Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations

223 Pages·1977·10.192 MB·English

by  J. N. Mohanty (editor)

READINGS
ON
EDMUND HUSSERL'S LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS
READINGS
ON
EDMUND HUSSERL'S
LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS
edited by
J. N. MOHANTY
MAR TINUS NIJHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1977
To
BANI
© 1977 by Martinus NijhojJ, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or
to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-13: 978-90-247-1928-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-010-1055-9
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-010-1055-9
CONTENTS
Editor's Introduction.
G. FREGE - Review of Dr. E. RusserI's Philosophy of Arithmetic 6
J. N. MOHANTY - RusserI and Frege: A New Look at their Relation-
n
~.
E. RUSSERL - A Reply to a Critic of my Refutation of Logical
Psychologism . 33
D. WILLARD - The Paradox of Logical Psychologism: HusserI's
Way Out 43
P. NATORP - qn the Question of Logical Method 55
A. NAEss - RusserI on the Apodictic Evidence of Ideal Laws 67
J. N. MOHANTY - HusserI's Thesis of the Ideality of Meanings 76
J. E. ATWELL - HusserI on Signification and Object . 83
R. SOKOLOWSKI - The Logic of Parts and Wholes in Husserl's
Investigations 94
A. GURWITSCH - Outlines of a Theory of "Essentially Occasional
Expressions" 112
Y. BAR-HILLEL - HusserI's Conception of a Purely Logical Grammar 128
J. M. EDIE - HusserI's Conception of 'The Grammatical' and Con-
temporary Linguistics. 137
C. DOWNES - On HusserI's Approach to Necessary Truth 162
G. PATZIG - HusserI on Truth and Evidence . 179
E. HUSSERL-The Task and the Significance of the Logical Investigations 197
Suggestions for Further Reading 216
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
I
Edmund Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen is, by any standard and also
by nearly common consent, a great philosophical work. Within the phenom
enological movement, it is generally recognised that the breakthrough
to pure phenomenology - not merely to eidetic phenomenology, but also
to transcendental phenomenology - was first made in these investiga
tions. But in the context of philosophy of logic and also of theory of know
ledge in general, these investigations took decisive steps forward. Amongst
their major achievements generally recognised are of course: the final
death-blow to psychologism as a theory of logic in the Prolegomena, a
new conception of analyticity which vastly improves upon Kant's, a theory
of meaning which is many-sided in scope and widely ramified in its appli
cations, a conception of pure logical grammar that eventually became
epoch-making, a powerful restatement of the conception of truth in terms
of 'evidence' and a theory of knowledge in terms of the dynamic movement
from empty intention to graduated fulfillment. There are many other detailed
arguments, counter-arguments, conceptual distinctions and phenomenolo
gical descriptions which deserve the utmost attention, examination and
assimilation on the part of any serious investigator.
With the publication of J. N. Findlay's English translation of the
Untersuchungen, it is expected that this work will find its proper place in
the curriculum of the graduate programs in philosophy in the English
speaking world. This, in its turn, it is hoped, will lead to a better and more
careful appreciation of Husserl's style of philosophising as well as of the
content of his philosophy. The essays in the present volume are put together
with the hope of contributing to that process and providing the beginning
reader, the graduate student as well as the instructor with material that
bring out, both appreciatively and critically, some of the main problems
and issues discussed in, and arising out of, the Untersuchungen.
There are two Husserl fragments in this anthology: the first one dating
2 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
from 1903, is a clarification by Husserl of the sense of his criticism oflogical
psychologism. The second piece, dating from 1925, is taken from the
Phiinomenologische Psychologie; in it Husserl looks back to the achieve
ments and limitations of the Untersuchungen and in particular relates them
to Brentano and Dilthey. I have also included two influential reviews of
Hussert's works: Frege's review of the Philosophie der Arithmetik which is
reputed to have led to Husserl's abandonment of his own psychologism
(a hypothesis which I have called into question in my essay on the relation
between Frege and Husserl). The second is a review of the Prolegomena
by Paul Natorp, the influential Neo-Kantian of Marburg, in which Natorp
seeks to bring out the extent to which the idea of a pure logic is acceptable
but needs to be supplemented by the Kantian problematic. Natorp's
review is often credited with having influenced the subsequent development
of Husserl's thought.
Two of the essays were hitherto unpublished: my "Husserl's thesis of
the Ideality of Meanings" and the late Aron Gurwitsch's essay on 'essen
tially occasional expressions'. I am indebted to Mrs. Alice Gurwitsch for
giving me permission to include the latter piece, and to Professor Lester
Embree for first drawing my attention to its existence and also for editing
it for publication.
