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EDMUND HUSSERL: Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man

(Lecture delivered by Edmund Husserl, Vienna, 10 May 1935; therefore often referred to as: "The Vienna Lecture". 115k)

[From: Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Translated with Notes and an Introduction by Quentin Lauer, Harper Torchbooks, ©1965 by Quentin Lauer. This page originally copied from PRO EUROPA website, where you will find much other good material, including (e.g.) Thomas Mann's response (1937) to the Third Reich stripping him of his honorary doctorate degree from the Frederick-William University at Bonn. PRO EUROPA's epigraph to the section of their website containing these texts is also fitting to quote here: "The struggle against everything whose only claim to dignity is its materiality, to refuse to be merely a passive and determined element in the order of Creation this seems to me the primordial virtue which transformed an Asian peninsula into Europe" - Carlo Schmid]
 
"The lights are going out all over Europe. We at least shall try to relight them." (--"Daniel Corbett, Christian Filips 7D", apparently from a German/Belgian student's 2000 online yearbook webpage)

I

In this lecture I will venture an attempt to awaken new interest in the oft-treated theme of the European crisis by developing the philosophico-historical idea (or the teleological sense) of European man.¹ In so far as in thus developing the topic I bring out the essential function that philosophy and its ramifications in our sciences have to perform in this process, the European crisis will also be given added clarification.

We can illustrate this in terms of the well-known distinction between scientific medicine and 'naturopathy'. Just as in the common life of peoples the latter derives from naïve experience and tradition, so scientific medicine results from the utilization of insights belonging to purely theoretical sciences concerned with the human body, primarily anatomy and physiology. These in turn are based on those fundamental sciences that seek a universal explanation of nature as such, physics and chemistry.

Now let us turn our gaze from man's body to his spirit, the theme of the so-called humanistic sciences.² In these sciences theoretical interest is directed exclusively to human beings as persons, to their personal life and activity, as also correlatively to the concrete results of this activity. To live as a person is to live in a social framework, wherein I and we live together in community and have the community as a horizon.³ Now, communities are structured in various simple or complex forms, such as family, nation, or international community. Here the world 'live' is not to be taken in a physiological sense but rather as signifying purposeful living, manifesting spiritual creativity - in the broadest sense, creating culture within historical continuity. It is this that forms the theme of various humanistic sciences. Now, there is an obvious difference between healthy growth and decline, or to put it another way, between health and sickness, even for societies, for peoples, for states. In consequence there arises the not so farfetched question: how is it that in this connection there has never arisen a medical science concerned with nations and with international communities? The European nations are sick; Europe itself, they say, is in critical condition. Nor in this situation are there lacking all sorts of nature therapies. We are, in fact, quite overwhelmed with a torrent of naïve and extravagant suggestions for reform. But why is it that so luxuriantly developed humanistic sciences here fail to perform the service that in their own sphere the natural sciences perform so competently?

Those who are familiar with the spirit of modern science will not be embarrassed for an answer. The greatness of the natural sciences consists in their refusal to be content with an observational empiricism, since for them all descriptions of nature are but methodical procedures for arriving at exact explanations, ultimately physico-chemical explanations. They are of the opinion that 'merely descriptive' sciences tie us to the finitudes of our earthly environing world.⁴ Mathematically exact natural science, however, embraces with its method the infinites contained in its actualities and real possibilities. It sees in the intuitively given a merely subjective appearance, and it teaches how to investigate intersubjective ('objective')⁵ nature itself with systematic approximation on the basis of elements and laws that are unconditionally universal. At the same time, such exact science teaches how to explain all intuitively pre-given concretions, whether men, or animals, or heavenly bodies, by an appeal to what is ultimate, i.e., how to induce from the appearances, which are the data in any factual case, future possibilities and probabilities, and to do this with a universality and exactitude that surpasses any empiricism limited to intuition.⁶ The consistent development of exact sciences in modern times has been a true revolution in the technical mastery of nature.

In the humanistic sciences the methodological situation (in the sense already quite intelligible to us) is unfortunately quite different, and this for internal reasons. Human spirituality⁷ is, it is true, based on the human physis, each individually human soul-life is founded on corporeality, and thus too each community on the bodies of the individual human beings who are its members. If, then, as is done in the sphere of nature, a really exact explanation and consequently a similarly extensive scientific practical application is to become possible for the phenomena belonging to the humanistic sciences, then must the practitioners of the humanistic sciences consider not only the spirit as spirit but must also go back to its bodily foundations, and by employing the exact sciences of physics and chemistry, carry through their explanations. The attempt to do this, however, has been unsuccessful (and in the foreseeable future there is no remedy to be had) due to the complexity of the exact psycho-physical research needed in the case of individual human beings, to say nothing of the great historical communities. If the world were constructed of two, so to speak, equal spheres of reality - nature and spirit - neither with a preferential position methodologically and factually, the situation would be different. But only nature can be handled as a self-contained world; only natural science can with complete consistency abstract from all that is spirit and consider nature purely as nature. On the other side such a consistent abstraction from nature does not, for the practitioner of humanistic science who is interested purely in the spiritual, lead to a self-contained 'world', a world whose interrelationships are purely spiritual, that could be the theme of a pure and universal humanistic science, parallel to pure natural science. Animal spirituality,⁸ that of the human and animal 'souls', to which all other spirituality is referred, is in each individual instance causally based on corporeality. It is thus understandable that the practitioner of humanistic science, interested solely in the spiritual as such, gets no further than the descriptive, than a historical record of spirit, and thus remains tied to intuitive finitudes. Every example manifests this. A historian, for example, cannot, after all, treat the history of ancient Greece without taking into consideration the physical geography of ancient Greece; he cannot treat its architecture without considering the materiality of its buildings, etc., etc. That seems clear enough.

What is to be said, then, if the whole mode of thought that reveals itself in this presentation rests on fatal prejudices and is in its results partly responsible for Europe's sickness? I am convinced that this is the case, and in this way I hope to make understandable that herein lies an essential source for the conviction which the modern scientist has that the possibility of grounding a purely self-contained and universal science of the spirit is not even worth mentioning, with the result that he flatly rejects it.

It is in the interests of our Europe-problem to penetrate a bit more deeply into this question and to expose the above, at first glance lucidly clear, argumentation. The historian, the investigator of spirit, of culture, constantly has of course physical nature too among the phenomena with which he is concerned; in our example, nature in ancient Greece. But this is not nature in the sense understood by natural science; rather it is nature as it was for the ancient Greeks, natural reality present to their eyes in the world that surrounded them. To state it more fully; the historical environing world of the Greeks is not the objective world in our sense; rather it is their 'representation of the world', i.e., their own subjective evaluation, with all the realities therein that were valid for them, for example the gods, the demons, etc.

Environing world is a concept that has its place exclusively in the spiritual sphere. That we live in our own particular environing world, to which all our concerns and efforts are directed, points to an event that takes place purely in the spiritual order. Our environing world is a spiritual structure in us and in our historical life.⁹ Here, then, there is no reason for one who makes his theme the spirit as spirit to demand for it any but a purely spiritual explanation. And this has general validity: to look upon environing nature as in itself alien to spirit, and consequently to desire to support humanistic science with natural science and thus presumably to make the former exact, is nonsense.

Obviously, too, it is forgotten that natural science (like all sciences as such) is a title for spiritual activities, those of natural scientists in cooperation with each other; as such these activities belong, as do all spiritual occurrences, to the realm of what should be explained by means of a science of the spirit.¹⁰ Is it not, then, nonsensical and circular, to desire to explain by means of natural science the historical event 'natural science', to explain it by invoking natural science and its laws of nature, both of which, as produced by spirit,¹¹ are themselves part of the problem?

Blinded by naturalism (no matter how much they themselves may verbally oppose it), the practitioners of humanistic science have completely neglected even to pose the problem of a universal and pure science of the spirit and to seek a theory of the essence of spirit as spirit, a theory that pursues what is unconditionally universal in the spiritual order with its own elements and its own laws. Yet this last should be done with a view to gaining thereby scientific explanations in an absolutely conclusive sense.

The preceding reflections proper to a science of the spirit provide us with the right attitude for grasping and handling our theme of spiritual Europe as a problem belonging purely to science of the spirit, first of all from the point of view of spirit's history. As has already been stated in the introductory remarks, in following this path we should reveal an extraordinary teleology, which is, so to speak, innate only in our Europe. This, moreover, is most intimately connected with the eruption (or the invasion) of philosophy and of its ramifications, the sciences, in the ancient Greek spirit. We already suspect that there will be question of clarifying the profoundest reasons for the origin of fatal naturalism, or - and this is of equal importance - of modern dualism in interpreting the world. Ultimately the proper sense of European man's crisis should thereby come to light.

We may ask, 'How is the spiritual image of Europe to be characterized?' This does not mean Europe geographically, as it appears on maps, as though European man were to be in this way confined to the circle of those who live together in this territory. In the spiritual sense it is clear that to Europe belong the English dominions, the United States, etc., but not, however, the Eskimos or Indians of the country fairs, or the Gypsies, who are constantly wandering about Europe. Clearly the title Europe designates the unity of a spiritual life and a creative activity - with all its aims, interests, cares and troubles, with its plans, its establishments, its institutions. Therein individual human beings work in a variety of societies, on different levels, in families, races,¹² nations, all intimately joined together in spirit and, as I said, in the unity of one spiritual image. This should stamp on persons, groups, and all their cultural accomplishments an all-unifying character.

'The spiritual image of Europe' - what is it? It is exhibiting the philosophical idea immanent in the history of Europe (of spiritual Europe). To put it another way, it is its immanent teleology, which, if we consider mankind in general, manifests itself as a new human epoch emerging and beginning to grow, the epoch of a humanity that from now on will and can live only in the free fashioning of its being and its historical life out of rational ideas and infinite tasks.¹³

Every spiritual image has its place essentially in a universal historical space or in a particular unity of historical time in terms of coexistence or succession - it has its history. If, then, we follow historical connections, beginning as we must with ourselves and our own nation, historical continuity leads us ever further away from our own to neighboring nations, and so from nation to nation, from age to age. Ultimately we come to ancient times and go from the Romans to the Greeks, to the Egyptians, the Persians, etc., in this there is clearly no end. We go back to primeval times, and we must perforce turn to Menghin's significant and genial work The History of the Stone Age.¹⁴ To an investigation of this type mankind manifests itself as a single life of men and of peoples, bound together by spiritual relationships alone, filled with all types of human beings and of cultures, but constantly flowing each into the other. It is like a sea in which human beings, peoples, are the waves constantly forming, changing, and disappearing, some more richly, more complexly involved, others more simply.

In this process consistent, penetrating observation reveals new, characteristic compositions and distinctions. No matter how inimical the European nations may be toward each other, still they have a special inner affinity of spirit that permeates all of them and transcends their national differences. It is a sort of fraternal relationship that gives us the consciousness of being at home in this circle. This becomes immediately evident as soon as, for example, we penetrate sympathetically into the historical process of India, with its many peoples and cultural forms. In this circle there is again the unity of a family-like relationship, but one that is strange to us. On the other hand, Indians find us strangers and find only in each other their fellows. Still, this essential distinction between fellowship and strangeness, which is relativized on many levels and is a basic category of all historicity, cannot suffice. Historical humanity does not always divide itself in the same way according to this category. We get a hint of that right in our own Europe. Therein lies something unique, which all other human groups, too, feel with regard to us, something that apart from all considerations of expediency, becomes a motivation for them - despite their determination to retain their spiritual autonomy - constantly to Europeanize themselves, whereas we, if we understand ourselves properly, will never, for example, Indianize ourselves.¹⁵ I mean we feel (and with all its vagueness this feeling is correct) that in our European humanity there is an innate entelechy that thoroughly controls the changes in the European image and gives to it the sense of a development in the direction of an ideal image of life and of being, as moving toward an eternal pole. It is not as though there were question here of one of those known orientations that give to the physical realm of organic beings its character - not a question, therefore, of something like biological development in stages from seminal form up to maturity followed by ageing and dying out. There is essentially no zoology of peoples. They are spiritual unities. They have not, and above all the supernationality Europe has not, a mature from that has been or can be reached, no form of regular repetition. From the point of view of soul, humanity has never been a finished product, nor will it be, nor can it ever repeat itself.¹⁶ The spiritual telos of European Man, in which is included the particular telos of separate nations and of individual human beings, lies in infinity; it is an infinite idea, toward which in secret the collective spiritual becoming, so to speak, strives. Just as in the development it becomes a conscious telos, so too it becomes necessarily practical as a goal of the will, and thereby is introduced a new, a higher stage of development that is guided by norms, by normative ideas.

