Document Type : Review
Authors
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Theology, Farabi Campus, University of Tehran, Qom, Iran
10.30465/os.2026.51469.2037
Abstract
Introduction
The crisis of European sciences originated in the 19th century with the reduction of all knowledge to the models of the exact natural and mathematical sciences, expelling values, meaning, and ethics from genuine knowledge. This created a deep split between the objective scientific world and the subjective world of lived experience, plunging European culture into relativism, meaninglessness, and alienation from fundamental human questions.
Husserl identifies key factors behind this crisis—objectivism, the subject-object split, forgetting foundational principles of philosophy, and extreme specialization. He argues that an authentic philosopher is not only responsible for preserving the telos born in Greek philosophy, but also seeks to realize the fundamental aim of philosophy: the knowledge of the world. Critiquing psychologism and naturalism, Husserl proposed phenomenological knowledge as the path to freeing oneself from the natural attitude and resolving the crisis.
Materials & Methods
This study uses a descriptive-analytical methodology based on extensive library research. Primary sources include Husserl's major works, particularly The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Logical Investigations, Ideas I, and Cartesian Meditations. These texts are examined alongside contemporary scholarship on Husserl's phenomenological thought and historical studies of the development of transcendental phenomenology. The analysis focuses on several key concepts in Husserl's philosophy—intentionality, the lifeworld (Lebenswelt), the natural attitude, the phenomenological reduction (epoché), transcendental subjectivity, and the crisis of the sciences—and investigates their implications for understanding the foundations of knowledge and the relationship between science and lived human experience. Rather than attempting to reconstruct a systematic doctrine, the study adopts an interpretive approach aimed at extracting critical insights from Husserl's phenomenological method and his diagnosis of the crisis of European sciences. By situating his philosophical ideas within the context of his lifelong commitment to philosophy as a rigorous science, the research seeks to illuminate the enduring relevance of his call to return "to the things themselves".
Discussion & Result
This study has demonstrated that Husserl’s formulation of a presuppositionless philosophy is inseparable from his diagnosis of the crisis of the European sciences. The reduction of all valid knowledge to the models of the natural and mathematical sciences—whereby meaning, values, and human ends were excluded from the sphere of genuine cognition—created a deep rupture between the objective world of scientific inquiry and the subjective world of lived experience. Our analysis confirms that Husserl identified this objectivism and forgetting the transcendental foundation of knowledge as the principal factors of the sciences’ loss of significance for human life.
Through a close examination of the transcendental turn, the research has shown that the disclosure of the field of pure consciousness constitutes the essential task of transcendental phenomenology. The epoché, by suspending the natural attitude that naively accepts the world as pre-given and present, reveals the absolute correlation between world and consciousness. This correlation means that the validity and meaning of the objective world are constituted in, and thus fundamentally rooted in, the conscious life of transcendental subjectivity. Consequently, the study clarifies that Husserl does not abandon the world but rather recovers it in its authentic givenness as a phenomenon for consciousness.
The results further indicate that the concept of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) plays a mediating role between the natural attitude and the transcendental sphere. Tracing the sense of all scientific idealizations back to their origin in the pre-scientific and intuitively given lifeworld, Husserl demonstrates that the crisis of the sciences can only be overcome by reactivating the foundational intentional accomplishments of subjectivity. The study therefore concludes that phenomenology, as a rigorous science of subjectivity, not only provides a way out of the crisis of the sciences but also restores philosophy to its authentic vocation: the relentless pursuit of ultimate, self-evident grounding for all knowledge, a grounding that must be sought, as Husserl insists, by returning “to the things themselves”.
Conclusion
In order to realize the fundamental idea of a presuppositionless philosophy—which is, in fact, regarded as the way out of the crisis of European philosophy and the sciences—Husserl devised the project of phenomenology. Through the successive development of his theories, he was led to the transcendental turn, and consequently came to see that the essential task of transcendental phenomenology is the disclosure of the field of pure consciousness. And because the science of pure phenomenology, by its very nature, stands entirely opposed to naturalism, he realized that one must abandon the habitual attitude of thought—which takes the idea of the natural world as a horizon within which consciousness plays no role in the constitution of anything, but rather presumes the world as something pre-given and present and its experience as something real. As a result of this liberation from prejudices, the absolute correlation of world and consciousness can be discovered. This discovery means that the validity and meaning of the world are rooted and founded in the conscious life of subjectivity; consequently, the science of transcendental phenomenology is understood as the science of subjectivity.
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