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Edmund Husserl

 
Edmund Husserl

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Edmund Husserl



 
 
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; April 8, 1859, Prostejov
Prostejov

Prostejov is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. Today the city is known for its fashion industry and special military forces based there....
, Moravia
Moravia

Moravia is a Historical regions of Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River, Central Europe which rises in the northwest of the region....
, Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire

The Austrian Empire was a periodization successor state empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867....
 – April 26, 1938, Freiburg
Freiburg

Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-W?rttemberg, Germany, in the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest. It straddles the Dreisam river, on the foothills of the Schlossberg....
, Germany) was a philosopher
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 and historicism
Historicism

Historicism refers to philosophy theories that include one or both of two claims:# that there is an organic succession of developments, a notion also known as historism , and/or;...
.

Born into a Moravia
Moravia

Moravia is a Historical regions of Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River, Central Europe which rises in the northwest of the region....
n Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887.






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Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (; April 8, 1859, Prostejov
Prostejov

Prostejov is a city in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic. Today the city is known for its fashion industry and special military forces based there....
, Moravia
Moravia

Moravia is a Historical regions of Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River, Central Europe which rises in the northwest of the region....
, Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire

The Austrian Empire was a periodization successor state empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867....
 – April 26, 1938, Freiburg
Freiburg

Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-W?rttemberg, Germany, in the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest. It straddles the Dreisam river, on the foothills of the Schlossberg....
, Germany) was a philosopher
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 who is deemed the founder of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, believing that experience is the source of all knowledge, while at the same time he elaborated critiques of psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 and historicism
Historicism

Historicism refers to philosophy theories that include one or both of two claims:# that there is an organic succession of developments, a notion also known as historism , and/or;...
.

Born into a Moravia
Moravia

Moravia is a Historical regions of Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River, Central Europe which rises in the northwest of the region....
n Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass
Karl Weierstrass

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass was a Germany mathematics who is often cited as the "father of modern mathematical analysis"....
, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger
Leo Königsberger

Leo K?nigsberger was a Germany mathematician, and history of science. He is best known for his three-volume biography of Hermann von Helmholtz, which remains the standard reference on the subject....
, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano
Franz Brentano

Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano was an influential Germany philosophy and psychology whose influence was felt by other such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski and Alexius Meinong, who followed and adapted his views....
 and Carl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf

Carl Stumpf was a germany Philosophy and Psychology.Born in Wiesentheid, he studied with Franz Brentano and Rudolf Hermann Lotze. He had an important influence on Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern Phenomenology , Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang K?hler and Kurt Koffka, co-founders of Gestalt psychology, as well as the renowned Austrian novelis...
. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

The Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg , also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-orientated university in the cities of Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Wittenberg within Saxony-Anhalt, Germany....
 from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.

Husserl's teaching and writing influenced, among others, Hans Blumenberg
Hans Blumenberg

Hans Blumenberg was a german Philosopher.He studied philosophy, German studies and classics and is considered to be one of the most important German philosophers of recent decades....
, Ludwig Landgrebe
Ludwig Landgrebe

Ludwig Landgrebe was an Austrian phenomenology and Professor of philosophy....
, Eugen Fink
Eugen Fink

Eugen Fink was a Germany philosopher....
, Max Scheler
Max Scheler

Max Scheler was a Germany philosopher known for his work in Phenomenology , ethics, and philosophical anthropology.Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by Jos? Ortega y Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." After his demise in 1928, Heidegger aff...
, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre , commonly known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre , was a French existentialism philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism....
, Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Lévinas

Emmanuel Levinas was a France philosopher and Talmudic commentator....
, Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap

Rudolf Carnap was an influential Germany-born philosophy who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a leading member of the Vienna Circle and a prominent advocate of logical positivism....
, Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl

Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl was a Germany mathematician. Although much of his working life was spent in Z?rich, Switzerland and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of G?ttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski....
, Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a France Phenomenology philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir....
, Alfred Schütz
Alfred Schütz

Alfred Sch?tz was a philosopher and sociologist. He was born in Austria, studied law in Vienna, worked as an international businessperson for Reitler and Company, and moved to the United States in 1939, where he became a member of the faculty of the New School for Social Research....
, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu

Pierre Bourdieu was an acclaimed France Sociology and writer known for his outspoken political views and public engagement. One of the principal players in French intellectual life, Bourdieu became the "intellectual reference" for movements opposed to neo-liberalism and globalisation that developed in France and elsewhere during the 1990s....
, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a France philosophy born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction, which was originally a translation of a Heideggerian term from Being and Time, also translated as 'De-structuring'....
, Jan Patocka
Jan Patocka

Jan Patocka is considered one of the most important contributors to Czech Republic philosophical Phenomenology , as well as one of the most influential central European philosophers of the 20th century....
, Roman Ingarden
Roman Ingarden

Roman Witold Ingarden was a Poland philosopher who worked in phenomenology , ontology and aesthetics.Before World War II, Ingarden published his works mainly in the German language....
, Edith Stein
Edith Stein

Edith Stein was a Germany-Jews Philosophy, a Carmelites nun, martyr, and saint of the Roman Catholic Church, who died at Auschwitz concentration camp....
 (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), Francisco Varela
Francisco Varela

Francisco Javier Varela Garc?a , was a Chilean biology, philosophy and neuroscience who, together with his teacher Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology....
,and Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II

Pope John Paul II John Paul II is widely acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the twentieth century. He has been Pope_John_Paul_II#Role_in_the_fall_of_Communism in bringing down communism in Eastern Europe, as well as significantly improving the Roman Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and A...
.

Biography


Education and early works

Husserl was born into a Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish family in a town that was then in the Austrian Empire
Austrian Empire

The Austrian Empire was a periodization successor state empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867....
, after 1918 a part of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918 until 1992 . On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia....
, and since 1993 a part of the Czech Republic
Czech Republic

The Czech Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country borders Poland to the northeast, Germany to the west, Austria to the south and Slovakia to the east....
.

