In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

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 Unpublished parts of the text were known and discussed by a few insiders for years before the much-anticipated posthumous Husserliana publication appeared in 1954. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe crisis of European sciences in Husserl’s late work diagnoses Galilean science as specifically and necessarily losing touch with the intuitive evidence that would legitimate it due to its reliance on a formal-mathematical conceptual apparatus. While the vast majority of Husserl’s late work was focussed on a critique of the formal-mathematical paradigm of the physical science of nature, at several points the possibility of biology as the exemplary science is raised to suggest that the lack (...) of a reliance on formal-mathematical conceptual language would mean that a systemic crisis would not occur in such a case. This investigation considers the grounds for the expectation that biology would not engender a crisis, suggests that a paradigmatic role for ecology would more adequately address this expectation, and finally claims that the question of the relation between a specific exemplary science and transcendental phenomenology is not fully resolved even in this case. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to put into practice, in the field of social sciences, the principles that Husserl displayed in his book from 1936, "The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology”. In that seminal work, Husserl reflected on the mathematization of nature and produced an historical meditation on the essence of geometry. Here we will try to extend the reach of Husserlian postulates in order to deal with economics and, more specifically, with the theory of (...) money. We think that, in certain social sciences, and in particular in those with a clear mathematical penchant like economics, the use of formalization often helps to cover an uncritical use of phenomenologically ungrounded idealizations. This fact ultimately results in a massive concealment of the true sense of some of its principal phenomenanamely, money. It is worth mentioning that this concern does not have its roots only in phenomenology, for even academic monetary theory openly acknowledges that we lack an understanding of the meaning of money which could help us clarify and prevent financial crisis and economic collapses. Crisis, in short, are not the result of a deep understanding of the concept of money; on the contrary, they highlight the fact that we don’t really know what money is. Thus, our goal here is to illustrate the possibilities offered by the phenomenological method in its application to the question of money. It is in this sense that the research taking place here can be understood as a “phenomenological critique of monetary theory”.En el presente artículo se pretende llevar a cabo una aplicación de los principios que Husserl lleva a cabo en su obra de 1936, “La crisis de las ciencias europeas y la fenomenología transcendental”, a las ciencias sociales; concretamente, al concepto de dinero. En su obra de 1936, Husserl puso el énfasis en la matematización de la naturaleza, centrándose sobre todo en la meditación histórica sobre la geometría. Pero en el caso de algunas ciencias sociales, como la economía, la utilización libre de construcciones idealizadoras fenomenológicamente infundadas, como en el caso del dinero, está teniendo como resultado un enorme encubrimiento de sentido del fenómeno monetario. Esto no es vivido tan solo desde la feno-menología: desde la propia teoría monetaria se reconoce que estamos faltos de una comprensión del sentido del dinero que nos ayude a clarificar y prevenir de manera suficiente las crisis financieras. Estas crisis no son fruto de que hayamos comprendido demasiado bien el concepto de dinero, sino de que todavía estamos faltos de una comprensión profunda del sentido del dinero. Aquí pretendemos ilustrar las posibilidades que el método fenomenológico ofrece, aplicado al caso del dinero. En este sentido, pueden considerarse las investigaciones que tienen lugar aquí como “crítica fenomenológica de la teoría monetaria”. (shrink)

As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he (...) refers as the crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to post colonialism. (shrink)

