The science of the life-world

Hans-Georg Gadamer

pp. 173-185

in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), The later Husserl and the idea of phenomenology, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1972

Abstract

Although the science of the life-world is the most discussed part of the doctrine of the late Husserl, there seems to be a permanent necessity to examine what is novel in this doctrine. Does it open new paths of investigation or is it only a new and clearer outline of the programmatic intentions phenomenology had from the beginning? It is a specific character of the Husserlian style of thinking to correct himself and to repeat himself in such a manner that they are indistinguishable. Therefore the introduction of the concept of Lebenswelt wavers between a mere description of the authentic approach which Husserl chose for his phenomenological investigation, and which distinguished him and his philosophical interest from the dominant Neo-Kantian and positivistic scientism, and a new self-criticism which may not attain the great goal for which Husserl longed throughout all his work, namely to found philosophy as a rigorous science, but which would make this goal appear attainable. To this we may add that the self-interpretation of Husserl is by no means a trustworthy canon for the understanding of his meaning, because his self-interpretation oscillates between continually renewed self-criticism and teleological self-interpretation, to such a degree that, for example, Husserl pretends that his own psychological approach in the Philosophy of Arithmetic would be the prefiguration of phenomenological investigation of what he calls constitution.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund