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Notes
1I thank Roberto Torretti for his assistance with the translation of my Spanish manuscript into English.
2“Aims, tasks are only had by persons who set themselves tasks.” (KEB, p. 373)
3Husserl, E., The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (hereafter: C), trans., with an Introduction, by David Carr (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Husserl, E., Die Krisis der Europaischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie, Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (hereafter: K), herausgegeben von Walter Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954) (Husserliana VI). Husserl, E., Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale Phänomenologie, Ergänzungsband, Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937 (hereafter: KEB), herausgegeben von Reinhold N. Smid (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993) (Husserliana XIX). I have translated most quotations from the German or French myself. Quotations from the Crisis are taken from Carr's translation (Husserl, C.), but I have occasionally retouched them to restore the meaning of the original German.
4Husserl, KEB, pp. 389, 391; cf. Husserl, K., pp. 209, 212, 214, 247, 259, 261, 325.
5Husserl distinguishes between the mathematical method of essential thinking (Wesensdenken), which is idealizing, and the method of essential intuition (Wesensanschauung), which is applicable to other fields, in a not exactly graspable “Typik” (Husserl, E., Erfahrung und Urteil, Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, redigiert und herausgegeben von Ludwig Landgrebe, Hamburg: Claassen 1954 (1st ed., 1948), p. 428n). Husserl never expected phenomenological descriptions to attain mathematical exactness; their achievement, rather than ideal exactness, is to produce the full intuition of the intended object.
6Merleau-Ponty, M., Phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p. 61n.
7It is likely that when Ricœur wrote this essay he did not yet know the whole contents of Husserliana volume VI, which was edited later by Biemel (this is the book I cite as K), and includes the important Beilagen (Supplements) that complete Parts I and II of Crisis.
8Ricoeur, P., “Husserl et le sens de l'histoire”, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 54, p. 282.
9Ibid., p. 315.
10These Supplements are contemporary texts that develop themes incompletely dealt with in the Crisis. They are 29 in all (Husserl, K., pp. 349–516). Carr's translation of the Crisis includes only six of them (Husserl, C., pp. 343–400).
11“The breakthrough to a genetic method brought a significant expansion of the scope of Husserl's phenomenology and, with it, of the kinds of issues that it was able to cover. Everything from the tacit features of perception to the historical transformations of cultural horizons was open to view” (Welton, D., (ed.), The New Husserl, A Critical Reader, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003, p. xiv). See also Steinbock, A. J., “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology,” in Welton, D., op. cit., pp. 289–325.
12Husserl, Nachlass K III 3, p. 60, as quoted by M. Riedel in Ritter et al., 1971–2007, vol. 3, p. 276.
13Husserl, K., p. 256; C, p. 253.
14“More and more, history of philosophy, seen from within, takes on the character of a struggle for existence, i.e., a struggle between the philosophy which lives in the straightforward pursuit of its task – the philosophy of naive faith in reason – and the scepticism which negates it and repudiates it in empiricist fashion” (Husserl, K., p. 11; Husserl, C., p. 13). Cf. KEB N° 33, pp. 421–3: Die Unterscheidung zwischen absoluter und relativer Urstiftung (Sommer 1934).
15Husserl distinguishes between “a broader and a narrower concept of self-reflection (Selbstbesinnung): pure ego-reflection (Ichreflexion) and reflection upon the whole life of the ego as ego; and reflection (Besinnung) in the pregnant sense of inquiring back into the sense or teleological essence of the ego” (Husserl, K., pp. 510s, no. 1; Husserl, C., p. 392n).
16Husserl, K., p. 485s; not in C. In the note appended to this passage, Husserl explains “existential self-reflection (die existenziale Selbstbesinnung)” as “a higher-level critical activity in which every act and achievement of my ego critically lays bare its lower and its higher, its good and its bad sense” (Husserl, K., p.486, no. 1).
17Husserl, KEB, p. 230.
18Husserl, K., pp. 325, 347–48; KEB, pp. 229, 234–35, 280–92, 396s.
19Husserl, K., p. 510; C, p. 392.
20Husserl, K., p. 321; C, p. 275.
21Husserl, K., p. 321; C, p. 276.
22“The life-world that philosophy faces motivated the irruption of science, the discovery of ideality. It awoke in human beings [ … ] the faculty of idealization. It woke up reason, which up to then was hidden reason. In other words, it awoke the actual possibility of transforming national-traditional ‘reason’ (reason in finitude, in relativity) into ‘pure’ reason, the ratio of the non-relative unconditional (des irrelativ Unbedingten), through which alone the pure and absolutely objective world can be discovered, and the objects are there as objects in themselves (als Objekte an sich) for us human beings” (Husserl, KEB, p. 347).
23Husserl, K., p. 322; C, p. 276.
24Husserl, K., p. 322; C, p. 277.
25Husserl, K., p. 323; C, pp. 277–8.
26See the essay entitled “Transzendentalphilosophie als Kritik der mytischen Denkweisen”, in Husserl, KEB, N° 20, pp. 222–6.
27Husserl, KEB, pp. 281, 370, 406–12.
28Husserl, KEB, p. 281.
29Husserl, KEB, p. 242
30Husserl, K., p. 324
31Husserl, K., p. 325; C, p. 279.
32Ibid.
33Husserl, K., p. 337. Carr's translation of this passage can be found in Husserl, C., p. 290; though I have substantially altered it here.
34Husserl, K., pp. 338–9; C, pp. 291–2.
35Husserl, K., p. 334: C, p. 287.
36Husserl, K., p. 5; C, p. 8.
37Carr avoids coining an English word for this Husserlian notion. At C, p. 17, line 2 from below, he renders “durch Rückfrage nach dem” (K, p. 16, line 13) as “we must inquire back into”; this makes good sense in the context, but masks the operation at play. Cf. two lines earlier, Carr's periphrasis for “historische und kritische Rückbesinnungen,” viz., “that we reflect back in a thorough historical and critical fashion.” And yet the prefix retro- is well entrenched in English.