Phenomenolgy of Late Husserl as Practical Philosophy Cover Image

Fenomenologija kasnog Husserla kao praktična filozofija
Phenomenolgy of Late Husserl as Practical Philosophy

Author(s): Ante Pažanin
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Fakultet političkih znanosti u Zagrebu
Keywords: phenomenology; practical philosophy; scientific-technical age; Husserl

Summary/Abstract: Starting from the view that Husserl was the most thorough critic of modern science and of the crisis which seized the European humanity and the entire world, the author meticulously analyses Husserl’s famous treatise “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity” (1935), which expresses an effort to develop the transcendental phenomenology starting from the historical world of life. The fundamental efforts of late Husserl are directed towards overcoming every “idealism and realism” in new historical thinking of the world of life with no deviation into historicism. Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936) was the most influential work not only of its author, but also of the entire philosophy of the time. Husserl envisaged the world-historical task of phenomenology to explore and develop in our scientific-technological age not only science and technology, but the rationality also of other forms of culture as man’s realization of freedom from art and politics to ethics and philosophy. In this way, the crisis of modern humanity and its science was to be overcome in the “worldhistorical process”. In that sense it is noteworthy that Husserl concludes his treatise with the thought that there are only two ways out of the crisis of European subsistence: a “decline of Europe” or a “rebirth of Europe from the spirit of philosophy”. The author demonstrates how phenomenology in late Husserl becomes practical philosophy, which, as a “rebirth of Europe from the spirit of philosophy”, and by the same token as a confirmation of realization of the “inherent reason”, inherent to mankind as such, encompasses finite and infinite “ideals for individual people in their nations”, as well as “ideals for the nations themselves” and for “the expanding synthesis of nations” (Husserl).

  • Issue Year: XLVII/2010
  • Issue No: 03
  • Page Range: 11-29
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Croatian