The fascinating question that Husserl encounters in a
work like the “Origin of Geometry” is, as he puts it, “the prob-
lem of the foundation of objectivity” (Writing 159 ). Actual
people, who lived at a certain point in history, developed the
notion of objective truth. They founded objectivity in the
form of the pure propositions of mathematics, which were not
a matter of opinion, and not, therefore, subject to historical
conditions. In spite of their universal nature, though, geom-
etry and higher mathematics remain rooted, according to
Husserl, within a certain civilization, that of Europe (and the
cultures influenced by Europe). Husserl yields to the tempta-
tion to associate the truth of geometry with the place of its
genesis in ancient Greece, the source of European civilization.
For Husserl, Europe is the culture that invented the scientific
consciousness, and therefore it remains the home of truth.
Husserl thus emphasizes the fact that a basic way of per-
ceiving the world, as a collection of precisely defined geomet-
rical shapes, had a historical origin, in ancient Greece. He
adds, though, that once geometry is discovered, it becomesuni-
versal. Similarly, one might argue, there may be cultures whose
members lack a sense of fear, or shame, or fairness. But, if they
existed, we would think of them as incomplete, waiting to ac-
quire a fuller sense of humanness. They would be like the ar-
chaic people before geometry who, unable to see quantifiable
shapes, were waiting to acquire a fuller sense of what things
look like. So a discovery becomes a norm.
Derrida points out that Husserl cannot at the same time
both describe a structure and explain its genesis. A permanent
gap remains between the ideal meaning encoded in geometry
and the fact that geometry was invented in a particular place
and time. It is hard to believe that geometry is an essentially
European science, given its universal applicability. Husserl’s
belief in the West as the native realm of philosophical thought,
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