Three arguments presented in Husserl’s critique of the naturalistic foundation of history

Abstract

This article presents three relevant arguments from Edmund Husserl’s critique of the naturalistic foundation of history and the humanities in general. First, the text presents the phenomenologist’s identification of the inadequacy of the objectivist attitude to the human sciences proposed by the naturalistic perspective, given the abstraction and causal explanation inherent to it, which is contrasted with the personalist attitude that thematizes the relations of motivation and the constitution of human meaning appropriate to the objects of humanities. Secondly, the text deals with Husserl’s analysis of the naturalistic proposal of psychophysical psychology as a sufficient foundation for the sciences of the mind and its contrast with the idea of a pure, phenomenologically based psychology as an adequate foundation for history and the humanities in general. Thirdly and finally, the text describes Husserl’s critique, in Crisis of European sciences, of the superficiality of the factual approach to history and its model of causal explanation, as well as highlighting the need for a methodology capable of accessing the internal meaning and intrinsic motivation of historical phenomena manifested in the factual crust. Through this approach, the article aims to highlight the presence of the discussion about the foundation of human sciences and, especially, of history in Husserlian thought.