Geschichte und Lebenswelt: Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion von Husserls Spätwerk (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 427 Geschicfite und Lebenswelt: Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion von Husserls Splitwerk. By Paul Janssen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970. Pp. xxii§ Clearly written and well argued, this book provides an important and informative exposition of the philosophy of Husserl's "late period." Its broadly conceived theme is that the unity and completeness of Husserl's ultimate position is best seen when we consider his work in the light of his reduction of objective science to the pre-scientific experience of our "lived-in-world" (Lebenswelt)---a perspective in which Husserl's position comes close to the problematic of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. This turn in Husserl's thinking is, of course, the crucial aspect of Die Krisis der Europiiischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phiinomenologie, first published in Belgrade in 1936. However, for his interpretation of Husserl's "late work"/anssen has consulted also Husserl's unpublished manuscripts of the Krisis period--being thus in a position to give us a rather comprehensive view of Husserl's thinking at that time. "The European nations are sick. Europe itself . . . is in crisis"--so wrote Husserl in 1935. What he saw was the bankruptcy of European philosophy--the bankruptcy of the whole history of European thought. More specifically, science and philosophy have been torn apart. Science has become a matter of value-free factuality and technology; and, in its own way, philosophy has lost all significance for human existence. What Husserl hoped for is the rebirth of Europe out of the spirit of a philosophy which, in value-accentuated synthesis, will "reconcile" science and "life." As Husserl saw it, the "originating genius of modern times" was Descartes with his emphasis on "absolute certainty" and a mathematically based "objectivism"--an objectivism which, in the European tradition, soon envisioned as its goal "a universal science of the world," neglecting what is subjective, spiritual, and valuationally meaningful in human existence. "It is assumed as self-evident," Husserl wrote, "that a universal, exact, causal determination governs the whole world and not only physcial nature" (p. 22)-- an assumption which ultimately culminates in a complete and universal psycho-physical naturalism. Opposed to such a "naturalistic position" is, of course, the natural personalistic point of view characteristic of ordinary experience--the "selfevident conviction" that the world is "what it is, in itself, and irrespective of our living or dying, of our knowing it or not knowing it" (p. 31). The world exists. The natural orientation, which disclosed this, exists; for it is the mode in which human beings live directly and intimately in the world. And for Husserl the crucial fact is that this world, disclosed in our natural orientation--this "lived-in-world" (Lebenswelt)---is the indisputable basis for aU our knowing and doing. A consistent interpretation of this subjective experience of the world, he is convinced, will entail the "break-through" to a transcendental-phenomenological insight that is foundational to a meaningful conception of human existence in its entirety. But how, we must ask, is it possible to achieve this "break-through" methodically and critically? In Krisis, Husserl sees the beginning of transcendental phenomenology as the end-product of the history of Western thinking. This means, however, that every philosopher is an inheritor of the whole of history, and that a radically new beginning without presuppositions--is no longer possible. Still, Husserl maintains, there is teleology in history, and teleology is "the form of forms" in which life manifests itself. And this concept of teleology itusserl combines with the idea of progress. Man's striving after consistency in judgment and after certainty in knowledge is thus but one aspect of a universal teleology at the heart of which is a striving after self- 428 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY preservation. For Husserl the "lived-in-world" is therefore "world history," and phenomenology is but the result of a spiritual life that is part and parcel of a universal teleology. Step by step there is being realized in all actions one self-identical meaning of life---the telos of a hfe that "consistently wills and actively achieves what it aims at in all its strivings," and which "remains teleologically consistent as the self of its own intrinsic...