The modernist movement has been regarded as representing a crisis point in Western thought. This volume looks at that crisis in terms of its reinterpretation of ideas concerning vitalism: the animation of the universe, whether spiritual or based in physical energies) of the universe. Beginning with vitalism's historical background in the enlightenment and the nineteenth century, and moving through scientific, philosophical and literary disciplines, the contributors chart the progress of vitalism and its influence on modernist thought. The focal (...) point is the work of Henri Bergson, whose part in this powerful reinterpretation had a considerable bearing on European and American intellectual life, and yet led to a vehement rejection of his work. A previously untranslated and little-known essay by Bakhtin will be of special interest in this stimulating collection, which includes original contributions from leading scholars in literature, the history of science, biology and philosophy, and comprises a wide-ranging reassessment of 'the perpetual crises of modernity'. The modernist movement has been regarded as representing a crisis point in Western thought. This volume looks at that crisis in terms of its reinterpretation of ideas concerning vitalism: the animation of the universe, whether spiritual or based in physical energies) of the universe. Beginning with vitalism's historical background in the enlightenment and the nineteenth century, and moving through scientific, philosophical and literary disciplines, the contributors chart the progress of vitalism and its influence on modernist thought. The focal point is the work of Henri Bergson, whose part in this powerful reinterpretation had a considerable bearing on European and American intellectual life, and yet led to a vehement rejection of his work. A previously untranslated and little-known essay by Bakhtin will be of special interest in this stimulating collection, which includes original contributions from leading scholars in literature, the history of science, biology and philosophy, and comprises a wide-ranging reassessment of 'the perpetual crises of modernity'. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays on Husserl's _Crisis of European Sciences_ by leading philosophers of science and scholars of Husserl. Published and ignored under the Nazi dictatorship, Husserl's last work has never received the attention its author's prominence demands. In the _Crisis_, Husserl considers the gap that has grown between the "life-world" of everyday human experience and the world of mathematical science. He argues that the two have become disconnected because we misunderstand our own scientific (...) past—we confuse mathematical idealities with concrete reality and thereby undermine the validity of our immediate experience. The philosopher's foundational work in the theory of intentionality is relevant to contemporary discussions of _qualia_, naive science, and the fact-value distinction. The scholars included in this volume consider Husserl's diagnosis of this "crisis" and his proposed solution. Topics addressed include Husserl's late philosophy, the relation between scientific and everyday objects and "worlds," the history of Greek and Galilean science, the philosophy of history, and Husserl's influence on Foucault. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende investigar el alcance, la función y la articulación que juega la modificación de neutralidad en “Ideas I”. A través del análisis de su estructura, se llegará a la conclusión de que, en cierto sentido, la modificación de neutralidad puede suponer una temprana vía de acceso a las temáticas que años más tarde serán desarrolladas en la “Crisis de las ciencias europeas”, interpretación ya sugerida por Brainard. Se sugiere, asimismo, un aumento de la presencia de los (...) modos de la conciencia neutralizada en el quehacer matemático propio de algunas actitudes “modeli-zadoras” de algunas ciencias sociales.This article aims to investigate the scope, function and articulation of neutrality modification in "Ideen I". Through the analysis of its structure, it will come to the conclusion that, in a certain sense, the neutrality modification can be an early path to the themes that years later will be developed in the "Crisis of European Sciences", as Brainard’s interpretation suggest. It also comes up with an increase in the presence of modes of neutralized consciousness in own mathematical work of some "modeler" attitudes of some social sciences. (shrink)

"Our grandparents, refugees; Our parents, immigrants; We, racists?" The slogan that prefaces the paper provides the theoretical caveat for the tensions, limitations, and contradictions of academic discourses in conjuring the daily realities of the era of the 'refugee crisis' in Greece. This paper has the form of a dialogue between a visual sociologist (Myrto) and a political theorist (Anna) who investigate different forms of the ways the 'refugee crisis' is changing the socio-political landscapes in Greece. The multiple aspects (...) of our identities provide valuable tools with which we unpack the multiple and contradictory narratives of researching, learning, and disseminating in the current milieu. In particular, we are interested in the ways we shape knowledge and the tension between the episte-mological and the ontological ways of knowing. In other words, by moving from theory to praxis and back, we are attempting to reconcile the problem of knowing and the problem of being part of a specific crisis milieu. For example, how can we use crisis as a research methodology? What can we learn from the ongoing 'refugee crisis' in relation to issues of citizenship, belonging, and the future of the European project? Furthermore, the paper attempts to transcend discursive borders between social sciences and the humanities by analysing the deeply performative, situated and embodied practices of doing research in moments of crisis. For example, how to navigate multiple, and at times contradictory, aspects of one's identity without returning to outmoded discourses of positivism and objectivity? (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking From The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.

Številka 45-46 revije Phainomena z naslovom „Evropsko sporazumevanje – filozofsko razumevanje združuje filozofsko refleksijo o evropskosti s hermenevtičnimi in fenomenološkimi študijami o temah, ki so temeljito opredelile evropski duh v prejšnjem stoletju. Na podlagi tega je mogoče oblikovati vprašanje o filozofsko smislu evropskosti danes in o možnosti prihodnjega evropskega sporazumevanja. Osnovo za to diskusijo najdemo v Husserlovem delu Kriza evropskih znanosti in transcendentalna fenomenologija. .The 45-46 issue of the philosophical journal Phainomena, “European Coming to an Understanding – Philosophical Understanding”, (...) is a collection of philosophical reflections on Europe introducing a number of hermeneutic and phenomenological studies of the topics which fundamentally determined the spirit of Europe of the 20th century. On this basis, it is possible to pose questions about the philosophical meaning of Europe today and of the possibility of the future European coming to an understanding. The fundamental work of this enterprise is Husserl’s work Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. (shrink)