All of this, however, is not intended as a speculative interpretation of our historicity but rather as the expression of a vital anticipation arising out of unprejudiced reflection. But this anticipation serves as intentional guidance¹⁷ toward seeing in European history extraordinarily significant connections, in the pursuit of which the anticipated becomes for us guaranteed certainty. Anticipation is the emotional guide to all discoveries.

Let us develop this. Spiritually Europe has a birthplace. By this I do not mean a geographical place, in some one land, though this too is true. I refer, rather, to a spiritual birthplace in a nation or in certain men or groups of men belonging to this nation. It is the ancient Greek nation¹⁸ in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. In it there grows up a new kind of attitude¹⁹ of individuals toward their environing world. Consequent upon this emerges a completely new type of spiritual structure, rapidly growing into a systematically rounded (geschlossen) cultural form that the Greeks called philosophy. Correctly translated, in its original sense, this bespeaks nothing but universal science, science of the world as a whole, of the universal unity of all being. Very soon the interest in the totality and, by the same token, the question regarding the all-embracing becoming and the resulting being begin to particularize themselves in accord with the general forms and regions of being.²⁰ Thus philosophy, the one science, is ramified into the various particular sciences.

In the emergence of philosophy in this sense, a sense, that is, which includes all sciences, I see - no matter how paradoxical this may seem - the original phenomenon of spiritual Europe. The elucidations that follow, however brief they must be kept, will soon eliminate the seeming paradox.

Philosophy-science²¹ is the title for a special class of cultural structures. The historical movement that has taken on the form of European supernationality goes back to an ideal image whose dimension is the infinite; not, however, to an image that could be recognized in a merely external morphological examination of changing forms. To have a norm constantly in view is something intimately a part of the intentional life of individual persons and consequently of nations and of particular societies within the latter, and ultimately of the organism formed by the nations united together as Europe. This, of course, is not true of all persons and, therefore, is not fully developed in the higher-level personalities constituted by intersubjective acts. Still, it is present in them in the form of a necessary progressive development and extension in the spirit of universally valid norms. This spirit, however, signifies at the same time the progressive transformations of collective humanity beginning with the effective formation of ideas in small and even in the smallest circles. Ideas, conceived within individual persons as sense-structures that in a wonderfully new manner secrete within themselves intentional infinities, are not in space like real things, which latter, entering as they do into the field of human experiences, do not by that very fact as yet signify anything for the human being as a person. With the first conception of ideas man gradually becomes a new man. His spiritual being enters into the movement of a progressive reformation. This movement from the very beginning involves communication and awakens a new style of personal existence in its vital circle by a better understanding of a correspondingly new becoming. In this movement first of all (and subsequently even beyond it) a special type of humanity spreads out, living in finitude but oriented toward poles of infinity. By the very same token there grows up a new mode of sociality and a new form of enduring society, whose spiritual life, cemented together by a common love of and creation of ideas and by the setting of ideal norms for life, carries within itself a horizon of infinity for the future - an infinity of generations finding constant spiritual renewal in ideas. This takes place first of all in the spiritual territory of a single nation, the Greeks, as a development of philosophy and of philosophical communities. Along with this there grows, first in this nation, a general cultural spirit that draws the whole of mankind under its sway and is therefore a progressive transformation in the shape of a new historicity.²²

This rough sketch will gain in completeness and intelligibility as we examine more closely the historical origin of philosophical and scientific man and thereby clarify the sense of Europe and, consequently, the new type of historicity that through this sort of development distinguishes itself from history in general.²³

First, let us elucidate the remarkable character of philosophy as it unfolds in ever-new special sciences. Let us contrast it with other forms of culture already present in prescientific man, in his artefacts, his agriculture, his architecture, etc. All manifest classes of cultural products along with the proper methods for insuring their successful production. Still, they have a transitory existence in their environing world. Scientific achievements, on the other hand, once the method of insuring their successful creation has been attained, have an entirely different mode of being, an entirely different temporality. They do not wear out, they are imperishable. Repeated creation does not produce something similar, at best something similarly useful. Rather, no matter how many times the same person or any number of persons repeat these achievements, they remain exactly identical, identical in sense and in value. Persons united together in actual mutual understanding can only experience what their respective fellows have produced in the same manner as identical with what they have produced themselves.²⁴ In a word, what scientific activity achieves is not real but ideal.

What is more, however, whatever validity or truth has been gained in this way serves as material for the production of higher-level idealities; and this goes on and on. Now, in the developed theoretical interest, each interest receives ahead of time the sense of a merely relative goal; it becomes a transition to constantly new, higher-level goals in an infinity preindicated as science's universal field of endeavor, its 'domain'. Thus science designates the idea of an infinity of tasks, of which at any time a finite number have already been accomplished and are retained in their enduring validity. These constitute at the same time the fund of premises for an endless horizon of tasks united into one all-embracing task.

Here, however, an important supplementary remark should be made. In science the ideality of what is produced in any particular instance means more than the mere capacity for repetition based on a sense that has been guaranteed as identical; the idea of truth in the scientific sense is set apart (and of this we have still to speak) from the truth proper to pre-scientific life. Scientific truth claims to be unconditioned truth, which involves infinity, giving to each factually guaranteed truth a merely relative character, making it only an approach oriented, in fact, toward the infinite horizon, wherein the truth in itself is, so to speak, looked on as an infinitely distant point.²⁵ By the same token this infinity belongs also to what in the scientific sense 'really is'. A fortiori, there is infinity involved in 'universal' validity for 'everyone', as the subject of whatever rational foundations are to be secured; nor is this any longer everyone in the finite sense the term has in prescientific life.²⁶

Having thus characterized the ideality peculiar to science, with the ideal infinities variously implied in the very sense of science, we are faced, as we survey the historical situation, with a contrast that we express in the following proposition: no other cultural form in the pre-philosophical historical horizon is a culture of ideas in the above-mentioned sense; none knows any infinite tasks - none knows of such universes of idealities that as wholes and in all their details, as also in their methods of production, bear within themselves an essential infinity.

Extra-scientific culture, not yet touched by science, is a task accomplished by man in finitude. The openly endless horizon around him is not made available to him. His aims and activities, his commerce and his travel, his personal, social, national, mythical motivation - all this moves about in an environing world whose finite dimensions can be viewed. Here there are no infinite tasks, no ideal attainments whose very infinity is man's field of endeavor - a field of endeavor such that those who work in it are conscious that it has the mode of being proper to such an infinite sphere of tasks.

With the appearance of Greek philosophy, however, and with its first definite formulation in a consistent idealizing of the new sense of infinity, there occurs, from this point of view, a progressive transformation that ultimately draws into its orbit all ideas proper to finitude and with them the entire spiritual culture of mankind. For us Europeans there are, consequently, even outside the philosophico-scientific sphere, any number of infinite ideas (if we may use the expression), but the analogous character of infinity that they have (infinite tasks, goals, verifications, truths, 'true values', 'genuine goods', 'absolutely' valid norms) is due primarily to the transformation of man through philosophy and its idealities. Scientific culture in accord with ideas of infinity means, then, a revolutionizing of all culture, a revolution that affects man's whole manner of being as a creator of culture. It means also a revolutionizing of historicity, which is now the history of finite humanity's disappearance, to the extent that it grows into a humanity with infinite tasks.

Here we meet the obvious objection that philosophy, the science of the Greeks, is not, after all, distinctive of them, something which with them first came into the world. They themselves tell of the wise Egyptians, Babylonians, etc.; and they did in fact learn much from these latter. Today we possess all sorts of studies on Indian, Chinese, and other philosophies, studies that place these philosophies on the same level with Greek philosophy, considering them merely as different historical formulations of one and the same cultural idea. Of course, there is not lacking something in common. Still, one must not allow intentional depths to be covered over by what is merely morphologically common and be blind to the most essential differences of principle.

Before anything else, the attitude of these two kinds of 'philosophers', the overall orientation of their interests, is thoroughly different. Here and there one may observe a world-embracing interest that on both sides (including, therefore, the Indian, Chinese and other like 'philosophies') leads to universal cognition of the world, everywhere developing after the manner of a sort of practical vocational interest and for quite intelligible reasons leading to vocational groups, in which from generation to generation common results are transmitted and even developed. Only with the Greeks, however, do we find a universal ('cosmological') vital interest in the essentially new form of a purely 'theoretical' attitude.²⁷ This is true, too, of the communal form in which the interest works itself out, the corresponding, essentially new attitude of the philosophers and the scientists (mathematicians, astronomers, etc.). These are the men who, not isolated but with each other and for each other, i.e., bound together in a common interpersonal endeavor, strive for and carry into effect theoria and only theoria. These are the ones whose growth and constant improvement ultimately, as the circle of cooperators extends and the generations of investigators succeed each other, become a will oriented in the direction of an infinite and completely universal task. The theoretical attitude has its historical origin in the Greeks.

Speaking generally, attitude bespeaks a habitually, determined manner of vital willing, wherein the will's directions or interests, its aims and its cultural accomplishments, are preindicated and thus the overall orientation determined. In this enduring orientation taken as a norm, the individual life is lived. The concrete cultural contents change in a relatively enclosed historicity. In its historical situation mankind (or the closed community, such as a nation, a race, etc.) always lives within the framework of some sort of attitude. Its life always has a normative orientation and within this a steady historicity or development.

Thus if the theoretical attitude in its newness is referred back to a previous, more primitive normative attitude, the theoretical is characterized as a transformed attitude.²⁸ Looking at the historicity of human existence universally in all its communal forms and in its historical stages, we find, then, that essentially a certain style of human existence (taken in formal universality) points to a primary historicity, within which the actual normative style of culture-creating existence at any time, no matter what its rise or fall or stagnation, remains formally the same. In this regard we are speaking of the natural, the native attitude, of originally natural life, of the first primitively natural form of cultures - be they higher or lower, uninhibitedly developing or stagnating. All other attitudes, then, refer back to these natural ones as transformations of them.²⁹ To put it more concretely, in an attitude natural to one of the actual human groups in history there must arise at a point in time motives that for the first time impel individual men and groups having this attitude to transform it.

How are we, then, to characterize the essentially primitive attitude, the fundamental historical mode of human existence?³⁰ The answer: on the basis of generation men naturally live in communities - in a family, a race, a nation - and these communities are in themselves more or less abundantly subdivided into particular social units. Now, life on the level of nature is characterized as a naïvely direct living immersed in the world, in the world that in a certain sense is constantly there consciously as a universal horizon but is not, merely by that fact, thematic. Thematic is that toward which man's attention is turned. Being genuinely alive is always having one's attention turned to this or that, turned to something as to an end or a means, as relevant or irrelevant, interesting or indifferent, private or public, to something that is in daily demand or to something that is startlingly new. All this belongs to the world horizon, but there is need of special motives if the one who is caught up in such a life in the world is to transform himself and it to come to the point where he somehow makes this world itself his theme, where he conceives an enduring interest in it.

But here more detailed explanations are needed. Individual human beings who change their attitudes as human beings belonging to their own general vital community (their nation), have their particular natural interests (each his own). These they can by no change in attitude simply lose; that would mean for each ceasing to be the individual he is, the one he has been since birth. No matter what the circumstances, then, the transformed attitude can only be a temporary one. It can take on a lasting character that will endure as a habit throughout an entire life only in the form of an unconditional determination of will to take up again the selfsame attitudes in a series of periods that are temporary but intimately bound together. It will mean that by virtue of a continuity that bridges intentionally the discreteness involved, men will hold on to the new type of interests as worth being realized and will embody them in corresponding cultural forms.³¹

We are familiar with this sort of thing in the occupations that make their appearance even in a naturally primitive form of cultural life, where there are temporary periods devoted to the occupation, periods that interrupt the rest of life with its concrete temporality (e.g., the working hours of a functionary, etc.).

Now, there are two possibilities. On the one hand, the interests of the new attitude will be made subservient to the natural interests of life, or what is essentially the same, to natural practicality. In this case the new attitude is itself a practical one. This, then, can have a sense similar to the practical attitude of the politician, who as a state functionary is attentive to the common good and whose attitude, therefore, is to serve the practical interests of all (and incidentally his own). This sort of thing admittedly still belongs to the domain of the natural attitude, which is, of course, different for different types of community members and is in fact one thing for the leaders of the community and another for the 'citizens' - both obviously understood in the broadest sense. In any event, the analogy makes it clear that the universality of a practical attitude, in this case one that embraces a whole world, need in no way signify being interested in and occupied with all the details and particularities of that world - it would obviously be unthinkable.

