ABSTRACT
The great work of Husserl's last years, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, grew out of the sense of crisis that had a double aspect in his thought. The crisis of the 1930s had a particular character – both the general economic crisis and the political terror rising from the triumph of Hitler's ideology. In choosing the work of Paul Ricoeur as the relevant continuation of the search in which Husserl was engaging in the Crisis, one is admitting a necessary development in the problematic itself. Australia, like all other nations and cultures, is faced by the central crisis of 'philosophy' or thought earmarked by Husserl: the dissolution of rationality into empty 'rationalism'; the need for a return to bases; and the search for a method where self-reflection gazes into method itself. Self-reflection is not the only focus to distinguish in Husserl's late philosophy.