He initially studied mathematics
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
 at the universities of Leipzig
University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest University in Europeand currently the List_of_universities_in_Germany#Universities_by_age university in Germany....
 (1876) and Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities....
 (1878), under Karl Weierstrass
Karl Weierstrass

Karl Theodor Wilhelm Weierstrass was a Germany mathematics who is often cited as the "father of modern mathematical analysis"....
 and Leopold Kronecker
Leopold Kronecker

Leopold Kronecker was a Germany mathematician and logician who argued that arithmetic and Mathematical analysis must be founded on "whole numbers", saying, "God made the integers; all else is the work of man" ....
. In 1881 he went to Vienna
Vienna

Vienna is the Capital of Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million...
 to study under the supervision of Leo Königsberger
Leo Königsberger

Leo K?nigsberger was a Germany mathematician, and history of science. He is best known for his three-volume biography of Hermann von Helmholtz, which remains the standard reference on the subject....
 (a former student of Weierstrass), obtaining the Ph.D. in 1883 with the work Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung ("Contributions to the Calculus of Variations").

In 1884, he began to attend Franz Brentano's lectures on psychology
Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
 and philosophy at the University of Vienna
University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. Having opened in 1365, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe....
. Husserl was so impressed by Brentano that he decided to dedicate his life to philosophy. In 1886 Husserl went to the University of Halle to obtain his Habilitation
Habilitation

Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a person can achieve by their own pursuit in certain European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate , the habilitation requires the candidate to write a postdoctoral thesis based on independent scholarly accomplishments, reviewed by and defended before an academic c...
 with Carl Stumpf
Carl Stumpf

Carl Stumpf was a germany Philosophy and Psychology.Born in Wiesentheid, he studied with Franz Brentano and Rudolf Hermann Lotze. He had an important influence on Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern Phenomenology , Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang K?hler and Kurt Koffka, co-founders of Gestalt psychology, as well as the renowned Austrian novelis...
, a former student of Brentano. Under his supervision he wrote Über den Begriff der Zahl (On the concept of Number; 1887) which would serve later as the base for his first major work, Philosophie der Arithmetik
Philosophy of Arithmetic

The Philosophy of Arithmetic is the English language title of Edmund Husserl's first published book. It was first published, in the German language, under the full title, Philosophie der Arithmetik....
 (1891).

In these first works he tries to combine mathematics
Mathematics

Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space, change, and related topics of pattern and form. Mathematicians seek out patterns whether found in numbers, space, natural science, computers, imaginary abstractions, or elsewhere....
, psychology
Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
 and philosophy
Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, justice, validity, mind, and language....
 with a main goal to provide a sound foundation for mathematics. He analyzes the psychological process needed to obtain the concept of number and then tries to build up a systematical theory on this analysis. To achieve this he uses several methods and concepts taken from his teachers. From Weierstrass he derives the idea that we generate the concept of number by counting a certain collection of objects. From Brentano and Stumpf he takes over the distinction between proper and improper presenting. In an example Husserl explains this in the following way: if you are standing in front of a house, you have a proper, direct presentation of that house, but if you are looking for it and ask for directions, then these directions (e.g. the house on the corner of this and that street) are an indirect, improper presentation. In other words, you can have a proper presentation of an object if it is actually present, and an improper (or symbolic as he also calls it) if you only can indicate that object through signs, symbols, etc. Husserl's 1901 Logical Investigations is considered the starting point for the formal theory of wholes and their parts known as mereology
Mereology

In philosophy, mereology is a collection of axiomatic first-order theories dealing with parts and their respective wholes. Mereology is both an application of predicate logic and a branch of formal ontology....
.

Another important element that Husserl took over from Brentano is intentionality
Intentionality

The term intentionality is often simplistically summarized as "aboutness". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "the distinguishing property of mind of being necessarily directed upon an Object , whether real or imaginary"....
, the notion that the main characteristic of consciousness
Consciousness

Consciousness is a difficult term to define, because the word is used and understood in a wide variety of ways, so that it frequently happens that what one person sees as a definition of consciousness is seen by others as about something else altogether....
 is that it is always intentional. While often simplistically summarised as "aboutness" or the relationship between mental acts and the external world, Brentano defined it as the main characteristic of mental phenomena, by which they could be distinguished from physical phenomena. Every mental phenomenon, every psychological act has a content, is directed at an object (the intentional object). Every belief, desire etc. has an object that they are about: the believed, the wanted. Brentano used the expression "intentional inexistence" to indicate the status of the objects of thought in the mind. The property of being intentional, of having an intentional object, was the key feature to distinguish mental phenomena and physical phenomena, because physical phenomena lack intentionality altogether.

The elaboration of phenomenology

Some years after the publication of his main work, the Logische Untersuchungen (Logical Investigations; first edition, 1900-1901) Husserl made some key conceptual elaborations which led him to assert that in order to study the structure of consciousness, one would have to distinguish between the act of consciousness and the phenomena at which it is directed (the object-in-itself, transcendent to consciousness). Knowledge of essence
Essence

In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an object or substance theory what it fundamentally is, and which it has by metaphysical necessity, and without which it loses its identity....
s would only be possible by "bracketing
Bracketing (phenomenology)

Bracketing is a term derived from Edmund Husserl for the act of suspending judgment about the natural world that precedes Phenomenology analysis....
" all assumptions about the existence of an external world. This procedure he called epoché. These new concepts prompted the publication of the Ideen (Ideas
Ideas

An idea is a thought or concept.Ideas may also refer to:* Ideas , a Pakistani retail chain* Ideas , a Canadian radio program* IDeaS , an emulator for the Nintendo DS...
) in 1913, in which they were at first incorporated, and a plan for a second edition of the Logische Untersuchungen.

From the Ideen onward, Husserl concentrated on the ideal, essential structures of consciousness. The metaphysical problem of establishing the material reality of what we perceive was of little interest to Husserl in spite of his being a transcendental idealist. Husserl proposed that the world of objects and ways in which we direct ourselves toward and perceive those objects is normally conceived of in what he called the "natural standpoint", which is characterized by a belief that objects materially exist and exhibit properties that we see as emanating from them. Husserl proposed a radical new phenomenological way of looking at objects by examining how we, in our many ways of being intentionally directed toward them, actually "constitute" them (to be distinguished from materially creating objects or objects merely being figments of the imagination); in the Phenomenological standpoint, the object ceases to be something simply "external" and ceases to be seen as providing indicators about what it is, and becomes a grouping of perceptual and functional aspects that imply one another under the idea of a particular object or "type". The notion of objects as real is not expelled by phenomenology, but "bracketed" as a way in which we regard objects instead of a feature that inheres in an object's essence founded in the relation between the object and the perceiver. In order to better understand the world of appearances and objects, phenomenology attempts to identify the invariant features of how objects are perceived and pushes attributions of reality into their role as an attribution about the things we perceive (or an assumption underlying how we perceive objects).

