Abstract
The last chapter ended with establishment of the guiding motivation, but did not state how it was to be satisfied. Here, as always, the factor of freedom must be recognized in following a motivated path. The stages which make up its journey are, within certain limits, determined by open choices.
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Thus, the thought of one in many is present in both the proper and the universal name. As Husserl writes: “What is usually designated as `the universality of a word meaning’ is a fact that in no way points to the universality attributed to concepts of kinds as opposed to concepts of individuals. On the contrary, it comprehends both in the same way” (LU, Tüb. ed., II/2, 30; F., p. 692). The distinction between the two is in what constitutes the many. For the proper name, as embodying the thought of an individual, the many refers to individual intuitions; for the generic name, it refers to individual objects. See Ibid., 1I/2, 31–32; F., pp. 693–94. It is to be noted that the meaning signified by the proper name is, in a recognative synthesis, identifiable with the fulfilling sense of the perception of an individual object. As Husserl defines this last: “This is the identical content which, in perception, pertains to the totality of possible perceptual acts which intend the same object, i.e., intend it perceptually as actually the same” (Ibid., 111 1, 51; F., p. 291).
A much more extended accout of this point is made by R. Sokolowski in “Identity in Absence and Presence,” Husserlian Meditations (Evanston, 1974), pp. 18–56.
Thomas Aquinas gives the classical formulation of this distinction in his Quodlibetum, II, 3c; ed. P. Mandonnet (Paris, 1926), p. 43. See also his Le “De Ente et Essentia,” Ch. 4; ed. M.D. Rolland-Gosselin (Kain, Belgium, 1926), p. 34.
Husserl is not above occasionally contradicting himself. At one point he writes: “The combination a round square really yields a unitary meaning. It is, however, apodictically evident that to this existing meaning no existing object can correspond” (LU, Halle ed., II, 312; see LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 326; F., p. 517). As the context of this passage makes clear, Husserl sees the notion of a round square as inconsistent (widersinnig) but not as grammatically senseless (unsinnig). On a grammatical level of a substantive modified by an adjective, it does have a unity in its sense. Now, to speak of an inconsistent meaning as existing does not just contradict the passage quoted in our text, it also goes against Husserl’s carefully worked out doctrine of the being of the ideal. As we shall see, Husserl will constantly assert that the ideal being of a species is the same as the ideal possibility of its instantiations existing. Thus, without the latter, we cannot speak of ideal being. Here, as always, the Logische Untersuchungen’s individual statements must be weighed in the context of its continuously expressed doctrine.
The distinction between the species as a concept and the species as an object is made in LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 102–103; F., pp. 331–32. See also Ibid., I111, 222; F., p. 431.
In other words, objects are possible that are never actually grasped. See LU, Tüb. ed., II/ 1, 219; F., p. 428.
It is typical of Husserl’s rather troubled relations with Frege that he makes only a general reference to this “Preface.” See LU, Tüb. ed., I, 169, fn. 1;F., p. 179.
It is to be noted that this notion becomes fully defined only in the second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen. One may compare, e.g., Husserl’s remarks on LU, Halle ed., II, 21 and his rewriting of these on LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 21; F., p. 265.
The same assertion is made on the level of the predicability of a term. Universal predicability is a function of a term’s specific unity. See LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 148; F., p. 372.
The relation between possibility and unifiability is expressed by Husserl as follows: “In the limiting case of a single content, the validity of a single species may be defined as its unifiability `with itself.’… The difference between speaking of unifiability and possibility lies simply in the fact that while the latter designates the straightforward validity of a species, the former (prior to the widening of the concept to the limiting case) designates the relation of the component species in a species that counts as one” (LU, Tüb. ed., II/2, 106, 107; F., pp. 752, 753).
See also LU, Tüb. ed., II/1, 279; F., pp. 477–78; Ibid., II/1, 283; F., pp. 480–81.
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Mensch, J.R. (1981). The Category of the Ideal. In: The Question of Being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations . Phaenomenologica, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3446-2_4
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