In contrast to the higher-level practical attitude there exists, however, still another essential possibility of a change in the universal natural attitude (with which we shall soon become acquainted in its type, the mythical-religious attitude), which is to say, the theoretical attitude - a name being given to it, of course, only provisionally, because in this attitude philosophical theoria must undergo a development and so become its proper aim or field of interest. The theoretical attitude, even though it too is a professional attitude, is thoroughly unpractical. Thus it is based on a deliberate epoche from all practical interests,³² and consequently even those of a higher level, that serve natural needs within the framework of a life's occupation governed by such practical interests.

Still, it must at the same time be said that there is no question here of a definitive 'cutting off' of the theoretical life from the practical. We are not saying that the concrete life of the theoretical thinker falls into two disconnected vital continuities partitioned off from each other, which would mean, socially speaking, that two spiritually unconnected spheres would come into existence. For there is still a third form of universal attitude possible (in contrast both to the mythical-religious, which is based on the natural, and to the theoretical attitudes). It is the synthesis of opposing interests that occurs in the transition from the theoretical to the practical attitude. In this way thoeria (the universal science), whose growth has manifested a tight unity through an epoche from all practical considerations, is called upon (and even proves in a theoretical insight³³ that it is called upon) to serve humanity in a new way, first of all in its concrete existence as it continues to live naturally. This takes place in the form of a new kind of practical outlook, a universal critique of all life and of its goals, of all the forms and systems of culture that have already grown up in the life of mankind. This brings with it a critique of mankind itself and of those values that explicitly or implicitly guide it. Carrying it to a further consequence, it is a practical outlook whose aim is to elevate mankind through universal scientific reason in accord with norms of truth in every form, and thus to transform it into a radically new humanity made capable of an absolute responsibility to itself on the basis of absolute theoretical insights.³⁴ Still, prior to this synthesis of theoretical universality and a practical outlook with universal interests, there is obviously another synthesis of theory and practice - the utilization of the limited results of theory, of those special sciences that are limited to the practical aspects of natural life, having relinquished by their very specialization the universality of theoretical interest. Here the primitively natural attitude and the theoretical are joined together in an orientation toward finite goals.

For a profounder understanding of Greco-European science (universally speaking, this means philosophy) in its fundamental difference from the equally notable oriental 'philosophies', it is now necessary to consider in more detail the practically universal attitude, and to explain it as mythical-religious, an attitude that, prior to European science, brings those other philosophies into being. It is a well-known fact, to say nothing of an essentially obvious necessity, that mythical-religious motives and a mythical-religious practice together belong to a humanity living naturally - before Greek philosophy, and with it a scientific world view, entered on the scene and matured. A mythical-religious attitude is one that takes as its theme the world as a totality - a practical theme. The world in this case is, of course, one that has a concrete, traditional significance for the men in question (let us say, a nation) and is thus mythically apperceived. This sort of mythical-natural attitude embraces from the very first not only men and animals and other infrahuman and infra-animal beings (Wesen) but also the suprahuman. The view that embraces them as a totality is a practical one; not, however, as though man, whose natural life, after all, is such that he is actually interested only in certain realities, could ever have come to the point where everything together would suddenly and in equal degree take on practical relevance. Rather, to the extent that the whole world is looked upon as dominated by mythical powers and to the extent that human destiny depends immediately or mediately on the way these powers rule in the world, a universally mythical world view may have its source in practicality and is, then, itself a world view, whose interests are practical. It is understandable that priests belonging to a priesthood in charge of both mythical-religious interests and of the traditions belonging to them should have motives for such a mythical-religious attitude. With this priesthood these arises and spreads the linguistically solidified 'knowledge' of these mythical powers (in the broadest sense though of as personal). This knowledge quasi-automatically takes on the form of a mystical speculation which, by setting itself up as a naïvely convincing interpretation, transforms the mythos itself. At the same time, obviously, attention is constantly directed also to the ordinary world ruled by these mythical powers and to the human and infrahuman beings belonging to it (these, incidentally, unsettled in their own essential being, are also open to the influence of mythical factors). This attention looks to the ways in which the powers control the events of this world, the manner in which they themselves must be subject to a unified supreme order of power, the manner in which they with regard to individual functions and functioners intervene by initiating and carrying out, by handing down decrees of fate. All this speculative knowledge however, has as its purpose to serve man toward his human aims, to enable him to live the happiest possible life on earth, to protect that life from sickness, from misfortune, need and death. It is understandable that in this mythico-practical approach to knowing the world there can arise not a little knowledge of the actual world, of the world known in a sort of scientific experience, a knowledge subsequently to be subjected to a scientific evaluation. Still, this sort of knowledge is and remains mythico-practical in its logical connections, and it is a mistake for someone brought up in the scientific modes of thought initiated in Greece and progressively developed in modern times to speak of Indian and Chinese philosophy (astronomy, mathematics) and thus to interpret India, Babylonia, and China in a European way.³⁵

There is a sharp cleavage, then, between the universal but mythico-practical attitude and the 'theoretical', which by every previous standard is unpractical, the attitude of thaumazein [Gr. = to wonder], to which the great men of Greek philosophy's first culminating period, Plato and Aristotle, trace the origin of philosophy. Men are gripped by a passion for observing and knowing the world, a passion that turns from all practical interests and in the closed circle of its own knowing activities, in the time devoted to this sort of investigation, accomplishes and wants to accomplish only pure theoria³⁶. In other words, man becomes the disinterested spectator, overseer of the world, he becomes a philosopher. More than that, from this point forward his life gains a sensitivity for motives which are possible only to this attitude, for novel goals and methods of thought, in the framework of which philosophy finally comes into being and man becomes philosopher.

Like everything that occurs in history, of course, the introduction of the theoretical attitude has its factual motivation in the concrete circumstances of historical events. Therefore it is worth-while to explain in this connection how, considering the manner of life and the horizon of Greek man in the seventh century B.C., in his intercourse with the great and already highly cultivated nations surrounding him, that thaumazein could introduce itself and at first become established in individuals. Regarding this we shall not enter into greater detail; it is more important for us to understand the path of motivation, with its sense-giving and sense-creating, which leads from mere conversion (or from mere thaumazein), to theoria - a historical fact, that nevertheless must have in it something essential. It is important to explain the change from original theoria, from the completely 'disinterested' (consequent upon the epoche from all practical interests) world view (knowledge of the world based only on universal contemplation) to the theoria proper to science - both stages exemplifying the contrast between doxa [Gr. = opinion] and episteme [Gr. = knowledge]. The theoretical interest that comes on the scene as that thaumazein, is clearly a modification of curiosity that has its original place in natural life as an interruption in the course of 'earnest living', as a working out of originally effected vital interests, or as a playful looking about when the specific needs of actual life have been satisfied or working hours are past. Curiosity, too (not in the sense of an habitual 'vice'), is a modification, an interest raised above merely vital interests and prescinding from them.

With an attitude such as this, man observes first of all the variety of nations, his own and others, each with its own environing world, which with its traditions, its gods and demigods, with its mythical powers, constitutes for each nation the self-evident, real world. In the face of this extraordinary contrast there arises the distinction between the represented and the real world, and a new question is raised concerning the truth - not everyday truth bound as it is to tradition but a truth that for all those who are not blinded by attachment to tradition is identical and universally valid, a truth in itself. Thus it is proper to the theoretical attitude of the philosopher that he is more and more predetermined to devote his whole future life, in the sense of a universal life, to the task of theoria, to build theoretical knowledge upon theoretical knowledge in infinitum.³⁷

In isolated personalities, like Thales, et al., there thus grows up a new humanity - men whose profession it is to create a philosophical life, philosophy as a novel form of culture. Understandably there grows up at the same time a correspondingly novel form of community living. These ideal forms are, as others understand them and make them their own, simply taken up and made part of life. In like manner they lead to cooperative endeavor and to mutual help through criticism. Even the outsiders, the non-philosophers, have their attention drawn to the unusual activity that is going on. As they come to understand, they either become philosophers themselves, or if they are too much taken up with their own work, they become pupils. Thus philosophy spreads in a twofold manner, as a widening community of professional philosophers and as a common educational movement growing along with the former. Here also, however, lies the origin of the subsequent, so unfortunate internal split in the unity of the people into educated and uneducated. Still, it is clear that this tendency to spread is not confined to the limits of the originating nation. Unlike all other cultural products, this is not a movement of interests bound to the soil of national traditions. Even foreigners learn in their turn to understand and in general to share in the gigantic cultural change which streams forth from philosophy. Now precisely this must be further characterized.

As philosophy spreads in the form of research and training, it produces a twofold effect. On the one hand, most essential to the theoretical attitude of philosophical man is the characteristic universality of the critical standpoint, which its determination not to accept without question any pregiven opinion, any tradition, and thus to seek out, with regard to the entire universe handed down in tradition, the true in itself - which is ideal. Yet this is not merely a new way of looking at knowledge. By virtue of the demand to subject the whole of experience to ideal norms, i.e., those of unconditional truth, these results at the same time an allembracing change in the practical order of human existence and thus of cultural life in its entirety. The practical must no longer take its norms from naïve everyday experience and from tradition but from the objective truth. In this way ideal truth becomes an absolute value that in the movement of education and in its constant application in the training of children carries with it a universal revision of practice. If we consider somewhat more in detail the manner of this transformation, we shall immediately understand the inevitable: if the general idea of truth in itself becomes the universal norm of all the relative truths that play a role in human life - actual and conjectural situation truths - then this fact affects all traditional norms, those of right, of beauty, of purpose, of dominant values in persons, values having a personal character, etc.

Thus there grows up a special type of man and a special vocation in life correlative to the attainment of a new culture. Philosophical knowledge of the world produces not only these special types of result but also a human conduct that immediately influences the rest of practical living with all its demands and its aims, aims of the historical tradition according to which one is educated, thus giving these aims their own validity. A new and intimate community, we might say a community of ideal interests, is cultivated among men - men who life for philosophy, united in their dedication to ideas, which ideas are not only of use to all but are identically the property of all. Inevitably there develops a particular kind of cooperation whereby men work with each other and for each other, helping each other by mutual criticism, with the result that the pure and unconditioned validity of truth grows as a common possession. In addition there is the necessary tendency toward the promotion of interest, because others understand what is herein desired and accomplished; and this is a tendency to include more and more as yet unphilosophical persons in the community of those who philosophize. This occurs first of all among members of the same nation. Nor can this expansion be confined to professional scientific research; rather its success goes far beyond the professional circle, becoming an educational movement.

Now, if this educational movement spreads to ever wider circles of the people, and naturally to the superior, dominant types, to those who are less involved in the cares of life, the results are of what sort? Obviously it does not simply bring about a homogeneous change in the normal, on the whole satisfactory national life; rather in all probability it leads to great cleavages, wherein the national life and the entire national culture go into an upheaval. The conservatives, content with tradition, and the philosophical circle will struggle against each other, and without doubt the battle will carry over into the sphere of political power. At the very beginning of philosophy, persecution sets in. The men dedicated to those ideas are outlawed. And yet ideas are stronger than any forces rooted in experience.³⁸

A further point to be taken into consideration here is that philosophy, having grown out of a critical attitude to each and every traditional predisposition, is limited in its spread by no national boundaries. All that must be present is the capacity for a universal critical attitude, which too, of course, presupposes a certain level of prescientific culture. Thus can the upheaval in the national culture propagate itself, first of all because the progressing universal science becomes a common possession of nations that were at first strangers to each other, and then because a unified community, both scientific and educational, extends to the majority of nations.

Still another important point must be adduced; it concerns philosophy's position in regard to traditions. There are in fact two possibilities to observe here. Either the traditionally accepted is completely rejected, or its content is taken over philosophically, and thereby it too is reformed in the spirit of philosophical ideality. An outstanding case in point is that of religion - from which I should like to exclude the 'polytheistic religions'. Gods in the plural, mythical powers of every kind, are objects belonging to the environing world, on the same level of reality as animal or man. In the concept of God, the singular is essential.³⁹ Looking at this from the side of man, moreover, it is proper that the reality of God, both as being and as value, should be experienced as binding man interiorly. These results, then, an understandable blending of this absoluteness with that of philosophical ideality. In the overall process of idealization that philosophy undertakes, God is, so to speak, logicized and becomes even the bearer of the absolute logos. I should life, moreover, to see a logic in the very fact that theologically religion invokes faith itself as evidence and thus as a proper and most profound mode of grounding true being.⁴⁰ National gods, however, are simply there as real facts of the environing world, without anyone confronting philosophy with questions stemming from a critique of cognition, with questions of evidence.

