The Idea of a Philosophical Culture:

Its First Germination in Greek Philosophy

Edmund Husserl

The fundamental character of Greek science as it originated with Thales [45]

is "philosophy," the systematic consequence of a theoretical interest that is
free of all other aims, an interest in truth purely for the sake of truth. Pure
science in this sense, however, does not simply denote a new cultural forma-
tion, one that merely takes its place alongside the other cultural formations.
It prepares a turn in the development of the entire culture, it turn that leads
the culture, in its entirety, on to a higher destiny. Given the tendency to sys-
tematic universality that is, so to speak, inborn in the purely theoretical inter-
est, philosophy could not stop with its initial, easily understandable prefer-
ence for cosmological problems. However much the world is given in natu-
ral outer observation as the totality of all realities which includes humanity
[Menschheit] as a group of subordinate particulars, in active life it is nevenhe-
less given to the acting and in panicular to the inquiring man in the necessary
orientational form 'I and my environing world', 'we and our (common) envi-
roning world'. This "principal coordination" also had to have an effect on the
theoretically inquiring interest. Subjectivity as cognizing and eminently as
theoretically cognizing; funhermore, subjectivity as affected in its weal and
woe by the environing world; and fmally subjectivity as freely acting from
within on the environing world and altering it purposively-all that had to

... Translated by Marcus Brainard. This essay first appeared under the title "Die Idee einer
philosophischen Kultur. Ihr erstes Aufkeimen in der griechischen Philosophie" in ]apa-
nisch-Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Wissenschaft und Technik 1 (1923), 45-51. A slightly different
version of this text has been published in Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24).
Erster Teil: Kritische ldeengeschichte, ed. Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana vn (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1956),203-7, as well as 8.23-10.31 and 11.31-17.7; Boehmnotes that there are dif-
ferences between the two texts, but does not list them. In the margins of the present trans-
lation, the page numbers of the original publication are provided. -The editors wish to
thank Dr. Elmar Bund, executor of Edmund Husserl's literary estate, for his kind per-
mission to publish the present translation here. The translator extends his thanks to Steve
Crowell for his helpful suggestions regarding this translation.

The New Yearbook for PhenornernJlog;y and

Phenomenological Philosophy ill (2003): 285-93
ISSN 1533-7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-3-8
286 EDMUND HUSSERL

become to an ever higher degree the focus of theoretical inquiry. And inquiry
into the world naively turned outward and inquiry into the spirit reflective-
ly turned inward had to intertwine with and condition one another. As soon
as inquiry moved in the direction of thinking and otherwise active subjectiv-
ity, it had to come upon questions of an ultimately possible fulfillment and,
in connection therewith, those of the genuineness and rightness of the goals
and paths to be chosen. Inquiry had to come upon them already in the
domain of science itself, since the devised theories, which were immediately
drawn into the conflict of systems, had to defend their right. Thus, in order
to be able to become a truly rational science, intelligible to itself and defini-
tively legitimating itself, the beginning science had to overcome the original
form of becoming proper to naive theoretical inquiry; as self-reflecting theo-
ry o/science, it had to inquire into the norms of a definitively self-legitimating
science and then strive fInally to achieve an essentially. reformed configura-
tion, and in fact with an explicitly set goal, namely that of a science led and
legitimated by the theory of science.
Similar normative problems, however, concerned not only the cognitive-
ly active man but the active man in general. Thus the entire complex of the
highest and ultimate questions had to enter into the fIeld of theoretical work,
aiming at the totality of absolute, normative ideas, which in their incontestable [46]
and unconditional validity are principially to determine human action in
every sphere. Regardless of whether these ideas also function-as it were, as
hidden entelechies-already prior to their being seen purely and formed theo-
retically as forces determinative of development: only as consciously worked
out and apodictically seen forms of possible legitimacy were and are they able
to bring about "genuine Humanity [echte Humanitat]." For what is that but a
truly responsible humanity, which as such strives to live in self-responsibility
that is wakeful at all times; that is determined at all times to follow "reason,"
to govern itself, and only in accordance with norms that it has thought itself
and into which it itself has had insight; and that is able and ready at all times
to defend the absolute, normatively justified character of its actions with ref-
erence to ultimate sources of finality. In this way, the task thus had to fall to
philosophy-universal science-of helping humanity, striving blindly towards
that goal, to achieve the most profound self-awareness, that of the true and gen-
uine sense of its life. It had to become its greatest obligation to give this sense
above all the ultimately rational form, that of a theory that is clarifIed and
grasped on all sides, is ultimately justifIed in every respect. Once it had been
systematically developed into sciences of principles, this theory had to bring
out and justify the entire system of norms that any humanity must satisfy if it
is to become a true and genuine humanity, a humanity imbued with pure prac-
tical reason. As philosophy in the pregnant sense of a science of universal prin-
ciples, it itself had to show in association with its ultimately rational reflections
 THE IDEA OF A PHILOSOPHICAL CULTURE 287

