Key Arguments

• After describing the ‘unhappy present’ of philosophy, Husserl explicitly asks whether our situation is ‘similar to the one encountered by Descartes in his youth’, thus framing the current crisis as structurally analogous to Descartes’ context.
• He then proposes that, if the situations are similar, this is ‘a fitting time to renew his radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher’, directly calling for a repetition—at a higher level—of Descartes’ original radical project.
• He specifies the task as subjecting ‘to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity’, insisting that even serious and traditional philosophy must be placed in question.
• He links this overthrow to ‘begin[ning] with new meditationes de prima philosophia’, deliberately echoing Descartes’ title to stress that what is needed is not piecemeal reform but a methodological recommencement of ‘first philosophy’.
• He suggests that the ‘disconsolateness’ of our philosophical position can ultimately be traced to the loss of ‘the driving forces emanating from the Meditations of Descartes’, especially the spirit of radical philosophical self‑responsibility, so that renewal must revive precisely that radicalness.
• He concludes that the question of such a renewal ‘indicates one of the ways that has led to transcendental phenomenology’, thereby presenting transcendental phenomenology itself as the outcome of this renewed Cartesian overthrow.

Source Quotes

Still, with the existence of these in isolation, the total philosophical present is essentially as we have described it. In this unhappy present, is not our situation similar to the one encountered by Descartes in his youth? If so, then is not this a fitting time to renew his radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher: to subject to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity (which counts on “making an effect” but not on being studied), and to begin with new meditationes de prima philosophia?

In this unhappy present, is not our situation similar to the one encountered by Descartes in his youth? If so, then is not this a fitting time to renew his radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher: to subject to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity (which counts on “making an effect” but not on being studied), and to begin with new meditationes de prima philosophia? Cannot the disconsolateness of our philosophical position be traced back ultimately to the fact that the driving forces emanating from the Meditations of Descartes have lost their original vitality — lost it because the spirit that characterizes radicalness of philosophical self-responsibility has been lost?

If so, then is not this a fitting time to renew his radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher: to subject to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity (which counts on “making an effect” but not on being studied), and to begin with new meditationes de prima philosophia? Cannot the disconsolateness of our philosophical position be traced back ultimately to the fact that the driving forces emanating from the Meditations of Descartes have lost their original vitality — lost it because the spirit that characterizes radicalness of philosophical self-responsibility has been lost? Must not the demand for a philosophy aiming at the ultimate conceivable freedom from prejudice, shaping itself with actual autonomy according to ultimate evidences it has itself produced, and therefore absolutely self-responsible — must not this demand, instead of being excessive, be part of the fundamental sense of genuine philosophy?

Must not the only fruitful renaissance be the one that reawakens the impulse of the Cartesian Meditations: not to adopt their content but, in not doing so, to renew with greater intensity the radicalness of their spirit, the radicalness of self-responsibility, to make that radicalness true for the first time by enhancing it to the last degree, / to uncover thereby for the first time the genuine sense of the necessary regress to the ego, and consequently to overcome the hidden but already felt naïveté of earlier philosophizing? In any case, the question indicates one of the ways that has led to transcendental phenomenology. Along that way we now intend to walk together.

Key Concepts

• In this unhappy present, is not our situation similar to the one encountered by Descartes in his youth?
• If so, then is not this a fitting time to renew his radicalness, the radicalness of the beginning philosopher:
• to subject to a Cartesian overthrow the immense philosophical literature with its medley of great traditions, of comparatively serious new beginnings, of stylish literary activity (which counts on “making an effect” but not on being studied), and to begin with new meditationes de prima philosophia?
• Cannot the disconsolateness of our philosophical position be traced back ultimately to the fact that the driving forces emanating from the Meditations of Descartes have lost their original vitality — lost it because the spirit that characterizes radicalness of philosophical self-responsibility has been lost?
• In any case, the question indicates one of the ways that has led to transcendental phenomenology.

Context

Later in §2, where Husserl, having diagnosed the crisis of philosophy, explicitly calls for a new Cartesian‑style overthrow of the philosophical tradition and presents transcendental phenomenology as the path emerging from such a radical new beginning.