Abstract

Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology has always been a challenge to its readers, interpreters and reviewers. Written during the last few years of the author’s life, it is unfinished and somewhat fragmentary, more a book project than a book. This circumstance alone may lend itself to a wide variety of interpretations; but the content and form of the work are also puzzling and unexpected when compared with Husserl’s earlier work. The history of its publication adds to the puzzle. About a hundred pages appeared while Husserl was still alive, but in an obscure and inaccessible journal. Husserl’s death in 1938, and then the upheaval of war, intervened. Unpublished parts of the text were known and discussed by a few insiders for years before the much-anticipated posthumous Husserliana publication appeared in 1954.