This article focuses on two issues involved in the formation and political trajectory of populist representations within political antagonism. First, it explores the role of crisis in the articulation of populist discourse. This problematic is far from new within theories of populism but has recently taken a new turn. We thus purport to reconsider the way populism and crisis are related, mapping the different modalities this relation can take and advancing further their theorization from the point of view (...) of a discursive theory of the political, drawing primarily on the Essex School perspective initially developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Second, this will involve focusing on the antagonistic language games developed around populist representations, something that has not attracted equal attention. Highlighting the need to study anti-populism together with populism, focusing on their mutual constitution, we will test the ensuing theoretical framework in an analysis of SYRIZA, a recent and, as a result, under-researched example of egalitarian, inclusionary populism emerging within the European crisis landscape. (shrink)

Although the notion of the crisis of European sciences has a general meaning, Husserl mainly focuses on this phenomenon in relation to the modern establishment of a mathematical natural science. However, he does not provide a definitive clarification of how its new method is specifically involved in bringing about such a crisis. Without trying to offer a faithful exegetical contribution, this paper further elaborates on Husserl’s analyses in the Krisis to give a possible answer to this (...) question. After defining the concept of crisis in general, I single out why algebraic thinking is the core of the method that essentially characterizes mathematical physics. Then, I compare this method to a case of pre-modern discipline (namely, Euclidean geometry) to show that the sedimentation of meaning at work in the progressive technization of algebra is exceptional and sufficient to explain the specificity of the modern character of the crisis of the exact sciences. The exclusively technical development of formal mathematics, in fact, elicits those shifts of meaning (such as objectivism) that phenomenology is required to amend to overcome the crisis and to establish an authentic form of knowledge. On the basis of these results, I conclude by suggesting a few consequences that are useful for the understanding of the project of phenomenology of the later Husserl. (shrink)

Philosophy as rigorous science and philosophy and the crisis of European man.

In this article I intend to explore the conception of science as it emerges from the work of Husserl, Schutz, and Garfinkel. By concentrating specifically on the issue of science, I attempt to show that Garfinkel’s views on the relationship between science and the everyday world are much closer to Husserl’s stance than to the Schutzian perspective. To this end, I explore Husserl’s notion of science especially as it emerges in the Crisis of European (...) Sciences, where he describes the failure of European science and again preaches for a return to the “things themselves”. In this respect I interpret ethnomethodology’s most recent program as an answer to that call originating from a sociological domain. I then argue that the Husserlian turn within ethnomethodology marks the split between Garfinkel and Schutz. In fact I try to show that Schutz’s epistemological work is only partially inspired by phenomenology and that his conception of science retains a rationalist stance that ethnomethodology opposes. In the final section I briefly discuss Garfinkel’s most recent program as a way of closing the gap between theory and experience by linking the topics of science to the radical experiential phenomena. (shrink)

This book is an essential contribution to the transdisciplinary field of critical design studies. The essays in this collection locate design at the center of a series of interrelated planetary crises, from climate change, nuclear war, and racial and geopolitical violence to education, computational culture, and the loss of the commons. In doing so, the essays propose a range of needed interventions in order to transform design itself and its role within the shifting realities of a planetary crisis. It (...) challenges the widely popular view that design can contribute to solving world problems by exposing how this attitude only intensifies the problems we currently face. In this way, the essays critique the dominant modes of framing the meaning and scope of design as a largely Anglo-European "problem-solving" practice. By drawing on post-development theory, decolonial theory, black studies, continental philosophy, science and technology studies and more, the contributions envision a critical and speculative practice that problematizes both its engagement with planet and itself. The essays in this collection will appeal to design theorists and practitioners alike, but also to scholars and students generally concerned with how the past and future of design is implicated in the unfolding complexity of ecological devastation, racial and political violence, coloniality, technological futures, and the brutality of modern western culture generally. (shrink)

The transformations undergone by research and science in the name of the so called "knowledge economy" cover the decisions of scientific policies and the "management" of research, and also the meaning of scientific activities (devoted to innovation) and even more fundamentally the very structure of the sciences (transformed to technosciences). The science that is contributing to capitalist competitiveness (and to the current economic crisis) is not the same as that which would be able to contribute "to the (...) conception and democratic carrying out of another form of globalization and another European project". However, this is not self-evident, and it needs to be thought about since it is not simply a matter of returning to the science of the 20th century that opened the way to technoscience. (shrink)

