Abstract

WE CONTINUE TO BE SURPRISED that the only pieces of sustained philosophizing that Husserl published in the 15 years between Ideas I and Internal Time-Consciousness were three articles that appeared in Kaizo, a Japanese periodical, in 1923 and 1924. We also find well-written drafts of two other articles that were to follow in the series but were never completed and submitted. We are even more intrigued when we realize that in these texts Husserl takes up themes never touched in publications before and not touched again until his very late work. While we know that his manuscripts contain continuous and extensive analyses of the essential forms of social and cultural life and of ethical normativity, the Kaizo articles build the only slender bridge actually published on these topics between his attack on "the new Weltanschauung philosophy" in his 1911 Logos article and the 1934-37 texts surrounding the The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy; slender, indeed, when we think that the articles were published in Japan and that the second and third appeared only in Japanese translation. Yet our intrigue is coupled with anticipation, for we have long wondered what Husserl would say to the Japanese, a society highly developed and yet not Western, a culture that does not have its beginnings in the Greek conception of science and knowledge and which clearly poses the question of cultural diversity. And we have wondered how he could define ethical life in this context, how the analysis would proceed, and how the human and social sciences could play a role in the account that he gives.