Reason and history

pp. 182-203

in: Richard Cobb-Stevens, Husserl and analytic philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1990

Abstract

The latest swing of the pendulum has taken philosophy from excessive confidence in our rational powers to an equally excessive mood of relativism. Many contemporary philosophic movements have in common the conviction that our rational categories are contingent products of history, and that all truths are therefore relativized by their historical horizons. Often referred to as "post-modernist," these movements are in fact the logical outcome of the specifically modern tendency to construe reason as a purely adaptive mechanism. Husserl clearly discerned the irrationalism underlying the two most powerful theses of modernity, naturalism and historicism. His critique of these reductive theses is closely linked with his project of restoring confidence in cognitive intuition.