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 [45]is "philosophy," the systematic consequence of a theoretical interest that isfree of all other aims, an interest in truth purely for the sake of truth. Purescience in this sense, however, does not simply denote a new cultural forma-tion, 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 leadsthe culture, in its entirety, on to a higher destiny. Given the tendency to sys-tematic universality that is, so to speak, inborn in the purely theoretical inter-est, philosophy could not stop with its initial, easily understandable prefer-ence for cosmological problems. However much the world is given in natu-ral outer observation as the totality of all realities which includes humanity[Menschheit] as a group of subordinate particulars, in active life it is nevenhe-less given to the acting and in panicular to the inquiring man in the necessaryorientational form 'I and my environing world', 'we and our (common) envi-roning world'. This "principal coordination" also had to have an effect on thetheoretically inquiring interest. Subjectivity as cognizing and eminently astheoretically cognizing; funhermore, subjectivity as affected in its weal andwoe by the environing world; and fmally subjectivity as freely acting fromwithin 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 einerphilosophischen Kultur. Ihr erstes Aufkeimen in der griechischen Philosophie" in ]apa­nisch-Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaft und Technik 1 (1923), 45-51. A slightly differentversion 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 tothank 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 SteveCrowell for his helpful suggestions regarding this translation.

The New Yearbook for PhenornernJlog;y andPhenomenological Philosophy ill (2003): 285-93ISSN 1533-7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-3-8

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become to an ever higher degree the focus of theoretical inquiry. And inquiryinto the world naively turned outward and inquiry into the spirit reflective­ly turned inward had to intertwine with and condition one another. As soonas 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 goalsand paths to be chosen. Inquiry had to come upon them already in thedomain of science itself, since the devised theories, which were immediatelydrawn into the conflict of systems, had to defend their right. Thus, in orderto be able to become a truly rational science, intelligible to itself and defini­tively legitimating itself, the beginning science had to overcome the originalform of becoming proper to naive theoretical inquiry; as self-reflecting theo­ry o/science, it had to inquire into the norms of a definitively self-legitimatingscience and then strive fInally to achieve an essentially. reformed configura­tion, and in fact with an explicitly set goal, namely that of a science led andlegitimated 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 thehighest and ultimate questions had to enter into the fIeld of theoretical work,aiming at the totality of absolute, normative ideas, which in their incontestable [46]and unconditional validity are principially to determine human action inevery sphere. Regardless of whether these ideas also function-as it were, ashidden entelechies-already prior to their being seen purely and formed theo-retically as forces determinative of development: only as consciously workedout and apodictically seen forms of possible legitimacy were and are they ableto bring about "genuine Humanity [echte Humanitat]." For what is that but atruly responsible humanity, which as such strives to live in self-responsibilitythat 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 itselfand into which it itself has had insight; and that is able and ready at all timesto defend the absolute, normatively justified character of its actions with ref-erence to ultimate sources of finality. In this way, the task thus had to fall tophilosophy-universal science-of helping humanity, striving blindly towardsthat goal, to achieve the most profound self-awareness, that of the true and gen-uine sense of its life. It had to become its greatest obligation to give this senseabove all the ultimately rational form, that of a theory that is clarifIed andgrasped on all sides, is ultimately justifIed in every respect. Once it had beensystematically developed into sciences of principles, this theory had to bringout and justify the entire system of norms that any humanity must satisfy if itis to become a true and genuine humanity, a humanity imbued with pure prac-tical reason. As philosophy in the pregnant sense of a science of universal prin-ciples, 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 inthe manner of a merely organic, blindly passive growth; rather, that it will bepossible only if it arises out of autonomous freedom, and first and foremostout of a truly autonomous science; yet eminently out of a universal philosophythat has given itself in its principial disciplines its absolute system of laws, theuniversal law for all possible, genuine laws. Philosophy itself has to show withultimately compelling rationality that historical culture that has grown natu­rally can achieve the developmental form of a genuinely humane culture onlyin 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 inaccordance 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 universalscience 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 ofhumanity by which it was to be set on the course of a genuine humanity. Weshall outline a fragment of such a mode of consideration in what follows, moreas an invitation to others to implement it actually in a thorough manner thanas a claim to have carried it out ourselves.

