Phenomenology and Crisis

Abstract

Phenomenology is a tradition of crises. Not only is it a movement that sees itself on the brink of modernity—a turning point in the philosophical tradition of the West—but it is also engaged in a constant struggle over the starting point and target area of its investigations. Phenomenology has not become a fixed system, because it defines itself as a project that cannot become one. As Husserl often remarks, phenomenology—as a philosophical undertaking—is a pursuit of an “absolute foundation,” in which “no one line of knowledge, no single truth may be absolutized and isolated.” Hence, it is a process of constant critique, repeatedly deciding anew what is primarily evident and meaningful. Phenomenology is an enterprise of constant separation— crisis. But as Jacques Derrida claims, the idea of crisis is important for the phenomenological tradition also in another sense. In his work Of Spirit—a book that deals with the concept of Geist (or its absence) in Heidegger’s work— Derrida claims that it is perhaps the concept of crisis that strikes a gap between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s thinking. Derrida points out that even though both wish to “awaken Europe and Philosophy to their responsibility,” for Heidegger this wake-up call “is not a discourse on crisis.” For both, the idea of crisis signifies a “loss of direction,” uncertainty about the ends of the Western philosophy; however, according to Derrida, Heidegger’s analyses do remain “radically heterogeneous” with respect to Husserl’s Crisis-works. He is not talking about a mere difference in the ways approach, but of a more profound separation: