Summary: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (page 2)

This freedom is first acquired through theoretical philosophy. One seeks to understand the world by freeing oneself from myth, tradition, and prejudice: Philosophy, as theory, makes us free ¹. This theoretical autonomy is accompanied by practical autonomy. In this respect, the philosophy of the Ancients differs from modern philosophy, which has become nothing more than a conventional scholastic concept, encompassing only a set of disciplines ².

Ancient philosophy is an all-encompassing science—a science of the totality of being ³.

In the early centuries of modernity, as with Descartes, the sciences were merely branches of philosophy. There was an aspiration to encompass, within the unity of a theoretical system, all meaningful questions without exception, in a rigorously scientific manner—following an apodictic rational methodology ⁴. This system was intended to provide answers to all problems.

We see, then, that the positivist concept of science in our time is a residual concept ⁵, one that has abandoned all the questions formerly included in the concept of metaphysics—especially the ultimate and highest questions ⁶.

The common feature of these abandoned questions is that they are problems of reason ⁷.

Philosophical questions, in the usual sense of the term, go beyond the world as a Universum of mere facts.

This is why it can be said that positivism decapitates philosophy ⁸.

In antiquity, metaphysics was the science of ultimate and highest questions. It achieved the status of queen of the sciences in the 18^th century, a time that rediscovered its enthusiasm for philosophy—an enthusiasm reflected, for example, in Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Today, something has changed:

This new humanity has lost what once gave it its momentum—faith in the universal philosophy of its ideal and method ⁹.

Why? Because it became clear that this method succeeded only in the positive sciences. In metaphysics, the emergence of impressive but unfortunately divergent philosophical systems revealed its failure. The contrast between the failure of metaphysics and the success of the positive sciences became deeply unsettling.

This led to a long and painful struggle, stretching from Hume and Kant to the present day, to uncover the true basis of this age-old failure ¹⁰.

The result was a strange and paradoxical outcome: Philosophy became, for itself, a problem ¹¹.

The separation between metaphysics and positive science was thus accompanied by a division between reason and being. Philosophical modernity was built upon the resolute ideal of such a universal philosophy ¹², one that could grasp the totality of being through reason. However, far from succeeding, this ideal instead underwent an internal dissolution ¹³.

This failure led to a revolutionary transformation: the problem of the authentic method of a universal philosophy became the central concern of all philosophical movements. The failure of philosophy, in turn, triggered a crisis in the modern positive sciences, which could no longer comprehend the meaning of their own foundations, given that they remained, fundamentally, branches of philosophy ¹⁴.

In fact, the foundation of the new philosophy is the original foundation of modern European humanity. [...] This is why the crisis of philosophy carries the significance of a crisis affecting all modern sciences, insofar as they are members of philosophical universality. It is a crisis of European humanity itself, concerning that which gives overall meaning to its cultural life¹⁵.

The consequences of this crisis include the emergence of scepticism towards metaphysics and a decline in faith in reason.

This has profound implications, for it is reason that ultimately confers meaning upon everything that claims to be—upon all things, values, and goals—by normatively relating them to what, since the very beginnings of philosophy, has been designated by the term truth ¹⁶.

¹ ibid.
² ibid., p.13
³ ibid.
⁴ ibid.
⁵ ibid.
⁶ ibid.
⁷ ibid.
⁸ ibid., p.14
⁹ I,4, p.15
¹⁰ ibid., p.16
¹¹ I, 5, p.16
¹² ibid., p.17
¹³ ibid.
¹⁴ ibid.
¹⁵ ibid., p.18
¹⁶ ibid.