that a truly humane development of humanity will never again be possible in

the manner of a merely organic, blindly passive growth; rather, that it will be
possible only if it arises out of autonomous freedom, and first and foremost
out of a truly autonomous science; yet eminently out of a universal philosophy
that has given itself in its principial disciplines its absolute system of laws, the
universal law for all possible, genuine laws. Philosophy itself has to show with
ultimately compelling rationality that historical culture that has grown natu-
rally can achieve the developmental form of a genuinely humane culture only
in the form of a scientifically founded and methodized culture, and-put ide-
ally-in the form of a philosophical culture that understands itself ultimately,
that legitimates and practically forms itself with ultimate rationality, thus in
accordance with insight into absolute principles.
The first germination and working out of this conviction, which is so sig-
nificant for the history of humanity, can be shown in the course of the devel-
opment taken by Greek philosophy. Generally, the history of philosophy
(which, just as it originally arose as universal science, had to remain universal
science in accordance with its essential sense) can be considered from the per-
spective of its greatest function for humanity-from the perspective of its nec-
essary destiny to create a universal and ultimately rational self-awareness of
humanity by which it was to be set on the course of a genuine humanity. We
shall outline a fragment of such a mode of consideration in what follows, more
as an invitation to others to implement it actually in a thorough manner than
as a claim to have carried it out ourselves.

The first philosophy that was naively directed to the outer world under- [47]
went a break in its development due to sophistic skepticism. The ideas of rea-
son in all their fundamental forms appeared to be devalued by the sophistic
arguments; these arguments had described what is in itself true in every sense-
being, the beautiful, the good in itself-as a deceptive delusion. Philosophy
thereby lost its target sense. With regard to something that is in principle only
subjective-relatively being, beautiful, or good, there were no principles and
theories that were true in themselves. However, it was not only philosophy
that was affected. Active life in its entirety was robbed of its firm, normative
goals; the idea of a life of practical reason lost its validity. Socrates was the first
to recognize that the problems that were thoughtlessly dismissed in the sophis-
tic paradoxes were fateful problems for a humanity on its way to becoming a
genuine Humanity. He reacted to sophistry as a practical reformer. Plato
transfers the emphasis of this reaction to science, becomes its reformer in keep-
ing with the theory of science, and steers the course of the development of an
autonomous humanity first of all to and along the path of a scientific culture.
As regards Socrates first of all, his ethical reform of life consists in his
interpretation of the truly satisfying life as a life of pure reason, that is, as a life
288 EDMUND HUSSERL

