CHARTING THE COURSE FOR A TRULY HUMANISTIC SCIENCE

HUSSERL, THE EPOCHE, AND THE LIFE-WORLD

Abstract

Edmund Husserl questions the so-called “objectivity” and focus of modern science in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl claims that the sciences as presently practiced and understood rest upon a “ground” that goes unnoticed and unacknowledged. Husserl calls this ground the life-world; the everyday horizon and environment that provide the sciences with the consistent structures of the objects they investigate. By extrapolating on what the life-world means for us as beings-in-the-world, Husserl hopes to resolve what he terms the “crisis of the European sciences.” In the following paper, I examine precisely what this “crisis” entails, how Husserl believes the crisis originated, and evaluate Husserl’s proposed solution to resolving this crisis.