On history and the life-world

David Carr

pp. 83-86

in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), The crisis of culture, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1976

Abstract

Husserl said that the crisis of European science was the loss of its meaning for life. Since the Renaissance, and perhaps ever since the birth of philosophy in Greece, we have lived in a scientific culture, that is, a culture that places in man’s rational, theorizing activity its hopes for man’s ultimate understanding of himself and his place in the universe. But the actual development of scientific theory, especially in modern times, has been toward a conception of the universe that is far removed from the world in which we live, and a conception of man that we no longer recognize as ourselves. Instead of facilitating man’s self-understanding, science seems to have contributed to his self-estrangement.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund