Relativism and the lifeworld

pp. 143-202

in: Gail Soffer, Husserl and the question of relativism, Berlin, Springer, 1991

Abstract

According to the prevailing view, Husserl is and remains a virulent absolutist. Our discussion in the preceding chapters has shown that this view is not without its grounds. We have seen that through the time of Ideas I Husserl fiercely attacks relativism both on theoretical (Prolegomena) and ethical/social grounds ("Philosophy as Rigorous Science"). We have also seen that one of the central motives guiding Husserl's development of phenomenology itself is precisely the desire to overcome relativism (and skepticism) in the most convincing and ultimate fashion possible. Yet although Husserl himself is almost universally acknowledged to be an absolutist, the same is not the case for the phenomenology he developed to provide an epistemically sound foundation for this absolutism. Rather, it has been suggested that relativism arises as an unexpected and undesired consequence of Husserl's own phenomenology, and its analysis of the lifeworld in particular. Thus it is alleged that Husserl remained an absolutist out of pure dogmatism, while the later heirs of the phenomenological tradition were truer to phenomenology itself, and so became relativists.¹