In a later period, Husserl began to wrestle with the complicated issues of intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity is something which is shared by two or more Subject ....
, specifically, how communication about an object can be assumed to refer to the same ideal entity (Cartesian Meditations
Cartesian Meditations

Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on two two-hour lectures he gave at the Sorbonne, in the Amphith?atre Descartes on February 23 and 25, 1929....
, Meditation V). Husserl tries new methods of bringing his readers to understand the importance of phenomenology to scientific inquiry (and specifically to psychology
Psychology

Psychology is an academic and applied science discipline involving the science study of human mental functions and behavior. Occasionally it also relies on symbolic hermeneutics and critical theory, although these traditions are less pronounced than in other social sciences such as sociology....
) and what it means to "bracket" the natural attitude. The Crisis of the European Sciences is Husserl's unfinished work that deals most directly with these issues. In it, Husserl for the first time attempts a historical overview of the development of Western philosophy
Western philosophy

Western philosophy is a term that refers to philosophy thinking in the Western world, as distinct from Eastern philosophy and the varieties of indigenous philosophies....
 and science
Science

In its broadest sense, science refers to any systematic knowledge or practice. In its more usual restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research....
, emphasizing the challenges presented by their increasingly (one-sidedly) empirical
Empirical

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment, as opposed to theory. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or Logical consequence that are observable by the senses....
 and naturalistic
Naturalism (philosophy)

Naturalism is a philosophical position that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and natural law. In its broadest and strongest sense, naturalism is the metaphysics position that "nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature." This is generally referred to as metaphysical or ontological natur...
 orientation. Husserl declares that mental and spiritual reality possess their own reality independent of any physical basis, and that a science of the mind ('Geisteswissenschaft') must be established on as scientific a foundation as the natural science
Natural science

In science, the term natural science refers to a methodological naturalism approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or law of nature origin....
s have managed:
"It is my conviction that intentional phenomenology has for the first time made spirit as spirit the field of systematic scientific experience, thus effecting a total transformation of the task of knowledge."


The Nazi era

Professor Husserl was denied the use of the library at Freiburg as a result of the anti-Jewish legislation the National Socialists (Nazis) passed in April 1933. It is rumoured that his former pupil and Nazi Party member, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
, informed Husserl that he was discharged, but Heidegger later denied this, labelling it as slander. Heidegger (whose philosophy Husserl considered to be the result of a faulty departure from, and grave misunderstanding of, Husserl's own teachings and methods) removed the dedication to Husserl from his most widely known work, Being and Time
Being and Time

Being and Time is a book by Germany philosophy Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction....
, when it was reissued in 1941. This was not due to diminishing relations between the two philosophers, however, but rather as a result of a suggested censorship by Heidegger's publisher who feared that the book may be banned by the Nazi regime. The dedication can still be found in a footnote on page 38, thanking Husserl for his guidance and generosity. The philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger is discussed at length by Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler is a France philosopher and Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. His best known work is Technics and Time, 1....
 in the film The Ister.

After his death, Husserl's manuscripts, amounting to approximately 40,000 pages of "Gabelsberger
Gabelsberger shorthand

Gabelsberger shorthand, named for its creator, is a form of shorthand previously common in Germany and Austria. Created circa 1817 by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, it was first fully described in the 1834 textbook Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie and became rapidly used....
" stenography and his complete research library, were smuggled to Belgium by Herman Van Breda
Herman Van Breda

Herman Leo Van Breda was a Franciscan, philosopher and founder of the Husserl archives at the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium....
 in 1939 and deposited at Leuven
Leuven

Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flanders, Belgium. It is located about 30 kilometers east of Brussels, with as other neighbouring cities Mechelen, Aarschot, Tienen, and Wavre....
 to form the Husserl-Archives of the Higher Institute of Philosophy
Higher Institute of Philosophy

The Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven was founded in 1889 by Cardinal D?sir?-Joseph Mercier to be a beacon of Neo-Thomist philosophy....
. Much of the material in his research manuscripts has been published in the Husserliana
Husserliana

The Husserliana is the complete works project of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, which was made possible by Herman Van Breda after he saved the manuscripts of Husserl....
 critical edition series.

The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl


Meaning and Object in Husserl

From Logical Investigations (1900/1901) to Experience and Judgment (published in 1939), Husserl expressed clearly the difference between meaning and object. He identified several different kinds of names. For example, there are names that have the role of properties that uniquely identify an object. Each of these names express a meaning and designate the same object. Examples of this are "the victor in Jena" and "the loser in Waterloo", or "the equilateral triangle" and "the equiangular triangle"; in both cases, both names express different meanings, but designate the same object. There are names which have no meaning, but have the role of designating an object: "Aristotle", "Socrates", and so on. Finally, there are names which designate a variety of objects. These are called "universal names"; their meaning is a "concept" and refers to a series of objects (the extension of the concept). The way we know sensible objects is called "sensible intuition".

Husserl also identifies a series of "formal words" which are necessary to form sentences and have no sensible correlates. Examples of formal words are "a", "the", "more than", "over", "under", "two", "group", and so on. Every sentence must contain formal words to designate what Husserl calls "formal categories". There are two kinds of categories: meaning categories and formal-ontological categories. Meaning categories relate judgments; they include forms of conjunction, disjunction, forms of plural, among others. Formal-ontological categories relate objects and include notions such as set, cardinal number, ordinal number, part and whole, relation, and so on. The way we know these categories is through a faculty of understanding called "categorial intuition".