Can we really trust the things our bodies tell us about the world? This book reveals how deeply intertwined cultural practices of art and science questioned the authority of the human body in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Henry Fuseli, Anne-Louis Girodet, and Philippe de Loutherbourg, it argues that Romantic artworks participated in a widespread crisis concerning the body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge. Rarely discussed sources and new archival material illuminate how (...) artists drew upon contemporary sciences and inverted them, undermining their founding empiricist principles. The result is an alternative history of Romantic visual culture that is deeply embroiled in controversies around electricity, mesmerism, physiognomy, and other popular sciences. This volume reorients conventional accounts of Romanticism and some of its most important artworks, while also putting forward a new model for the kinds of questions that we can ask about them. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl questions the so-called “objectivity” and focus of modern science in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl claims that the sciences as presently practiced and understood rest upon a “ground” that goes unnoticed and unacknowledged. Husserl calls this ground the life-world; the everyday horizon and environment that provide the sciences with the consistent structures of the objects they investigate. By extrapolating on what the life-world means for us as beings-in-the-world, Husserl hopes to resolve (...) what he terms the “crisis of the European sciences.” In the following paper, I examine precisely what this “crisis” entails, how Husserl believes the crisis originated, and evaluate Husserl’s proposed solution to resolving this crisis. (shrink)

This analysis of Herbert Marcuse’s appropriation of the argument concerning the “mathematization of nature” in Edmund Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology shows that Marcuse and Husserl both assume that the perception of real, concrete individuals in the lifeworld underlies formal scientific abstractions and that the critique of the latter requires a return to such qualitative perception. In contrast, I argue that no such return is possible and that real, concrete individuals are constituted by the (...) relation between a given perception and its horizon. In this manner, Marcuse’s social critique can be combined with Husserl’s theoretical-perceptual one, making possible an ecological critique. L’analyse de l’appropriation que fait Herbert Marcuse de l’argument concernant la « mathématisation de la nature » dans la Crise des sciences europe ennes et la phénoménologie transcendantale de Husserl démontre que Marcuse et Husserl assument tous les deux que la perception des individus réels concrets dans le monde de la vie sous-tend les abstractions scientifiques formelles et que la critique de ces dernières nécessite un retour à la perception qualificative. J’avance au contraire qu’un tel retour n’est pas possible et que les individus réels concrets sont constitués par la relation entre une perception donnée et son horizon. Nous pouvons alors combiner la critique sociale de Marcuse avec la critique théorico-perceptuelle de Husserl pour en faire une critique égologique. (shrink)

Science in the Changing World, first published in 1933, contains a series of broadcasted presentations on the relationship between science and the development of European civilisation in the first half of the 20th century. Specifically, each talk attempts to reflect the crisis through which the world seemed to be passing at the time, and to make an analysis of those forces of transformation in science, art, economics, and social life which were associated most closely with (...) the advent of the 'scientific' century. Included among the presenters are such eminent and diverse thinkers as Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell and Hilaire Belloc. Science at Your Service: First published in 1945, this collection of twelve BBC broadcasts focuses on the influence of science in everyday life, and demonstrates that not all science is remote and theoretical. Each speaker deals with some aspect of mid-20th century scientific advance as it related to subjects of practical importance, from textiles and tunnels to fishing and ship design. Offering a glimpse into the attitudes towards science current in the middle of the Second World War, this brief and accessible collection will be of interest to cultural historians as well as to the general science enthusiast. (shrink)

The intent of this work is bring to attention, as useful elements for a debate, the possibility of reasoning on the implementations that will come to the country-system from the resources of the PNRR. From a historical, albeit brief, and legislative analysis of active labor policies in Italy, one can try to understand how to stimulate Italian economic growth. To do this, one must examine the structural elements that contribute to making our country fragile in comparison with other European (...) countries, fragility associated with the horizontal and vertical segregation that characterizes the world of work. This is a phenomenon that has worsened further during the pandemic crisis. Hence, employment discontinuity, non-standard contractual forms, differences in male and female employment rates, as well as that set of social, cultural, and psychological barriers all become elements that decline the concept of horizontal and vertical segregation mentioned earlier. This is where the PNRR comes into play, whose intentions include promoting a process of transformation in tune with the great changes in the socio-economic scenario. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the revival of Hegel in France and Germany in the early twentieth century and point especially to the crucial role of phenomenology in incorporating Hegel into their mature transcendental philosophy. Indeed, Martin Heidegger was responsible for a significant revival of Hegel studies at the University of Freiburg, following his arrival there in 1928 as the successor to Husserl. Similarly, Husserl’s student, Fink characterised Husserl’s phenomenology in explicitly Hegelian terms as “the self-comprehension of the Absolute”. The (...) late Husserl seems to embrace the Hegelian vision when he presents his approach in the Crisis itself as a “teleological historical reflection”. (shrink)