in which man subjects his life goals to critique-ultimately evaluative critique-

in tireless self-reflection and a radical giving of accounts. Such a giving of
accounts is carried out as a cognitive process, and in fact as a methodical return
to the original source of all right and its cognition: put in our terms, to "per-
fect clarity," "insight," "evidence." In this cognitive method of clarification,
what is held to be beautiful and good is normatively confronted with the beau-
tiful and the good itself, which comes into view with complete clarity. In other
words, the true and genuine knowledge of the beautiful and the good, which
is originally generated in perfect evidence, is what alone makes man truly vir-
tuous. It is the necessary (and, according to Socrates, also the sufficient) con-
dition of a rational or ethical life. Only unreason-a blind living along with-
out clarity that makes no effort concerning that genuine knowledge of the
truly good-makes man wretched, allows him to chase after foolish goals. In
making reflectively evident what one is actually aiming at, and what one had
presupposed unclearly thereby as supposedly being beautiful or ugly, useful or
harmful, the true and the false, the genuine and the non-genuine are distin-
guished. They are distinguished because in complete clarity the essential con-
tent of the things themselves achieves intuitive actualization and thus at the
same time their very value or lack thereof. Every such clarification, however,
immediately attains exemplary significance. Whatever comes into view in the
individual instance as the true or the genuine itself, and as the norm of an
unclear, mere opinion, offers itself straight away as an example of something
general. It becomes visible in the pure eidetic intuition that naturally sets in,
the intuition in which everything that is empirically contingent assumes the
character of the freely variable, as essentially genuine as such and in this pure or
a priori generality as valid norm for every conceivable individual instance of
any such essence whatsoever.
Let us summarize. Socrates, the ethical practitioner, was the first to focus
his-ethico-practical-attention on the opposition fundamental to all wakeful
personal life, that between unclear opinion and evidence. He was the first to [48]
recognize the necessity of a universal method of reason and to recognize the
fundamental sense of this method as an intuitive and a priori critique of rea-
son; or put more precisely: as a method of clarifying self-reflections that is com-
pleted in apodictic evidence, as the primordial source of all finality. He was the
first to recognize the existence of pure and general essentialities in themselves
to be absolutely self-given in a general and pure intuition. In relation to this
discovery, the radical giving of accounts demanded by Socrates in general for
the ethical life attains eo ipso the significant form of a principial normation or
legitimation of the active life in accordance with the general ideas of reason
that are disclosed by pure eidetic intuition.
Even if all this may lack, in Socrates, a properly scientific formulation
and systematic implementation due to his dearth of theoretical intentions, it
 THE IDEA OF A PHlLOSOPI-llCAL CULTURE 289

may nevertheless be regarded as certain that in Socrates there indeed lie the
core forms for the thoughts fundamental to the critique of reason, whose the-
oretical and technological formation and highly fruitful further development
is Plato's everlasting glory.
Plato applied the Socratic principle of a radical giving of accounts to sci-
ence. Theoretical cognizing, inquiring, and justifying are, after all, initially
only a special kind of the striving and acting life. So a radical reflection on the
principles of its genuineness is also required here.
Whereas Socrates' reform of life was directed against the sophists insofar
as they, through their subjectivism, confused and corrupted general moral con-
victions, Plato turns against them as the corrupters of science ("philosophy").
In both respects, the sophists met with so little resistance and gave rise to such
harmful effects because, just as there still was no genuine rational life in gen-
eral, likewise there was no genuine scientific cognitive life. Here, too, all ra-
tionality was merely naive pretension, lacking as it did clarity on the ultimate
possibility and legitimacy of its final goals and paths. A genuine rational life, in
particular genuinely scientific inquiry and achievement, has to transcend com-
pletely the level of naivete by radically clarifying reflection; it has-put ideal-
ly-to have a completely sufficient legitimation ready for every step, but emi-
nently the legitimation based on principles gained through insight.-Through
the great seriousness with which Plato seeks in the spirit of Socrates to over-
come the anti-scientific skepticism, he becomes the father of all genuine sci-
ences. He becomes such insofar as he-instead of taking·lightly the sophistic
arguments against the possibility of a cognition that is in itself valid and a sci-
ence that binds every rational being-subjects them to a deeply penetrating
critique; insofar as he undertakes at the same time the positive disclosure of
the possibility of such cognition and science, and does so (guided by the most
profound understanding of Socratic maieutics) in the spirit of an intuitive
clarification of essence and the evident articulation of their general eidetic
norms. And finally insofar as he endeavors to the best of his ablities, and on
the basis of such principial insights, to set genuine science itself on its course.
One can say that it is first with Plato that the pure ideas-genuine cogni-
tion, genuine theory and science, and (encompassing these former) genuine [49]
philosophy-entered into the consciousness of humanity, just as he was the
first to recognize and treat them as the philosophically most important,
because most principial, topics of inquiry. Plato is also the creator of the
philosophical problem and the science of method, namely the method of sys-
tematically actualizing the supreme purposive idea of "philosophy," which is
contained in the essence of cognition itself. Genuine cognizing, genuine truth
(valid in itself, definitively determinative), beings in the true and genuine
sense (as the identical substrates of definitively determinative truths), become
eidetic correlates for him. The total complex of truths valid in themselves to
 290 EDMUND HUSSERL

