Abstract
The insight, due originally to Dagfinn Føllesdal, that some of Husserl’s most characteristic problems, concepts, and doctrines could be elucidated by comparing them with those of Frege was in many ways a liberation.1 Amongst other things, it provided an initial point of access to Husserl’s thoughts and texts, in the absence of which Husserl might well have continued to seem, to those of a generally ‘analytic’ orientation, either too impenetrable or too irrelevant to warrant investigation. It provided a touchstone against which certain Husserlian doctrines could be evaluated. Likewise — though this aspect has so far been little emphasized — it provided a perspective within which a balanced and critical judgement of Frege’s achievements could be formulated.2 And finally, F0llesdaFs insight has provoked and fostered a healthy curiosity about European intellectual history, and especially about the nature and origin of the socalled ‘analytic-continental’ divide that characterizes so much contemporary European thought. The invitation to compare the ideas of Husserl and Frege has clearly proved immensely valuable.
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Notes
See Føllesdal, D.: 1958, Husserl und Frege,
Aschehoug, Oslo; 1969, ‘Husserl’s Notion of Noema’, Journal of Philosophy, 66, pp. 680–687; 1972, ‘An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers’, in R.E. Olsen and A.M. Paul (eds.), Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia,Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp. 417–429; and 1984, ‘Brentano and Husserl on Intentional Objects and Perception’, in H.L. Dreyfus (ed.), Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 31–41.
Two exceptions to this generalization are Dummett, M.A.E.: 1990, ‘Thought and Perception: The Views of Two Philosophical innovators’, in D. Bell and N. Cooper (eds.), The Analytic Tradition: Meaning, Thought and Knowledge, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 83–103; and also Bell, D.: 1990, Husserl, Routledge, London, especially pp. 59–84.
Mohanty, J.N.: 1982, Husserl and Frege, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 43.
Harney, M.J.: Intentionality, Sense and the Mind, Nijhoff, The Hague, p. 164n.
Smith, D.W. and McIntyre, R.: 1982, Husserl and Intentionality. A Study of Mind, Meaning and Language, Reidel, Dordrecht, p. 176.
Dreyfus, H.L.: 1984, ‘Husserl’s Perceptual Noema’, in (ed.) H.L. Dreyfus, Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science, pp. 99–100.
Given its commitment to transcendental idealism, and its reliance on the phenomenological reduction, Husserl’s philosophy after about 1910 seems less prone to misinterpretation along Fregean lines. My focus in the present paper is thus on Husserl’s early thought, and especially on the Logical Investigations.
The Oxford English Dictionary dates this usage as ‘chiefly after 1817’, and asserts that ‘its current use appears to derive from Kant’. See also entries under ‘Gegenstand’ and ‘Objekt’ in (ed.) J. Ritter: 1974, Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Schwabe Verlag, Basel and Stuttgart.
Descartes R.: 1984, Meditations on First Philosophy, ‘Third Meditation’, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by J. Cottingham, R. Stoothhoff, and Dugald Murdoch, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, volume II, p. 28.
Especially Charles Renouvier. See Renouvier, C.B.: 1897, Essais de critique général, Paris, Vol I, Logique, p. 19.
Brentano’s text is as follows: Jedes psychische Phänomen ist durch das charakterisiert, was die Scholastiker des Mittelalters die intentionale (auch wohl mentale)* Inexistenz eines Gegenstandes gennant haben, und was wir... die Beziehung auf einen Inhalt, die Richtung auf ein Objekt (worunter hier nicht eine Realität zu verstehen ist), oder die immanente Gegenständlichkeit nennen würden. Jedes enthält etwas als Objekt in sich....
Sie gebrauchen auch den Ausdruck ‘gegenständlich (objektive) in etwas sein’, der, wenn man sich jetzt seiner bedienen wollte, umgekehrt als Bezeichnung einer wirklichen Existenz außerhalb des Geistes genommen werden dürfte. Doch erinnert daran der Ausdruck ‘immanent gegenständlich sein’, den man zuweilen in ähnlichem Sinne gebraucht, und bei welchem offenbar das ‘immanent’ das zu fürchtende Mißverständnis ausschließen soll. Brentano, F.: 1874, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Duncker und Humblot, Leipzig, Vol I, Book 2, eh. 1, §5.
Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol II, Book 2, ch. 5, §2n.
Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt, Vol I, Book 1, ch. 1, §2.
Quotations from Husserl’s Logical Investigations are cited as follows: LU refers to the pagination in Husserl, E.: 1984, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, U. Panzer (ed.), Nijhoff, The Hague. LI refers to the pagination in Husserl, E.: 1970, Logical Investigations, translated by J.N. Findlay, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
See Frege, G.: 1964, The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, translated by M. Furth, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, pp. 10–25; and 1984, ‘Thoughts’ in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, B. McGuinness (ed.), Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 351–372. See also Husserl, LU pp. 110, 130; LI pp. 333, 353.
Frege, G.: 1984, ‘Review of E.G. Husserl, Philosophie der Arithmetik r, in Collected Papers, p. 207.
Husserl, E.: 1931, Ideas. General Introduction to Phenomenology, translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson, George Allen & Unwin, London, pp. 407–8.
Frege, G.: 1984, ‘On Sense and Meaning’, in Collected Papers, p. 159.
Frege, G.: 1984, ‘On Sense and Meaning’, Collected Papers, p. 163.
Küng, G.: 1977, ‘The Phenomenological Reduction as Epoche and Explication’, in F.A. Elliston and P. McCormick (eds.), Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, p. 341.
See, for example, LU pp. 6, 14, 23, 26, 381, and 765; LI pp. 249, 255, 261, 264, 556, and 862.
The greater part of Investigations I, II, V, and VI are in fact explicitly devoted to the provision of phenomenological analyses of such objectivity concepts as knowledge, evidence, truth, existence, object, Meaning, Species, state of affairs, and the like.
Husserl, E.: 1987, Vorlesungen liber Bedeutungslehre. Sommersemester 1908, U. Panzer (ed.), Nijhoff, The Hague.
Intentionaler Gegenstand als solcher. In fact I use the English phrase to capture the whole family of notions that Husserl employs in this connection: the intentional object as intended; the meant objectivity as meant; the object in the How of its determinations, and so forth.
Dummett, M.A.E.: 1991, ‘Critical Notice of D. Bell, HusserV, Philosophical Quarterly, 41, pp. 485–488.
Der vermeinte (oder intentionale) Gegenstand schlechthin. Husserl sometimes talks in this connection of “der Gegenstand-worüber” or “der Gegenstand, welcher intendiert ist” (see, e.g., LU p. 414, and Bedeutungslehre pp. 41, 66f, 166).
For elucidation of the notion of intentional identity, see Geach, P.T.: 1972, ‘Intentional Identity’ and ‘The Perils of Pauline’, in Logic Matters, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 146–165.
Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungslehre, p. 51.
Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungslehre, p. 40.
See, for example, LU pp. 10, 29, and 535; LI pp. 252, 266, and 663.
Husserl, E.: 1987, Bedeutungslehre, p. 46; also p. 36.
See LU pp. 26, 427, and 439; LI pp. 264, 587, and 596.
See references cited above, footnote 21.
These two errors are summarized very clearly at LU p. 385; LI p.
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Bell, D. (1994). Reference, Experience, and Intentionality. In: Haaparanta, L. (eds) Mind, Meaning and Mathematics. Synthese Library, vol 237. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8334-3_7
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