The paper aims at identifying, explaining and illustrating the affordances of “creative nonfiction” as a style of writing social science. The first part introduces creative nonfiction as a method of writing which brings together empirical material and fiction. In the second part, based on illustrations from my ethnographic research of European “crisis reporters,” written in the form of a novel about a fictional journalist, but also based on a review of existing social science research that employs (...) a creative method of writing, I identify several main affordances of creative nonfiction in social-scientific research. In particular, I argue that creative nonfiction allows scientists to illustrate their findings, to express them in an allegorical way, to organize data into a narrative, to let their pieces of research act in the social world, and to permeate research accounts with self-reflexive moments. I also discuss some apparent negative affordances: challenges that creative nonfiction poses to readers and to the institutionalized academic discourse. Finally, I suggest that writing about sociological problems in the style of creative nonfiction can help to produce more engaging and engaged texts, and I discuss the ethical implications of the approach. (shrink)

In his last work, "Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology", Edmund Husserl formulated a radical new approach to phenomenological philosophy. Unlike his previous works, in the "Crisis" Husserl embedded this formulation in an ambitious reflection on the essence and value of the idea of rational thought and culture, a reflection that he considered to be an urgent necessity in light of the political, social, and intellectual crisis of the interwar period. In this book, James (...) Dodd pursues an interpretation of Husserl's text that emphasizes the importance of the problem of the origin of philosophy, as well as advances the thesis that, for Husserl, the "crisis of reason" is not a contingent historical event, but a permanent feature of a life in reason generally. (shrink)

Neuropragmatism offers a non-dualistic conception of experience from which scientific inquiries can provide resources for sociocultural critique. This reconstructive effort addresses what Emma Dowling calls the care crisis without succumbing to what Mike W. Martin calls therapeutic tyranny. This tyranny relies on problematic dualisms, between mind/body, mind/world, and fact/value, that are also found in neuropsychoanalysis. While pragmatism and psychoanalysis more generally share an evolutionary perspective and can overlap in therapeutic approaches, neuropsychoanalysis diverges from this effort in its dual-aspect monism (...) and positivistic conception of science. Where neuropsychoanalysis seeks to reconcile the first-person subjectivity of lived experience with the third-person objectivity of science, neuropragmatism offers reconstruction. In taking the neuropragmatic turn, neuropsychoanalysts can better utilize Freudian therapies in conjunction with active inference principles, such as the free-energy principle and allostasis. Along with neuropragmatism’s conception of experience as organism-environment dynamic engagement, neuropsychoanalysis can benefit from allostatic approaches to experience and inquiry without reducing experience to brute mechanism or denying the utility of such mechanisms for prediction and intervention. Understanding the value-ladenness of experience, primary and secondary, in everyday waking life and in reflective inquiry, empowers people to better care for themselves without succumbing to merely coping with neoliberal oppression. (shrink)

Social theory is developing in response to the coronavirus (COVID) crisis. Fundamental questions about social justice in the relationship of individuals to society are raised by Delanty in his review of political philosophy, including Agamben, Foucault and Žižek. However, the focus on the libertarian critique of authoritarianism is not enough. The social democratic critique of neoliberalism lies at the centre of the contesting responses to the COVID crisis. A social democratic perspective on public health, democracy and state action (...) is contrasted with the anti-statists of left and right. This is addressed in debates on the relationship between science and governance, the place of crisis in theories of change and the conceptualisation of alternative forms of social formation. The crisis initiated by the pandemic, cascading through society, from health to economy, to polity and into violence, includes a contestation between social democratic and neoliberal visions of alternative forms of society. (shrink)