The first philosophy that was naively directed to the outer world under- [47]went a break in its development due to sophistic skepticism. The ideas of rea-son in all their fundamental forms appeared to be devalued by the sophisticarguments; these arguments had described what is in itself true in every sense-being, the beautiful, the good in itself-as a deceptive delusion. Philosophythereby lost its target sense. With regard to something that is in principle onlysubjective-relatively being, beautiful, or good, there were no principles andtheories that were true in themselves. However, it was not only philosophythat was affected. Active life in its entirety was robbed of its firm, normativegoals; the idea of a life of practical reason lost its validity. Socrates was the firstto recognize that the problems that were thoughtlessly dismissed in the sophis-tic paradoxes were fateful problems for a humanity on its way to becoming agenuine Humanity. He reacted to sophistry as a practical reformer. Platotransfers the emphasis of this reaction to science, becomes its reformer in keep-ing with the theory of science, and steers the course of the development of anautonomous 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 hisinterpretation of the truly satisfying life as a life of pure reason, that is, as a life

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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 ofaccounts is carried out as a cognitive process, and in fact as a methodical returnto 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 otherwords, the true and genuine knowledge of the beautiful and the good, whichis 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 thetruly good-makes man wretched, allows him to chase after foolish goals. Inmaking reflectively evident what one is actually aiming at, and what one hadpresupposed unclearly thereby as supposedly being beautiful or ugly, useful orharmful, 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 thesame time their very value or lack thereof. Every such clarification, however,immediately attains exemplary significance. Whatever comes into view in theindividual instance as the true or the genuine itself, and as the norm of anunclear, mere opinion, offers itself straight away as an example of somethinggeneral. It becomes visible in the pure eidetic intuition that naturally sets in,the intuition in which everything that is empirically contingent assumes thecharacter of the freely variable, as essentially genuine as such and in this pure ora priori generality as valid norm for every conceivable individual instance ofany such essence whatsoever.

Let us summarize. Socrates, the ethical practitioner, was the first to focushis-ethico-practical-attention on the opposition fundamental to all wakefulpersonal life, that between unclear opinion and evidence. He was the first to [48]recognize the necessity of a universal method of reason and to recognize thefundamental sense of this method as an intuitive and a priori critique of rea-son; or put more precisely: as a method of clarifying self-reflections that is com-pleted in apodictic evidence, as the primordial source of all finality. He was thefirst to recognize the existence of pure and general essentialities in themselvesto be absolutely self-given in a general and pure intuition. In relation to thisdiscovery, the radical giving of accounts demanded by Socrates in general forthe ethical life attains eo ipso the significant form of a principial normation orlegitimation of the active life in accordance with the general ideas of reasonthat are disclosed by pure eidetic intuition.

Even if all this may lack, in Socrates, a properly scientific formulationand 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 thecore forms for the thoughts fundamental to the critique of reason, whose the­oretical and technological formation and highly fruitful further developmentis 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, initiallyonly a special kind of the striving and acting life. So a radical reflection on theprinciples of its genuineness is also required here.

Whereas Socrates' reform of life was directed against the sophists insofaras 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 suchharmful 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 ultimatepossibility and legitimacy of its final goals and paths. A genuine rational life, inparticular 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 readyfor every step, but emi­nently the legitimation based on principles gained through insight.-Throughthe 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 taking·lightly the sophisticarguments against the possibility of a cognition that is in itself valid and a sci­ence that binds every rational being-subjects them to a deeply penetratingcritique; insofar as he undertakes at the same time the positive disclosure ofthe possibility of such cognition and science, and does so (guided by the mostprofound understanding of Socratic maieutics) in the spirit of an intuitiveclarification of essence and the evident articulation of their general eideticnorms. And finally insofar as he endeavors to the best of his ablities, and onthe 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 cogni-tion, genuine theory and science, and (encompassing these former) genuine [49]philosophy-entered into the consciousness of humanity, just as he was thefirst to recognize and treat them as the philosophically most important,because most principial, topics of inquiry. Plato is also the creator of thephilosophical problem and the science of method, namely the method of sys­tematically actualizing the supreme purposive idea of "philosophy," which iscontained in the essence of cognition itself. Genuine cognizing, genuine truth(valid in itself, definitively determinative), beings in the true and genuinesense (as the identical substrates of definitively determinative truths), becomeeidetic 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 thatis theoretically connected and methodically set in motion, the unity of a uni­versal science. That is philosophy in Plato's sense. Its correlate is thus thetotality of all true beings.

