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2. HISTORY AS THE OTHER -- NOTES ON HUSSERL’S IDEAOF A RADICAL SELBSTBESINNUNGHans RuinWith his late and posthumously published work, The Crisis of the European Sciencesand Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl is generally acknowledged to have led hisphenomenological project into a somewhat new direction, a more historical and perhapshermeneutic direction. 1 Phenomenology is here introduced from within an historicalaccount of the evolution of philosophy in the modern times, starting with Galileo andDescartes. But, more important than the factual historical content of the presentation, isHusserl’s emphasizing that phenomenology must understand itself from within such anhistorical context; it cannot assert its radicalism without a certain historical consciousness,transformed into a Selbstbesinnung. 2 On the face of it, this seems to indicate a radicaldeparture from the standpoint developed until then, and most recently in the CartesianMeditations, where the primacy of the phenomenological reflection is confirmed withoutany such detours.In an early essay on Husserl’s understanding of history, Paul Ricoeur -- in a very clearsightedmanner -- raised the question of the status of historical reflection within Husserlianphenomenology. 3 He showed there, how it grows partly from a personal disillusionmentwith the contemporary historical situation, but also how it arises from within the phenomenologicalproject itself. He notices how, in one sense, the historical considerations arenothing but a natural and parallel extension of the reflexive philosophy which had alreadybeen achieved on the interior level (pp. 299-300). Ricoeur carefully displays some of theproblems and inner workings of this historical extension, and towards the very end of hisessay, he makes a few remarks which make up the starting point for my reflections in thepresent essay. There he focuses on what he holds to be the principal enigma of Husserl’sdiscussion in The Crisis, viz., the relation between the individual reflecting cogito in theshape of the transcendental ego and the historical spirit of which it is ultimately a part.It is, as Ricoeur expresses it, a theory of a history which “encompasses that by which it isencompassed.” (p. 314) This paradoxical notion, which operates throughout The Crisis,is not explicitly treated within the context of that same work. However, according toRicoeur, its clues are to be found elsewhere, viz., in the Husserlian analysis of thestructure of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the Other. This was something Husserl1Translated from the German by David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970),henceforth referred to as Crisis. The evaluations of the larger implications for phenomenology andHusserl’s own self-interpretation have widely differed. For a brief summary of the discussion up until thelate sixties, cf. Carr’s introduction to the translation, xxx-xxxi. For a very recent monograph on thisparticular work, see James Dodd, Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s Crisis of the EuropeanSciences (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2004).2Carr translates this expressive German notion as “self-understanding” and Dorion Cairns, in histranslation of the Cartesian Meditations, as “self-examination.” Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations,trans. Dorion Cairns (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988). However, neither of these alternatives is reallyable to bring out the full meaning of a thorough coming-to-terms-with and grasping oneself that is impliedby the original expression.3Paul Ricoeur, “Husserl et le sens de l’histoire,” Revue de métaphysique et morale 54 (1949): 280-316.236