A couple of interesting passages from this book:
After the collapse of the many attempts by German philosophers to construct great speculative systems, the doctrines of empiricism and scientism consigned the concerns of traditional philosophy to the rubbish heap, and this was for many people a cultural catastrophe. Phenomenology seemed to rehabilitate a great tradition, to be a defence against scepticism and relativism.
…
Husserl forced us to confront an uncomfortable alternative: either we accept the restrictions of empiricism, turning away from the great philosophical tradition – the search for truth, meaning and the nature of being – and impoverishing European culture, or we must accept some form of transcendentalism, not necessarily Husserl's reduction and his idealism, but the belief that the human mind can have some insight into being and truth.
