Transcendentalism and history

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of Husserl's theory of the nature of the sciences and of philosophy in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl's position is shown to be structured around a central contradiction between his objective (arational, non-subjectivist history of the sciences) and the-problematic of transcendental empiricism in which that objective is to be realised. The effect of this contradiction is a discourse structured by a series of ‘discrepancies’ between its elements and a denegatory play on words which glosses over the discrepancies. Three major discrepancies appear in Husserl's discussion of: (I) the meaning of the pure geometry taken for granted by Galileo; (2) Galileo's mathematisation of the world; (3) the birth of scientific physics and its effect in the transformation of philosophy. Husserl's radical suppression of objectivism culminates in a speculative philosophy of history in which philosophy itself is represented as the self-conscious reflection of a world that is essentially spiritual. Husserl's epistemology is shown to be impossible without these necessary discrepancies and to be impossible as an epistemology because of them. Thus there can be no Husserlian theory of knowledge unless these contradictions are also present and no corresponding realisation of that theory in ‘positive’ knowledges. This conclusion forestalls any attempt at an Husserlian social theory. Show more