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solitude.” 26 If there is a “history of redemption,” it is only a private one that concernsthe passage -- in the inner life of an individual subject -- from the “mundane” to the“transcendental” attitude. The history of humankind, however, and including the intersubjectivecommunities that exist in a variety of subordinate forms, are part of the “naturalworld” parenthesized by the transcendental epoché. It is not until the 1920s that Husserlcomes to deal with the problem of history in a way which repeats, very much likeclassical Gnosticism, the dualism between “mere fact” and a “hidden significance,” on aglobal scale. 27Like his pre-genetic analyses of the different fundamental attitudes of subjectivity,Husserl’s approach to human history is focused on the phenomenon of scientific andphilosophical thought. Nevertheless, he does not treat the history of science and ofphilosophy as a mere subset of the historical development of humankind in general. Thisapparently very restricted chapter of history concerns all human beings alike, its intrinsiclaw being conceived as the progressive breakthrough of the idea of transcendental reason,whose essence is situated beyond all cultural, racial or other contingent determinations.Although himself explicitly referring to different key figures of occidental philosophy,Husserl is less interested in history as such than in its meta-historical dimension,something that reveals itself only in a transcendental reading of historical “facts.” 28 It isworth noting that the possibility of such a reading actually lies in his own phenomenologicalapproach, which appears to represent the crucial point in modern occidental philosophy.29 Transcendental phenomenology is not just one historical form of philosophyamong other forms of philosophy; it is the historically incarnated possibility of endowingthe history of thought with a sense that is more than the sum of its concrete, factualincarnations. Again, like in ancient Gnosticism, the event of “conversion” that enables thepneumatic neophyte to decrypt the “true,” hidden sense of history, is part of this historyitself and at the same time its decisive turn, 30 or, to speak in Kantian terms:phenomenology is at the same time the end of the historical series of philosophicalapproaches and what holds this series together as a whole.If the gnostic schema of parallelism between the principles of universal history andthose of individual existence also appears in Husserl, it nevertheless proceeds exactly inthe opposite direction. Whereas traditional Gnosticism considers the dualism betweenpsyché and pneuma (in human beings) as a reflection of the macrocosmic strife betweenthese two principles, 31 Husserl projects the possible breakthrough of transcendentalreason -- in the single thinking subject -- onto the universal context of human history. Thisapproach constitutes more than a simple hermeneutic reversal; rather, it is the reason why,despite its dualistic tendencies, Husserl’s thought does not imply the same disastrousethical consequences as traditional Gnosticism. Where the “world” (including its “nothingness,”as arrived at from the viewpoint of the pneuma) is considered to be a pre-givenontological domain, the actions of the “pneumatic man” inside this worldly sphere becomecompletely irrelevant and are abandoned to arbitrariness. If, on the contrary, “world” isanother name for a certain form of horizontal finality in the self-presencing of phenomena26See Edmund Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922-1937), Hua XXVII (Dordrecht/ Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 171.27See Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 45.28See Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie,Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlaß (1934-1937), Hua XXIX (Dordrecht/Boston/London:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), 230; 403-404; 417.29See Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften, 72-73.30See Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 35.31See ibid., 44.226