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Formal and Transcendental Logic
"What we today call science, in our pregnant sense of the word, is not science in the historically oldest sense, that of a naively straightforwardly effected work of theoretical reason. Only in a
loose sense do we still refer to the philosophies of the pre-Platonic age, or similar cultural formations of other peoples and times, as sciences. Only as preliminary forms, as stages preliminary to science, do we accept them. Science in a new sense arises in the first instance from Plato's establishing of logic, as a place for exploring the essential requirements of "genuine" knowledge and "genuine" science and thus discovering norms, in conformity with which a science consciously aiming at thorough justness, a science consciously justifying its method and theory by norms, might be built. In intention this logical justification is a justification deriving entirely from pure principles. Science in the Platonic sense intends, then, to be no longer a merely naive activity prompted by a purely theoretical interest. Every step that it takes, it also demands to justify as genuine, as necessarily valid, according to principles. Thus the original sense here is that logical insight into principles, the insight drawn from the pure idea of any possible cognition and method of cognition whatever, precedes the method factually employed and the factual shaping of science, and guides them in practice; whereas the fact of a method and of a science, which have grown up somehow in nalvete must not pass itself off as a norm for rightly shaping scientific production.
Plato's logic arose from the reaction against the universal denial of science by sophistic skepticism. If skepticism denied the essential possibility of any such thing as "philosophy", as science, then Plato had to weigh, and establish by criticism, precisely the essential possibility of such a thing. If all science was called in question, then naturally no fact, science, could be presupposed. Thus Plato was set on the path to the pure idea. Not gathered from the de facto sciences but formative of pure norms, his dialectic of pure ideas — as we say, his logic or his theory of science — was called on to make genuine science possible now for the first time, to guide its practice. And precisely in fulfilling this vocation the Platonic dialectic actually helped create sciences in the pregnant sense, sciences that were consciously sustained by the idea of logical science and sought to actualize it so far as possible. Such were the strict mathematics and natural science whose further developments at higher stages are our modern sciences.
But the original relationship between logic and science has undergone a remarkable reversal in modern times. The sciences made themselves independent. Without being able to satisfy completely the spirit of critical self-justification, they fashioned extremely differentiated methods, whose fruitfulness, it is true, was practically certain, but whose productivity was not clarified by ultimate insight. They fashioned these methods, not indeed with the everyday man's naivete, but still with a naivete of a higher level, which abandoned the appeal to the pure idea, the justifying of method by pure principles, according to ultimate apriori possibilities and necessities. In other words: logic, which was originally the torchbearer for method and claimed to be the theory of the pure principles of possible cognition and science, lost this historical vocation and lagged far behind in its development." - from Husserl's Introduction
loose sense do we still refer to the philosophies of the pre-Platonic age, or similar cultural formations of other peoples and times, as sciences. Only as preliminary forms, as stages preliminary to science, do we accept them. Science in a new sense arises in the first instance from Plato's establishing of logic, as a place for exploring the essential requirements of "genuine" knowledge and "genuine" science and thus discovering norms, in conformity with which a science consciously aiming at thorough justness, a science consciously justifying its method and theory by norms, might be built. In intention this logical justification is a justification deriving entirely from pure principles. Science in the Platonic sense intends, then, to be no longer a merely naive activity prompted by a purely theoretical interest. Every step that it takes, it also demands to justify as genuine, as necessarily valid, according to principles. Thus the original sense here is that logical insight into principles, the insight drawn from the pure idea of any possible cognition and method of cognition whatever, precedes the method factually employed and the factual shaping of science, and guides them in practice; whereas the fact of a method and of a science, which have grown up somehow in nalvete must not pass itself off as a norm for rightly shaping scientific production.
Plato's logic arose from the reaction against the universal denial of science by sophistic skepticism. If skepticism denied the essential possibility of any such thing as "philosophy", as science, then Plato had to weigh, and establish by criticism, precisely the essential possibility of such a thing. If all science was called in question, then naturally no fact, science, could be presupposed. Thus Plato was set on the path to the pure idea. Not gathered from the de facto sciences but formative of pure norms, his dialectic of pure ideas — as we say, his logic or his theory of science — was called on to make genuine science possible now for the first time, to guide its practice. And precisely in fulfilling this vocation the Platonic dialectic actually helped create sciences in the pregnant sense, sciences that were consciously sustained by the idea of logical science and sought to actualize it so far as possible. Such were the strict mathematics and natural science whose further developments at higher stages are our modern sciences.