Through sensible intuition our consciousness constitutes what Husserl calls a "situation of affairs" (Sachlage). It is a passive constitution where objects themselves are presented to us. To this situation of affairs, through categorial intuition, we are able to constitute a "state of affairs" (Sachverhalt). One situation of affairs through objective acts of consciousness (acts of constituting categorially) can serve as the basis for constituting multiple states of affairs. For example, suppose a and b are two sensible objects in a certain situation of affairs. We can use it as basis to say, "a<b" and "b>a", two judgments which designate different states of affairs. For Husserl a sentence has a proposition or judgment as its meaning, and refers to a state of affairs which has a situation of affairs as a reference base.

Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics

Husserl believed that truth-in-itself has as ontological
Ontology

Ontology in philosophy is the study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic category of being and their relations....
 correlate being-in-itself, just as meaning categories have formal-ontological categories as correlates. Logic
Logic

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical Trivium . The word derives from Greek language ?????? , fem....
 is a formal theory of judgment
Belief

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a proposition or premise to be true....
, that studies the formal a priori
A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)

The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments....
 relations among judgments using meaning categories. Mathematics, on the other hand, is formal ontology
Ontology

Ontology in philosophy is the study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic category of being and their relations....
; it studies all the possible forms of being (of objects). Hence for both logic and mathematics, the different formal categories are the objects of study, not the sensible objects themselves. The problem with the psychological approach to mathematics and logic is that it fails to account for the fact that this approach is about formal categories, and not simply about abstractions from sensibility alone. The reason why we do not deal with sensible objects in mathematics is because of another faculty of understanding called "categorial abstraction." Through this faculty we are able to get rid of sensible components of judgments, and just focus on formal categories themselves.

Thanks to "eidetic intuition" (or "essential intuition"), we are able to grasp the possibility, impossibility, necessity and contingency among concepts and among formal categories. Categorial intuition, along with categorial abstraction and eidetic intuition, are the basis for logical and mathematical knowledge.

Husserl criticized the logicians of his day for not focusing on the relation between subjective processes that give us objective knowledge of pure logic. All subjective activities of consciousness need an ideal correlate, and objective logic (constituted noema
Noema

Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
tically) as it is constituted by consciousness needs a noetic correlate (the subjective activities of consciousness).

Husserl stated that logic has three strata, each further away from consciousness and psychology than those that precede it.

  • The first stratum is what Husserl called a "morphology of meanings" concerning a priori ways to relate judgments to make them meaningful. In this stratum we elaborate a "pure grammar" or a logical syntax, and he would call its rules "laws to prevent non-sense", which would be similar to what logic calls today "formation rules
    Formal language

    A formal language is a set of words, i.e. finite string of letters, or symbols. The inventory from which these letters are taken is called the alphabet over which the language is defined....
    ". Mathematics, as logic's ontological correlate, also has a similar stratum, a "morphology of formal-ontological categories".


  • The second stratum would be called by Husserl "logic of consequence" or the "logic of non-contradiction" which explores all possible forms of true judgments. He includes here syllogistic classic logic, propositional logic and that of predicates. This is a semantic stratum, and the rules of this stratum would be the "laws to avoid counter-sense" or "laws to prevent contradiction". They are very similar to today's logic "transformation rules
    Formal language

    A formal language is a set of words, i.e. finite string of letters, or symbols. The inventory from which these letters are taken is called the alphabet over which the language is defined....
    ". Mathematics also has a similar stratum which is based among others on pure theory of pluralities, and a pure theory of numbers. They provide a science of the conditions of possibility of any theory whatsoever. Husserl also talked about what he called "logic of truth" which consists of the formal laws of possible truth and its modalities, and precedes the third logical third stratum.


  • The third stratum is metalogic
    Metalogic

    Metalogic is the study of the metatheory of logic. While logic is the study of the manner in which logical systems can be used to decide the correctness of arguments, metalogic studies the properties of the logical systems themselves....
    al, what he called a "theory of all possible forms of theories." It explores all possible theories in an a priori
    A priori

    A priori may refer to:* A priori , a type of constructed language* A priori , a knowledge of the actual population* A priori and a posteriori , used to distinguish two types of propositional knowledge...
     fashion, rather than the possibility of theory in general. We could establish theories of possible relations between pure forms of theories, investigate these logical relations and the deductions from such general connection. The logician is free to see the extension of this deductive, theoretical sphere of pure logic.


The ontological correlate to the third stratum is the "theory of manifolds" In formal ontology, it is a free investigation where a mathematician can assign several meanings to several symbols, and all their possible valid deductions in a general and indeterminate manner. It is, properly speaking, the most universal mathematics of all. Through the posit of certain indeterminate objects (formal-ontological categories) as well as any combination of mathematical axioms, mathematicians can explore the apodeictic connections between them, as long as consistency is preserved.

According to Husserl, this view of logic and mathematics accounted for the objectivity of a series of mathematical developments of his time, such as n-dimensional manifold
Manifold

In mathematics, more specifically topology, a manifold is a topological space in which every point has a neighborhood which "resembles" Euclidean space....
s (both Euclidean
Euclidean

List of topics named after Euclid *Euclidean space*Euclidean geometry*Euclid's Elements*Euclidean domain*Euclidean distance*Euclidean ball*Euclidean algorithm...
 and non-Euclidean), Hermann Grassmann
Hermann Grassmann

Hermann G?nther Grassmann was a Germany polymath, renowned in his day as a linguistics and now admired as a mathematics. He was also a physics, Humanism, general scholar, and publisher....
's theory of extension
Exterior algebra

In mathematics, the exterior product or wedge product of vectors is an algebraic construction generalizing certain features of the cross product to higher dimensions....
s, William Rowan Hamilton
William Rowan Hamilton

Sir William Rowan Hamilton was an Ireland physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, who made important contributions to classical mechanics, optics, and algebra....
's Hamiltonian
Hamiltonian

Hamiltonian may refer toIn mathematics:* Hamiltonian system* Hamiltonian path, in graph theory* Hamiltonian group, in group theory* Hamiltonian ...
s, Sophus Lie
Sophus Lie

Marius Sophus Lie was a Norway-born mathematician. He largely created the theory of continuous symmetry, and applied it to the study of geometry and differential equations....
's theory of transformation groups, and Cantor's
Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a Germany mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a foundations of mathematics in mathematics....
 set theory
Set theory

Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies Set , which are collections of objects. Although any type of object can be collected into a set, set theory is applied most often to objects that are relevant to mathematics....
.

