The Book Of Dead Philosophers (critchley, Simon) / quote 17 of 18
Husserl: the philosopher as civil servant of humanity
In 1935 and 1936, as the lights were going out all over Europe, the elderly Husserl travelled to Vienna and Prague to give the lectures that were developed into his final, unfinished book, The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. For Husserl, philosophy is the freedom of absolute self-responsibility and the philosopher is ‘the civil servant of humanity’. He concludes by asserting that the duty of the philosopher is to confront ‘the barbarian hatred of spirit’ and renew philosophy through ‘a heroism of reason’. At a time of crisis, then as now, the greatest danger facing ‘good Europeans’ is weariness, the refusal to take up the philosophical battle of reason against barbarism.