For permissions to reprint the various essays in this volume, I am grateful
to their respective authors as well as to the editors and/or publishers of the
journals or books in which they were originally printed.
II
Several of the essays included in this volume are critical of Husserl, and
succeed in raising problems and issues which need to be taken into account.
Arne Naess, who is deeply appreciative of the Untersuchungen, nevertheless
questions the claim of phenomenology to yield apodictic knowledge and
asserts that every science courts the radical risk of error. Every actual
science will be, according to Naess, on the "human side" of the chasm
between the real and the ideal and therefore will be subject to the imper
fections of the so-called factual sciences. Naess, and also Gunther Patzig,
questions the claim of evidence to rule out all doubt about truth. In the
words of Naess, "the ultimate meeting of human beings with the Sach
verhalt" cannot effectively rule out the claim of others who do not intuit
the Sachverhalt but genuinely believe that they do. Likewise Patzig argues
that Husserl illegitimately moves from evidence as a phenomenal character
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 3
of certain judgments to evidence as the consciousness of the actual truth.
Patzig's criticism, developed in great detail, has the merit that it also
contains an account of the rationale of Husserl's so-called idealistic tum:
for Patzig, this tum corresponds to the shift from the early thesis that
evidence is reducible to truth to the later thesis that truth is reducible to
evidence, and this latter shift is accounted for as being due to the difficulties
inherent in the earlier thesis about the relation of truth to evidence.
If thus Patzig and Naess question the self-evidence" theory of truth,
the paper by Downes (as also Naess's) is concerned with the theory of
apodictic truth. Downes seeks to relate Husserl's conceptions of a priori
and necessary truth to the contemporary analytical philosophy with which
he brings out its basic general agreement. What Husserl's theory lacks is,
according to him, a method for investigating the a priori. The method Husserl
practises is, at its best, implicitly linguistic.
Atwell calls into question the basis on which Husserl's rejection of the
referential theory of meaning is grounded; yet one of the central theses of
the Untersuchungen, i.e. the thesis of the ideality of meanings, rests on this
rejection. With regard to the thesis of ideality, Willard emphasises the
influence of Lotze on Husserl. This needed to be pointed out, in view of the
widely current view as to Frege's influence: the truth would appear rather
to be that both Frege and Husserl were under the influence of Lotze.
Whereas Willard shows that the relation between mind (or, mental acts)
and meaning, for Husserl, is one of instantiation or exemplification, one
may add that Husserl seems subsequently to have rejected the treatment
of meanings as species, and the relation is still one of intentionality, the
ideal meaning is still the content of the act concerned.
The two papers by Bar-Hillel and Edie, are concerned with one of
Husserl's most seminal ideas i.e. the conception of pure logical grammar.
Bar-Hillel takes Husserl to task for leaving the linguistic level and seeking
to explore the realm of meanings with the help of apodictic evidence. He
recognises that Husserl's basic insights (especially with regard to the two
kinds of meaninglessness) can be preserved in translating his theses into the
purely syntactic idiom. He gives Husserl his due as one of the first to empha
sise the role played by the rules of formation in the construction of any
language. But he looks upon him only as forerunner of Carnap's more
mature and developed conception of logical syntax. Edie corrects some of
Bar-Hillel's remarks about the fourth Investigation by taking into account
the more developed conception of logical grammar to be found in the
Formal and Transcendental Logic. In particular, Edie - rightly, I think -
insists that unlike Carnap Husserl is concerned, not with ideal constructed
4 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
languages, but with natural languages. While Bar-Hillel turns to Carnap to
bring out the inadequacies of Husserl's seminal conception, Edie turns to
transformational grammar to shed light on the Husserlian theme of a uni
versal grammar.
The beauty of Sokolowski's paper (whose theme has now been developed
by him in a larger work, Husser/ian Meditations) is that he takes one central
theme from the Untersuchungen, the relation of part and whole, and shows,
very effectively, not only that it runs through and determines all the six
investigations but also that it permeates the entire Husserlian phenomenol
ogy. Sokolowski thus succeeds both in dispelling the belief that the investi
gations are a set of disconnected enquiries and themes and in correcting
the widely held belief that for the later and the more developed Husserlian
phenomenology, they are of no great importance.
Aron Gurwitsch builds upon Busserl's admittedly incomplete theory of
'essentially occasional expressions' as formulated in the Untersuchungen,
and taking into account the phenomenon of horizontal consciousness,
relates the use of such expressions to the organisational aspect with which the
perceptual world presents itself and to the three orders of existence which,
according to Gurwitsch, always present themselves in our experience. This
essay is a good example of Gurwitsch's own style of phenomenology, and
also an example of what can constructively be done on the basis of Busserl's
suggestive thoughts.