Husserl and the Critique of Psychologism


Philosophy of Arithmetic and Frege

Some analytic philosophers suggest that Husserl, after obtaining his PhD in mathematics, began analyzing the foundations of mathematics
Foundations of mathematics

Foundations of mathematics is a term sometimes used for certain fields of mathematics, such as mathematical logic, axiomatic set theory, proof theory, model theory, and recursion theory....
 from a psychological point of view, as a disciple of Brentano
Brentano

There are some famous people named Brentano or von Brentano:* Antonie Brentano* August Brentano, bookseller* Bernard von Brentano, novelist...
. In his professorial doctoral dissertation, On the Concept of Number (1886) and in his Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891), Husserl sought, by employing Brentano's descriptive psychology, to define the natural number
Natural number

In mathematics, a natural number can mean either an element of the Set = *n = = ? = ? ...
s in a way that advanced the methods and techniques of Weierstrass, Dedekind, Georg Cantor
Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a Germany mathematician, born in Russia. He is best known as the creator of set theory, which has become a foundations of mathematics in mathematics....
, Frege, and other contemporary mathematicians. Later, in the first volume of his Logical Investigations, the Prolegomena of Pure Logic, Husserl, while attacking the psychologistic
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 point of view in logic and mathematics, also appears to reject much of his early work, although the forms of psychologism analysed and refuted in the Prolegomena did not apply directly to his Philosophy of Arithmetic. While some scholars point to Frege's
Gottlob Frege

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a Germany mathematics who became a logician and philosophy. He helped found both modern mathematical logic and analytic philosophy....
 negative review of the Philosophy of Arithmetic, this did not turn Husserl towards Platonism
Platonism

Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism....
, because he had already discovered the work of Bernhard Bolzano around 1890/91 and explicitly mentioned Bolzano, Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a Germany polymath who wrote primarily in Latin and French language.He occupies an equally grand place in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics....
 and Lotze
Rudolf Hermann Lotze

Rudolf Hermann Lotze , was a Germany philosopher and logician. He also had a medical degree and was unusually well versed in biology. He argued that if the physical world is governed by mechanical laws, relations and developments in the universe could be explained as the functioning of a world mind....
 as inspirations for his newer position.

Likewise, the opinion that Husserl's notions of noema
Noema

Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
 and object are due to Frege's notions of sense
Sense

Senses are the physiological methods of perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception....
 and reference
Reference

A reference is a relation between Object in which one object designates by linking to another object. Such relations as these may occur in a variety of domains, including logic, computer science, time, art and scholarship....
 is to commit an anachronism
Anachronism

An anachronism is an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other....
, because Husserl's review of Schröder
Schröder

Schr?der is a German language surname which has been held by many notable people including:* Ernst Schr?der, German logician and mathematician....
, published before Frege's landmark 1892 article, clearly distinguishes sense from reference. Likewise, in his criticism of Frege in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl remarks on the distinction between the content and the extension
Extension

Extension may refer to:* A List of cheerleading stunts* The building of community capacity by outsiders, for instance agricultural extension* Extension , relating to the pulling apart of the Earth's crust and lithosphere...
 of a concept. Moreover, the distinction between the subjective mental act, namely the content of a concept, and the (external) object, was developed independently by Brentano and his school
School of Brentano

The School of Brentano refers to the philosophers and psychologists who studied with Franz Brentano and were essentially influenced by him. While it was never a school in the traditional sense, Brentano tried to maintain some cohesion in the school....
, and may have surfaced as early as Brentano's 1870's lectures on logic.

Scholars such as J. N. Mohanty, Claire Ortiz Hill, and Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock, among others, have argued that Husserl's so-called change from psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 to platonism
Platonism

Platonism is the philosophy of Plato or the name of other philosophical systems considered closely derived from it. In a narrower sense the term might indicate the doctrine of Platonic realism....
 came about independently of Frege's review. For example, the review falsely accuses Husserl of subjectivizing everything, so that no objectivity is possible, and falsely attributes to him a notion of abstraction
Abstraction

Abstraction is the process or result of generalization by reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically in order to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose....
 whereby objects disappear until we are left with numbers as mere ghosts. Contrary to what Frege states, in Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic we already find two different kinds of representations: subjective and objective. Moreover, objectivity is clearly defined in that work. Frege's attack seems to be directed at certain foundational doctrines then current in Weierstrass's Berlin School, of which Husserl and Cantor cannot be said to be orthodox representatives.

Furthermore, various sources indicate that Husserl changed his mind about psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 as early as 1890, a year before he published the Philosophy of Arithmetic. Husserl stated that by the time he published that book, he had already changed his mind -- that he had doubts about psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 from the very outset. He attributed this change of mind to his reading of Leibniz, Bolzano, Lotze, and David Hume
David Hume

David Hume was a Scotland philosopher, economist, historian and a key figure in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment....
. Husserl makes no mention of Frege as a decisive factor in this change. In his Logical Investigations, Husserl mentions Frege only twice, once in a footnote to point out that he had retracted three pages of his criticism of Frege's The Foundations of Arithmetic, and again to question Frege's use of the word Bedeutung to designate "reference" rather than "meaning" (sense).

In a letter dated May 24, 1891, Frege thanked Husserl for sending him a copy of the Philosophy of Arithmetic and Husserl's review of Ernst Schröder
Ernst Schröder

Ernst Schr?der was a German mathematician mainly known for his work on algebraic logic. He is a major figure in the history of mathematical logic , by virtue of summarizing and extending the work of George Boole, Augustus De Morgan, Hugh MacColl, and especially Charles Peirce....
's Vorlesungen über die Algebra der Logik. In the same letter, Frege used the review of Schröder's book to analyze Husserl's notion of the sense of reference of concept words. Hence Frege recognized, as early as 1891, that Husserl distinguished between sense and reference. Consequently, Frege and Husserl independently elaborated a theory of sense and reference before 1891.

