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7/26/2019 Husserl's Logical Investigations
1/5
HU SSERL 'S LOGICAL INVESTTGATJON S*
History has
not
been very kind to Husserl's Logical Investigations.
Matters might have been differen t if Bert ran d Russell had
ac
tually read, a nd
understood,
the copy he had with him in pri son in Brixton duri ng the fi rst
World War, but by and large the work has had practically no effect on exact
philosophy in general or on an alytic philosop hy in pa rticular. Husserl
himself is la rgely to blame for this state
of
affairs, since sho rt ly after
complet ing the work he sai
le
d
off
in to somewhat muddi er , metaphysica l
waters. His later writings tend to be unclear and to suffer from an excess of
grandiose terminology, so that it is onl y spo radically that they co
nt
inue o r
deepen the mag is terial analyses and a rgu ments of the Investigalion s of
1900 0 I This state
of
affa irs is rellected in the history
of the
editions and
tra
nslations
of
the
book
. Findlay's readable bu t im perfect tra nslat ion - in
itself a
co
nsiderable ach
ie
vement - appeared seventy years
af
ter the wo rk
was first published, and the editors
of
Husserl's works in Lo uvain have
refl ected the pre va iling philosoph ical at mosphere on the Continent in tha t,
at least un t
il
recently, they have concentrated their energies on bringing out
edit ions
of
Husserl's later writings.
No w,
however, some twenty vol
um es
of
collected works later, and over eighty yea rs after the
appeara
nce of H usserl 's
one true masterpiece , a critical edition
of
the
work is at
last avai lable in
completed form .
Ursula P
anzer s
edition of volume II of the work, which comes nine years
after Elmar Holenstein's edit ion of the
Prolegomena to
u re
Logic
the
over ture wi th which the si x Logica l Investiga tions pro per begin, contai ns the
texts
of
both
the first (A) edition
of
1900 1901
and
of the second (B) edition
of
1
913/
1921. The two volum
es of
the Panzer edition conta in also the
annotat
ions and supplements interleaved between the pages of H usserl's
own
copy
of the Investigations and in her introduct io n the editor usefully
summari ses the changes Husserl mad e in this addi
ti
onal mate ria l and also
the differences between the first and second edi tions
of
the Investigations
the mselves.
*Review of:
Edmund
Husser ,
Logische Un lersuchunf{en
, II. Band, l und 2. Teil (Husserhana
XIX / ] ,
XI
XI2 ,
ed . Ursula Panzer, The
Ha
gu
e/B
ost
on /L
ancas
ter
: Martinus Ni
jho
ff.
198 4,
LXVlll
XVIII 958 pp.
Grazer Philosophische Studien, 27 (1986), 199207
Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan
7/26/2019 Husserl's Logical Investigations
2/5
200
What results
not, must
be
in
Husserl s
first and in
some more pregnant
For
the
main
text
of
the
addition
is
that
the
easy
of
a lso the intrinsic
second
of the
c
ontrast
ed with
here. But this
editor
may have
interests
of
indefinite article
first
edition
-
evident also
in
fall
into two main groups.
Husserl s
conviction
that
he
had discovered
ses would somehow have their
come to be
seen in a
new and
and more substantial
and
arguments, or
assays
A
characteristic
sional
removal
of the word
its
derivatives
in
such as 'is brought and the like.
The
and
indeed
most notorious such
. In
the
first
edition
Husserl
had
set
account
accounts
that is not
reduced to
Another
not of
the same
order
the
group are those to
be
Husser had ea flier
and
has
fa
scinated
concerns
the
stat
us
and prope
r
mind
be
or substa
ntive
of
says, occasional uses of
and his account of 1I1
basis. In a
hitherto
the
of a
indexical use
of
the firs t
use a proper name,
all
occas
io
nal
or indexica l
ou
t each index
ic a l use of an such
these or 'here must be bound up
on
the
pa
rt of
the
uses with
the non-indexical
contexts.
