Abstract
What features of the Logical Investigations insure their cohesion and unity? Is there such a thing as a programme to which the exceptionally diverse investigations of this monumental work contributes? This question is important for anyone who acknowledges that there is a tension between the logical theme, which concerns namely the objective and ideal character of meaning and reference, and the psychological theme which touches upon the subjective dimension of mental acts. The case of logical psychologism is paradigmatic of this tension. In the Prolegomena, the arguments against this form of psychologism concern the practical and normative conception of logic as well as the foundational claims of empirical psychology. This tension thus bears witness to Husserl’s double exertion. On the one hand, the logical struggle he leads opposes him to the tenants of the practico-normative logic, and thus to the empiricists as well as to the Kantians, and what is at stake in this struggle is the idea of a pure logic as it is sketched in the last part of the Prolegomeana. On the other hand, Husserl develops a theory of knowledge whose central theme is the justification of knowledge. This part of the struggle sets him up against philosophical naturalism, that is, against the psychologistic doctrines of John Stuart Mill and Ernst Mach which have this in common that they seek on ground logic on natural sciences such as psychology or biology.
Two versions of this paper have been presented in two conferences commemorating the centenary of Husserl’s Logical Investigations,the first in Paris in May 2001 and the second in Montreal, also in May 2001. I wish to thank Sandra Lapointe and Jimmy Plourde for their helpful comments and their work on the English version of this paper.
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References
I here subscribe to the thesis advocated by J. P. Miller (1982) in his book Numbers in Presence and Absence and according to which we must acknowledge three stages in the development of Husserl’s conception of analysis over the pre-phenomenological period (1982, p.4f1). On Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics, see also Schmidt (1989), Lohmar (1989) and Wiegand (2001).
Husserl there claims that “the justification of the use, in calculus, of the quasi-numbers which arise from inverse operations — the negative, imaginary, fractional and irrational numbers — should be included in the second volume.” (Hua XII, p. 7). See also (Hua XII, p. 221) where the problem of imaginary number is raised in connection with the concept of infinite set.
This claim is explicitly advocated in the introduction to the habilitation thesis where Husserl writes: “All these more complicated and more artificial constructions which we also call numbers, i.e. fractional and irrational numbers, negative and complex numbers, have their origin and their foundation (Anhalt) in the basic concepts of number and in the relations which tie them together” (Hua XII, p. 294–5/359).
Here is the entire passage of the letter to Stumpf: “Nach all dem darf ich sagen: Die arithmetica universalis ist keine Wissenschaft, sondern ein Stück formaler Logik, diese selbst würde ich definieren als Kunst der Zeichen (etc, etc,) und sie als ein besonderes, und eines der wichtigsten Kapitel der Logik als Kunstlehre der Erkenntnis bezeichnen. Überhaupt scheinen diese Untersuchungen zu wichtigen Reformen der Logik anzuregen. Ich kenne keine Logik, die auch nur der Möglichkeit einer gemeinen Rechenkunst gerecht würde.” (Hua XII, p. 248).
At first glance, this statement might seem suspicious since Husserl’s conception of analysis, for instance, as a general theory of formal deductive systems is an eminently philosophical conception! More on this later.
I have dealt with this question in Fisette (2002b).
Concerning Husserl’s doctrine of essences and its elaboration into formal and regional ontologies on which we will say more later, see G. Null (1989).
I advocate this position in Fisette (1998) where I claim that the problem of indexicals and essentially occasional expressions is directly responsible for this significant adjustment.
I wish to emphasise the philosophical aspect of this project in order to distinguish it from its phenomenological aspect, for phenomenology claims to be philosophically neutral as shown by the fact that it could be subjected to different philosophical positions, be it in Husserl’s own work or in phenomenology after Husserl. Phenomenology responds to philosophical imperatives, when it becomes transcendental phenomenology, the imperatives which are namely prescribed by the theory of science. It does so while carrying out one of the tasks indispensable to the realisation of such a programme, in this case the task which concerns its foundation and justification. These imperatives have their common source in the idea of a universal philosophy which Husserl construes, following Aristotle, as first philosophy. Moreover, the very idea of first philosophy is reminiscent of the project of a theory of science which is to be found in the Logical Investigations. Indeed, we will see that many texts clearly indicate that the ideal of a universal philosophy is nothing else than the realisation of a genuine
In his preparatory reflections for the 1920/1 lectures on transcendental logic (Hua XVII, p. 351), Husserl claims that his reflections on logic are guided by the idea of a theory of science understood as a science of science
See on that subject U. Melle (1996) “Nature and Spirit”.
The passage in question reads as follows: “Noema in general is, on its part, nothing beyond the generalisation of the idea of meaning to the entire domain of mental acts” (Hua V, p. 89).
On this question, see the enlightening analyses of the 12th chapter of the 1917/8 lectures (Hua XXX, p. 274 f.). Husserl there clearly and cleanly specifies the necessary steps of this widening of the idea of a Wissenschaftslehre beyond the analytic and towards other disciplines and sciences.
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Fisette, D. (2003). Husserl’s Programme of a Wissenschaftslehre in the Logical Investigations . In: Husserl’s Logical Investigations Reconsidered. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0207-2_4
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