Timo Miettinen

This article investigates the philosophical history of European universalism with the aim of differentiating between its two senses: the modern and the Ancient. Based on Edmund Husserl’s late interpretations on the unique character of Greek philosophy, this distinction is articulated in terms of “substantial” and “formal” accounts of universalism. Against the modern (substantial) idea of universalism, which took its point of departure especially from the natural law theories of the early modern period, Husserl conceived Greek universalism as an essentially formal notion, which relied on the critique of one’s cultural-historical situation on the basis of the shared faculty of reason. Instead of a ready-made position, this idea of universalism is best described in terms of a “task”, which has its peculiar temporal horizon in infinity. By discussing the political implications of philosophical universalism, the article aims at uncovering its latent cultural implications, that is, the ideas of self-critique and self-renewal nurturing the utopian motive of culture. Thus by broadening the philosophical scope of universalism, the article will insist on its relevance for contemporary debate on Eurocentrism.

This article considers the possibility of articulating a renewed understanding of the principle of political idealism on the basis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. By taking its point of departure from one of the most interesting political applications of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the ordoliberal tradition of the so-called Freiburg School of Economics, the article raises the question of the normative implications of Husserl’s eidetic method. Contrary to the “static” idealism of the ordoliberal tradition, the article proposes that the phenomenological concept of political idealism ought to be understood as a fundamentally dynamic principle. As opposed to the classical understanding of political idealism as the implementation of a particular normative model—political utopianism—the phenomenological reformulation of this idea denoted a radically critical principle of self-reflection that can only be realized on the basis of perpetual renewal. In order to illustrate this point, the article considers Husserl’s distinction between two types of ideals of perfection, the absolute and the relative, and argues for their relevance for political philosophy

Throughout its history, the relationship of phenomenology to historical reflection has appeared ambiguous. On the one hand, phenomenology—with the help of its founding figures—gave a promise to return from the world-historical speculations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the phenomenon of lived historicity, that is, to the question of how historical time is experienced within the life of the individual. On the other hand, phenomenology could not resist the temptation to critically reconsider some of the fundamental historical narratives that define our modern self-understanding—narratives that concerned the revolutionary effect of the natural sciences , the birth of the subject ..

In the field of philosophy of history, the problem of historical representation has become one of the central points of interest during the past few decades. Through the publication of Hayden White’s influential Metahistory , Louis Mink’s studies of the narrative form, and recent openings in the so-called “new philosophy of history” , we have witnessed a new interest in the questions of narrativity and emplotment—that is, the ways in which historical knowledge is constructed through the creative activity of the historian. Although history deals with facts and real events, it is argued, this past reality is always given to us in a certain narrative form: historical explanation cannot merely employ universally valid causal laws because it concerns particular beings—humans, groups, institutions—and their intentions, which are bound to unique circumstances and contexts. Further, history is not just about facts or general ideas but involves an element ..

ABSTRACT This article deals with the topic of production in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. It argues for the centrality of the often-neglected thematic of production for Husserl's late phenomenology of generativity and its broadened understanding of human subjectivity as “poietic being.” As the article shows, this understanding had significant consequences for Husserl's understanding of philosophy not so much as an individualistic attitude but as the creation of a new type of communal accomplishment, the ideas, and a new type of producing community.

This article examines the problem of cultural transformation—particularly the problem of modern Westernization—in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. By focusing on the concept of limit in Husserl’s late manuscripts, the article illustrates how Husserl conceives the concept of culture with regardto a twofold liminal structure: territoriality and teleology. In the birth of Greek philosophy, Husserl detects a radical transformation in the fundamental sense ofboth of these structures, which will be described as the deconstruction and deferment of cultural limits. The article argues that while Husserl was keen to uncoverthe expansionist motive of the European–occidental tradition, his aim was by no means to simply justify it on the basis of universal reason. Instead, Husserl aimed at articulating a novel theory of universalism that would be based on the ideas of self-critique and renewal, and that would conceive cultural transformation through a reciprocal relation between home and alien. By elaborating the twofold liminal structure of culture, the article will answer some of the critiques ofHusserl’s alleged Euro-centrism.

According to Husserl’s self-description, his phenomenological project was “completely apolitical.” Husserl’s phenomenology did not provide a political philosophy in the classical sense, a normative description of a functioning social order and its respective institutional structures. Nor did Husserl have much to say about the day-to-day politics of his time. Yet his reflections on community and culture were not completely without political implications. This article deals with an often-neglected strand of Husserl’s philosophy, namely his critique of liberalism. In this article, liberalism is understood in the manner of Leo Strauss, as a tradition of individualist philosophy emerging from Hobbes’s political thought. As the article shows, Husserl followed many of his contemporaries in criticizing Hobbes’s abstract individualism, which could provide only a preventative function for political institutions. More importantly, Husserl’s engagement with Hobbes can be understood as a kind of ethical counterpart to his analysis of Galileo in the Crisis, as a critique of formal apriorism in the political domain. What Galileo did for physical nature with his “garb of ideas,” Hobbes did for human nature, reducing human sociality to interactions between atomistic individuals. In doing so, Hobbes ended up presenting a “mathematics of sociality” in an empirical garb. Going against the liberal view of the human person, Husserl presented his theory of social ethics founded on an original co-existence of subjects and a theory of human renewal.

The aim of this volume is to offer an updated account of the transcendental character of phenomenology. The main question concerns the sense and relevance of transcendental philosophy today: What can such philosophy contribute to contemporary inquiries and debates after the many reasoned attacks against its idealistic, aprioristic, absolutist and universalistic tendencies—voiced most vigorously by late 20th century postmodern thinkers—as well as attacks against its apparently circular arguments and suspicious metaphysics launched by many analytic philosophers? Contributors also aim to clarify the relations of transcendental phenomenology to other post-Kantian philosophies, most importantly to pragmatism and Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. Finally, the volume offers a set of reflections on the meaning of post-transcendental phenomenology

This article examines the problem of cultural transformation—particularly the problem of modern Westernization—in the framework of Husserlian phenomenology. By focusing on the concept of limit in Husserl’s late manuscripts, the article illustrates how Husserl conceives the concept of culture with regardto a twofold liminal structure: territoriality and teleology. In the birth of Greek philosophy, Husserl detects a radical transformation in the fundamental sense ofboth of these structures, which will be described as the deconstruction and deferment of cultural limits. The article argues that while Husserl was keen to uncoverthe expansionist motive of the European–occidental tradition, his aim was by no means to simply justify it on the basis of universal reason. Instead, Husserl aimed at articulating a novel theory of universalism that would be based on the ideas of self-critique and renewal, and that would conceive cultural transformation through a reciprocal relation between home and alien. By elaborating the twofold liminal structure of culture, the article will answer some of the critiques ofHusserl’s alleged Euro-centrism.

This article deals with ordoliberalism, a school of economics and legal theory that emerged in the 1930s and whose ideas became particularly influential in the shaping of the post-WWII German economic model. Instead of a purely political or economic doctrine, the article approaches ordoliberalism as a philosophical theory that originated as a response to the crisis of economics and scientific reason in general, to the growing dispersion of individual sciences and the loss of their common foundation. By focusing on the relation between Edmund Husserl and Walter Eucken, the founder of ordoliberalism, the article highlights some of the methodological and conceptual innovations that constituted the unique approach of ordoliberalism, namely, its aim to construct economics as a rule-oriented science with a strong emphasis on constitutional choice and institutional issues. According to the main argument, the ordoliberal emphasis on law and executive institutions was a consistent outcome of their theoretical decision to construct economics as a normative science of ideal forms.