Substantially, though in a somewhat sketchy fashion, we have now described the historical movement that makes understandable how, beginning with a few Greek exceptions, a transformation of human existence and of man's entire cultural life could be set in motion, beginning in Greece and its nearest neighbors. Moreover, now it is also discernible how, following upon this, a supernationality of a completely new kind could arise. I am referring, of course, to the spiritual form of Europe. It is now no longer a number of different nations bordering on each other, influencing each other only by commercial competition and war. Rather a new spirit stemming from philosophy and the sciences based on it, a spirit of free criticism providing norms for infinite tasks, dominates man, creating new, infinite ideals. These are ideals for individual men of each nation and for the nations themselves. Ultimately, however, the expanding synthesis of nations too has its infinite ideals, wherein each of these nations, by the very fact that it strives to accomplish its own ideal task in the spirit of infinity,⁴¹ contributes its best to the community of nations. In this give and take the supernational totality with its graded structure of societies grows apace, filled with the spirit of one all-inclusive task, infinite in the variety of its branches yet unique in its infinity. In this total society with its ideal orientation, philosophy itself retains the role of guide, which is its special infinite task.⁴² Philosophy has the role of a free and universal theoretical disposition that embraces at once all ideals and the one overall ideal - in short, the universe of all norms. Philosophy has constantly to exercise through European man its role of leadership for the whole of mankind.

II

It is now time that there be voiced misunderstandings and doubts that are certainly very importunate and which, it seems to me, derive their suggestive force from the language of popular prejudice.

Is not what is here being advocated something rather out of place in our times - saving the honor of rationalism, of enlightenment, of an intellectualism that, lost in theory, is isolated from the world, with the necessarily bad result that the quest for learning becomes empty, becomes intellectual snobbishness? Does it not mean falling back into the fatal error of thinking that science makes men wise, that science is called upon the create a genuine humanity, superior to destiny and finding satisfaction in itself? Who is going to take such thoughts seriously today?

This objection certainly is relatively justified in regard to the state of development in Europe from the seventeenth up to the end of the nineteenth century. But it does not touch the precise sense of what I am saying. I should like to think that I, seemingly a reactionary, am far more revolutionary than those who today in word strike so radical a pose.

I, too, am quite sure that the European crisis has its roots in a mistaken rationalism.⁴³ That, however, must not be interpreted as meaning that rationality as such is an evil or that in the totality of human existence it is of minor importance. The rationality of which alone we are speaking is rationality in that noble and genuine sense, the original Greek sense, that became an ideal in the classical period of Greek philosophy - though of course it still needed considerable clarification through self-examination. It is its vocation, however, to serve as a guide to mature development. On the other hand, we readily grant (and in this regard German idealism has spoken long before us) that the form of development given to ratio in the rationalism of the Enlightenment was an aberration, but nevertheless an understandable aberration.

Reason is a broad title. According to the good old definition, man is the rational living being, a sense in which even the Papuan is man and not beast. He has his aims, and he acts with reflection, considering practical possibilities. As products and methods grow, they enter into a tradition that is ever intelligible in its rationality. Still, just as man (and even the Papuan) represents a new level of animality - in comparison with the beast - so with regard to humanity and its reason does philosophical reason represent a new level. The level of human existence with its ideal norms for infinite tasks, the level of existence sub specie aeternitatis, is, however, possible only in the form of absolute universality, precisely that which is a priori included in the idea of philosophy. It is true that universal philosophy, along with all the particular sciences, constitutes only a partial manifestation of European culture. Contained, however, in the sense of my entire presentation is the claim that this part is, so to speak, the functioning brain upon whose normal functioning the genuine, healthy spirit of Europe depends. The humanity of higher man, of reason, demands, therefore, a genuine philosophy.

But at this very point there lurks a danger. 'Philosophy' - in that we must certainly distinguish philosophy as a historical fact belonging to this or that time from philosophy as idea, idea of an infinite task.⁴⁴ The philosophy that at any particular time is his historically actual is the more or less successful attempt to realize the guiding idea of the infinity, and thereby the totality, of truths. Practical ideals, viewed as external poles from the line of which one cannot stray during the whole of life without regret, without being untrue to oneself and thus unhappy, are in this view by no means yet clear and determined; they are anticipated in an equivocal generality. Determination comes only with concrete pursuit and with at least relatively successful action. Here the constant danger is that of falling into one-sidedness and premature satisfaction, which are punished in subsequent contradictions. Thence the contrast between the grand claims of philosophical systems, that are all the while incompatible with each other. Added to this are the necessity and yet the danger of specialization.

In this way, of course, one-sided rationality can become an evil. It can also be said that it belongs to the very essence of reason that philosophers can at first understand and accomplish their infinite task only on the basis of an absolutely necessary onesidedness.⁴⁵ In itself there is no absurdity here, no error. Rather, as has been remarked, the direct and necessary path for reason allows it initially to grasp only one aspect of the task, at first without recognizing that a thorough knowledge of the entire infinite task, the totality of being, involves still other aspects. When inadequacy reveals itself in obscurities and contradiction, then this becomes a motive to engage in a universal reflection. Thus the philosopher must always have as his purpose to master the true and full sense of philosophy, the totality of its infinite horizons. No one line of knowledge, no individual truth must be absolutized. Only in such a supreme consciousness of self, which itself becomes a branch of the infinite task, can philosophy fulfill its function of putting itself, and therewith a genuine humanity, on the right track. To know that this is the case, however, also involves once more entering the field of knowledge proper to philosophy on the highest level of reflection upon itself. Only on the basis of this constant reflectiveness is a philosophy a universal knowledge.

I have said that the course of philosophy goes through a period of naïveté. This, then, is the place for a critique of the so renowned irrationalism, or it is the place to uncover the naïveté of that rationalism that passes as genuine philosophical rationality, and that admittedly is characteristic of philosophy in the whole modern period since the Renaissance, looking upon itself as the real and hence universal rationalism. Now, as they begin, all the sciences, even those whose beginnings go back to ancient times, are unavoidably caught up in this naïveté. To put it more exactly, the most general title for this naïveté is objectivism, which is given a structure in the various types of naturalism, wherein the spirit is naturalized.⁴⁶ Old and new philosophies were and remain naïvely objectivistic. It is only right, however, to add that German idealism, beginning with Kant, was passionately concerned with overcoming the naïveté that had already become very sensitive. Still, it was incapable of really attaining to the level of superior reflectiveness that is decisive for the new image of philosophy and of European man.

What I have just said I can make intelligible only by a few sketchy indications. Natural man (let us assume, in the pre-philosophical period) is oriented toward the world in all his concerns and activities. The area in which he lives and works is the environing world which in its spatiotemporal dimensions surrounds him and of which he considers himself a part. This continues to be true in the theoretical attitude, which at first can be nothing but that of the disinterested spectator of a world that is demythologized before his eyes. Philosophy sees in the world the universe of what is, and world becomes objective world over against representations of the world - which latter change subjectively, whether on a national or an individual scale - and thus truth becomes objective truth. Thus philosophy begins as cosmology. At first, as is self-evident, it is oriented in its theoretical interest to corporeal nature, since in fact all spatiotemporal data do have, at least basically, the form of corporeality. Men and beasts are not merely bodies, but to the view oriented to the environing world they appear as some sort of corporeal being and thus as realities included in the universal spatiotemporality. In this way all psychic events, those of this or that ego, such as experience, thinking, willing, have a certain objectivity. Community life, that of families, of peoples, and the like, seems then to resolve itself into the life of particular individuals, who are psychophysical objects. In the light of psychophysical causality there is no purely spiritual continuity in spiritual grouping; physical nature envelops everything.

The historical process of development is definitively marked out through this focus on the environing world. Even the hastiest glance at the corporeality present in the environing world shows that nature is a homogeneous, unified totality, a world for itself, so to speak, surrounded by a homogeneous spatiotemporality and divided into individual things, all similar in being res extensae and each determining the other causally. Very quickly comes a first and greatest step in the process of discovery: overcoming the finitude of nature that has been thought of as objective-in-itself, finitude in spite of the open infinity of it. Infinity is discovered, and first of all in form of idealized quantities, masses, numbers, figures, straight lines, poles, surfaces, etc. Nature, space and time become capable of stretching ideally into infinity and also of being infinitely divided ideally. From the art of surveying develops geometry; from counting, arithmetic; from everyday mechanics, mathematical mechanics; etc. Now, without anyone forming a hypothesis in this regard, the world of perceived nature is changed into a mathematical world, the world of mathematical natural sciences. As ancient times moved forward, with the mathematics proper to that stage, the first discovery of infinite ideals and of infinite tasks was accomplished simultaneously. That discovery becomes for all subsequent times the guiding star of the sciences.

How, then, did the intoxicating success of this discovery of physical infinity affect the scientific mastery of the realm of spirit? In the focus on the environing world, a constantly objective attitude, everything spiritual appeared to be based on physical corporeality. Thus an application of the mode of thought proper to natural science was obvious. For this reason we already find in the early stages Democritean materialism and determinism.⁴⁷ However, the greatest minds recoiled from this and also from any newer style of psychophysics (Psychophysik). Since Socrates, man is made thematic precisely as human, man with his spiritual life in society. Man retains an orientation to the objective world, but with the advent of Plato and Aristotle this world becomes the great theme of investigations. At this point a remarkable cleavage makes itself felt: the human belongs to the universe of objective facts, but as persons, as egos, men have goals, aims. They have norms for tradition, truth norms - eternal norms. Though the development proceeded haltingly in ancient times, still it was not lost. Let us make the leap to so-called 'modern' times. With glowing enthusiasm the infinite task of a mathematical knowledge of nature and in general of a world knowledge is undertaken. The extraordinary successes of natural knowledge are now to be extended to knowledge of the spirit. Reason had proved its power in nature. 'As the sun is one all-illuminating and warming sun, so too is reason one' (Descartes).⁴⁸ The method of natural science must also embrace the mysteries of spirit. The spirit is real⁴⁹ and objectively in the world, founded as such in corporeality. With this the interpretation of the world immediately takes on a predominantly dualistic, i.e., psychophysical, form. The same causality -only split in two- embraces the one world; the sense of rational explanation is everywhere the same, but in such a way that all explanation of spirit, in the only way in which it can be universal, involves the physical. There can be no pure, self-contained search for an explanation of the spiritual, no purely inneroriented psychology or theory of spirit beginning with the ego in psychical self-experience and extending to the other psyche.⁵⁰ The way that must be traveled is the external one, the path of physics and chemistry. All the fond talk of common spirit, of the common will of a people, of nations' ideal political goals, and the like, are romanticism and mythology, derived from an analogous application of concepts that have a proper sense only in the individual personal sphere. Spiritual being is fragmentary. To the question regarding the source of all these difficulties the following answer is to be given: this objectivism or this psychophysical interpretation of the world, despite its seeming self-evidence, is a naïve one-sidedness that never was understood to be such. To speak of the spirit as reality (Realitat), presumably a real (realen) annex to bodies and having its supposedly spatiotemporal being within nature, is an absurdity.

At this point, however, it is important for our problem of the crisis to show how it is that the 'modern age', that has for centuries been so proud of its successes in theory and practice, has itself finally fallen into a growing dissatisfaction and must even look upon its own situation as distressful. Want has invaded all the sciences, most recently as a want of method. Moreover, the want that grips us Europeans, even though it is not understood, involves very many persons.⁵¹

There are all sorts of problems that stem from naïveté, according to which objectivistic science holds what it calls the objective world to be the totality of what is, without paying any attention to the fact that no objective science can do justice to the subjectivity that achieves science. One who has been trained in the natural sciences finds it self-evident that whatever is merely subjective must be eliminated and that the method of natural science, formulated according to a subjective mode of representation, is objectively determined. In the same manner he seeks what is objectively true for the psychic too. By the same token, it is taken for granted that the subjective, eliminated by the physical scientist, is, precisely as psychic, to be investigated in psychology and of course in psychophysical psychology. The investigator of nature, however, does not make it clear to himself that the constant foundation of his admittedly subjective thinking activity is the environing world of life. This latter is constantly presupposed as the basic working area, in which alone his questions and his methodology make sense. Where, at the present time, is that powerful bit of method that leads from the intuitive environing world to the idealizing of mathematics and its interpretation as objective being, subjected to criticism and clarification? Einstein's revolutionary changes concern the formulas wherein idealized and naïvely objectivized nature (physis) is treated. But regarding the question of how formulas or mathematical objectification in general are given a sense based on life and the intuitive environing world, of this we hear nothing. Thus Einstein does nothing to reformulate the space and time in which our actual life takes place.

