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The experience of life is particularly problematic for the phenomenologist. Unlike living creatures, life itself cannot be seen or experienced directly as a phenomenon in its own right. Is there a phenomenality specific to life, apart from the manifestations of life exhibited by living creatures? At first it seems doubtful that what is specific to life as such is describable as a phenomenon. Rather it seems that life is felt from within, going beyond any form of life in particular. If an absolutely original intuition of life existed, how could it be construed as relative to a constitutive consciousness, as the phenomenological method requires? In his later career, Husserl tried to bypass this difficulty by coining the concept of life-world (Lebenswelt). Understanding life means, first and foremost, understanding the life of spirit (Geist). Spirit shares at least two significant features with life felt from within: (i) it is creative beyond all predictability; (ii) it exemplifies an immediate presence to self. Indeed, the main source that Husserl drew on in developing his concept of life-world was Dilthey. Husserl acknowledged, moreover, that however significant it may be, the concept of life-world is intrinsically obscure and vague.¹ Arguably, Husserl's life-world is an echo of the fashionable Lebensphilosophie of the early twentieth century, of which Rickert said ironically that its main character was Prinzipienlosigkeit, the unscrupulous absence of principle which was thought to do justice to the inherent, immediate and concrete dynamism of life.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230282995_12

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