Husserl and the History of Reason

Abstract

It is in the text known as “The Origin of Geometry,” published as Appendix VI to The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,1 that the problem of history comes to the fore in Edmund Husserl’s writings. Husserl there states: “As will become evident here, at first in connection with one example, our investigations are historical in an unaccustomed sense.”2 This claim raises several questions. First: what is the “unaccustomed sense” in which history here presents itself? Second, and more fundamentally: what are the implications for Husserl’s philosophy of this admission that it must confront the problem of history?