Crisis as a Philosophical Beginning

Abstract

When natural consciousness entrusts itself straightway to Science, it makes an attempt, induced by it knows not what, to walk on its head too, just this once; the compulsion to assume this unwanted posture and to go about in it is a violence it is expected to do to itself, all unprepared and seemingly without necessity. Hegel, Philosophy of Spirit, 30/15 What is the beginning of philosophy? How do we enter into philosophy? Husserl describes the transition to philosophy as an act of our free will; yet in his later works, he asks how this act could be motivated. One such motivation for turning to philosophy can be found in the experience of a crisis in the natural sciences that inspires historical reflections. Such reflections lead to wonder as the original motivation for philosophy in ancient Greece, wonder that can also be a form of crisis, but not the same as that occasioned by the current crisis of sciences. In contrast, it might seem as if there is no problem of motivation in Hegel's philosophy since he analyzes a contradictoriness within natural consciousness that leads into philosophy as a way to solve these contradictions. However, Hegel is also aware of the fact that for natural consciousness philosophy first seems an unnecessary form of violence. Moreover, Hegel explicitly discusses crisis as a possible motivation for philosophy, especially political crises in ancient Greece, which he depicts as ruptures between inner thought and outer reality. In this essay, I will show how Hegel and Husserl come to similar conclusions concerning possible motivations for philosophy as they both turn to the historical beginning of philosophy in ancient Greece. fact that they both discuss crisis as a motivation for philosophy calls for an investigation of the common structure of crisis, but also of differences between the different shapes of crisis that are diagnosed by Hegel and Husserl. I will first turn to Husserl since he raises the problem of motivation more explicitly; this will enable us to find similar problems and solutions in Hegel's philosophy. Crisis and Wonder in Husserl Way into Phenomenology In his early writings, Husserl suggests a way into phenomenology that he eventually designates as Cartesian because he takes up central insights from Descartes' philosophy. This way is more direct than others, but it has the disadvantage that one can easily fall back into the natural attitude, especially since Husserl does not address the question of how we are motivated to enter into the pursuit of philosophy in the first place. Husserl claims that the move to philosophy is an act of free will.1 Every way into philosophy has to begin with the natural attitude, the attitude in which we always already find ourselves. As long as we remain in the natural attitude, we are naively convinced that objects exist independently of our experience of them. Even in cases where we are mistaken, when we falsely posit the Being of the object, our conviction regarding the independent Being of objects in general is not shaken; we simply replace the mistaken judgments with a new, improved one. What this indicates is that no object given in perception is altogether isolated, but is surrounded by horizons that point to perceptual possibilities of other objects. These horizonal possibilities are never given exhaustively, for they are embedded in the overall world horizon. natural attitude can be characterized by the universal judgment The world is. Husserl first conceives philosophy as a science that would radically break from the natural attitude. Such a conception of science must then meet different conditions: Philosophy must be a type of universal science, a science that would take up beings in their totality; but it would also have to be a presuppositionless science, a science that takes nothing for granted and justifies itself absolutely. world's existence, however, can be doubted, as Descartes has already shown in his Meditations on First Philosophy, and therefore cannot serve as a secure foundation for Husserl's new science. …