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The Idea of a Philosophical Culture: Its First Germination in Greek Philosophy

Edmund Husserl

The fundamental character of Greek science as it originated with Thales is "philosophy," the systematic consequence of a theoretical interest that is free of all other aims, an interest in truth purely for the sake of truth. Pure science in this sense, however, does not simply denote a new cultural formation, one that merely takes its place alongside the other cultural formations. It prepares a turn in the development of the entire culture, it turn that leads the culture, in its entirety, on to a higher destiny. Given the tendency to systematic universality that is, so to speak, inborn in the purely theoretical interest, philosophy could not stop with its initial, easily understandable preference for cosmological problems. However much the world is given in natural outer observation as the totality of all realities which includes humanity [Menschheit] as a group of subordinate particulars, in active life it is nevenheless given to the acting and in panicular to the inquiring man in the necessary orientational form 'I and my environing world', 'we and our (common) environing world'. This "principal coordination" also had to have an effect on the theoretically inquiring interest. Subjectivity as cognizing and eminently as theoretically cognizing; funhermore, subjectivity as affected in its weal and woe by the environing world; and fmally subjectivity as freely acting from within on the environing world and altering it purposively-all that had to
... Translated by Marcus Brainard. This essay first appeared under the title "Die Idee einer philosophischen Kultur. Ihr erstes Aufkeimen in der griechischen Philosophie" in ]apanisch-Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaft und Technik 1 (1923), 45-51. A slightly different version of this text has been published in Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische ldeengeschichte, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana vn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1956),203-7, as well as 8.23-10.31 and 11.31-17.7; Boehmnotes that there are differences between the two texts, but does not list them. In the margins of the present translation, the page numbers of the original publication are provided. -The editors wish to thank Dr. Elmar Bund, executor of Edmund Husserl's literary estate, for his kind permission to publish the present translation here. The translator extends his thanks to Steve Crowell for his helpful suggestions regarding this translation. The New Yearbook for PhenornernJlog;y and Phenomenological Philosophy ill (2003): 285-93
ISSN 1533-7472 ISBN 0-9701679-3-8

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become to an ever higher degree the focus of theoretical inquiry. And inquiry into the world naively turned outward and inquiry into the spirit reflectively turned inward had to intertwine with and condition one another. As soon as inquiry moved in the direction of thinking and otherwise active subjectivity, it had to come upon questions of an ultimately possible fulfillment and, in connection therewith, those of the genuineness and rightness of the goals and paths to be chosen. Inquiry had to come upon them already in the domain of science itself, since the devised theories, which were immediately drawn into the conflict of systems, had to defend their right. Thus, in order to be able to become a truly rational science, intelligible to itself and definitively legitimating itself, the beginning science had to overcome the original form of becoming proper to naive theoretical inquiry; as self-reflecting theory o/science, it had to inquire into the norms of a definitively self-legitimating science and then strive fInally to achieve an essentially. reformed configuration, and in fact with an explicitly set goal, namely that of a science led and legitimated by the theory of science. Similar normative problems, however, concerned not only the cognitively active man but the active man in general. Thus the entire complex of the highest and ultimate questions had to enter into the fIeld of theoretical work, aiming at the totality of absolute, normative ideas, which in their incontestable and unconditional validity are principially to determine human action in every sphere. Regardless of whether these ideas also function-as it were, as hidden entelechies-already prior to their being seen purely and formed theoretically as forces determinative of development: only as consciously worked out and apodictically seen forms of possible legitimacy were and are they able to bring about "genuine Humanity [echte Humanitat]." For what is that but a truly responsible humanity, which as such strives to live in self-responsibility that is wakeful at all times; that is determined at all times to follow "reason," to govern itself, and only in accordance with norms that it has thought itself and into which it itself has had insight; and that is able and ready at all times to defend the absolute, normatively justified character of its actions with reference to ultimate sources of finality. In this way, the task thus had to fall to philosophy-universal science-of helping humanity, striving blindly towards that goal, to achieve the most profound self-awareness, that of the true and genuine sense of its life. It had to become its greatest obligation to give this sense above all the ultimately rational form, that of a theory that is clarifIed and grasped on all sides, is ultimately justifIed in every respect. Once it had been systematically developed into sciences of principles, this theory had to bring out and justify the entire system of norms that any humanity must satisfy if it is to become a true and genuine humanity, a humanity imbued with pure practical reason. As philosophy in the pregnant sense of a science of universal principles, it itself had to show in association with its ultimately rational reflections