Mathematical science of nature is a technical marvel for the purpose of accomplishing inductrions whose fruitfulness, probability, exactitude, and calculability could previously not even be suspected. As an accomplishment it is a triumph of the human spirit. With regard to the rationality of its methods and theories, however, it is a thoroughly relative science. It presupposes as data principles that are themselves thoroughly lacking in actual rationality. In so far as the intuitive environing world, purely subjective as it is, is forgotten in the scientific thematic, the working subject is also forgotten, and the scientist is not studied.⁵² (Thus from this point of view the rationality of the exact sciences is on a level with the rationality of the Egyptian pyramids).

It is true, of course, that since Kant we have a special theory of knowledge, and on the other hand there is psychology, which with its claims to scientific exactitude wants to be the universal fundamental science of the spirit. Still, our hope for real rationality, i.e., for real insight,⁵³ is disappointed here as elsewhere. The psychologists simply fail to see that they too study neither themselves nor the scientists who are doing the investigating nor their own vital environing world. They do not see that from the very beginning they necessarily presuppose themselves as a group of men belonging to their own environing world and historical period. By the same token, they do not see that in pursuing their aims they are seeking a truth in itself, universally valid for every-one. By its objectivism psychology simply cannot make a study of the sould in its properly essential sense, which is to say, the ego that acts and is acted upon. Though by determining the bodily function involved in an experience of evaluating or willing, it may objectify the experience and handle it inductively, can it do the same for purposes, values, norms? Can it study reason as some sort of 'disposition'? Completely ignored is the fact that objectivism, as the genuine work of the investigator intent upon finding true norms, presupposes just such norms; that objectivism refuses to be inferred from facts, since in the process facts are already intended as truths and not as illusions. It is true, of course, that there exists a feeling for the difficulties present here, with the result that the dispute over psychologism is fanned into a flame. Nothing is accomplished, however, by rejecting a psychological grounding of norms, above all of norms for truth in itself. More and more perceptible becomes the overall need for a reform of modern psychology in its entirety. As yet, however, it is not understood that psychology through its objectivism has been found wanting; that it simply fails to get at the proper essence of spirit; that in isolating the soul and making it an object of thought, that in reinterpreting psychophysically being-in-community, it is being absurd. True, it has not labored in vain, and it has established many empirical rules, even practically worthwhile ones. Yet it is no more a real psychology than moral statistics with its no less worthwhile knowledge is a moral science.⁵⁴

In our time we everywhere meet the burning need for an understanding of spirit, while the unclarity of the methodological and factual connection between the natural sciences and the sciences of the spirit has become almost unbearable. Dilthey, one of the greatest scientists of the spirit, has directed his whole vital energy to clarifying the connection between nature and spirit, to clarifying the role of psychophysical psychology, which he thinks is to be complemented by a new, descriptive and analytic psychology. Efforts by Windelband and Rickert have likewise, unfortunately, not brought the desired insight. Like everyone else, these men are still committed to objectivism. Worst of all are the new psychological reformers, who are of the opinion that the entire fault lies in the long-dominant atomistic prejudice, that a new era has been introduced with wholistic psychology (Ganzheitspsychologie). There can, however, never be any improvement so long as an objectivism based on a naturalistic focusing on the environing world is not seen in all its naïveté, until men recognize thoroughly the absurdity of the dualistic interpretation of the world, according to which nature and spirit are to be looked upon as realities (Realitäten) in the same sense. In all seriousness my opinion is this: there never has nor ever will be an objective science of spirit, an objective theory of the soul, objective in the sense that it permits the attribution of an existence under the forms of spatio-temporality to souls or to communities of persons.

The spirit and in fact only the spirit is a being in itself and for itself; it is autonomous and is capable of being handled in a genuinely rational, genuinely and thoroughly scientific way only in this autonomy⁵⁵. In regard to nature and scientific truth concerning it, however, the natural sciences give merely the appearance of having brought nature to a point where for itself it is rationally known. For true nature in its proper scientific sense is a product of the spirit that investigates nature, and thus the science of nature presupposes the science of the spirit. The spirit is essentially qualified to exercise self-knowledge, and as scientific spirit to exercise scientific self-knowledge, and over and over again. Only in the kind of pure knowledge proper to science of the spirit is the scientist unaffected by objection that his accomplishment is delf-concealing⁵⁶. As s consequence, it is absurd for the sciences of the spirit to dispute with the sciences of nature for equal rights. To the extent that the former concede to the latter that their objectivity is an autonomy, they are themselves victims of objectivism. Moreover, in the way the sciences of the spirit are at present developed, with their manifold disciplines, they forfeit the unlimate, actual rationality which the spiritual Weltanschauung makes possible. Precisely this lack of genuine rationality on all sides is the source of what has become for man an unbearable unclarity regarding his own existence and his infinite tasks. These last are inseparably united in one task: only if the spirit returns to itself from its naïve exteriorization, clinging to itself and purely to itself, can it be adequate to itself⁵⁷.

Now, how did the beginning of such a self-examination come about? A beginning was impossible so long as sensualism, or better, a psychology of data, a tabula rasa psychology, held the field. Only when Brentano promoted psychology to being a science of vital intentional experiences was an impulse given that could lead further - though Brentano himself had not yet overcome objectivism and psychological naturalism⁵⁸. The development of a real method of grasping the fundamental essence of spirit in its intentionalities and consequently of instituting an analysis of spirit with a consistency reaching to the infinite, led to transcendental phenomenology. It was this that overcame naturalistic objectivism, and for that matter any form of objectivism, in the only possible way, by beginning one's philosophizing from one's own ego; and that purely as the author of all one accepts, becoming in this regard a purely theoretical spectator. This attitude brings about the successful institution of an absolutely autonomous science of spirit in the form of a consistent understanding of self and of the world as a spiritual accomplishment. Spirit is not looked upon here as part of nature or parallel to it; rather nature belongs to the sphere of spirit. Then, too, the ego is no longer an isolated thing alongside other such things in a pregiven world. The serious problem of personal egos external to or alongside of each other comes to an end in favor of an intimate relation of beings in each other and for each other.

Regarding this question of interpersonal relations, nothing can be said here; no one lecture could exhaust the topic. I do hope, however, to have shown that we are not renewing here the old rationalism, which was an absurd naturalism, utterly incapable of grasping the problems of spirit that concern us most. The ratio now in question is none other than spirit understanding itself in a really universal, really radical manner, in the form of a science whose scope is universal, wherein an entirely new scientific thinking is established in which every conceivable question, whether of being, of norm, or of so-called 'existence'⁵⁹, finds its place. It is my conviction that intentional phenomenology has for the first time made spirit as spirit the field of systematic, scientific experience, thus effecting a total transformation of the task of knowledge. The universality of the absolute spirit embraces all being in a absolute historicity, into which nature fits as a product of spirit. It is intentional, which is to say transcendental phenomenology that sheds light on the subject by virtue of its point of departure and its methods. Only when seen from the phenomenological point of view is naturalistic objectivism, along with the profoundest reasons for it, to be understood. Above all, phenomenology makes clear that, because of its naturalism, psychology simply could not come to terms with the activity and the properly radical problem of spirit's life.

III

Let us summarize the fundamental notions of what we have sketched here. The 'crisis of European existence', which manifests itself in countless symptoms of a corrupted life, is no obscure fate, no impenetrable destiny. Instead, it becomes manifestly understandable against the background of the philosophically discoverable 'teleology of European history'. As a presupposition of this understanding, however, the phenomenon 'Europe' is to be grasped in its essential core. To get the concept of what is contra-essential in the present 'crisis', the concept 'Europe' would have to be developed as the historical teleology of infinite goals of reason; it would have to be shown how the European 'world' was born from ideas of reason, i.e., from the spirit of philosophy⁶⁰. The 'crisis' could then become clear as the 'seeming collapse of rationalism'. Still, as we said, the reason for the downfall of a rational culture does not lie in the essence of rationalism itself but only in its exteriorization, its absorption in 'naturalism' and 'objectivism'.

The crisis of European existence can end in only one of two ways: in the ruin of a Europe alienated from its rational sense of life, fallen into a barbarian hatred of spirit; or in the rebirth of Europe from the spirit of philosophy, through a heroism of reason that will definitively overcome naturalism. Europe's greatest danger is weariness. Let us as 'good Europeans' do battle with this danger of dangers with the sort of courage that does not shirk even the endless battle. If we do, then from the annihilating conflagration of disbelief, from the fiery torrent of despair regarding the West's mission to humanity, from the ashes of the great weariness, the phoenix of a new inner life of the spirit will arise as the underpinning of a great and distant human future, for the spirit alone is immortal.

NOTES

1.     It is unquestionable that 'Western man' would be a happier expression in the context. Husserl, however, speaks of europäischen Menschentums, which, as will be seen later, must be translated as 'European man' if the rest of the text is to make sense.

2.   Geisteswissenschaften: In certain contexts it will be necessary to translate this term more literally as 'sciences of the spirit'. This will be particularly true where the term occurs in the singular. cf. p. 154 n. 1 and n. 10 infra.

3.     The notion of 'horizon', which played such an important part in Husserl's earlier writings, has here taken on a somewhat broader connotation. Formerly it signified primarily those concomitant elements in consciousness that are given, without being the direct object of the act of consciousness under consideration. In every act of consciousness there are aspects of the object that are not directly intended but which are recognized, either by recall or anticipation, as belonging to the object intended. These aspects constitute its horizon. In the present essay 'the community as a horizon' signifies the framework in which experience occurs, conditioning that experience and supplying the diverse aspects of objectivity that are not directly intended in any one act of consciousness.

4.     I am using an expression borrowed from Dewey to translate the Husserlian Umwelt, a term Husserl uses frequently only in his last period. In the light of the Cartesian Meditations we must remember that though such a world is subjectively 'constituted', it is still not a private world, since its constitution is ultimately 'intersubjective'.

5.     Like Kant, Husserl saw 'necessity' and 'universality' as the notes that characterize genuinely valid objectivity. Not until his later works (Ideen II and Cartesian Meditations), however, does he explicitly see 'intersubjective constitution' as the ultimate concrete foundation for universal objectivity.

6.     Here Husserl is giving to the term 'intuition' the limited meaning of sense intuition that it has for Kant.

7.   Geistigkeit: Following a decision to translate 'Geist' as 'spirit' rather than as 'mind', we are forced into a somewhat uncomfortable translation of the present abstraction. The embarrassment becomes acute when reference is made to the 'spirituality' of animals (cf. n. 8 infra), but it is not likely that 'mentality' would be any less embarrassing.

8.     Where there is consciousness, there is spirit, and in animals there is consciousness. For Husserl, self-consciousness is a mark of 'personality' rather than 'spirituality'.

9.     In this connection one should consult the Second Cartesian Meditation, where Husserl insists that the only reality that the world can have for one who would approach it scientifically is a phenomenal reality. If we are to understand it scientifically, our analysis of it must be purely phenomenological, i.e., it is the phenomenon 'world' that we must analyze. 'We shall direct our attention to the fact that phenomenological epoche lays open (to me, the meditating philosopher) an infinite realm of being of a new kind, as the sphere of a new kind of experience: transcendental experience' (Cartesian Meditations, p. 66). Cf. ibid., p. 69: 'Now, however, we are envisaging a science that is, so to speak, absolutely subjective, whose thematic object exists whether of not the world exists'.

10.   Because of the context here, it is imperative that 'Geisteswissenschaft' not be translated as 'humanistic science'.

11.   From his earliest days Husserl never tired of insisting that there can be no 'natural science' of science itself. It is the theme of Logische Untersuchungen and is perhaps most eloquently expressed in Formale und transzendentale Logik, whose purpose is to develop a 'science of science', which, Husserl holds, can be only a transcendental (constitutive) phenomenology.

