Husserl on Relativism in the Late Manuscripts

Abstract

Husserl’s attempts to refute certain forms of relativism, especially psychologism, historicism, biological specism, all of which he regarded as relativistic, in the Logische Untersuchungen and in the Logos essay of 1910 are well-known,¹ and I will not discuss them here. In general, from the very inception phenomenology has been anti-relativistic. Husserl thought he had conclusively refuted relativism, by refuting some varieties of it. Paradoxically enough, Husserl’s thinking had elements which gave rise to relativism from within phenomenology. The task therefore which he tried to face up to was: how to overcome relativism, if refutation was not possible? One can make a strong argument to the effect that relativism cannot be refuted, for refutation would make use of a logic and the relativism may not accept the validity of that logic.