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that a truly humane development of humanity will never again be possible in the manner of a merely organic, blindly passive growth; rather, that it will be possible only if it arises out of autonomous freedom, and first and foremost out of a truly autonomous science; yet eminently out of a universal philosophy that has given itself in its principial disciplines its absolute system of laws, the universal law for all possible, genuine laws. Philosophy itself has to show with ultimately compelling rationality that historical culture that has grown naturally can achieve the developmental form of a genuinely humane culture only in the form of a scientifically founded and methodized culture, and-put ideally-in the form of a philosophical culture that understands itself ultimately, that legitimates and practically forms itself with ultimate rationality, thus in accordance with insight into absolute principles. The first germination and working out of this conviction, which is so significant for the history of humanity, can be shown in the course of the development taken by Greek philosophy. Generally, the history of philosophy (which, just as it originally arose as universal science, had to remain universal science in accordance with its essential sense) can be considered from the perspective of its greatest function for humanity-from the perspective of its necessary destiny to create a universal and ultimately rational self-awareness of humanity by which it was to be set on the course of a genuine humanity. We shall outline a fragment of such a mode of consideration in what follows, more as an invitation to others to implement it actually in a thorough manner than as a claim to have carried it out ourselves. The first philosophy that was naively directed to the outer world underwent a break in its development due to sophistic skepticism. The ideas of reason in all their fundamental forms appeared to be devalued by the sophistic arguments; these arguments had described what is in itself true in every sensebeing, the beautiful, the good in itself-as a deceptive delusion. Philosophy thereby lost its target sense. With regard to something that is in principle only subjective-relatively being, beautiful, or good, there were no principles and theories that were true in themselves. However, it was not only philosophy that was affected. Active life in its entirety was robbed of its firm, normative goals; the idea of a life of practical reason lost its validity. Socrates was the first to recognize that the problems that were thoughtlessly dismissed in the sophistic paradoxes were fateful problems for a humanity on its way to becoming a genuine Humanity. He reacted to sophistry as a practical reformer. Plato transfers the emphasis of this reaction to science, becomes its reformer in keeping with the theory of science, and steers the course of the development of an autonomous humanity first of all to and along the path of a scientific culture. As regards Socrates first of all, his ethical reform of life consists in his interpretation of the truly satisfying life as a life of pure reason, that is, as a life [47]

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in which man subjects his life goals to critique-ultimately evaluative critiquein tireless self-reflection and a radical giving of accounts. Such a giving of accounts is carried out as a cognitive process, and in fact as a methodical return to the original source of all right and its cognition: put in our terms, to "perfect clarity," "insight," "evidence." In this cognitive method of clarification, what is held to be beautiful and good is normatively confronted with the beautiful and the good itself, which comes into view with complete clarity. In other words, the true and genuine knowledge of the beautiful and the good, which is originally generated in perfect evidence, is what alone makes man truly virtuous. It is the necessary (and, according to Socrates, also the sufficient) condition of a rational or ethical life. Only unreason-a blind living along without clarity that makes no effort concerning that genuine knowledge of the truly good-makes man wretched, allows him to chase after foolish goals. In making reflectively evident what one is actually aiming at, and what one had presupposed unclearly thereby as supposedly being beautiful or ugly, useful or harmful, the true and the false, the genuine and the non-genuine are distinguished. They are distinguished because in complete clarity the essential content of the things themselves achieves intuitive actualization and thus at the same time their very value or lack thereof. Every such clarification, however, immediately attains exemplary significance. Whatever comes into view in the individual instance as the true or the genuine itself, and as the norm of an unclear, mere opinion, offers itself straight away as an example of something general. It becomes visible in the pure eidetic intuition that naturally sets in, the intuition in which everything that is empirically contingent assumes the character of the freely variable, as essentially genuine as such and in this pure or a priori generality as valid norm for every conceivable individual instance of any such essence whatsoever. Let us summarize. Socrates, the ethical practitioner, was the first to focus his-ethico-practical-attention on the opposition fundamental to all wakeful personal life, that between unclear opinion and evidence. He was the first to recognize the necessity of a universal method of reason and to recognize the fundamental sense of this method as an intuitive and a priori critique of reason; or put more precisely: as a method of clarifying self-reflections that is completed in apodictic evidence, as the primordial source of all finality. He was the first to recognize the existence of pure and general essentialities in themselves to be absolutely self-given in a general and pure intuition. In relation to this discovery, the radical giving of accounts demanded by Socrates in general for the ethical life attains eo ipso the significant form of a principial normation or legitimation of the active life in accordance with the general ideas of reason that are disclosed by pure eidetic intuition. Even if all this may lack, in Socrates, a properly scientific formulation and systematic implementation due to his dearth of theoretical intentions, it

