Europe: a postulate of phenomenological reason

ABSTRACT

This paper presents Husserl’s concept of Europe as a postulate of phenomenological reason. I begin by showing that a certain interpretation of history is necessary in order for phenomenology to be possible as science. I then show how Husserl’s concept of Europe enables this interpretation. Working with a general definition of postulation that brings Husserl into conversation with Kant, I examine the motives and truth conditions for asserting that Europe is what Husserl claims it to be. I highlight the critical import of Husserl’s concept by identifying three criteria it establishes for authentically European history: denationalization, renaissance and Europeanization. I conclude by considering the inherently controversial nature of “Europe” and outline the space for a contest of concepts that would serve the same theoretical–practical function.

Notes

1 This general view that Crisis represents a compromise with historicism includes conflicting views about the extent to which this compromise is successful. Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that Crisis ultimately positions transcendental eidetics as an abstract moment of cultural self-understanding. More recently, Anthony Steinbock has grounded this perspective in the matters and methods of “generative phenomenology”. Jacques Derrida argues that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology eventually forces him into a confrontation with concrete history that his method cannot accommodate. David Carr has worked out a less aporetic version of this approach. Merleau-Ponty, ‘Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man’, 85–92; Steinbock, Home and Beyond, 234–70; Derrida, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy, 153–60; Carr, Phenomenology and the Problem of History. I examine this interpretative trajectory in Knies, ‘Crisis and the Limits of Phenomenological Reason’, 39–50.

2 Elisabeth Ströker, for example, holds that the historical sections of Crisis proceed “exclusively within the framework of the epoche”. Ströker, Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, 184. She presents the historical reflections as the first stage of an inquiry that traces constituted formations of science back to their transcendental sources. Yet, Crisis I and II seem interested in the “datable, chronologically determinable time” that Ströker places beyond Husserl’s concern (Ibid., 185). Further, Husserl presents the discovery of transcendental subjectivity, not as a deepening of the historical reflection, but as a departure from it that fulfils the tasks it assigns.

3 Husserl, Crisis, 98.

4 Husserl, Crisis, 13.

5 Ibid., 207–8.

6 Ibid., 66.

7 Ibid., 68.

8 Ibid., 13.

9 Ibid., 97–8.

10 Ibid., 13.

11 Ibid., 69.

12 Ibid., 112.

13 Ibid., 192, 194, 197.

14 Ibid., 5.

15 Ibid., 6.

16 Ibid., 7.

17 Ibid., 282.

18 Ibid., 283.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 290.

22 Efraim Schmueli suggests that “the concept of the telos of European civilization was [ … ] a philosophical postulate”. Schmueli, ‘Critical Reflections on Husserl’s Philosophy of History’, 51. However, because he does not approach “Europe” in the context of a practical extension of reason, it appears to him the object of a pretended eidetic insight.

23 Husserl, Crisis, 14.

24 Ibid., 299.

25 Ibid., 17.

26 Ibid., 299.

27 Ibid., 3ff.

28 Ibid., 17.

29 Husserl, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die transcendentale Phänomenologie: Ergänzungsband, 374. (All translations of German material are my own.)

30 For a synopsis, see Melle, ‘Husserl’s Personalist Ethics’.

31 Husserl, Crisis, 17.

32 Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 410.

33 Ibid., 411.

34 For Thomas Cobet, Husserl’s account of vocation invites the objection that it relies on “a subjective capacity that remains mysterious”. Cobet, Husserl, Kant und die praktische Philosophie, 41. This is least the case with philosophy, because the personal and universal callings coincide.

35 Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 410.

36 Husserl, Crisis, 13

37 Ibid., 15

38 Ibid., 16

39 This dilemma is attenuated in post-Husserlian phenomenology insofar as it abandons Husserl’s understanding of the phenomenological attitude as a “completely different sort of waking life” (Crisis, 144) that breaks from a natural attitude that “in its total historicity, in life and science, was never before interrupted” (Ibid., 151). To the extent that the phenomenological attitude is not an interruption and appropriation, but rather an elaboration of natural life, the synthesis between the two attitudes in a unified historical development is not prima facie untenable, and so requires no special reflections to demonstrate its tenability.

40 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 146.

41 Husserl, Crisis, 299.

42 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 173.

43 Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 397.

44 This is, albeit, a “peculiar truth”. Husserl, Crisis, 73.

45 Ibid., 299, 290. Paul Ricoeur rightly saw that Husserl’s stance on Europe “is not an inductive conclusion  … but rather a philosophical requirement” which nonetheless has to compete with “other possible readings of history, for example, as history of labor, of law  … ”. Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, 168–9.

46 Husserl, Crisis, 276.

47 Ibid., 394–5. Cf. Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 49. Invoking Husserl’s manuscripts on Dichtung, Gail Soffer argues that the historical reflections of Crisis proceed under a “reduction to historicity” for which “factual accuracy is irrelevant”. Soffer, ‘Philosophy and the Disdain for History’, 103. However, when historical reconstruction engages public controversies about cultural structures, as in Crisis, must it not respect the demands of objectivity that Soffer would suspend?

48 For this interpretation of James, see: Davis, ‘Wishful Thinking and “The Will to Believe”’.

49 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 119.

50 Ibid., 113.

51 Husserl, ‘Wert des Lebens. Wert der Welt’, 235ff.

52 Ibid., 226.

53 Husserl, Crisis, 275.

54 Ibid., 16.

55 Steinbock explores this contrast between Hegel’s descriptive and Husserl’s normative historical methods within the framework of generative phenomenology. Steinbock, ‘Spirit and Generativity’.

56 Husserl, Crisis, 71.

57 Ibid., 8.

58 Klaus Held de-emphasizes this free appropriation in favour of enriching Husserl’s concept by linking modern Europe to Greece through a continuous Europeanization process that incorporates medieval Christianization. Held, ‘Husserls These von der Europäisierung der Menschheit’.

59 Husserl, Crisis, 14.

60 Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 9, 41.

61 Ibid., 44–5.

62 Ibid., 8.

63 Ibid., 10ff. Karl Schuhmann notes that Husserl most often identifies Volk and Nation. Schuhmann, Husserls Staatsphilosophie, 70.

64 Husserl, Crisis, 286.

65 Rodolphe Gasché captures Husserl’s perspective: the self-estrangement of Greek culture occurs via the “constitutive foreignness of the universal”. Gasché, Europe, or the Infinite Task, 70.

66 Husserl, Crisis, 278.

67 Ibid., 288.

68 Ibid., 279.

69 Ibid., 274.

70 Ibid., 289.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., 275.

73 Ibid., 16, 17.

74 Ibid., 16.

75 I consider the relevance of Husserl’s promotion of Europeanization to a critique of Western imperialism in Knies, ‘A Qualified Defense of Husserl’s Crisis Concepts’ (forthcoming).

76 Husserl, Ergänzungsband, 16.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

79 Husserl, Crisis, 15.

80 Jan Patočka approaches the crisis problematic from the perspective of this Untergang: “today, when Europe has come to an end  … ”. Patočka, Plato and Europe, 9.

81 Husserl, Crisis, 299.

82 This suspension orients Derrida’s approach to Europe. Derrida embraces “with one hand” the crisis discourse that incites Europe to self-recovery; he frees the other for something non-European by deconstructing that discourse. Derrida, The Other Heading, 31.

83 An important modern thinker of this periphery is Fanon, in whom Lewis Gordon sees an alternative to Husserl’s crisis problematic. Philosophical culture based on the critical appropriation of the human world first of all requires a “sociogenic” critique of the identity formations that support reason as European. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, 6–12.