European Rationality in the Break from Modernity: Studies in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (Aaltonen 2008–2011)

The main research objective of the project is to examine and evaluate the late modern crisis of reason and to contribute to an understanding of this crisis within the framework of the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and his (post)phenomenological successors, most notably Martin Heidegger. The project articulates reason and rationality with the help of five core concepts: objectivity, ideality, grounding, evidence, and limit. The task is to explicate the meaning of these concepts and to use them in analyzing and critically evaluating contemporary debates concerning the manifestations of a fundamental crisis of reason in the different fields of Western culture.