III
The position of the Logische Untersuchungen in the total structure of Husser
lian thought has been a matter of some controversy amongst phenomenol
ogists. In fact, this question is part of a wider question concerning the
place of philosophical reflections on logic within a phenomenological
philosophy. Why is it that Husserl returned to the theme of logic ever
anew? Why is it that the breakthrough to pure phenomenology came about
in a work on philosophy of logic? Why is it that the first chapter of the
early major work introducing pure phenomenology, the Ideas I, is devoted
to what he calls "logical considerations"? The chapter from Phiinomeno
logische Psychologie which is included in this anthology shows Husserl's
own evaluation of the role that the logical Investigations played in the
development of his thought, and of various historical influences that bore
on them. But these remarks also make it clear that even if "fundamental
clarity" had not been achieved in the Investigations and even if their
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 5
subject matter was limited to logical objectivities alone along with their
constitutive acts - yet the theses of the Investigations continue to be the
abiding basis for the structure of Husserlian thought. As pointed out earlier,
Sokolowski's work substantiates this abundantly well, especially with
regard to the conceptual framework of the third investigation. But from
a still broader perspective, the thematisation of logic would seem to serve
two purposes for Husserlian phenomenology : Formal logic, and its
correlate, formal ontology lay bare the form of the world. In this sense,
the 'world' was a theme of Husserlian reflections from the right beginning.
In the second place, the ideality of the logical is an important moment
of the accomplishments of the life of consciousness. The constitutive
function of consciousness is not grasped in its entirety as well as in one of
its most essential possibilities, so long as the logical is not grasped in its
ideal-objectivity and the acts constituting it are not laid bare. The same
holds good also of the life-world thematic: the life-world serves as the
foundation for the constitution of the higher order idealities, and the
possibility of such constitution is not imposed on the life-world ab extra
but is inherent in it and in fact defines it as the basis for logical and
scientific thinking. The traditional question, if logical thinking distorts
reality, is misconceived from the point of view of Husserlian phenomenology.
For it is not the case that logic as a tool is found to be there and is taken up
by human intellect to engage in its intellectual endeavors to grasp reality.
That picture is misleading. Logical forms and objectivities are idealisations
of life-world structures and are constituted accomplishments of the life of
consciousness. They belong to the total structure of SUbjectivity and have
their rightful place in it. They do not exhaust it, nor are they autonomous
in the sense of being the 'first,' presuppositionless beginning. But they are
not tools of distortion of misrepresentation of an alien reality. For Husserlian
phenomenology, then, reflection on the theme of logic reveals the nature
of the constitutive accomplishments of the life of consciousness in one of its
most essential moments.
Graduate Faculty of the J. N. MoHANTY
New School for Social Research,
New¥ork
REVIEW OF DR. E. HUSSERL'S
PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC*
by
GOTTLOB FREGE
(translated by E. W. KLUGE)
The author decides in the Introduction that for the time being he will con
sider (only) cardinal numbers (cardinalia), and thereupon launches into
a discussion of multiplicity, plurality, totality, aggregate, collection, set.
He uses these words as if they were essentially synonymous; the concept
of a cardinal number is supposed to be different from this. However,
1
the logical relationship between multiplicity and number (p. 9) remains
somewhat obscure. If one were to go by the words "The concept of number
includes the same concrete phenomena as the concept of mUltiplicity albeit
only by way of the extensions of the concepts of its species, the numbers two,
three, four, etc .... ," one might infer that they had the same extension. On
the other hand, multiplicity is supposed to be more indeterminate and more
general than number. The matter would probably be clearer if a sharper
distinction were drawn between falling under a concept and subordination.
Now the first thing he attempts to do is to give an analysis of the concept
of multiplicity. Determinate numbers as well as the generic concept of
number which presupposes them, are then supposed to emerge from it
by means of determinations. Thus we are first led down from the general
to the particular, and then up again.
Totalities are wholes whose parts are collectively connected. We must
be conscious of these parts as noticed in and by themselves. The collective
connection consists neither in the contents' being simultaneously in the
awareness, nor in their arising in the awareness one after another. Not
even space, as all-inclusive form, is the ground of the unification. The con
nection consists (p. 43) in the unifying act itself. "But neither is it the case
that over and above the act there exists a relational content which is distinct
• Zeitschri/t fur Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik, vol. 103 (1894), pp. 313-332.
The translator's notes are indicated. E. tr. first appeared in Mind, LXXXI, 1972, pp.
321-337. Reprinted here with permission. - J. N. M.
1 Henceforth I shall take "cardinal" to be understood. - Trans.