A new idea of philosophy that determines all subsequent developmentsthereby comes onto the scene. Hencefonh, it is not to be merely science ingeneral, the naive construct of a purely theoretical interest. Nor merely (as ithad been previously) universal, but simultaneously absolutely legitimated sci­ence. It is to be a science that strives for finality in every step and in everyrespect, and in fact on the basis of actually effected legitimations, for theabsoluteness of which .the cognizer (and every fellow cognizer) is to takeresponsibility at any time in complete insight. The Platonic dialectic, this be­ginning of a new epoch, already indicates that a philosophy with this higherand 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: theidea of a necessary founding and structuring of philosophy in two levels-soto speak, a "first" and a "second" philosophy (though without our wanting toadopt the historical sense of this Aristotelian language). As first philosopby auniversal methodology comes first that absolutely legitimates itself for its ownsake; or put theoretically: a science of the totality of pure (a priori) principlesof 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 beseen, the unity of all a priori sciences that can ever be actualized is therebydefmed, 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 legitimatingjustifications back to first philosophy, to the a priori system of possible ration­al method as such, they draw from their constant application a thoroughgoingrationality, precisely that of the specific "explanation" that is capable ofdemonstrating that each methodical step is defmitively legitimated on the basisof a priori principles (thus, at any time with the insight into their apodicticnecessity). 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," thecorrelate and region of which is the unity of factically real actuality.

Yet ifwe return once again to Plato himself, then we must also stress that [SO]he by no means wanted to be merely a reformer of science. By his ultimateintention, even in his effons on behalf of the theory ofscience he alwaysremained a Socratic, thus in the universal sense an ethicist. Hence his theo-retical 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 beengauged in its full sense, its entire and legitimate scope: The deftnitive justifi­cation, guaranty, legitimation of every rational human activity is carried outin the forms and in the medium of theoretical reason and is carried out ulti­mately by means of philosophy. Cultivating humanity to the heights of trueand genuine humanness presupposes the development of genuine science inits 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 awarenessto assume the function of the TrteJ.lov1.K:OV of all culture as such-similar in theindividual 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 "manwrit large." The supreme condition of the possibility of the latter's cultivationinto a "genuine" culture is the creation of genuine science. It is the necessarymeans for the elevation and achievement of every other genuine culture andat the same time is itself a form of such culture. Everything genuine and truemust allow of being demonstrated as such and is itself possible only as a freeproduct, which has arisen from the evidence of the genuineness. of the goal.Ultimate demonstration, ultimate cognition of everything genuine is subjectas cognition to scientifIc norms and has its highest rational form as principiallegitimation, thus as philosophy.

Plato too developed essential features of such thoughts (developed furtherhere, of course) in advance, prepared them, but also justifted them in theirprimitive forms. And certainly, the tendency that is characteristic especially forEuropean 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 theincreasingly powerful form of a norm that is acknowledged in general cultur­al consciousness itself, and finally (in the epoch of Enlightenment) the form ofa purposive idea that consciously guides the development of culture.

In these circumstances the revolutionary insight was that the individualman and his life necessarily has to be considered as a functioning member inthe unity of the community and its communal life and thus that the idea ofreason is also an idea that bears not merely on the individual man but also onthe community, an idea against which, therefore, the social bonds of human-ity and the historically developed forms of social life are to be judged norma- [51]tively. 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 bythe 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 trulyrational 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 suchan ethics received, completely in the sense of our foregoing exposition, its spe­cial character from his principial idea of philosophy. Namely: while Socrateshad 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 bythe 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 ifthis 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 byit 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 laysclaim 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 canmost definitely be described as rationalism and its history can be consideredfrom the perspective of the battle for the assenion and development of itsproper sense, the struggle for its rationality. For all battles for an autonomyof 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 andagain and which ultimately encompass the theoretical universe. All practicalquestions harbor in themselves questions of knowledge, which in turn can beframed generally and transformed into scientific questions. Even the question

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