But the original relationship between logic and science has undergone a remarkable reversal in modern times. The sciences made themselves independent. Without being able to satisfy completely the spirit of critical self-justification, they fashioned extremely differentiated methods, whose fruitfulness, it is true, was practically certain, but whose productivity was not clarified by ultimate insight. They fashioned these methods, not indeed with the everyday man's naivete, but still with a naivete of a higher level, which abandoned the appeal to the pure idea, the justifying of method by pure principles, according to ultimate apriori possibilities and necessities. In other words: logic, which was originally the torchbearer for method and claimed to be the theory of the pure principles of possible cognition and science, lost this historical vocation and lagged far behind in its development." - from Husserl's Introduction
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First published January 1, 1929
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About the author
Edmund Husserl
507 books525 followersEdmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (Dr. phil. hab., University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1887; Ph.D., Mathematics, University of Vienna, 1883) was a philosopher 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 and historicism.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
Born into a Moravian Jewish family, he was baptized as a Lutheran in 1887. Husserl studied mathematics under Karl Weierstrass, completing a Ph.D. under Leo Königsberger, and studied philosophy under Franz Brentano and Carl Stumpf. Husserl taught philosophy, as a Privatdozent at Halle from 1887, then as professor, first at Göttingen from 1901, then at Freiburg im Breisgau from 1916 until his 1928 retirement.
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February 2, 2025
(I need to revise my review that I wrote years ago completely.)
Husserl was an intuitionist in philosophy of mathematics, but yet a Platonic intuitionist. He managed to do this because he broadened the concept of intuition to every kind of evidence. In one's encountering of states of affairs, one has categorial intuition built on sensuous intuition; and then there is intuition of pure categorial forms based on categorial intuition of states of affairs. Husserl well anticipated Michael Dummett's critique of the law of excluded-middle. I do not think Wittgenstein's conventionalism can work any more: to be able to draw a truth table presupposes a form independent from any conventions. Conventions give name to eternal forms instead of creating them.
In my review of Kant I pointed out the ambiguity of Kant's concept of analyticity. Husserl's theory of meaning is better. Instead of stipulating analyticity as expounding one's thought, Husserl took analytic propositions as propositions abstracted from core stuffs while concerning only non-contradictoriness inherent in syntactical forms. It does not expand knowledge of the core stuff because the latter is abstracted, not because it is "only" an explicating of a thought. The latter, however, is far from trivial for Husserl. He realised that what one means can be opaque and that there can be an unfulfilled meaning intention pointing toward a meaning. This is a more sophisticated view than that of Wittgenstein (and most analytic philosophers) who followed Kant in assuming that one can know one's meaning somehow in an instant and dismissed every expression whose meaning cannot be thus known as "meaningless". While for Husserl reason lies ultimately in sense-explicating, cheerleaders of "reason" in Anglosphere presuppose unreflectively a range of expressions that is "meaningful" and celebrate only technical operations within that framework.
Husserl did not seem to think very highly of Frege (his anti-psychologism came from Bolzano instead of Frege and predated Frege's criticism) and his "modern logic" referred mostly to the algebraisation of logic by Leibniz, Boole and Schroder. He asked the question why this algebraisation is possible, and he answered this question by distinguishing the level of non-contradiction and the level of truth of traditional logic and phenomenologically describing mathematicians' focusing of the former level. The bridge is thus easily built as long as the meaning added to the new level is brought into consideration. While idolaters of "cutting-edge" researches may dismiss Husserl's approach as outdated, I do not think that analytic philosophers (at least after Frege and before Dummett) have reached much philosophical depth by their new logic: Russell simply treated logically equivalent propositions as completely the same without reflecting on the logical equivalence itself while Wittgenstein spoke as if there are only fully meaningful expressions (whose meaning is immanent to us) and language illnesses that should be put into treatment. But Husserl's ignorance of the problem of self-reference is a serious insufficiency for me.