Commentators argue that Husserl's notion of noema
Noema

Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
 has nothing to do with Frege's notion of sense, because noemata are necessarily fused with noeses
Noesis

Noesis is a Greek word meaning understanding as "the ability to sense or know something, immediately".In Phenomenology , it is an act of consciousness....
 which are the conscious activities of consciousness. Noemata have three different levels:
  • The substratum, which is never presented to the consciousness, and is the support of all the properties of the object;
  • The noematic senses, which are the different ways the objects are presented to us;
  • The modalities of being (possible, doubtful, existent, non-existent, absurd, and so on).
Consequently, in intentional activities, even non-existent objects can be constituted, and form part of the whole noema
Noema

Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
. Frege, however, did not conceive of objects as forming parts of senses: If a proper name denotes a non-existent object, it does not have a reference, hence concepts with no objects have no truth value in arguments. Moreover, Husserl did not maintain that predicates of sentences designate concepts. According to Frege the reference of a sentence is a truth value; for Husserl it is a "state of affairs." Frege's notion of "sense" is unrelated to Husserl's noema
Noema

Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
, while the latter's notions of "meaning" and "object" differ from those of Frege.

In fine, Husserl's conception of logic and mathematics differs from that of Frege, who held that arithmetic
Arithmetic

Arithmetic or arithmetics is the oldest and most elementary branch of mathematics, used by almost everyone, for tasks ranging from simple day-to-day counting to advanced science and business calculations....
 could be derived from logic. For Husserl this is not the case: mathematics (with the exception of geometry
Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers....
) is the ontological correlate of logic, and while both fields are related, neither one is strictly reducible to the other.

Husserl's Criticism of Psychologism

Psychologism
Psychologism

Psychologism is a generic type of position in philosophy according to which psychology plays a central role in grounding or explaining some other, non-psychological type of fact or law....
 in logic stipulated that logic itself was not an independent discipline, but a branch of psychology. Husserl, after his Platonic turn, pointed out that the failure of anti-psychologists to defeat psychologism is a result of being unable to distinguish between the theoretical side of logic (which tells us what is - descriptive), and the normative side (which tells us how we ought to think - prescriptive). Anti-psychologists at that time conceived logic as being normative in nature, when pure logic does not deal at all with "thoughts" but about a priori
A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)

The terms "a priori" and "a posteriori" are used in philosophy to distinguish two types of knowledge, justifications or arguments....
 conditions for any judgments and any theory whatsoever.

Since "truth-in-itself" has "being-in-itself" as ontological correlate, and psychologists reduce truth (and hence logic) to empirical psychology, the inevitable consequence is scepticism. Besides, also psychologists have not been so successful in trying to see how from induction or psychological processes we can justify the absolute certainty of logical principles, such as the principles of identity and non-contradiction. It is therefore futile to base certain logical laws and principles on uncertain processes of the mind.

This confusion made by psychologism (and related disciplines such as biologism and anthropologism) can be due to three specific prejudices:

1. The first prejudice is the supposition that logic is somehow normative in nature. Husserl argues that logic is theoretical, i.e., that logic itself proposes a priori laws which are themselves the basis of the normative side of logic. Since mathematics is related to logic, he cites an example from mathematics: If we have a formula like (a+b)(a-b)=a²-b² it does not tell us how to think mathematically. It just expresses a truth. A proposition that says: "The product of the sum and the difference of a and b should give us the difference of the squares of a and b" does express a normative proposition, but this normative statement is based on the theoretical statement "(a+b)(a-b)=a²-b²".

2. For psychologists, the acts of judging, reasoning, deriving, and so on, are all psychological processes. Therefore, it is the role of psychology to provide the foundation of these processes. Husserl states that this effort made by psychologists are a "µet?ßas?? e?? ???? ?????" (a transgression to another field). It is a µet?ßas?? because psychology cannot possibly provide any foundations for a priori laws which themselves are the basis for all the ways we should think correctly. Psychologists have the problem of confusing intentional activities with the object of these activities. It is important to distinguish between the act of judging and the judgment itself, the act of counting and the number itself, and so on. Counting five objects is undeniably a psychological process, but the number 5 is not.

3. Judgments can be true or not true. Psychologists argue that judgments are true because they become "evidently" true to us. This evidence, a psychological process that "guarantees" truth, is indeed a psychological process. Husserl responds to it saying that truth itself as well as logical laws remain valid always regardless of psychological "evidence" that they are true. No psychological process can explain the a priori objectivity of these logical truths.

From this criticism to psychologism, the distinction between psychological acts from their intentional objects, and the difference between the normative side of logic from the theoretical side, derives from a platonist conception of logic. This means that we should regard logical and mathematical laws as being independent of the human mind, and also as an autonomy of meanings. It is essentially the difference between the real (everything subject to time) and the ideal or irreal (everything that is atemporal), such as logical truths, mathematical entities, mathematical truths and meanings in general.

Philosophers Influenced by Husserl

Hans Blumenberg
Hans Blumenberg

Hans Blumenberg was a german Philosopher.He studied philosophy, German studies and classics and is considered to be one of the most important German philosophers of recent decades....
 received his postdoctoral qualification in 1950, with a dissertation on 'Ontological distance', an inquiry into the crisis of Husserl's phenomenology.

Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl

Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl was a Germany mathematician. Although much of his working life was spent in Z?rich, Switzerland and then Princeton, New Jersey, he is associated with the University of G?ttingen tradition of mathematics, represented by David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski....
's interest in intuitionistic logic
Intuitionistic logic

Intuitionistic logic, or constructivist logic, is the symbolic logic system originally developed by Arend Heyting to provide a formal basis for Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer's programme of intuitionism....
 and impredicativity appears to have resulted from contacts with Husserl.

Rudolf Carnap
Rudolf Carnap

Rudolf Carnap was an influential Germany-born philosophy who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a leading member of the Vienna Circle and a prominent advocate of logical positivism....
 was also influenced by Husserl, not only concerning Husserl's notion of essential insight that Carnap used in his Der Raum, but also his notion of "formation rules" and "transformation rules" is founded on Husserl's philosophy of logic.

Ludwig Landgrebe
Ludwig Landgrebe

Ludwig Landgrebe was an Austrian phenomenology and Professor of philosophy....
 became assistant to Husserl in 1923. From 1939 he collaborated with Eugen Fink
Eugen Fink

Eugen Fink was a Germany philosopher....
 at the Husserl-Archives
Higher Institute of Philosophy

The Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven was founded in 1889 by Cardinal D?sir?-Joseph Mercier to be a beacon of Neo-Thomist philosophy....
 in Leuven, authorized by Husserl. In 1954 he became leader of the Husserl-Archives. Landgrebe is known as one of Husserl's closest associates, but also for his independent views relating to history, religion and politics as seen from the viewpoints of existentialist philosophy and metaphysics.

