Abstract

«Philosophy as a rigorous science» is the title of a long article Husserl published in 1910 in the journal «Logos». To conceive of philosophy as a rigorous science is, on the one hand, to remove it from any form of relativism (psychologistic or historicist) and to postulate its omnitemporal and omnisubjective validity; on the other hand, to posit that its demand for an apodictic foundation must surpass the certainty that belongs to scientific truths. Are these manifest idealisations or mythical ideals that should be abandoned once and for all? In this article, we examine the various aspects of the Husserlian return to Descartes: the foundation of the sciences on metaphysics (and thus on the transcendental sphere), the rejection of the deductive model of science in favor of a purely reflexive and descriptive requirement, an examination of Husserl’s erkenntnistheoretisch presupposition, and finally the question of methodical order in phenomenology. We conclude that the Idea of absolute recommencement can only be a methodical thread that can never be satisfied