12.   Stämmen: Literally the term means 'stocks', but the English word could scarcely be unambiguous in the context.

13.   Not only is Europe, according to Husserl, the birthplace of philosophy and the sciences, but it is philosophy and the sciences that more than anything else have made European culture unique, have given it its most distinguishing characteristic.

14.   Oswald Menghin, Weltgeschichte der Steinzeit (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1931).

15.   The tacit beginning of all Husserl's philosophizing is the value judgement that the rational life, in the sense in which he understands it, is the best life. But unlike Hegel, he has not excogitated a philosophy of history to justify this judgment.

16.   Nature is precisely that which does repeat constantly (despite evolution). It is characteristic of natural species that their members follow each other in the same identifiable form. Spirit, however, is an ongoing totality, never reaching maturity, never reproducing itself in the same form.

17.   This notion of 'intentional guide', of 'clue', is developed in No 21 of the Second Cartesian Meditation. Husserl recognizes a subjective factor - here 'anticipation' - as guiding the manner in which objects - here history itself - are intentionally 'constituted'.

18.   Husserl was never particularly concerned with historical accuracy, even in his choice of terminology. Apart from the anachronism involved in applying the term 'nation' to the loose unities of the ancient world, 'Greek' itself is a term that covers a somewhat heterogeneous grouping in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.

19.   Despite the embarrassments involved in certain contexts, I have chosen to translate Einstellung for the most part by 'attitude'. The German term indicates a focusing of attention in a particular way. There is no way in English of rendering the play on words involved in the opposition of Einstellung-Umstellung, which latter is more than a mere 'change' of attitude; 'reorientation' of attitude is more like it.

20.   This is Husserl's somewhat unwieldy way of indicating that the overall interest in being breaks down into particular interests in types or classes of being - which are the objects of particular sciences.

21.   Here, near the end of his life, Husserl retains the theme he had developed so many years earlier in 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science'. The ideal of philosophy and the particular sciences is the same; differences are to be traced to the degree of universality involved in the one and the other. The entire book Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschafften is devoted to developing this theme historically.

22.   Under the verbiage of this extremely difficult paragraph is hidden a profound  insight into the transformation that takes place in men when they begin to look beyond facts to ideas. The only way to describe the horizon thus opened is to call it 'infinite'. Whether this began only with the Greeks is, of course, open to dispute. Still, the Greeks are the intellectual first parents of Western man.

23.   With the advent of philosophical and scientific ideals history itself becomes historical in an new and more profound sense.  It is unfortunate, however, that Husserl fails to see history as the progressive concretization of the ideal.

24.   It would seem that in terms of ideas the world scientific community is far more closely knit than is the philosophical community. The type of unity, however, is analogous in both cases. Husserl would not like to admit that the differences are due to essential differences in the disciplines themselves. It is questionable that the sort of unity achieved in science is even desirable in philosophy.

25.   For Husserl, truth is, so to speak, a Platonic Idea, in relation to which any particular truth is but a participation.

26.   If 'everyone' simply includes the sum total of all existing subjects, it does not have the universal significance that Husserl demands. In the sense in which he understands it, 'universal' is inseparable from 'essential'. One is reminded of the critics who accuse Husserl of being 'scholastic'. Cf. p. 82 supra.

27.   The attitude that pursues 'knowledge for its own sake'. It is precisely in this that the 'infinity' of the horizon consists' there is no assignable practical goal in which its interests can terminate.

28.   Here the play on words involved in Einstellung  and Umstellung is impossible to render in English.

29.   In Husserl's view, the beginning of a philosophical (of scientific) focusing of attention on the environing world - as opposed to a naïve, mythical, or poetic attitude - represents the most important revolution in the history of human thought. At the same time, he sees this revolution as continuous with previous attitudes, since it is a transformation of them - not an elimination - something is common to the old and the new.

30.   That man's Einstellung in regard to the world about him should, for Husserl, be the most of human existence seems to imply some affinity between this position and that which Heidegger expresses by In-der-Welt-sein. Whether Husserl was influenced by his own student in this cannot be determined (cf. Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, I, p. 300). It may or may not be significant that this theme appears in Husserl's writings only after the publication of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (19.... Time, New York: Harper & Row, 1962).

31.   Neither philosophy nor science nor, for that matter, any professional interest can become the exclusive interest in any man's life. But it is true that one is designated philosopher, scientist, etc., by the predominant interest which has an intentional continuity throughout all the occupations of his daily life.

32.   In a somewhat different context the meaning of epoche here parallels its technical meaning as employed, for example, in Ideen I. It is neither an elimination of nor a prescinding from other interests. Rather, it simply 'puts them in brackets', thus retaining them, but allowing them in no way to influence theoretical considerations.

33.   I.e., in a phenomenological essential intuition.

34.   Since Husserl's philosophical life was devoted almost exclusively to the programmatic aspects of phenomenology - getting it 'off the ground', so to speak - he found little time himself for the sort of thing he describes here. But many of his students did. Much of the contemporary interest in Husserl, manifested in a wide variety of areas, is due to a desire to learn how to do what Husserl suggests.

35.   Aside from the fact that he knows little or nothing of Eastern thought, Husserl here repeats the arbitrariness of 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science', where he simply decides what philosophy is (in an essential intuition, of course) and refuses to dignify with that name whatever does not measure up.

36.   Despite Husserl's insistence here and elsewhere that this is Plato's attitude, there is little justification for his failing to recognize that Plato's purpose, even in his most 'theoretical' investigations, is eminently practical. In a somewhat different meaning, the same can be said for Aristotle.

37.   To characterize 'essentially' the 'path of motivation' from mere curiosity about the world to a universal philosophical science of the world is, of course, extremely aprioristic. We are simply told how it must have been (the danger of all 'essential' intuition). It remains true, however, that there is no better introduction to philosophy than a history of the pre-Socratic attempts to know the secrets of the world - without doing anything about it.

38.   One is reminded of the contrast made by Aristotle between 'men of experience' and 'men of science' (Metaph. A 981a). In a more striking way Socrates met this in his conflict with the 'practical' politicians of his day.

39.   Again, a phenomenological essential intuition, that says nothing regarding the 'existence' of God.

40.   Nowhere, it seems, has Husserl developed this profound insight wherein he sees faith as a special kind of evidence, permitting theology, too, to be a science. In different ways this is developed by Scheler in his philosophy of religion, by Van der Leeuw and Hering in their phenomenology of religion, and by Otto in his investigations of 'the sacred'.

41.   Im Geiste der Unendlichkeit: The expression, scarcely translatable into English, bespeaks a spirit that refuses to stop short of infinity in its pursuit of truth. In Husserl himself, one hesitates to see it as a plea for a metaphysics, but in a Scheler, a Heidegger, a Conrad-Martius, it becomes just that; cf. Peter Wust, Die Auferstehung der Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1920).

42.   In Formale und transzendentale Logik Husserl calls philosophy the 'science of all sciences', which is to say, it provides the norms whereby any science can be worthy of the name.

43.   Husserl's constant plea has been for a return to the 'rationalism' of Socrates and Plato (cf. 'Philosophy as Regorous Science', p. 76 supra), not to the rationalism of seventeenth - and eighteenth - century Europe. His own inspiration, however, is traceable far more to Descartes, Hume, and Kant than to Socrates and Plato.

44.   The philosophia perennis that, like a Platonic Idea, is eternally changeless amid the varying participations that we can call 'philosophies'.

45.   One is reminded of Husserl's insistence in the Cartesian Meditations (pp. 121-35) that a successful phenomenological philosophy must being as solipsism, moving on to an intersubjectivity only after it has been established  on a solipsistic basis. In this Husserl once more derives his inspiration from seventeenth - and eighteenth - century rationalism.

46.   The theme is familiar from the whole first part of 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science'.

47.   Democritus, who flourished two hundred years after Thales, was a contemporary of Socrates. Thus he belongs more properly to the 'golden age' of Greek philosophy than to the 'early stages'.

48.   Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rele 1. The quotation is verbally inaccurate (probably from memory), but the sense is the same.

49.   For Husserl, real has a distinctively different meaning from reell. The former is applied  only to the material world of facts; the latter belongs to the ideal world of intentionality. Cf. Ideen I, pp. 218-20.

50.   Cf. Husserl's Encyclopaedia Britannica article, 'Phenomenology', where he develops the notion of a 'pure' psychology independent of psychophysical considerations.

51.   The play upon the word Not is impossible to render here. The situation of modern science is described as a Notlage, which can be translated as a 'situation of distress'. By itself Not can mean 'need', 'want', 'suffering', etc. The word is used three times, and there is a shade of difference in meaning each time it is used.

52.   The work of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr has shown how quantum mechanics and nuclear physics have high-lighted precisely the problem Husserl brings out here.

53.   It is axiomatic for Husserl that only insight can reveal 'essences' and that only a knowledge of essences can be ultimately scientific. That this insight should be at once intuitive and constitutive is peculiar to the Husserlian theory of intentionality; cf. my La phenomenologie de Husserl, pp. 31-34.

54.   Husserl's judgment of 'phychologism' was no less severe at the end of his life than it was when he wrote 'Philosophy as Rigorous Science'.

55.   'Dualism' and 'monism' are terms whose meanings are not easily determined. As a convinced 'idealist' Husserl considered himself a monist, and he criticized Kant strongly for remaining a dualist. Hegel, on the other hand, criticizes Fichte (whom Husserl resembles closely in this) for not having escaped dualism. One might well make a case for designating as monism a theory that accepts only one kind of reality, to which both matter and spirit (of the 'factual' and the 'ideal') belong. By this criterion Husserl's distinction would be 'dualistic'. Perhaps the best that can be said is that Husserl is, in intention at least, epistemologically a monist. Spirit alone is being in the full sense, because only of spirit can there be science in the full sense. One conclusion from all this, it would seem, is that the terminology involved bears revision.

56.   If the proper function of true science is to know 'essences', there seems little question that the sciences of nature neither perform nor pretend to perform this function. If, in addition, essences are, only insofar as they are 'constituted' in consciousness (ultimately spirit), then only a science of spirit can legitimately lay claim to the title.

57.   One is reminded of Hegel's dictum that when reason is conscious to itself of being all reality, it is spirit. The difference in the paths by which Hegel and Husserl arrive at this conclusion should be obvious.

58.   For his part, Brentano complained that his theory of intentionality had been transformed by Husserl into an a priori idealism.

59.   Existenz: Husserl was never particularly sympathetic to 'existentialism'. To him it smacked too mach of irrationalism. A rational science of philosophy could only be an essentialism. In such a science, existence could be significant only as 'possible existence'.

60.   Though Husserl's 'historical erudition' frequently leaves much to be desired, there is a profound insight here. It is the spirit of philosophy conceived in ancient Greece that throughout the centuries has guided the intellectual life of the West.

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The Role of Husserl's Epoche for Science

A View from a Physicist

Piet Hut

School of Natural Sciences Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, NJ 08540, USA

There are two ways that the epoche can be used for science: as an internal tool, to make progress within a given field of science; and as an external tool, to evaluate the very notion of what science is, and the role of science among other ways of knowing.

1. A Rude Awakening

For almost half a century, since the end of the second world war, discussions about the role of science in society focused mostly on the consequences of applications of science and technology. Among ways of knowing reality, science reigned supreme, and there was little real doubt about the fact that science alone produced true (reliable, objective) knowledge about the structure of the world. Or so it seemed to virtually all scientists and most intellectuals.

The early nineties formed a period of rude awakening for physicists. On a practical level, the end of the cold war brought a halt to the near-automatic funding of major scientific projects in the name of a science race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Large projects in physics were either canceled or scaled down. The most prominent event was the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider, in 1993 when Congress unceremoniously pulled the plug on the project after billions of dollars had been spent and a 14-mile tunnel had been dug under the Texas grasslands.

At the same time, there was a shift from physics to biology as the discipline that drew the center of attention. Even if the SSC had been built, the Human Genome Project would have drawn more attention, producing the code underlying the blueprint underlying human life. With this shift came serious new ethical issues, starting with the danger of bioterrorism and questions concerning genetically modified food. While physicists and chemists had lived for many decades with the responsibility for guarding the know-how for how to kill millions of people, biologists are now rapidly developing the know-how for infecting and modifying people, a knowledge that carries even graver responsibility for its unforeseeable consequences.