Max Scheler
Max Scheler

Max Scheler was a Germany philosopher known for his work in Phenomenology , ethics, and philosophical anthropology.Scheler developed further the philosophical method of the founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and was called by Jos? Ortega y Gasset "the first man of the philosophical paradise." After his demise in 1928, Heidegger aff...
 met Husserl in Halle and found in his phenomenology a methodological breakthrough for his own philosophical endeavors. Even though Scheler later criticised Husserl's idealistic logical approach and proposed instead a "phenomenology of love", he states that he remained "deeply indebted" to Husserl throughout his work. Husserl also had some influence on Pope John-Paul II, which appears strongly in a work by the latter, The Acting Person, or Person and Act. It was originally published in Polish in 1969 under his pre-papal name Karol Wojtyla (in collaboration with the polish phenomenologist: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka) and combined phenomenological work with Thomistic
Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Order was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis....
 Ethics.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a France Phenomenology philosopher, strongly influenced by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir....
's Phenomenology of Perception
Phenomenology of Perception

The Phenomenology of Perception was the magnum opus of France Phenomenology philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.Following explicitly from the work of Edmund Husserl, Merleau-Ponty's project is to reveal the phenomenological structure of perception....
 is influenced by Edmund Husserl's work on perception and temporality, including Husserl's theory of retention and protention
Retention and protention

Retention and Protention are key aspects of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology of temporality.Our experience of the world is not of a series of unconnected moments....
.

Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Sellars

Wilfrid Stalker Sellars was an United States philosopher. His father was the noted Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century....
, an influential figure in the so-called "Pittsburgh school" (Robert Brandom
Robert Brandom

Robert Brandom is an United States philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his work manifests both systematic and historical interests in these topics....
, John McDowell
John McDowell

John Henry McDowell is a philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, Oxford University and now University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh....
) had been a student of Marvin Farber
Marvin Farber

Marvin Farber was an United States philosopher. He was Professor Emeritus at the University at Buffalo, and was Chairman of the Department of Philosophy there from 1937 to 1961....
, a pupil of Husserl, and was influenced by phenomenology through him:

Husserl's formal analysis of language also inspired Stanislaw Lesniewski
Stanislaw Lesniewski

Stanislaw Lesniewski was a Poland mathematician, philosopher and logician....
 and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz
Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz was a Poland philosopher and logician.He originated many novel ideas in semiotics, including the "categorial grammar" used by many formal linguists....
 in the development of categorial grammar
Categorial grammar

Categorial grammar is a term used for a family of formalisms in natural language syntax motivated by the principle of compositionality and organized according to the view that syntactic constituents should generally combine as grammatical functions or according to a function-argument relationship....
.

Husserl also influenced Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was an influential Germany Philosophy. His best known book, Being and Time, is generally considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century....
, who was Husserl's assistant, and who Husserl himself considered best suited as his successor until Heidegger started supporting the Nazi ideology. Heidegger's magnum opus Being and Time
Being and Time

Being and Time is a book by Germany philosophy Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly existentialism, hermeneutics and deconstruction....
 is dedicated to Husserl.

Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel

Kurt G?del was an Austrian-United States logician, mathematician and philosopher. One of the most significant logicians of all time, G?del made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when many, such as Bertrand Russell, A....
 expressed very strong appreciation for Husserl's work, especially with regard to "bracketing" or epoche.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre , commonly known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre , was a French existentialism philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism....
 was also largely influenced by Husserl, although he didn't agree with every aspect of his analyses.

The influence of the Husserlian phenomenological tradition in the 21st century is extending beyond the confines of the European and North American legacies. It has already started to impact (indirectly) scholarship in Eastern and Oriental thought, including research on the impetus of philosophical thinking in the history of ideas in Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
.

See also

  • Intentionality
    Intentionality

    The term intentionality is often simplistically summarized as "aboutness". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is "the distinguishing property of mind of being necessarily directed upon an Object , whether real or imaginary"....
  • Intersubjectivity
    Intersubjectivity

    Intersubjectivity is something which is shared by two or more Subject ....
  • Noema
    Noema

    Noema is Greek for the meaning of something. It is the mental equivalent of a Schema or schematic of something. It is the "representation" of an experience of a meaning based system through its own self-referential process....
  • Phenomenology
  • State of affairs
    State of affairs

    The state of affairs is that combination of circumstances applying within a society or group at a particular time. The current state of affairs may be considered acceptable by many observers, but not necessarily by all....


Bibliography


Primary literature


In German
  • 1887. Über den Begriff der Zahl. Psychologische Analysen.
  • 1891. Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen (Philosophy of Arithmetic
    Philosophy of Arithmetic

    The Philosophy of Arithmetic is the English language title of Edmund Husserl's first published book. It was first published, in the German language, under the full title, Philosophie der Arithmetik....
    )
  • 1900. Logische Untersuchungen. Erste Teil: Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (Logical Investigations, Vol 1)
  • 1901. Logische Untersuchungen. Zweite Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis (Logical Investigations, Vol 2)
  • 1911. Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (included in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy: Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man)
  • 1913. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology)
  • 1923-24. Erste Philosophie. Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion (First Philosophy, Vol 2: Phenomenological Reductions)
  • 1925. Erste Philosophie. Erste Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte (First Philosophy Vol 1: Critical History of Ideas)
  • 1928. Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins.
  • 1929. Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft (Formal and Transcendental Logic)
  • 1931. Méditations cartésiennes (Cartesian Meditations
    Cartesian Meditations

    Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on two two-hour lectures he gave at the Sorbonne, in the Amphith?atre Descartes on February 23 and 25, 1929....
    )
  • 1936. Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy)
  • 1939. Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. (Experience and Judgment)
  • 1952. Ideen II: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution.
  • 1952. Ideen III: Die Phänomenologie und die Fundamente der Wissenschaften.