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may nevertheless be regarded as certain that in Socrates there indeed lie the core forms for the thoughts fundamental to the critique of reason, whose theoretical and technological formation and highly fruitful further development is Plato's everlasting glory. Plato applied the Socratic principle of a radical giving of accounts to science. Theoretical cognizing, inquiring, and justifying are, after all, initially only a special kind of the striving and acting life. So a radical reflection on the principles of its genuineness is also required here. Whereas Socrates' reform of life was directed against the sophists insofar as they, through their subjectivism, confused and corrupted general moral convictions, Plato turns against them as the corrupters of science ("philosophy"). In both respects, the sophists met with so little resistance and gave rise to such harmful effects because, just as there still was no genuine rational life in general, likewise there was no genuine scientific cognitive life. Here, too, all rationality was merely naive pretension, lacking as it did clarity on the ultimate possibility and legitimacy of its final goals and paths. A genuine rational life, in particular genuinely scientific inquiry and achievement, has to transcend completely the level of naivete by radically clarifying reflection; it has-put ideally-to have a completely sufficient legitimation ready for every step, but eminently the legitimation based on principles gained through insight.-Through the great seriousness with which Plato seeks in the spirit of Socrates to overcome the anti-scientific skepticism, he becomes the father of all genuine sciences. He becomes such insofar as he-instead of takinglightly the sophistic arguments against the possibility of a cognition that is in itself valid and a science that binds every rational being-subjects them to a deeply penetrating critique; insofar as he undertakes at the same time the positive disclosure of the possibility of such cognition and science, and does so (guided by the most profound understanding of Socratic maieutics) in the spirit of an intuitive clarification of essence and the evident articulation of their general eidetic norms. And finally insofar as he endeavors to the best of his ablities, and on the basis of such principial insights, to set genuine science itself on its course. One can say that it is first with Plato that the pure ideas-genuine cognition, genuine theory and science, and (encompassing these former) genuine philosophy-entered into the consciousness of humanity, just as he was the first to recognize and treat them as the philosophically most important, because most principial, topics of inquiry. Plato is also the creator of the philosophical problem and the science of method, namely the method of systematically actualizing the supreme purposive idea of "philosophy," which is contained in the essence of cognition itself. Genuine cognizing, genuine truth (valid in itself, definitively determinative), beings in the true and genuine sense (as the identical substrates of definitively determinative truths), become eidetic correlates for him. The total complex of truths valid in themselves to

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be attained through possible genuine cognition necessarily forms a unity that is theoretically connected and methodically set in motion, the unity of a universal science. That is philosophy in Plato's sense. Its correlate is thus the totality of all true beings. A new idea of philosophy that determines all subsequent developments thereby comes onto the scene. Hencefonh, it is not to be merely science in general, the naive construct of a purely theoretical interest. Nor merely (as it had been previously) universal, but simultaneously absolutely legitimated science. It is to be a science that strives for finality in every step and in every respect, and in fact on the basis of actually effected legitimations, for the absoluteness of which .the cognizer (and every fellow cognizer) is to take responsibility at any time in complete insight. The Platonic dialectic, this beginning of a new epoch, already indicates that a philosophy with this higher and genuine sense is possible only on the basis of principial preliminary investigations of the conditions under which a philosophy is possible. Therein lies, as if contained in a living seed, an idea that will be significant in the future: the idea of a necessary founding and structuring of philosophy in two levels-so to speak, a "first" and a "second" philosophy (though without our wanting to adopt the historical sense of this Aristotelian language). As first philosopby a universal methodology comes first that absolutely legitimates itself for its own sake; or put theoretically: a science of the totality of pure (a priori) principles of all possible cognitions and of the whole of the a priori truths that are contained in those principles, thus that are purely deducible from them. As can be seen, the unity of all a priori sciences that can ever be actualized is thereby defmed, the unity that is indivisibly combined by way of the essential combination of all principial fundamental truths. On the second level is the totality of the "genuine" factual sciences, that is, those that "explain" by a rational method. Referring in all their legitimating justifications back to first philosophy, to the a priori system of possible rational method as such, they draw from their constant application a thoroughgoing rationality, precisely that of the specific "explanation" that is capable of demonstrating that each methodical step is defmitively legitimated on the basis of a priori principles (thus, at any time with the insight into their apodictic necessity). At the same time, these sciences themselves attain-always put ideally-the unity of a rational system from the cognized systematic unity of the . supreme a priori principles; they are disciplines of a "second philosopby," the correlate and region of which is the unity of factically real actuality. Yet if we return once again to Plato himself, then we must also stress that he by no means wanted to be merely a reformer of science. By his ultimate intention, even in his effons on behalf of the theory of science he always remained a Socratic, thus in the universal sense an ethicist. Hence his theoretical inquiry had an even more profound significance. In shon, at issue is

