Husserl Search For Certitude

'Kolakowski's Husserl and the Search for Certitude consists of his three Cassirer Lectures, delivered at Yale in 1974. In broad, general terms, he places Husserl in the tradition of philosophers, from Descartes to the Logical positivists, who were engaged in the attempt to discover some knowledge which was certain and indubitable. His final view is that such a quest must fail. But he also argues that unless it is undertaken, the tension and disharmonies which exist between the claims of the skeptics and relativists on the one hand, and those who believe in the possibility of absolute certainty on the other, must come to an end. And since he believes that this tension is to a large extent the source of all culture and intellectual life, we should be disastrously impoverished if the search were finally given up. . . . [Kolakowski's] purpose is to show the ways in which Husserl pursued, and inevitably failed to reach, his goal, and to justify, at least in part, the claim he made for his philosophy, that is was the defense of culture and civilization. The lectures are elegant, persuasively clear and delightful.' - Mary Warnock, Times Literary Supplement