Arendt Hannah - The crisis of meaning and the life-world: Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Patocka

The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World

SERIES IN CONTINENTAL THOUGHT

Editorial Board

Ted Toadvine, Chairman, University of Oregon

Michael Barber, Saint Louis University

Elizabeth A. Behnke, Study Project in Phenomenology of the Body

David Carr, Emory University

James Dodd, New School University

Lester Embree, Florida Atlantic University

Sara Heinmaa, University of Jyvskyl, University of Helsinki

Jos Huertas-Jourda, Wilfrid Laurier University

Joseph J. Kockelmans, Pennsylvania State University

William R. McKenna, Miami University

Algis Mickunas, Ohio University

J. N. Mohanty, Temple University

Dermot Moran, University College Dublin

Thomas Nenon, University of Memphis

Rosemary Rizo-Patron de Lerner, Pontificia Universidad Catlica del Per, Lima

Thomas M. Seebohm, Johannes Gutenberg Universitt, Mainz

Gail Soffer, Rome, Italy

Elizabeth Strker, Universitt Kln

Nicolas de Warren, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Richard M. Zaner, Vanderbilt University

International Advisory Board

Suzanne Bachelard, Universit de Paris

Rudolf Boehm, Rijksuniversiteit Gent

Albert Borgmann, University of Montana

Amedeo Giorgi, Saybrook Institute

Richard Grathoff, Universitt Bielefeld

Samuel Ijsseling, Husserl-Archief te Leuven

Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University

Werner Marx, Albert-Ludwigs Universitt, Freiburg

David Rasmussen, Boston College

John Sallis, Boston College

John Scanlon, Duquesne University

Hugh J. Silverman, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Carlo Sini, Universit di Milano

Jacques Taminiaux, Louvain-la-Neuve

D. Lawrence Wieder

Dallas Willard, University of Southern California

The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World

Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Patoka

LUBICA UNK

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

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2016 by Ohio University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Unk, Lubica, author.

Title: The crisis of meaning and the life-world : Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Patoka / Lubica Unk.

Description: Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press, 2016. | Series: Series in Continental thought ; No. 49 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016040550| ISBN 9780821422489 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780821445884 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Husserl, Edmund, 18591938. Krisis der europischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phnomenologie. | Husserl, Edmund, 18591938Influence. | SciencePhilosophy. | HistoryPhilosophy. |

Phenomenology. | Heidegger, Martin, 18891976 | Arendt, Hannah, 19061975. | Patoka, Jan, 19071977.

Classification: LCC B3279.H93 K739 2016 | DDC 193dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040550

To Lenka, without whom this book would never have been conceived, although I doubt she knows it.

CONTENTS

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger

Hannah Arendt

Jan Patoka

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Philosophy begins with wonder, as Plato and Aristotle taught us. This book began with my own wondering, which led me to search for the meaning of the notion of crisis in the title of Husserls book The Crisis of European Sciences. I followed many paths, some of which I shared with my students in philosophy at Murdoch University. They taught me a lot and helped me to clarify some of the complicated issues we encountered together. They also taught me that one can speak about Husserls and Heideggers ideas without being entangled in their language; and, in turn, I keep teaching them to use simple, but not simplistic, language, which helps a lot in clarifying ones own thinking. They are too many to name. I thank them all.

I owe a lot to Ivan Chvatk and to our many conversations, which help me to understand Jan Patoka.

For scholarly input, those who deserve my gratitude are also too many to name. Apologies to those I have forgotten. It was a long journey. I would like to thank, especially, Erika Abrams, Ingo Farin, Jan Frei, Chris Grant, Ludger Hagedorn, Pavel Kouba, Jeff Malpas, Dermot Moran, Steve Schofield, Ciaran Summerton, Laka vandov, Lucy Tatman, and Anita Williams.

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council for the 20102012 research project, Judgment, Responsibility, and the Life-World; and two Fellowships of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic for Foreign Specialists Engaged in Bohemistic Studies, supporting my research in the Jan Patoka Archives in Prague (AugustSeptember 2007 and SeptemberOctober 2010). I have also benefited from the support of Murdoch University, Australia; the Jan Patoka Archives at the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague; and the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

I would like to express my gratitude to anonymous readers of the manuscript. I would also like to thank Darja Zoubkov and Hana Matyskov, from the secretariat of the Center for Theoretical Study in Prague, for all their help when I worked at the archives; and to Urszula Dawkins for her patience with copyediting the manuscripts, while reining in my Slavic spirit whenever it wanted to produce novel forms of English.

For early guidance and continuing support, I wish to give a special thanks to Claire Colebrook and Horst Ruthrof. They have done much to help with my thinking. Last, I want to thank my daughter, Lenka, for her critical insights, and her tolerance, help, and love.

INTRODUCTION

BACK TO THE THINGS THEMSELVES?

In our opinion, Heideggers philosophy provided some extremely important prerequisites for a complete rethinking of phenomenology, chiefly inasmuch as it brought to light unnoticed ontological presuppositions in Husserls phenomenology. As however Heideggers own philosophy took a turn that allowed the theme of appearing as such to be dealt with exclusively in connection with the renewal of the problem of Being, Husserls problems have since then never been taken up again, though they do not seem to have been simply settled and done with but, on the contrary, rather to have deepened through new inquiries.

Jan Patoka

This book started as a puzzlement related to the title of Edmund Husserls book The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy.

This book, then, is the continuation of a debate both with Husserl and against him. Husserl presented his thinking about the life-world (Lebenswelt) in lectures in Vienna (7 and 10 May 1935) and Prague (1215 November 1935); eventually the Prague lectures were posthumously published as Crisis. There are two interrelated issues. One is the question of meaning; hence the title of Husserls work, which could be formulated as the crisis of meaning. The other is the trajectory of how the modern conception of nature came about. These issues are related, but they do not overlap in the consideration of the thinkers whom this book presents.

This problem can, of course, be traced back to the beginning of philosophy in ancient Greece, and could be expressed, paraphrasing Patoka and harking back to Pascal, in this way: How can we procure meaning from this mute, scientifically conjured-up universe, which is indifferent to our lived experience of the world; which is indifferent to what makes us human?