Abstract
My paper analyzes the paradoxical point of
view adopted by Husserl in the essays on «Renovation of man and culture», partially published in 1923-24 in Japan. While the philosopher inequivocally acknowledges that European
culture perished in the Great War, he at the same time announces that the one and only
new vision to be trusted is a new rational science concerning individual and collective
subjectivity. Therefore, the underlying philosophy of History leaves in obscurity the
conditions of the possibility for the catastrophe of war itself, since for Husserl self-reflective
freedom, theoretical and practical reason and Modernity in itself as beneficient progress
were by this date inseparable notions. The outstanding essay on individual ethics, viewed as a human life that is self-regulated through practical reason, also requires a more vivid contrast with the explosion of evil in the historical life-world.
view adopted by Husserl in the essays on «Renovation of man and culture», partially published in 1923-24 in Japan. While the philosopher inequivocally acknowledges that European
culture perished in the Great War, he at the same time announces that the one and only
new vision to be trusted is a new rational science concerning individual and collective
subjectivity. Therefore, the underlying philosophy of History leaves in obscurity the
conditions of the possibility for the catastrophe of war itself, since for Husserl self-reflective
freedom, theoretical and practical reason and Modernity in itself as beneficient progress
were by this date inseparable notions. The outstanding essay on individual ethics, viewed as a human life that is self-regulated through practical reason, also requires a more vivid contrast with the explosion of evil in the historical life-world.