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Husserl’s Foundation of the Formal Sciences in his “Logical Investigations”

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Abstract

This article is composed of three sections that investigate the epistemological foundations of Husserl’s idea of logic from the Logical Investigations. First, it shows the general structure of this logic. Husserl conceives of logic as a comprehensive, multi-layered theory of possible theories that has its most fundamental level in a doctrine of meaning. This doctrine aims to determine the elementary categories that constitute every possible meaning (meaning-categories). The second section presents the main idea of Husserl’s search for an epistemological foundation for knowledge, science and logic. Their epistemological clarification can only be reached through a detailed analysis of the structure of those intentions that give us what is meant in our intentions. To reveal the intuitive giveness of logical forms is the ultimate aim of Husserl’s epistemology of logic. Logical forms and meaning-categories can only be given in a certain higher-order intuition that Husserl calls categorical intuition. The third section of this article distinguishes different kinds of categorical intuition and shows how the most basic logical categories and concepts are given to us in a categorical abstraction.

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Notes

  1. Husserl raises this question already in the first chapter of his Prolegomena zur reinen Logik and continues to focus on it through the final chapter of his book.

  2. For more detailed information on how Husserl’s early phenomenology was influenced by his mathematical background, see Hartimo (2010), and Fisette (2003), whose article also takes into account the development of Husserl’s logic in the years after the Logical Investigations.

  3. The German usage of the word “Wissenschaften”, that is, Science, refers to the natural sciences as well as the humanities. Thus Husserl regards each of the above mentioned disciplines as a science.

  4. Compare, Husserl (1975), § 64.

  5. Compare, Husserl (1975), § 68.

  6. Compare, Husserl (1974).

  7. Compare, Husserl: IV. Logische Untersuchung, § 14.

  8. Husserl (1975), § 67 [engl. p. 153], Husserl (1996, 122ff.).

  9. Husserl (1975), § 67.

  10. Husserl (1984b), Hua. XXIV, 71.

  11. Husserl (1975), § 67, p. 246.

  12. Compare, Husserl (1984b), Hua. XXIV, 157ff.

  13. Husserl (1984a), Hua. XIX, 44.

  14. A more profound introduction to Husserl’s phenomenology of the Logical Investigations can be found in Sokolowski (1974), Zahavi (1992), and Bernet et al. (1993).

  15. Husserl (1984a), Hua. XIX, 722ff, 736.

  16. The main task of the Logical Investigations is, according to the “Introduction” to this work, “to bring the logical ideas, concepts and laws to epistemological clarity and distinctness” (Hua. XIX, 9).

  17. Husserl (1984a), Hua. XIX, 707, 713. Regardless of its importance for the phenomenological foundation of logic and mathematics, there are fewer studies on Husserl’s conception of the categorial abstraction than on his categorial intuition. Helpful comments on Husserl’s categorial abstraction can be found in Rosado-Haddock (1987), Seebohm (1990), Tugendhat (1966, 147ff).

  18. Tieszen (1989, 32).

  19. Insightful investigations on Husserl’s theory of categorial intuition are written by Cobb-Stevens (1990), Lohmar (2002), Rosado-Haddock (1987), Seebohm (1990), Sokolowski (1981), Tugendhat (1966, 111–136), Grünewald (1977, 128–139).

  20. Rosado Haddock illustrates this accomplishment of the categorial abstraction with the following examples: “Given a categorial intuition of a relation, pure categorial abstraction directs itself to the form of the relation, leaving aside everything material in the related objects, considering them as mere indeterminate points of the relation. Thus, given a categorial intuition of the relation of ‘being bigger than’ between the sensible objects A and B, pure categorial abstraction directs itself to the relation, leaving the objects related as mere indeterminate points of the relation completely void of any individualizing traits. Similarly, given a categorial intuition of a set, pure categorial abstraction directs itself to the form of the collection, leaving the members of the set completely indeterminate.” Rosado-Haddock (1987) 91f.

  21. Compare Husserl (1972), EU § 87; Husserl (1968), Hua. IX, 72ff.

  22. Husserl (1974).

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  1. Universität Paderborn Philosophie, Warburger Str. 100, 33098, Paderborn, Germany

    Henning Peucker

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Peucker, H. Husserl’s Foundation of the Formal Sciences in his “Logical Investigations”. Axiomathes 22, 135–146 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9167-7

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