Husserl on the Meaning of History

In Part I of the Crisis, the natural sciences (especially mathematical physics) are treated in the figure of Galileo, as we saw in Chapter 3. In the Crisis Part III, as we saw in the last chapter, the status of psychology as a science is discussed critically. In this chapter, we shall examine Husserl’s overall conception of history (variously Historie, Geschichte), including his account of the development of Western (i.e. what he calls ‘European’) culture, which focuses specifically on the emergence of theoretical reflection, essential to scientific rationality, and the breakthrough to the very idea of philosophy itself with its conception of ‘purposive life’ (Zweckleben, K 502), a life lived according to reason (Vernunftleben, C 117; K 119). Understanding the meaning of history is central both to the Crisis project and to Husserl’s mature conception of transcendental phenomenology. Husserl himself, in his Preface to the Philosophia articles, describes the Crisis as a ‘teleological historical reflection’ (C 3; K xiv n.3) involving an intellectual ‘reconstruction’ and ‘backwards questioning’ (Rückfragen) of the history of Western culture (specifically the development of modern philosophy and natural science). History is being deliberately explored as a way of understanding transcendental constitution, and thus, in his ‘Foreword to the Continuation of the Crisis’ (Supplement XIII, K 435–45 – not translated in Carr), Husserl refers to his approach as a ‘teleological-historical way’ to the idea of transcendental phenomenology. In this ‘Foreword’ he emphasizes that the historical mode of exposition is ‘not chosen by chance’ but rather is central to his task (Crisis K 441), since he wants to exhibit the whole history of philosophy as possessing a ‘unitary teleological structure’ (eine einheitliche teleologische Struktur, K 442).