Amidst these major changes in funding and potential consequences of scientific research, a minor form of rude awakening took place, for which the label `science wars' would soon be used. From the late seventies onwards, a number of sociologists, philosophers, and historians were no longer content to describe the societal conditions leading to science and the consequences of scientific discoveries for society. They began to question the status of scientific knowledge itself. What part, if any, of scientific insights can really be considered objective and universal, and what part (any? all?) is inextricably linked up with our culturally determined way to ask scientific questions in the first place?

By and large, scientists didn't like this outside attention a bit. At first they simply ignored `science studies', as this new field became known. But in the early nineties, perhaps because of the other rude awakenings, a number of scientists became quite rude themselves in their ferocious attacks on science studies. Rapidly the field became polarized, with lots of name calling from both sides, and little attempt at respectful debate.

2. Counter Currents

Curiously, while some scientists felt called upon to defend the forts of rationality against perceived attacks from the outside, other scientists quietly began to form study groups on themes that had been more or less taboo for half a century. Conferences on the scientific study of consciousness appeared, and workshops on science and religion were held. Suddenly, many scientists came out of the closet, so to speak, happily surprised that they no longer had a need to wash their mouth when uttering words like `consciousness' and `spirituality' among their peers.

Clearly, science is in a period of transition with respect to the question of how it sees itself. Age-old philosophical questions, which traditionally had been asked by many leading scientists, once again can be heard. Future historians will have a field day trying to explain why philosophy had been declared virtually off limits in the scientific community during the second half of the twentieth century. Was it simply arrogance, triggered by the plethora of new scientific discoveries, which seemed to obviate any need to ask others for advice? Was it a reaction to the misuse of philosophy in the hands of the Nazis, which seemed to tar all forms of deep philosophical questioning in the eyes of many scientists? Was it the shock of a loss of innocence, after the design and use of the first nuclear weapons, which made scientists reluctant to ask the deepest questions?

Similarly, future historians have a rich palette of possible reasons to choose from, when trying to understand why the anti-philosophy era began to wane. What happened in the nineties? The generation that had fought in the second world war, and had helped to rebuild the economy thereafter, had retired. The new generation holding power had finished their studies in the sixties, that period heady with idealism followed by the disillusionment of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Wouldn't it be natural if they would show different priorities in evaluating science, with perhaps more of an open mind towards the inherent limits of the dogma of objectivity that had ruled science for so long?

Within science itself, a number of developments were making the idea of pure objectivity burst at the seams. The promise of quantum computing brought discussions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, and thereby the role of the subject in physics, into the hard-nose engineering domain. Brain studies showing where thoughts and emotions are localized begged the question of how to translate between neurochemical processes and the actual experience of the subject. And robotics, coming of age after a slow start, made us think from scratch about how to design artificial subjects, after tens of thousands of years of experience making artificial objects.

3. Which Direction to Explore?

With all these signs of a new willingness to scrutinize the underlying assumptions of science, and to explore alternative interpretations, the burning question is: where to look? In other words: in which direction can we search for new perspectives; how can we gain a new type of innocence, that knows to ask questions where others run past?

Perhaps we are ready to return to the old question "What is Reality?", with a new form of openness, which has been lacking for at least half a century. It has been unfashionable to ask about the structure of reality from scratch, without already having chosen a framework in which to ponder the answer, be it scientific, religious or sceptical. As a consequence, a sense of wonder at the sheer appearance of the world, moment by moment, has been lost.

To look at the world in wonder, and to stay with that sense of wonder without jumping straight past it, has become almost impossible for someone taking science seriously. The three dominant reactions are: to see science as the only way to get at the truth, at what is really real; to accept science but to postulate a more encompassing reality around or next to it, based on an existing religion; or to accept science as one useful approach in a plurality of many approaches, none of which has anything to say about reality in any ultimate way.

The first reaction leads to a sense of wonder scaled down to the question of wonder about the underlying mathematical equations of physics, their interpretation, and the complexity of the phenomena found on the level of chemistry and biology. The second reaction tends to allow wonder to occur only within the particular religious framework that is accepted on faith. The third reaction allows no room for wonder about reality, since there is no ultimate reality to wonder about.

Having lost our ability to ask what reality is like means having lost our innocence. The challenge is to regain a new form of innocence, by accepting all that we can learn from science, while simultaneously daring to ask `what else is true?' In each period of history, the greatest philosophers struggled with the question of how to confront skepticism and cynicism, from Socrates and Descartes to Kant and Husserl in Europe, and Nagarjuna and many others in Asia and elsewhere. I hope that the question "What is Reality?" will reappear soon, as a viable intellectual question and at the same time as an invitation to try to put all our beliefs and frameworks on hold. Looking at reality without any filter may or may not be possible, but without at least trying to do so we will have given up too soon.

Within Western philosophy, I find Husserl's epoche to be a useful tool for making systematic explorations of tacit assumptions underlying our everyday view of the world, and I feel that its application to science can hold great promise. Briefly, the epoche is a form of suspense of judgment -- a way to let the phenomena speak while `bracketing' the usual presuppositions that are in force in any given situation. I see two major applications for the epoche in science, one internal, and one external.

4. Internal Applications of the Epoche in Science

The method of phenomenology, including the use of a form of epoche, can be found everywhere in science, in the actual way that scientists engage in scientific research. It does not carry a specific name, and it is not seen to be connected in any way with the school of philosophy called phenomenology. Most scientists probably have never heard of the school of phenomenology, and hardly any of them know the word epoche. And yet something akin to the epoche is being taught implicitly in any good science class.

All major breakthroughs in science stem from a form of epoche. Galileo, when looking at how the Sun seems to revolve around the Earth, bracketed the common belief that the Earth itself is immovable. It was then easy to see that a rotating Earth and a fixed Sun would give rise to exactly the same phenomena. By separating the phenomena from the belief structures in which these phenomena had always been embedded, he found new interpretations which opened new doors for scientific exploration.

Newton, when interpreting gravity as action at a distance, bracketed the belief that any form of action should occur through material contact. Einstein explored the consequences of Maxwell's equations, while bracketing all the presuppositions that had been used to derive those equations in the first place, including the absolute character of space and time. From purely phenomenological thought experiments, he thus derived the relativity of space and time, together with the precise rules according to which they can be transformed into each other.

Bohr bracketed the notion that a particle must have a definite state before one makes a measurement, when he developed his Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The list can be extended almost indefinitely, from the most important breakthroughs down to the day-to-day little `aha's of laboratory research and pencil-and-paper derivations in theoretical research. Whenever we seem to be stuck, we `wiggle the wires' of our presuppositions, to see where we can find a way out, by bracketing one or more of those presuppositions.

In daily life, too, a similar pattern holds. I am convinced that I have parked my car in a particular section of the parking lot, where I always park my car. It is not there. Is it stolen? Before calling the police, I bracket my conviction that I left my car there, this morning. By doing so, I make more room for the possibility to recall what I exactly did, this particular morning, rather than falling back on my justified belief that I (almost) always park in this particular section of the parking lot. And indeed, I then remember that this morning there was a particular and highly exceptional reason for me to park the car elsewhere.

There seems to be a continuum running through all these examples, from the most brilliant breakthrough to the most mundane form of problem solving. The main difference between bracketing prejudices in science and in daily life is the fact that science has developed systematic structures that encourage bracketing. The scientific system of peer review, together with its encouragement of new ideas combined with a very critical attitude in testing those new ideas, has been refined over the last four centuries into a remarkably efficient enterprise.

5. External Applications of the Epoche in Science

For all its strengths, the scientific attitude has a major weakness in that it is not designed to be applied to itself. Science does not encourage bracketing of itself, lock, stock and barrel. Scientists, no matter how flexible and ingenious in exploring new approaches within specific areas of science, are rarely willing to apply the very same method they have been using all their life to science itself.

Sure, scientists are willing to question the foundations of science, because they know from experience that what are called foundations actually have more of ornamental function. The foundations of each discipline have repeatedly been replaced, while work on the higher floors of the discipline went on without a glitch -- try doing that with a real building! From a practical point of view, what really grounds science is not the principles that seem to capture the most parsimonious summary of the state of the field at any given moment, but rather the sum total of the activities that make that field what it is: science is what scientists do.

In my experience, scientists are willing to question the `foundations' of what they do, and they are willing to question any of the particular actions and presuppositions they are working with. However, they seem to be very ill at ease in the face of a form of questioning that addresses the status of the scientific view of the world. The very notion of doubting the truth of science simply goes against the grain.

My proposal is: let us try to find a way to open the discussion about the role of science in a modern world view, by using the notion of the epoche. After all, the epoche is already such a familiar tool for the working scientist, and as such is can play a bridge function from science to phenomenology.

For such a discussion to be successful, two ingredients are needed. Philosophers must help us to clarify the very notion of what is means to perform an epoche, and scientists must find a way to overcome their reluctance to question the ultimate truth of that which they are immersed in.

To start with the latter, the reluctance of scientists to question their own enterprise is reminiscent of the reluctance with which former rulers approach the notion of democracy. The very idea to have to defend your ideas in the marketplace, with others attacking you, is not very appealing. It requires considerable practice to separate an attack on your ideas from an attack on yourself and your own personal integrity. For those not raised in a democratic culture, any form of debate can feel like a threat. Unfortunately, the recent `science wars' have shown how some scientists can come across as equally dogmatic as fundamentalists in various religions. To find ways of letting scientists lower their defenses against what might at first look like an attack on the scientific `truth', is a high priority.

An equally high priority is to find ways for philosophers to offer a technique, a systematic approach (scientists love systematic approaches) that can help to unpack and bring into focus the layers of sedimented unquestioned assumptions that have accumulated in science. These assumptions are passed on from one generation to the next, by osmosis during the undergraduate years of college, and are further polished and sealed off in graduate school. A beginning student quickly learns which questions to ask and which not to ask. And after years of not asking, even remote memories of those questions fade into the background. Reviving those questions, in more mature ways, is one step towards an attempt to regain innocence, to retain a beginner's mind, and from that viewpoint to look at science as a whole.

6. Bracketing the Scientific World View

To reopen a dialogue between scientists and philosophers, both sides have to take each other seriously. It is clear that science, narrow as it may be in its angle on the world, should be taken seriously, given its amazing accomplishments, theoretically as well as experimentally. In my opinion, philosophy should be taken equally seriously, but not only for the reasons usually given -- that philosophers may be able to analyze the logical structure of science with greater clarity and more of a historical awareness of how science has grown, in comparison to most working scientists. Interesting as that may be, I see a greater gift that philosophy can give to science.

Rather than talking only about epistemology, philosophy can return to a discussion of ontology. Scientists are no longer very impressed with discussions about epistemology. They are used to such discussions in quantum mechanics, and by now many scientists have at least heard something about theory-ladenness of experiments, falsifiability as the criterion for a good scientific theory, etc. But a rekindling of the question of ontology addresses different concerns. Ask a scientist what the world is made out of, and he or she may talk about atoms or molecules, or quantum mechanical wave functions, or possibly strings or vacuum fluctuations, depending on the level on which one want to focus. Diverse as those answers may be, they all have in common that they borrow elements from descriptions of building blocks of nature, as used already within contemporary physics.

Now propose to a scientist that everything could be seen as `made out of experience', or at least, for starters, as `given in experience.' The scientist may admit that, epistemologically, all that we know is given to us in our experience. He or she may also admit that this whole world we experience could be the result of a dream, something we experience either solipsistically or collectively, or in more modern terms: it could all be a huge form of virtual reality. But by and large, such discussions are unlikely to be more than an intellectual game. The first time you realize that perhaps all you ever experience is experience, you may be surprised or even startled. But the second or third time you hear someone talking about it, you are likely to dismiss it as boring, obvious, and ultimately trivial.

It is possible, however, to be really struck by this option, to make a deeply felt shift from living in a material world to living in an experiential world. Clearly, Husserl was affected by the application of the epoche in ways that may seem odd when one contemplates the epoche in the usual way, as only an intellectual game. Towards the end of his life, Husserl described the epoche as a `complete personal transformation, comparable in the beginning to a religious conversion' [The Crisis of European Sciences, 1970, Northwestern Univ. Pr., p. 137]. Is this a subjective epiphenomenon, an interesting personal quirk of Husserl, without further significance for philosophy? I don't think so.

