Abstract This essay examines the semantics of crisis in late Husserl, seeking to contextualise this within its time and to consider both contemporary references to Husserl’s diagnosis – from the end of the interwar period – and current discourse surrounding the so-called ‘polycrisis’. The alarming picture of a crisis in the singular is contrasted with both the question of the inner plurality inherent in this very crisis and with today’s deliberate reflections on a multiplicity of crises. The urgency of critical escalation or, conversely, permanence and thus possibly the loss of the notion of an end to the crises, as well as of a resolution: here, Husserl seems to have opted, anachronistically, for a pathos of decision-making that no longer makes any sense within the framework of discourse on the polycrisis. The contrast between the singular crisis that drives action and the many crises that run counter to one another could also be interpreted differently, i. e. in favour of a phenomenology that acknowledges the multiplicity and heterogeneity of philosophical findings on crisis, yet cannot condone passivity. In the Krisis manuscripts, the warning against ‘Müdigkeit’ (weariness) serves as a key metaphor for this. At this point, Husserl calls not only for a change of attitude, but for action, even though it is clear that phenomenology – as a philosophy – possesses scarcely any means to this end.
Petra Gehring (Wed,) studied this question.