Conversation with Husserl and Malvine Husserl, 13/8/31

pp. 8-11

in: Dorion Cairns, Conversations with Husserl and Fink, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1976

Abstrakt

Present-day culture [is] characterized by an over-development of technic. Technik is something which can be learned without learning the culture behind it. Technik [has] advanced further in America because [there is] less culture there to hold it back. Our culture [has been] determined fundamentally by the ideal of science, which first appeared in Greece and continued, though mixed with other elements. Today the ideal has become lost, though the technic which is the result of science remains. But the culture itself must find its renewal in a rediscovery and thorough working out of the idea of science: phenomenology. The crisis, the impasse, of culture [is] shown by the fact that the young today are dissatis- fied. Before it has been the old. This dissatisfaction [was] recorded by Huxley¹¹ — [in] Point Counterpoint (Husserl read a passage where science is compared to drink as being likewise a flight from the harder job of living. He seemed pleased with the exposition as an indictment of present-day non-phenomenological science), — [and] by Hergesheimer.¹²