Husserl's theory of absolute subjectivity is unsatisfying. He said that I as the absolute ego set others as absolute egos, too and that therefore there is an absolute inter-subjectivity. But how can there be more than one absolutes? And moreover an absolute can even be annulled if I found that what I took to be a human being is a mere statue! As most modern philosophers, Husserl was not a good metaphysician. It is good that in this book he toned down some Avicennian metaphysics of the unbridgeable gap between the real and ideal in LU and HUA3 in his supposedly "metaphysically unbiased" investigations, although he did not give it up.
Husserl was an intuitionist in philosophy of mathematics, but yet a Platonic intuitionist. He managed to do this because he broadened the concept of intuition to every kind of evidence. In one's encountering of states of affairs, one has categorial intuition built on sensuous intuition; and then there is intuition of pure categorial forms based on categorial intuition of states of affairs. Husserl well anticipated Michael Dummett's critique of the law of excluded-middle. I do not think Wittgenstein's conventionalism can work any more: to be able to draw a truth table presupposes a form independent from any conventions. Conventions give name to eternal forms instead of creating them.
In my review of Kant I pointed out the ambiguity of Kant's concept of analyticity. Husserl's theory of meaning is better. Instead of stipulating analyticity as expounding one's thought, Husserl took analytic propositions as propositions abstracted from core stuffs while concerning only non-contradictoriness inherent in syntactical forms. It does not expand knowledge of the core stuff because the latter is abstracted, not because it is "only" an explicating of a thought. The latter, however, is far from trivial for Husserl. He realised that what one means can be opaque and that there can be an unfulfilled meaning intention pointing toward a meaning. This is a more sophisticated view than that of Wittgenstein (and most analytic philosophers) who followed Kant in assuming that one can know one's meaning somehow in an instant and dismissed every expression whose meaning cannot be thus known as "meaningless". While for Husserl reason lies ultimately in sense-explicating, cheerleaders of "reason" in Anglosphere presuppose unreflectively a range of expressions that is "meaningful" and celebrate only technical operations within that framework.
Husserl did not seem to think very highly of Frege (his anti-psychologism came from Bolzano instead of Frege and predated Frege's criticism) and his "modern logic" referred mostly to the algebraisation of logic by Leibniz, Boole and Schroder. He asked the question why this algebraisation is possible, and he answered this question by distinguishing the level of non-contradiction and the level of truth of traditional logic and phenomenologically describing mathematicians' focusing of the former level. The bridge is thus easily built as long as the meaning added to the new level is brought into consideration. While idolaters of "cutting-edge" researches may dismiss Husserl's approach as outdated, I do not think that analytic philosophers (at least after Frege and before Dummett) have reached much philosophical depth by their new logic: Russell simply treated logically equivalent propositions as completely the same without reflecting on the logical equivalence itself while Wittgenstein spoke as if there are only fully meaningful expressions (whose meaning is immanent to us) and language illnesses that should be put into treatment. But Husserl's ignorance of the problem of self-reference is a serious insufficiency for me.
Husserl's theory of absolute subjectivity is unsatisfying. He said that I as the absolute ego set others as absolute egos, too and that therefore there is an absolute inter-subjectivity. But how can there be more than one absolutes? And moreover an absolute can even be annulled if I found that what I took to be a human being is a mere statue! As most modern philosophers, Husserl was not a good metaphysician. It is good that in this book he toned down some Avicennian metaphysics of the unbridgeable gap between the real and ideal in LU and HUA3 in his supposedly "metaphysically unbiased" investigations, although he did not give it up.
August 25, 2021
Erfahrung und Urteil contains introduction by Landgrebe which draws heavily on the Krisis, but according to the correspondence between Husserl and Landgrebe, Husserl was dissatisfied by this introduction and finally suggested (Landgrebe did not oblige) that Formal and Transcendental Logic already suffices as an introduction.
Indeed, this works serves as a kind of bridge between Logische Untersuchungen and EU, incorporating insights of Ideen in the process. What is taken over from LU is mostly the notion of logic as formal ontology, which is now interpreted as simultaneous with formal apophantic. What is incorporated from Ideen is the necessity of turn to transcendental subjectivity in order to ultimately ground the logic; whereby the necessity is revealed once the questions of truth penetrate logic and push it beyond formal ontology/formal apophantic. This sets stage for that glorious ascent from passively synthesizing consciousness - perceiving, pre-predicative consciousness - towards actively judging consciousness, forming truthful scientific claims in the process, in EU.