In English
  • Cartesian Meditations
    Cartesian Meditations

    Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology is a book by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, based on two two-hour lectures he gave at the Sorbonne, in the Amphith?atre Descartes on February 23 and 25, 1929....
    , 1960 [1931]. Cairns, D., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1970 [1936/54], Carr, D., trans. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Experience and Judgement, 1973 [1939], Churchill, J. S., and Ameriks, K., translators. London: Routledge.
  • Formal and Transcendental Logic, 1969 [1929], Cairns, D., trans. The Hague: Nijhoff.
  • Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy -- First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology, 1982 [1913]. Kersten, F., trans. The Hague: Nijhoff.
  • Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy - Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, 1989. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, translators. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy - Third Book: Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, 1980, Klein, T. E., and Pohl, W. E., translators. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Logical Investigations, 1973 [1913], Findlay, J. N., trans. London: Routledge.
  • On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), 1990 [1928]. Brough, J.B., trans. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • "Philosophy as Rigorous Science", translated in Lauer, Q., ed., 1965 [1910] Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy. New York: Harper.
  • Philosophy of Arithmetic
    Philosophy of Arithmetic

    The Philosophy of Arithmetic is the English language title of Edmund Husserl's first published book. It was first published, in the German language, under the full title, Philosophie der Arithmetik....
    , Willard, Dallas, trans., 2003 [1891]. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Anthologies:
  • Willard, Dallas, trans., 1994. Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
  • Welton, D., ed., 1999. The Essential Husserl. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.


Secondary literature

  • Derrida, Jacques
    Jacques Derrida

    Jacques Derrida was a France philosophy born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction, which was originally a translation of a Heideggerian term from Being and Time, also translated as 'De-structuring'....
    , 1954 (French), 2003 (English). The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
  • --------, 1962 (French), 1976 (English). Introduction to Husserl's The Origin of Geometry. Includes Derrida's translation of Appendix III of Husserl's 1936 The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.
  • --------, 1967 (French), 1973 (English). Speech and Phenomena (La Voix et le Phénomčne), and other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. ISBN 0-8101-0397-4*Fine, Kit
    Kit Fine

    Kit Fine is Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He previously taught for several years at UCLA. The author of several books and dozens of articles in international academic journals, he has made notable contributions to the fields of philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language and also has written on...
    , 1995, "Part-Whole" in Smith, B., and Smith, D. W., eds., The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Follesdal, Dagfinn, 1972, "An Introduction to Phenomenology for Analytic Philosophers" in Olson, R. E., and Paul, A. M., eds., Contemporary Philosophy in Scandinavia. John Hopkins Univ. Press: 417-30.
  • Hill, C. O., 1991. Word and Object in Husserl, Frege, and Russell: The Roots of Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Ohio Univ. Press.
  • -------- and Rosado Haddock, G. E., 2000. Husserl or Frege? Meaning, Objectivity, and Mathematics. Open Court.
  • Levinas, Emmanuel
    Emmanuel Lévinas

    Emmanuel Levinas was a France philosopher and Talmudic commentator....
    , 1963 (French), 1973 (English). The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Köchler, Hans
    Hans Köchler

    Hans K?chler is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations....
    , 1983, "The Relativity of the Soul and the Absolute State of the Pure Ego", Analecta Husserliana 16: 95-107.
  • --------, 1986. Phenomenological Realism. Selected Essays. Frankfurt a. M./Bern: Peter Lang.
  • Kulikov, Sergei, 2005 (Russian). "" Philosophy of Science 4 (27): 3-13.
  • Mohanty, J. N., 1974, "Husserl and Frege: A New Look at Their Relationship", Research in Phenomenology 4: 51-62.
  • --------, 1982. Edmund Husserl's Theory of Meaning. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • --------, 1982. Husserl and Frege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Natanson, Maurice, 1973. Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-0425-3
  • Ricoeur, Paul
    Paul Ricoeur

    Paul Ric?ur was a French people Philosophy best known for combining Phenomenology description with Hermeneutics interpretation. As such, he is connected to two other major hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer....
    , 1967. Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Rollinger, R. D., 1999, Husserl's Position in the School of Brentano in Phaenomenologica 150. Kluwer. ISBN 0-7923-5684-5
  • --------, 2008. Austrian Phenomenology: Brentano, Husserl, Meinong, and Others on Mind and Language. Frankfurt am Main: Ontos-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86838-005-7
  • Schuhmann, K., 1977. Husserl – Chronik (Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls). Number I in Husserliana Dokumente. Martinus Nijhoff. ISBN 90-247-1972-0
  • Simons, Peter, 1987. Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Sokolowski, Robert. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0521667920
  • Smith, B. & Smith, D. W., eds., 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43616-8
  • Smith, David Woodruff, 2007. Husserl London: Routledge.
  • Stiegler, Bernard
    Bernard Stiegler

    Bernard Stiegler is a France philosopher and Director of the Department of Cultural Development at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. His best known work is Technics and Time, 1....
    , 2009. Technics and Time, 2: Disorientation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Tieszen, Richard, 1995. "Mathematics" in B. Smith & D. W. Smith, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


External links


Husserl archives

  • , the main Husserl-Archive in Leuven
    Leuven

    Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flanders, Belgium. It is located about 30 kilometers east of Brussels, with as other neighbouring cities Mechelen, Aarschot, Tienen, and Wavre....
    , International Centre for Phenomenological Research.
    • , the ongoing critical edition of Husserl's works.
    • , edition for lectures and shorter works.
    • , English translation of Husserl's works.
  • at the University
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  • (New York
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  • , at the École normale supérieure, Paris.
  • .


Other links

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a Open access online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. The SEP was initially developed with U.S....
    :
    • "" -- Christian Beyer. Accessed 2008-09-11.
    • "" -- David Woodruff Smith. Accessed 2008-17-11.
  • Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a free online encyclopedia on Philosophy topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995....
    : " -- Marianne Sawicki. Accessed 2008-11-18.
  • Includes a number of online texts in German and English.
  • open content project.
  • Phenomenological articles, and
  • "" Resource guide on Husserl's logic and formal ontology, with annotated bibliography.
  • on Husserl and phenomenology.
  • devoted to Husserl's phenomenology and its relation to art and architecture, with specific reference to architectural drawings.