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology has long occupied a position amongst Edmund Husserl’s writings of almost singular renown and influence. It is easy to see why this should be so. The Crisis offered the reading public its first glimpse of a new Husserl, or at least one strikingly different in tone, mode of presentation, and thematic emphasis from the Husserl of Ideas I or Cartesian Meditations. In a seeming reversal of the Augustinian dictum that (...) Husserl used to close Cartesian Meditations,“Noli foras ire, in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.” The Crisis looks outward rather than within, toward the body, history, the intersubjective community, and an analysis of the life-world, arguably Husserl’s most enduring philosophical contribution and the one with which The Crisis is most closely associated. And these concerns are framed against a backdrop o .. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Preface; Introduction: Husserl's life and writings; 1. Husserl's Crisis: an unfinished masterpiece; 2. Galileo's revolution and the origins of modern science; 3. The Crisis in psychology; 4. Rethinking tradition: Husserl on history; 5. Husserl's problematical concept of the life-world; 6. Phenomenology as transcendental philosophy; 7. The ongoing influence of Husserl's Crisis.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

Analyses of household urban agriculture have demonstrated a wealth of personal, economic, social, moral or political uses for self-provisioned food, yet have often understood the practice itself as merely a production process. This ‘means-to-an-end’ perspective is especially pronounced in studies of locations undergoing economic hardship. Urban gardening in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has been framed as an element of an informal economy, enabling household savings, access to informal networks and avoidance of industrial goods deemed (...) ethically dubious. In this article, I present evidence from participant observation and interviews with urban gardeners conducted in 2014–2015 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where urban agriculture proliferated during the European debt crisis that began in 2009. I interpret the material through an ecological perspective that focuses on labour in nature and highlights the interconnected, situated role of the gardener. My analysis of gardening styles, behaviours, attitudes and life-narratives of long-term urban growers challenges the utilitarian interpretation by arguing that urban agriculture in Ljubljana is in fact a means in itself—not an informal economy, but a narrative practice. While undertaken to ameliorate the effects of economic hardship, household urban agriculture first and foremost promotes individual wellbeing and restores a stable sense of self. I outline a series of self-making benefits of working with cultivated, edible nature that helped gardeners reconstruct their biographies after their previously established self-making processes collapsed in the economic downturn. (shrink)

This article examines the proximity of the conceptions of Europe defended by Edmund Husserl and Paul Valéry during the interwar period, their common diagnosis of a European crisis and their attempt to give a non-geographical definition of Europe, based on the notion of spirit. It is shown that, behind the common use of the term and lexicon of spirit, the two authors actually put forward two different paradigms to account for Europe’s cultural specificity (a dynamic paradigm in Valéry (...) and a teleological paradigm in Husserl), and that this duality is reflected in the way they understand European modernity, the significance of science, and finally the idea of a Europeanization of the world. In so doing, the article enters into a critical discussion with those readings that have noted the proximity of the two authors only to see in them the same spiritualism, suspected of perpetuating the Eurocentric prejudice. (shrink)

The disciplines within biology which have upheld neo-Darwinism are now in a state of Kuhnian crisis, the puzzle solving power of normal science being replaced with long debates about the interpretation of data, competition between rival articulations of the once universal paradigm, the re-opening of long solved problems, explicit discontent on the part of scientists and frequent appeals to philosophy and history. Similar features of distress are found when scientific research attempts to serve policy decisions. It is argued (...) that the dramatic reduction in the efficiency of the consensus building machinery of science in areas relevant to public policy and in periods of Kuhnian crisis are explained in the same way; by the scientists' loss of autonomy, the weakening of disciplinary boundaries, and the elevation of the degree of critical scrutiny to which conjectures are submitted. (shrink)

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl argues that the only way to respond to the scientific Krisis of which he speaks is with phenomenological reflections on the history, method, and task of philosophy. On the assumption that an accurate diagnosis of a malady is a necessary condition for an effective remedy, this paper aims to formulate a precise concept of the Krisis of the European sciences with which Husserl operates in this work. (...) Thus it seeks an answer to the question: What exactly, according to Husserl, is “the ‘crisis’ [Krisis] of the European sciences”? There are two different tendencies in the literature on this question. According to the traditional interpretation, the Krisis of the European sciences lies not in the inadequacy of their scientificity but in the loss of their meaningfulness for life. According to an innovative suggestion, the Krisis lies not in the loss of their meaningfulness for life but in the inadequacy of their scientificity. These readings are mutually exclusive because each claims that the other misidentifies the Krisis as something that it is not. The argument of this paper, however, is that, given the many different senses of Krisis in The Crisis, an adequate understanding of the Krisis that Husserl identifies requires not a disjunctive but an inclusive approach. Therefore the paper proposes that Husserl’s Krisis of the European sciences is both a crisis of their scientificity and a crisis of their meaningfulness for life. The relevance of this result to Husserl’s philosophical and historical sense-investigations in The Crisis—as well as to the present critical situation of philosophy—is self-evident. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 237-240.