Summary: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

I/ The crisis of the sciences as an expression of the radical crisis of life in European humanity

Is there really a crisis of the sciences? Has their scientificity become dubious?

What is certain is that at the time Husserl wrote his work there seemed to be a crisis in philosophy, which threatened to fall into scepticism, irrationalism or mysticism.

What about the positive sciences? They do not seem to be in crisis, since they were showing marvellous results at the time Husserl was writing his book. The same goes for the sciences of mind: The contrast between the « scientificity » of these groups of sciences and, on the contrary, the « non-scientificity » of philosophy cannot be ignored ¹.

However, if we listen to the complaints raised by the crisis of our culture, and to the role attributed to the sciences in this crisis, will we then see sufficient grounds to subject the scientificity of all the sciences to serious criticism while admitting the unassailable rectitude of their methodical performance (which constitutes their scientificity in the first sense) ².

And indeed, we shall see that the crisis of philosophy refers back to that of the modern sciences, including the mathematical sciences.

To begin with Husserl notes a reversal, occurring at the end of the nineteenth century, in the way the sciences are esteemed: it is not aiming at their scientificity, but at what science in general had meant and can mean for human existence ³.

Husserl notes that the positive sciences have shaped our overall view of the world. As a result, we have turned indifferently away from the questions that for an authentic humanity are the decisive questions ⁴.

In fact, simple de facto sciences form a simple de facto humanity ⁵.

Husserl puts it this way:

In the distress of our lives, this science has nothing to tell us. The questions it excludes on principle are precisely the questions that are most burning in our unhappy age for a humanity abandoned to the upheavals of fate: these are the questions that concern the meaning or lack of meaning of all this human existence ⁶.

It is necessary, according to Husserl, to provide a rational ⁷ answer, to these questions.

Finally, what does science have to tell us about us, human beings, as subjects of freedom?

First of all, the simple science of bodies has nothing to tell us, since it abstracts from everything that is subjective ⁸.

On the other hand, the sciences of the mind dealing with human being must put out of circuit any axiological stance (which concerns values): Scientific, objective truth is exclusively the observation of what the physical and spiritual world is in fact. ⁹ Now is it possible for the world and the human being to have any real meaning if the sciences only allow objectivity of this type to be asserted as true?.

For example, history, considered in its scientific approach, seems to teach us that rules of life, ideals, norms, are formed like fleeting waves and, like them, are undone, that always reason will turn to unreason and always benefits to plagues ¹⁰.

It should be noted that the ideal of positivist objectivity has not always reigned.

In the past science could claim significance for this European humanity. Why has this changed? Why this positivist turn?

A change actually occurred during the Renaissance: the Middle Ages mode of existence was depreciated. Ancient humanity was admired, and people wanted to imitate it. What is sought to be imitated is the philosophical form ¹¹ of existence, in other words the fact of freely giving oneself for one's whole life a rule drawn from pure reason.

¹ La crise des sciences européennes et la phénoménologie transcendantale, Gallimard, Paris, 1976, trad. G. Granet, I,1, p.9
² I,2,p.9
³ ibid., p.10
⁴ ibid.
⁵ ibid.
⁶ ibid.
⁷ ibid.
⁸ ibid., p.10-11
⁹ ibid., p.11
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ I,3, p.12