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

This freedom is achieved first 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, ancient philosophy differs from modern philosophy, which has become little 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 the modern era, Descartes being a prime example, the sciences were merely branches of philosophy. The aim was to bring all meaningful questions without exception within the unity of a single theoretical system, in a rigorously scientific manner, grounded in 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 one 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 was crowned queen of the sciences in the eighteenth century, an era that witnessed a renewed 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 drove it forward—faith in the universal philosophical ideal and its method ⁹.

Why? Because it became clear that this method was successful only in the positive sciences. In metaphysics, the proliferation of impressive but irreconcilable philosophical systems laid bare 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 roots of this persistent failure ¹⁰.

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

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

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

In fact, the new philosophy is rooted in the original founding impulse of modern European humanity. [...] This is why the crisis of philosophy amounts to a crisis affecting all modern sciences, insofar as they belong to a philosophical whole. It is a crisis of European humanity itself, touching the very meaning of its cultural life¹⁵.

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

This has profound implications, for it is reason that ultimately confers meaning on everything that lays claim to existence—on all things, values, and goals—by relating them normatively 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.