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the following fundamental conviction, which is still far from having been gauged in its full sense, its entire and legitimate scope: The deftnitive justification, guaranty, legitimation of every rational human activity is carried out in the forms and in the medium of theoretical reason and is carried out ultimately by means of philosophy. Cultivating humanity to the heights of true and genuine humanness presupposes the development of genuine science in its principially rooted and connected totality. It is the cognitive locus of all rationality; from it, too, those who are called to lead humanity-the "archons"draw the insights by which they rationally order communal life. Through such intuitions the idea of a new culture is predelineated, namelyas a culture in which science not only arises as one among other cultural formations, and with ever greater awareness aims at its telos of "genuine" science, but also in which science is called and endeavors with ever greater awareness to assume the function of the TrteJ.lov1.K:OV of all culture as such-similar in the individual soul to voUc;' in relation to the other parts of the soul. The development of humanity as a process of cultivation is carried out not only as a development in the individual man, but as a development in the cultivation of "man writ large." The supreme condition of the possibility of the latter's cultivation into a "genuine" culture is the creation of genuine science. It is the necessary means for the elevation and achievement of every other genuine culture and at the same time is itself a form of such culture. Everything genuine and true must allow of being demonstrated as such and is itself possible only as a free product, which has arisen from the evidence of the genuineness. of the goal. Ultimate demonstration, ultimate cognition of everything genuine is subject as cognition to scientifIc norms and has its highest rational form as principial legitimation, thus as philosophy. Plato too developed essential features of such thoughts (developed further here, of course) in advance, prepared them, but also justifted them in their primitive forms. And certainly, the tendency that is characteristic especially for European culture, the tendency towards universal rationalization through a science that ftrst of all forms itself rationally, ftrst arises in Plato's genius. And, only as a consequence of his continued influence, that tendency takes on the increasingly powerful form of a norm that is acknowledged in general cultural consciousness itself, and finally (in the epoch of Enlightenment) the form of a purposive idea that consciously guides the development of culture. In these circumstances the revolutionary insight was that the individual man and his life necessarily has to be considered as a functioning member in the unity of the community and its communal life and thus that the idea of reason is also an idea that bears not merely on the individual man but also on the community, an idea against which, therefore, the social bonds of humanity and the historically developed forms of social life are to be judged normatively. As is well known, Plato calls the community the "man writ large" in

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view of its normal developmental form, the state. He is apparently guided by the naturally developed apperception-which generally and inevitably determines the thought and action of practical-political life-that regards communities, cities, and states analogously to individ.ual men as thinking, feeling, practically deciding, acting beings-as something like personalities. And, -indeed, like all original apperceptions, this one also has an original right in itself. Plato thereby becomes the founder of the doctrine of social reason, of a truly rational human community in general, or of a genuinely social life in generalin shon, the founder of social ethics as the full and true ethics. For Plato such an ethics received, completely in the sense of our foregoing exposition, its special character from his principial idea of philosophy. Namely: while Socrates had grounded the rational life on knowledge that is legitimated with insight, in Plato this knowledge is now defended by philosophy, the absolutely legitimated science. Funhermore, the rational individual life is then defended by the communal life, the individual man by man writ large. In this way philosophy becomes the rational foundation, the principial condition of the possibility of a genuine, truly rational community and truly rationallife.-Even if this is restricted in Plato to the idea of the state community and is thought ' through under the conditions of his time, it is easy to extend his fundamental thought universally to a communalized humanity grasped however broadly. Ground is broken thereby for the idea of a new humanity and human culture, arid in fact as a humanity and culture based on philosophical reason. How this idea would have to be funher developed in pure rationality, how far its practical possibility reaches, to what extent it is to be acknowledged and put into force as the highest practical norm-these are ope~ questions here. At any rate, however, the fundamental Platonic thoughts of a rigorous philosophy as the function of a communal life that is to be reformed by it have de facto had a continuous and increasing effect. Consciously or unconsciously, they determine the essential character and the fate of the development of European culture. Science spreads through all spheres of life and lays claim everywhere, insofar as it has made progress or believes to have done so, to the significance of an ultimately normative authority. In this sense, then, the fundamental character of European culture can most definitely be described as rationalism and its history can be considered from the perspective of the battle for the assenion and development of its proper sense, the struggle for its rationality. For all battles for an autonomy of reason, for the liberation of man from the bonds of tradition, for "natural" religion, "natural" law, etc., are finally-or reduce to-battles for the universal normative function of the sciences, which have to be justified again and again and which ultimately encompass the theoretical universe. All practical questions harbor in themselves questions of knowledge, which in turn can be framed generally and transformed into scientific questions. Even the question

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concerning rational autonomy as the supreme principle of culture must be raised as a scientific question and decided with scientific finality.

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