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(1992) Husserl, Heidegger and the crisis of philosophical responsibility, Dordrecht, Springer.
It could be argued that in contradistinction to the Aristotelian dictum that "all philosophy begins in wonder,"1 philosophy for Edmund Husserl begins in "crisis." This is not to say that there is an absence of philosophical wonder in the thought of Husserl; indeed he continually speaks of human subjectivity as the "wonder of wonders."2 Husserl's philosophy can be seen as an ongoing attempt to grasp the marvel of human subjectivity. This subjectivity is the proper goal of philosophy, for in Husserl's view it is the source of all truth. He states this poetically at the end of his Cartesian Meditations by quoting Augustine: "Do not go abroad, go back into yourself; truth dwells within oneself."3 However, this very subjectivity, which is the origin and goal of all true wonder had, according to Husserl, been misunderstood, improperly treated, ignored or even banned from the realm of philosophical inquiry. The lack of a proper awareness of human subjectivity is a crisis of the gravest kind in Husserl's eyes, for it constitutes an attack on the origin of all truth. Husserl's philosophy can be understood therefore as "crisis"-philosophy, as an attempt to do battle with the various forms of thought that have misconceived, and continue to misconceive, misrepresent, or forget human subjectivity in all its wonder.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-2470-6_1
Full citation:
Buckley, P. (1992). Introduction: Husserl and the crisis as loss, in Husserl, Heidegger and the crisis of philosophical responsibility, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 3-8.
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