A better way to get at least a hint of how Husserl saw the epoche is to read his letters, in which he shows at least a little more of his true colors. In Husserl's Briefwechsel, III/281, in a letter to Roman Ingarden, he writes that none of his old students understand what he is really trying to do, and concludes: ``Es is schwer, das Schwerste der Philosophie ueberhaupt ist die phaenomenologische Reduktion, sie mit Verstaendnis zu durchdringen und zu ueben.'' But even in his letters, he remains the ultimate scientist/scholar, who does not want to speculate. In III/422, in a letter to Dietrich Mahnke, he writes: ``Seit 1907 lebe ich ja ganz in diesen Gedankenreihen, denen speciell -- soweit ich wissenschaftlich Begruendbares sagen kann, was darueber hinausgeht, verschweige ich principiell, mag es mich noch so sehr innerlich beschaeftigt haben -- der II. Bd. der `Ideen' gewidmet ist.''

7. A personal entry into Husserlian thinking

I feel a strong affinity with the way Husserl not only describes, but also feels himself into the epoche. In fact, it was a certain familiarity with the type of shift that can be triggered by the epoche that drove me to study Husserl in considerable detail. Entering his thinking through a side door, starting with the epoche, I was less bothered than many others seem to be by Husserl's dry and long-winded writing, and his attempts to continue fighting late nineteenth century battles that most people consider to be totally outdated. Rather, I was struck by the fact that I found, smack in the middle of Western twentieth century philosophy something that I had first encountered in various ancient Asian writings, and that had transformed my life and my way of looking at the world.

Exploring various contemplative schools in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and to some extent also in Christianity and Sufi traditions, I had always been struck by the similarities between the experimental laboratory method of science and experiential methods of meditation and contemplation in many traditional spiritual approaches. The idea of stepping out of the world so to speak, in order to observe the world and your own role in it better, makes a lot of sense. Taking a step back, in order to better jump forwards in ways that otherwise would have been difficult to do, is a common technique in many arts and crafts, from playing scales on a musical instrument to going to the moves of a dance step by step.

The idea of viewing my own life as a laboratory has always appealed to me. To view the world through the lens of working hypotheses, ideas to be tested and challenged, and used until they can be safely replaced with something better, all that seemed so much better than relying on dogma, faith or just plain habit. In laboratory mode, theory is used as an indispensable tool for exploration, but nothing is put into stone. Theory presents possible identifications, but working in a lab can teach you a form of freedom from identification. In the light of new experimental results, all previous ideas are up for grabs. And while we need a lot of firm results before we even begin to think of making a major overhaul in our theoretical ideas, the possibility of such overhauls is built in into laboratory life.

After I had been searching for ways to flesh out this parallel between contemplative and scientific research, through the common element of a lab method, I finally stumbled upon the Husserlian epoche as a stepping stone or connection piece between the two. While it is very difficult to formulate what type of parallels are involved in a move between contemplation and science, it is easier to try to describe the move between matter-based science and experience-based phenomenology, on the one hand, and between phenomenology and contemplative spirituality on the other.

In the remainder of this paper, I will focus on the first move, by describing and comparing four different ways of looking at the world: two versions of materialism and two versions of phenomenology. It is my hope that these world views may serve to set a stage for further discussion between Husserlian philosophers and interested scientists.

8. Radical Materialism

The simplest and in a way most straightforward interpretation of what science tells us about the world is to view the world as a complex play of energy, also known as matter, in space and time, according to the rules of quantum mechanics and relativity, based on our present understanding of the standard model of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. While this model will not be the final answer within physics as to what the world is made out of, it can be argued that any future discoveries in the realm of string theory or other forms of quantum gravity are unlikely to change the by now well-tested standard model in its domain of applicability.

In other words, we now have in hand the basic equations that seem to describe all phenomena on Earth as well as in the Heavens, past, present and future, with the exception of what happened in the earliest fraction of the first picosecond after the start of the Big Bang. What a far cry from a hundred years ago, when you could throw some salt in the fire, and have no idea how to compute or even understand the wavelength of the Sodium lines in the spectrum that give off such a characteristic bright yellow -- and no idea of the mechanism by which the Sun and stars are shining, since nuclear energy had not yet been discovered.

Isn't it tempting to leave it at that, and to declare the search for `what reality is made off' to be finished, once and for all, for all practical purposes? Tempting indeed, and yes, the discovery and thorough testing of the standard model does stand as one of the milestones in human understanding. There is indeed a sense of awe that strikes anyone who has gone through the derivation and at least some of the consequences of those equations, which can be written on one sheet of paper, and seem to capture all of reality as through a magic spell.

This view I will label as `radical materialism', radical in the sense that it proclaims that there is nothing else to look for, and materialism in the sense that it views all of reality to be made out of complex patterns of matter (or its equivalent energy), draped across space and time, according to the well-defined equations of the standard model. We have reached the end of our quest, begun as long as humans could ponder the structure of reality, formalized by the Greeks in their philosophical speculations as to what constitutes material reality, set into full swing four hundred years ago by Galileo, Newton, and their followers, and now finished for all intents and purposes -- according to the radical materialist.

9. Elegant Materialism

There is an alternative interpretation of the success of the standard model, one that I would call more elegant. It pays more respect to the fact that we still have very little idea as to how to apply our knowledge of the basic laws of nature to derive anything at all from first principles. Knowledge about quarks does not help us as yet in deriving the behavior of atomic nuclei, for example, and we are a far cry removed from computing the spectrum of ionized iron from a knowledge of electrons and iron nuclei. And so it continues for many levels up. Our knowledge of the human genome forms only the very first step on the much longer path of trying to determine the structure and function of the proteins encoded by the genome, and the complicated ways in which many proteins simultaneously interact with each other.

Elegant materialism speaks in terms of emerging properties, a convenient term to describe how ensembles of many particles on one level often give rise to qualitatively new types of behavior on higher levels. Phase transitions, such as melting of ice or condensation of vapor, are examples of such collective phenomena. The formation of molecules, given the laws governing atoms, and the way a biological organism functions, given the behavior of all its cells, are other examples. What is not clear, however, is whether the elegant name `emergent property' really points to something new and fundamental.

It is true that many `emergent properties' were first discovered on the higher level of analysis in which they play their role, rather than predicted from the detailed dynamics at a lower level of analysis. But what does this tell us? It seems to indicate a form of limitation in our power of reasoning and intuition, but does it signify a real break between the layers of analysis? After all, once we have recognized and more or less understand the phenomena associated with an emergent property, we can often (in principle if not yet in practice) derive that property from lower levels of analysis. What, then, is really new in emergent properties, other than a fancy name and the difficulty that human beings happen to have in figuring out how to ground these properties in lower levels of description?

While my heart goes out to the elegance of a description in terms of emergence, I really don't see what exactly the term buys us, and I must admit that I would side with the more radical materialists, if our only choice of world views was between what I have called the radical and elegant forms of materialism.

10. Elegant Phenomenology

Fortunately, there are alternatives, and here is where phenomenology comes in. Let us take the example of a blind person feeling objects in the world with a stick. This person is keenly aware of touching objects. But when asked concretely what is felt by him or her, the answer is: the stick. Through the stick everything else is felt, and knowledge about the world can be represented through motions in the stick. In a roughly analogous way, we can describe the way we deal with the world in purely experiential terms. Since the whole world is given to us in our experience, we can present the world as experience, thus bracketing the question of whether there is anything at all underlying the experience of which we are conscious.

Phenomenology, by redirecting our attention to what is most directly given in experience, and as experience, can help us overcome all kinds of mistaken identification. As such, this help comes for free: who do not have to pay any price in terms of giving up other views we may have; we are only asked to bracket them, for the time being.

For example, when we believe that everything can be explained by materialism, but have too limited a view of what material properties can be, we tend to diminish our outlook on the world. Something like that happened in the nineteenth century, when the world was seen as a material clockwork, before quantum mechanics taught us that nature sports an inherent form of spontaneity. The clockwork picture of the world was not a limitations of materialism per se, but rather a limitation on the contemporary degree of insight into the structure and behavior of matter.

What I would call `elegant phenomenology' uses this reasoning as a pragmatic trick to get away from practical limitations of a straightforward form of materialism. No attempt is made to argue with the view that matter (energy) is all there is. Rather, such a statement is just seen as not very informative. Without disagreeing the least with a materialist, whether of a hard-nosed radical or a more elegant version, the elegant phenomenologist chooses to analyze the world in exactly the way the world is given in experience. The perceptual psychologist Gibson made a move that was somewhat similar, when talking about the ambient optic array, rather than focusing on physical objects that scatter light.

In a sense, the elegant phenomenologist drives the program of looking for emergent properties to its logical conclusion. Accepting a human being to be ultimately nothing more than a biological organism that is constituted through complex patterns of atoms and molecules, he or she chooses to analyze self and other and the whole world in terms of the highest level of `emergence' in human beings: consciousness.

11. Radical Phenomenology

As an alternative, a phenomenologist can take a more radical position. Just as the radical materialist does not want to take the notion of emergence very seriously, the phenomenologist can take the same radical stance, but with a totally different outcome. After all, the jump from material brain properties to human consciousness does seem to be larger than the jump from atoms to molecules, or from cells to tissues to organisms. Starting with a focus on consciousness, it is not clear that we can find our way back to the atoms and molecules that are supposed to give rise to consciousness -- a belief inherent in the previous three positions.

We may some day find a precise correlation between a third-person description of electrochemical processes in our nervous system and our own first-person experience. But such a correlation still may not `explain' in any way why or how sufficient complexity in an objective description gives rise to the `emergence' of subjective awareness. A radical phenomenologist, refusing to wave the magic wand of emergence, will view all talk of matter as just that: a handy way to summarize the correlations that are present between the many phenomena in our consciousness that we interpret as being material. We seem to be back here at the old division between materialism and idealism, but with a new twist: there is no need to posit a mind in any reified way, least of all a Mind of God, as Bishop Berkeley did.

By staying with conscious experience as it is given, without trying to ground it in anything or Any One else, the radical phenomenologist has made a move which bears some similarity to that of radical materialists. The latter were forced to abandon attempts to ground electromagnetic radiation in a hypothetical ether, and they have thus learned to deal with waves without a medium in which something is forming waves. Similarly, in even more extreme ways, quantum mechanics has taught us that we cannot talk about properties of particles before measuring them, not even in principle. Attributes in physics seem to have come unglued from the `things' that were supposed to `carry' and own them. Hard-nosed materialism is facing the challenge to come to grips with a world that is less and less `grounded' in the classical sense of the world. The equally hard-nosed phenomenologist who refuses to talk about ways of grounding experience in reductionistic models does seem to be in good company!

12. A Return to Innocence

As a happy amateur in the field of Husserl Studies, I have enjoyed reading much of Husserl's works that were published in his lifetime, as well as bits and pieces of those Husserliana Volumes that came out after his death, together with some of the letters that appeared in his ten-volume Briefwechsel. The more I read of the Old Master, the more I am impressed with the image I got from him after first reading the Logical Investigations and the Ideas: that of an eternal beginner, someone who approaches reality with a true beginner's mind, a German nineteenth-century scholar trying to make contact with what is almost an antipodal notion, a childlike innocence that shows the world new and fresh in each moment, when seen and experienced through the epoche.

I am honored to be given the opportunity to speak here at this meeting of the Husserl Circle, and I look forward to engage in dialogues which I hope will continue beyond the few days of the meeting. I am especially interested in what I see as the main challenge in such a dialogue for most scientists and for many philosophers as well: to invite each other to really taste the experience of radical phenomenology, whether we want to make that our preferred position or not. Is there really something new there, and if so, can we find ways to talk about it that are sufficiently intersubjective that we can start a meaningful discussion about `what it is like to be a radical phenomenologist'?

My broader question, to the community of Husserl scholars, is: can radical phenomenology still be presented as a viable world view, or should we be ready to throw in the towel, and cede ontological ground to scientific materialists, be it in the form of radical materialism, or more elegant versions of either materialism of phenomenology?

I think it can, but I look forward to hear arguments otherwise. Let me give away here my ultimate argument for a radical phenomenology position: no matter how convinced one may be of the existence of the material world, an acceptance of that existence is bound to come in a package deal with a certain understanding of what `material' implies. This will no doubt place limitations on one's expectations and on one's strategy of looking for new aspects of life. Therefore, even if materialism would be the only correct position, the best strategy may be to perform an ultimate epoche, and thus refuse any form of identification with any particular picture one may have of matter.

PS: This would be a safe place to end, but I can't help paraphrasing Galileo, in remarking about the mind: ``and yet she moves''.

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Éloge du tiers toujours exclu : reconsidérer le monisme de l’esprit

Raphaël Simard, Université Laval