Plan of Philosophy of History for Science in Husserl’s Later Thought

The present article, consistent with Husserl’s last work under the title The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, highlights two main categories. On the one hand, the science as devoid of human life and culture leads to crisis. Through his identification of the roots of the crisis adopting a teleological-historical inquiry into the primal meaning of science and his search for original self-evident primacies upon which science rest, Husserl made an attempt to find a way out of this problem. On the other hand, he presents life-world as the meaning-fundament of science and strives to shift back to science’s intuitional origins through the realization of the priority of life-world as the source of ontic validity. The life- world as the meaning-fundament of the modern science implies the historical sediment meanings and being conscious of these meanings involves awareness of intentional history. Accordingly, Husserl’s later phenomenology puts emphasis on both the role of historical reflection as an approach for the identification of the historical route of thought and science and on history as the horizon and context of science. The main thesis of the present article is that in order to plan a philosophy of history for science in the framework of Husserl’s later thought, the concept of crisis plays the major role. How does Husserl make use of history to deal with the crisis of science? Upon his realization of the crisis, does he relinquish the concepts of reason, philosophy and science and make an appeal to relativism and historicism or does he likewise believe in the dream of “philosophy as pure science” and strives to revive reason and improve science?