Crisis and Modernity: On the Idea of Historical Critique

It is a well-known fact that Husserl’s late works were defined by a growing consciousness of a scientific and cultural crisis. This crisis was inextricably connected to the aftermath of the First World War and the collapse of European values; its true sense, however, could only be understood against the backdrop of the whole of modernity. Science had not only lost its unity, but it was unable to answer fundamental questions regarding the normative ideals of humanity. This article deals with the emergence of historical critique in Husserl’s late works as an answer to this crisis. It shows how Husserl’s post-WWI insistence of philosophy as a generative idea – something that develops as a part of historical lifeworld in the course of generations – was tied to the idea of historical critique as a necessary prerequisite of phenomenology. Against his earlier view on the fundamental “presuppositionlessness” of phenomenology, Husserl began to treat the critique historical presuppositions as a necessary starting point of a responsible philosophical attitude. It was only this type of critique that made possible the idea of philosophy as a common and an infinite task. This argument, however, necessitated a reinterpretation of the concept of teleology and a rethinking of the narrative of modernity itself.