The Theoretical Reformer: on Husserl’s Plato (Husserl and the Figures of the History of Philosophy)

ABSTRACT

The present research contributes to the elucidation of an important aspect of Husserl’s interpretation of the history of philosophy, that is, his reading of the beginning of Western thought. In particular, it aims to clarify the sense in which Husserl deems Plato the father of the idea itself of philosophy as a science. As will be maintained, Husserl thinks of Socrates and Plato together as providing the first reform of philosophy, whose overall goal is to give reason (Vernunft) a universal method of self-justification against the general skepticism of the sophists. The analysis will be both systematically and historically oriented, for, it will try to both reconstruct Husserl’s interpretation of the background against which Plato first introduces the idea of philosophy as a science, and to show that what is truly at stake for Husserl is the nature of philosophy itself.