July 26, 2006: Husserl's "Crisis" Revisited

In light of the focus of scienticism on controlling the world, this might be a good time to review some of the basic ideas behind Edmund Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences. A good summary of Husserl's critique of scientific thinking was provided by Habermas in his "Knowledge and Human Interests" lecture. Habermas breaks down Husserl's argument into three stages:

1. “It is directed in the first place against the objectivism of the sciences, for which the world appears objectively as a universe of facts whose lawlike connection can be grasped descriptively. In truth, however, knowledge of the apparently objective world of facts has its transcendental basis in the prescientific world. The possible objects of scientific analysis are constituted a priori in the self-evidence of our primary life-world. In this layer phenomenology discloses the products of a meaning-generative subjectivity.”
2. “Second, Husserl would like to show that this productive subjectivity disappears under the cover of an objectivistic self-understanding, because the sciences have not radically freed themselves from interests rooted in the primary life-world. Only phenomenology breaks with the naive attitude in favor of a rigorously contemplative one and definitively frees knowledge from interest.”
3. “Third, Husserl identifies transcendental self-reflection, to which he accords the name of phenomenological description, with theory in the traditional sense. The philosopher owes the theoretical attitude to a transposition that liberates him from the fabric of empirical interests. In this regard theory is ‘unpractical.’ But this does not cut it off from practical life. For, according to the traditional concept, it is precisely the consistent abstinence of theory that produces action-orienting culture.”

He then makes the astute observation that Husserl worked on this book in the early Thirties, at a time when the rise of the Nazis in Germany brought along an increased attention to scienticism in the name of "rising barbarism" (to use Habermas' phrase). With such a context I can only wonder if, once again, science is not being enslaved by another period of "rising barbarism," when the power of the government purse is ultimately determining what scientists can and cannot think and then lauding the virtues of their "objective thinking." The cover of my 1986 paperback printing of Husserl's book had a series of time-lapse photographs of the detonation of an atomic (or hydrogen) bomb. The cover of the current printing (shown in the poster above) is much more neutral. Is there a message here about how we ought to think about interpreting Husserl's message today?