Crisis and Problematicity: Europe from the Perspectives of Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka

The increasing rationalisation of European modernity and the attendant disenchantment of the world have been a key topic in phenomenology. They have been connected to a loss of meaning due to the disappearance of a common worldview on the basis of which people understood themselves such as those provided by myth, religion, or metaphysics. Even though this process itself is not unique to Europe, it does provide the narrative structure of many typical accounts of Europe. In these accounts Europe has lost its connection to what is taken to be its spiritual core (usually identified with either Greek rationality or Christianity). The solution often offered to this crisis is a re-establishment of this spirit to renew the meaning of the world. This project reframes the phenomenological concept of this crisis on the basis of the idea that the moment of the interruption of meaning might be constitutive of meaning itself. If this interruption of meaning indicates more than a mere lack, Europe’s crisis can be interpreted anew. This leads to the development of an interpretation that does not consider this crisis as a loss of meaning to be overcome. Instead, it reveals a positive aspect: The loss of particular worldviews allows for a form of universalism which in many accounts of Europe is essential to it.