Crisis and Lifeworld: New phenomenological perspectives

HERNÁN INVERSO

Karl Alber Verlag

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2022

9783495474778

The notion of crisis plays a fundamental role in contemporary philosophy. A sense of anxiety, instability, and rupture dominates the scene during the most turbulent times, but it also accompanies even the calmest periods. A world of increasing communication and interconnectedness is more sensitive to global processes that have rendered traditional parameters obsolete, exposing a wavering horizon populated by fickle phenomena. In fact, when the meeting that gave rise to this book occurred, neither the pandemic nor the war situations that have shaken recent times had yet occurred. However, the essential diagnosis linked to the crisis has not changed substantially. These events have been added to the collective experience as a further indication of the relevance of some fundamental questions. It is clear that the improvement of some material indices in comparison with previous centuries has nothing to do with this sensation, but rather, as Husserl rightly saw, it is a cultural and spiritual condition that requires a deeper effort of intellection.The polysemy of this notion is well known. The Greek origins of the concept of crisis point to various facets derived from krinein, which in its most basic sense is ‘to sift’, to separate with the sieve the flour from the bran, or any other element, so that the coarser remains on the filter and the subtler falls into the storage place. This act implies disorder and shaking, the loss of the initial composition, but also a breakthrough in the distinction of what was mixed, a clarity that was not there before, and a new reconfiguration of the parts. By this double-sidedness, krisis was conceived as the climax of an illness that allows us to infer the outcome of the disease, the agitation and confrontation that arises in the face of a disruptive event, but also the choice made in distinguishing the elements of a situation and the resulting judgement.Indeed, phenomenology is the offspring of this kind of scenario. It appeared at the beginning of the 20th century on a convulsed horizon. Metaphysical models seemed exhausted. Psychologism and historicism were exhausted, and everything called for a complete redefinition. At the same time, the social and political crisis was taking on its worst face in the form of war. Husserl was personally struck by this political instability, which underlines a vital dimension reflected in crisis and the life-world as connected elements. This theme is central to his thought. The world of life underlies the “natural attitude” and allows putting in the forefront the phenomena which imply communal features and “homeworld”. Far from being a late inclusion, or even a reaction to the philosophy of Heidegger, the notion of Lebenswelt has deep roots in Husserl’s thought. Indeed, the word is not in the first works. Still, the idea of a “natural concept of the world” (natürliche Weltbegriff), taken from Richard Avenarius and also present in Dilthey, is already in Thing and Space (1907) and the Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology (1910/11). There, he states that the description of that level would require quite complex reflections, as it occurs with other matters identified as relevant whose treatment is deferred. The first appearance of the word Lebenswelt in a manuscript goes back to 1917, and it keeps growing during the decade of 1920 up to the Crisis. The notion of Lebenswelt also includes some aspects of the concept of Umwelt, the “surrounding world” related to the environment and everyday life, and through the reduction, it is possible to reveal its constitution.From this perspective, the substantial contribution of the Crisis is based on its treatment of the teleological sense and the indication of the requirement of a Rückfrage. This retrospective question focuses on the gap and tries to bridge it. Thus, the origin is a vacuum, and it is necessary to think about it in the teleological framework of a symbolical horizon of sense. This horizon gives way to a history of histories and points to the Urstiftung associated with the symbolic institution of meaning. This search opens the realm of the transcendental conscience and its link with time and language, as well as with the features of the symbolic institutions and its givenness in the distance from its origin. Hence, the Lebenswelt implies the primary level of the phenomena in their radical indeterminacy and phenomezalisation. Thus, the life-world marks the horizon of all praxis, and the crisis involves a modality that disrupts it, giving rise to the cancellation of the habitual, to instability, but also “stupendous happenings”, as Husserl points out in the opening of his inaugural lecture at Freiburg. Because of this complex condition, despite the complex evolution of the later phenomenological variants, the importance of this theme remained unchanged and constitutes today one of the most important contributions of this current to philosophical thought in general. Within the framework of this exploration, these issues were the central topics addressed at the conference held in September 2018 at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, which brought together experts on the subject to discuss different perspectives linked to Husserlian contributions, their reception, and the lines open to understanding contemporary phenomena.