And yet, there seems to be a sort of sudden rupture between first section about formal ontology and second section about transcendental phenomenology. Where do all those concepts suddenly stem from? For example: what is the relation between ideating abstraction - concept from LU, maintained in the first section - and free variation in the latter section? Is eidos produced by ideating abstraction or free variation? Are both the same?
In LU, Husserl surely didn't discard the question of truth - formation of truthful judgments - but he somehow tries to address the issue, mainly in sixth investigation, with keeping his hand on the formal ontology - he tries to solve this issue adjacent to these formal investigations. It's painful to read, but it's valiant effort. In FTL, once Husserl reaches the question of truthful judgments, he simply declares it unsolvable within the constraints of formal ontology (which is correct, but also trivial) and then pushes aside the entire formal ontology a delves into sort of summary of Ideen, Analyses and a bit of time consciousness. If really meant as introduction to EU, I think the newcomer will be baffled by this sudden move.
I personally don't need Husserl to align transcendental investigations with logical investigations, but invasion of "first-person experience" this sudden (instead of being meticulously developed like in Ideen or EU), and with such relief provided by formal logic, is about to cause all sorts of misunderstandings, making phenomenology seem like some sort of anthropology which it is clearly not.
Anyway, what we at least can perceive here is the formation of rupture between, so to say, analytic and continental tradition - which I actually believe has the same source in the beginning of the twentieth century, whereby one can see close affinities between early Husserl, Vienna guys, Wittgenstein, neo-Kantians, etc. - and maybe with sufficient effort it could be brought to the same source, which would involve closing some unnecessary ruptures.
Indeed, this works serves as a kind of bridge between Logische Untersuchungen and EU, incorporating insights of Ideen in the process. What is taken over from LU is mostly the notion of logic as formal ontology, which is now interpreted as simultaneous with formal apophantic. What is incorporated from Ideen is the necessity of turn to transcendental subjectivity in order to ultimately ground the logic; whereby the necessity is revealed once the questions of truth penetrate logic and push it beyond formal ontology/formal apophantic. This sets stage for that glorious ascent from passively synthesizing consciousness - perceiving, pre-predicative consciousness - towards actively judging consciousness, forming truthful scientific claims in the process, in EU.
And yet, there seems to be a sort of sudden rupture between first section about formal ontology and second section about transcendental phenomenology. Where do all those concepts suddenly stem from? For example: what is the relation between ideating abstraction - concept from LU, maintained in the first section - and free variation in the latter section? Is eidos produced by ideating abstraction or free variation? Are both the same?
In LU, Husserl surely didn't discard the question of truth - formation of truthful judgments - but he somehow tries to address the issue, mainly in sixth investigation, with keeping his hand on the formal ontology - he tries to solve this issue adjacent to these formal investigations. It's painful to read, but it's valiant effort. In FTL, once Husserl reaches the question of truthful judgments, he simply declares it unsolvable within the constraints of formal ontology (which is correct, but also trivial) and then pushes aside the entire formal ontology a delves into sort of summary of Ideen, Analyses and a bit of time consciousness. If really meant as introduction to EU, I think the newcomer will be baffled by this sudden move.
I personally don't need Husserl to align transcendental investigations with logical investigations, but invasion of "first-person experience" this sudden (instead of being meticulously developed like in Ideen or EU), and with such relief provided by formal logic, is about to cause all sorts of misunderstandings, making phenomenology seem like some sort of anthropology which it is clearly not.
Anyway, what we at least can perceive here is the formation of rupture between, so to say, analytic and continental tradition - which I actually believe has the same source in the beginning of the twentieth century, whereby one can see close affinities between early Husserl, Vienna guys, Wittgenstein, neo-Kantians, etc. - and maybe with sufficient effort it could be brought to the same source, which would involve closing some unnecessary ruptures.
April 2, 2025
I definitely need to read this again - but it’s a real tour de force, and a good example of the phenomenological method in action. Recommended reading after reading about Husserl’s phenomenological method.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews