Edmund Husserl - Logical Investigations

Logical Investigations

Volume I

International Library of Philosophy

Edited by Jos Bermdez, Tim Crane and Peter Sullivan

Advisory Board: Jonathan Barnes, Fred Dretske, Frances Kamm, Brian Leiter, Huw Price and Sydney Shoemaker

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Logical Investigations, Vols I & II
Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Translated by J. N. Findlay
from the Second German edition of Logische Untersuchungen

with a new Preface by Michael Dummett
and edited with a new Introduction by Dermot Moran

Volume I

Prolegomena to pure logic
(Volume I of the German editions)

Expression and meaning
(Investigation I, Volume II of the German editions)

The ideal unity of the species and modern theories of abstraction
(Investigation II, Volume II of the German editions)

First published in German as Logische Untersuchungen

by M. Niemeyer, Halle 1900/1901

Second German edition, Vol. I and Vol. II, Part I, first published 1913

First published in English 1970

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

Reprinted 1976, 1977, 1982

This paperback edition first published 2001

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

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Reprinted 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008

Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Translation 1970 J. N. Findlay

Preface 2001 Michael Dummett

Introduction and editorial matter 2001 Dermot Moran

Typeset in Times by Graphicraft Ltd, Hong Kong

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

TJI Digital, Padstow, Cornwall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 978-0-415-24189-2 (Vol. I)

ISBN 978-0-415-24190-8 (Vol. II)

Dedicated to
Carl Stumpf
with Honour
and
in Friendship

PROLEGOMENA TO PURE LOGIC
Volume I of the German Editions

CHAPTER ONE
Logic as a normative and, in particular, as a practical discipline

CHAPTER TWO
Theoretical disciplines as the foundation of normative disciplines

CHAPTER THREE
Psychologism, its arguments and its attitude to the usual counter-arguments

CHAPTER FOUR
Empiricistic consequences of psychologism

CHAPTER FIVE
Psychological interpretations of basic logical principles

CHAPTER SIX
Syllogistic inferences psychologistically considered. Syllogistic and chemical formulae

CHAPTER SEVEN
Psychologism as a sceptical relativism

CHAPTER EIGHT
The psychologistic prejudices

CHAPTER NINE
Logic and the principle of the economy of thought

CHAPTER TEN
End of our critical treatments

CHAPTER ELEVEN
The idea of Pure Logic

66 B. The question as it relates to the content of knowledge

CHAPTER ONE
Essential distinctions

CHAPTER TWO
Towards a characterization of the acts which confer meaning

CHAPTER THREE
Fluctuation in meaning and the ideality of unities of meaning

CHAPTER FOUR
The phenomenological and ideal content of the experiences of meaning

CHAPTER ONE
Universal objects and the consciousness of universality

CHAPTER TWO
The psychological hypostatization of the universal

CHAPTER THREE
Abstraction and attention

CHAPTER FOUR
Abstraction and representation

CHAPTER FIVE
Phenomenological study of Humes theory of abstraction

CHAPTER SIX
Separation of varying concepts of abstraction and abstract

Preface

Edmond Husserls Logical Investigations, little known to English-speaking students of philosophy but well known to most students of the subject with a different mother tongue, is a work of the first importance in the history of philosophy. It was written at a turning point in Husserls philosophical development, between his earlier book, Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891), deeply embedded in the psychologism so prevalent in German philosophy of the time, and the Ideas towards a pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy (1913) in which the notion of noema was first presented and the programme of phenomenology was first set out. In Philosophy of Arithmetic Husserl had criticised Gottlob Freges Foundations of Arithmetic from a psychologistic standpoint. Psychologism attempts to explain concepts by reference to the inner mental operations supposedly involved in attaining them or grasping them; Frege had engaged in denouncing this methodology the intrusion of psychological considerations into logic and the analysis of meaning from the Foundations of Arithmetic onwards. Husserl, whose previous relations with Frege had been fairly cordial, was deeply affronted by his savage, and in certain respects unfair, review in 1894 of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, and had no further contact with him for the next twelve years. Freges review was his most sustained attack on psychologism; and although it was resented by Husserl for its unkindness, it is widely believed to have influenced him profoundly, albeit some reject this conjecture. However this may be, Husserl had completely changed his attitude to psychologism by 1900. His arguments against it in the Prolegomena often coincided with those used by Frege, although he elaborated them in far more detail. Yet while Freges objections to psychologism had made little impact, that of Husserls assault on it was overwhelming: the Prolegomena came close to killing off the influence of psychologism within German philosophy, although Husserls old teacher Brentano remained bewildered by this turn of events.

Attention to Husserls famous book may help to correct the impression of German philosophy often given by those who declare their enthusiasm for what they describe as the German tradition in the subject. This they see as originating in the work of Hegel and the idealist school generally and of the Prolegomena.

Frege did not see himself as the founder of a school, although he was highly conscious of his divergence from the approaches of other philosophers contemporary with him. Yet nowadays he is recognised by all analytical philosophers as the grandfather of their school of philosophy with Bolzano, whom Husserl so greatly admired, as its great-grandfather. Husserl, on the other hand, set out to be the inaugurator of a new philosophical method; and no one could deny him the title of founder of phenomenology. They were thus progenitors of two philosophical schools that have diverged so widely from one another that communication between them has until recently been almost impossible. Yet, at the time when Husserls