The Far Reaches

The Far Reaches: Phenomenology, Ethics, and Social Renewal in Central Europe by Michael Gubser, 229 pages

If phenomenology is little known and little respected outside academic philosophical circles, much of its obscurity is no doubt due to its epistemological preoccupations, which are hardly applicable to everyday life.  Yet, as Michael Gubser chronicles in The Far Reaches, phenomenology always included ethical and social elements, planted by early figures such as Husserl and Scheler and bearing fruit most spectacularly in Central Europe in the late twentieth century, in thinkers including Vaclav Havel and St John Paul II.  In the process, Gubser also calls into question claims that the revolutions of 1989 had little intellectual originality.  The dissidents may have had an apolitical shyness born of a long experience of totalitarian rule, but their writings describe a global crisis of values that afflicted the materialist, individualist West just as deeply as the materialist, collectivist East.

In places, The Far Reaches makes for rather difficult reading - a contributing factor in the obscurity of phenomenology is its specialized vocabulary, and while Gubser does his best to ameliorate this difficulty, the reader is still left with pages of abstract language.  The rewards, both philosophical and historical, are well worth the struggle.