be attained through possible genuine cognition necessarily forms a unity that

is theoretically connected and methodically set in motion, the unity of a uni-
versal science. That is philosophy in Plato's sense. Its correlate is thus the
totality of all true beings.
A new idea of philosophy that determines all subsequent developments
thereby comes onto the scene. Hencefonh, it is not to be merely science in
general, the naive construct of a purely theoretical interest. Nor merely (as it
had been previously) universal, but simultaneously absolutely legitimated sci-
ence. It is to be a science that strives for finality in every step and in every
respect, and in fact on the basis of actually effected legitimations, for the
absoluteness of which .the cognizer (and every fellow cognizer) is to take
responsibility at any time in complete insight. The Platonic dialectic, this be-
ginning of a new epoch, already indicates that a philosophy with this higher
and genuine sense is possible only on the basis of principial preliminary inves-
tigations of the conditions under which a philosophy is possible. Therein lies,
as if contained in a living seed, an idea that will be significant in the future: the
idea of a necessary founding and structuring of philosophy in two levels-so
to speak, a "first" and a "second" philosophy (though without our wanting to
adopt the historical sense of this Aristotelian language). As first philosopby a
universal methodology comes first that absolutely legitimates itself for its own
sake; or put theoretically: a science of the totality of pure (a priori) principles
of all possible cognitions and of the whole of the a priori truths that are con-
tained in those principles, thus that are purely deducible from them. As can be
seen, the unity of all a priori sciences that can ever be actualized is thereby
defmed, the unity that is indivisibly combined by way of the essential combi-
nation of all principial fundamental truths.
On the second level is the totality of the "genuine" factual sciences, that is,
those that "explain" by a rational method. Referring in all their legitimating
justifications back to first philosophy, to the a priori system of possible ration-
al method as such, they draw from their constant application a thoroughgoing
rationality, precisely that of the specific "explanation" that is capable of
demonstrating that each methodical step is defmitively legitimated on the basis
of a priori principles (thus, at any time with the insight into their apodictic
necessity). At the same time, these sciences themselves attain-always put ide-
ally-the unity of a rational system from the cognized systematic unity of the
. supreme a priori principles; they are disciplines of a "second philosopby," the
correlate and region of which is the unity of factically real actuality.
Yet if we return once again to Plato himself, then we must also stress that [SO]
he by no means wanted to be merely a reformer of science. By his ultimate
intention, even in his effons on behalf of the theory of science he always
remained a Socratic, thus in the universal sense an ethicist. Hence his theo-
retical inquiry had an even more profound significance. In shon, at issue is
 THE IDEA OF A PHILOSOPIDCAL CULTURE 291

