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Abstract

This article brings together two texts: Edmund Husserl's lectures held in Vienna and Prague in 1935 and published in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1977), and Aron Gurwitsch's essay `On Contemporary Nihilism' (1945). The three-fold thesis maintained in the article is the following: Firstly, that the two texts express a common preoccupation related to their common historical background and concerning, on the one hand, philosophy and the idea of science, and on the other, the socio-political situation. Secondly, that the diagnoses made of this crisis situation, be it for science or for political life, as well as the remedy offered for it by the two thinkers are the same: namely, the loss of faith in Reason and the call for a renewal of this faith respectively. Thirdly, that Gurwitsch's essay can help us to better understand Husserl's motivations and intentions, not made explicit enough in the text of The Crisis. The thesis is substantiated by following the line of argumentation presented in each text and comparing the one with the other.

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References

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HUSSERL'S CRISIS AND GURWITSCH'S NIHILISM: A COMMON PREOCCUPATION - A COMMON CALL

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