the following fundamental conviction, which is still far from having been
gauged in its full sense, its entire and legitimate scope: The deftnitive justifi-
cation, guaranty, legitimation of every rational human activity is carried out
in the forms and in the medium of theoretical reason and is carried out ulti-
mately by means of philosophy. Cultivating humanity to the heights of true
and genuine humanness presupposes the development of genuine science in
its principially rooted and connected totality. It is the cognitive locus of all ra-
tionality; from it, too, those who are called to lead humanity-the "archons"-
draw the insights by which they rationally order communal life.
Through such intuitions the idea of a new culture is predelineated, name-
lyas a culture in which science not only arises as one among other cultural for-
mations, and with ever greater awareness aims at its telos of "genuine" science,
but also in which science is called and endeavors with ever greater awareness
to assume the function of the TrteJ.lov1.K:OV of all culture as such-similar in the
individual soul to voUc;' in relation to the other parts of the soul. The develop-
ment of humanity as a process of cultivation is carried out not only as a devel-
opment in the individual man, but as a development in the cultivation of "man
writ large." The supreme condition of the possibility of the latter's cultivation
into a "genuine" culture is the creation of genuine science. It is the necessary
means for the elevation and achievement of every other genuine culture and
at the same time is itself a form of such culture. Everything genuine and true
must allow of being demonstrated as such and is itself possible only as a free
product, which has arisen from the evidence of the genuineness. of the goal.
Ultimate demonstration, ultimate cognition of everything genuine is subject
as cognition to scientifIc norms and has its highest rational form as principial
legitimation, thus as philosophy.
Plato too developed essential features of such thoughts (developed further
here, of course) in advance, prepared them, but also justifted them in their
primitive forms. And certainly, the tendency that is characteristic especially for
European culture, the tendency towards universal rationalization through a sci-
ence that ftrst of all forms itself rationally, ftrst arises in Plato's genius. And,
only as a consequence of his continued influence, that tendency takes on the
increasingly powerful form of a norm that is acknowledged in general cultur-
al consciousness itself, and finally (in the epoch of Enlightenment) the form of
a purposive idea that consciously guides the development of culture.
In these circumstances the revolutionary insight was that the individual
man and his life necessarily has to be considered as a functioning member in
the unity of the community and its communal life and thus that the idea of
reason is also an idea that bears not merely on the individual man but also on
the community, an idea against which, therefore, the social bonds of human-
ity and the historically developed forms of social life are to be judged norma- [51]
tively. As is well known, Plato calls the community the "man writ large" in
292 EDMUND HUSSERL

view of its normal developmental form, the state. He is apparently guided by

the naturally developed apperception-which generally and inevitably deter-
mines the thought and action of practical-political life-that regards commu-
nities, cities, and states analogously to individ.ual men as thinking, feeling, prac-
tically deciding, acting beings-as something like personalities. And, -indeed,
like all original apperceptions, this one also has an original right in itself.
Plato thereby becomes the founder of the doctrine of social reason, of a truly
rational human community in general, or of a genuinely social life in general-
in shon, the founder of social ethics as the full and true ethics. For Plato such
an ethics received, completely in the sense of our foregoing exposition, its spe-
cial character from his principial idea of philosophy. Namely: while Socrates
had grounded the rational life on knowledge that is legitimated with insight,
in Plato this knowledge is now defended by philosophy, the absolutely legit-
imated science. Funhermore, the rational individual life is then defended by
the communal life, the individual man by man writ large. In this way philoso-
phy becomes the rational foundation, the principial condition of the possi-
bility of a genuine, truly rational community and truly rationallife.-Even if
this is restricted in Plato to the idea of the state community and is thought '
through under the conditions of his time, it is easy to extend his fundamen-
tal thought universally to a communalized humanity grasped however broad-
ly. Ground is broken thereby for the idea of a new humanity and human cul-
ture, arid in fact as a humanity and culture based on philosophical reason.
How this idea would have to be funher developed in pure rationality,
how far its practical possibility reaches, to what extent it is to be acknowl-
edged and put into force as the highest practical norm-these are ope~ ques-
tions here. At any rate, however, the fundamental Platonic thoughts of a rig-
orous philosophy as the function of a communal life that is to be reformed by
it have de facto had a continuous and increasing effect. Consciously or uncon-
sciously, they determine the essential character and the fate of the develop-
ment of European culture. Science spreads through all spheres of life and lays
claim everywhere, insofar as it has made progress or believes to have done so,
to the significance of an ultimately normative authority.
In this sense, then, the fundamental character of European culture can
most definitely be described as rationalism and its history can be considered
from the perspective of the battle for the assenion and development of its
proper sense, the struggle for its rationality. For all battles for an autonomy
of reason, for the liberation of man from the bonds of tradition, for "natural"
religion, "natural" law, etc., are finally-or reduce to-battles for the univer-
sal normative function of the sciences, which have to be justified again and
again and which ultimately encompass the theoretical universe. All practical
questions harbor in themselves questions of knowledge, which in turn can be
framed generally and transformed into scientific questions. Even the question
 THE IDEA OF A PHn.oSOPHICAL CULTURE 293

concerning rational autonomy as the supreme principle of culture must be

raised as a scientific question and decided with scientific finality.