We
7/26/2019 Husserl's Logical Investigations
3/5
events and
processes
of the
One
felic i
tous
ver
ba
l
introduction
of
the term
formal
concerned
with
Husse
rl
s
cl
arification
material
world.
to
the
third
and his still
valuable account of
and pure and mathematics
are indeed
a
nd contribut
i
ons
the
of
at a
official
of
moment
or
abstract
Thus
for
intuition
for
'm
oment
,
element ,
rando
m.
Th
is
state
of atTairs
is made
still worse in the
moment ' in
the
is
confused
with moment in
This
er
ror has
concepts
(
12
of
a n
extended
discussion
is to be
.
This discussion because
it
between
the
theories
of
necessary
Husserl and his teacher
Brenta-
of 1887-91
now
n
b
et
ween
the two,
Brentanian framework one can
between
simultaneous
never
relate en tities
that Brentano s
st
ructure
world .
The
of t
he
translation.
Generalisation
vi a
extension to the
. We shall quote
from
at both
reader a of Busserl s Aristotelian
of his treatmen t, and
also because
it is absent
out
fi
rst of all that concept of concrete
or
ent
exist in isola t
ion from
all other
7/26/2019 Husserl's Logical Investigations
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204
objects, does not coincide with the concept
thing.
For
we
find concreta in
this sense also, e.g., in the realm of sensations .
To
the unity
of th
e thing there belongs more than the individualised concretum ; there
belongs also (ideally speaking) a possible infinite manifold of tem porally succeeding
concreta
of
one
and
the same form, passing continuously
into
each
othe
r in the sense
of
the concepts
of
change a nd perseverance, this manifold being held together (either
for itself
or
togeth
er
with
other
associated manifolds
of
a similar constitution)
throu
gh
the unity of causality. This means that there obtains a lawflllness
in
relation to these
manifolds which makes the concreta co-existing at any given poin t in time unilaterally
dependent
on
those concreta
of
a n arbitrarily chosen earlier point in time which are
ass igned to it in the sense
of
change
or
pe rseverance. (p.
26
1)
The unity of the thing therefore consists in the existence
of
a con tinuous
series of temporally instantaneous concrete conten ts or 'objects' - Husserl
uses these terms interchangeably - tied together by a causal law.
The re follows a brief formalised treatment of the relation between
successive 'va lues' of a thing at successive inst
ants
(a
relati on later called
'genidentity by
Kurt
Lewin), which
is
followed in turn by an account of
trans-temporal dependence that is manifes ted in the
mater
ial world:
As a result
of
callsality the concreta
of
a given Iflstant are, whether
of
themselves or m
consort wi
th
other
co-existing
concreta,
dependent
on
those
of an
earlier instant -
and thus in a certain se nse non-self-sufficient.
t
must however be
noted. that
thl,
concept
of
dependence used by us so far was defined only as dependence in -.0.
existence .. .
t
is howe ver easy
to
generalise the concepts
of
independent and deper
cont
en
ts so
that
one would be able
to
distinguish between cases
of
co-exisTence
ml Ii
cases
of
succession. We need only so extend the concept
of
whole (and the
co
n
bound up analytically therewith). that one is allowed to speak not only
of
h
(unities, connections) of co-existence bu t also of those of sllccession. Our concepts
then immediately applicab le
to
things, whereby it is
ne
7/26/2019 Husserl's Logical Investigations
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206
modern
philosophy of the sort of extended, careful
argument
that has
beco me the n
orm
- or at least the ideal - in an alytic
ph
ilosophy.
The
sixth Investigation was entirely re-written by Husserl and his re-
writings are to appear, at some stage in the future, in a separate volume
of
Husserliana. Husserl did not him self br ing these revisions to a publishable
form, and therefore allowed the 2nd edition of th is rnvestigation to ap
in 1921 in a version merely
partially
revised'.
In recent years, particularly as a resu lt of work by F0l1esdal , c l n
y r ~
and Woodruff Smith , the so-called
noema theory
of
meaning
set out
b
Husserl in
Ideas
I has received a consid
era
b
le
amount of attention .
h
at t ractiveness of this late r theo ry
is
due in part
to
the fact that Husser "
noemata resemb le F regean
inne and can
indeed be seen as a
generalisaf
of the lat ter. Wha t is less often recorded is that Husser had already, in the
fi rst edition of the present wor k, put for ward another, quite different
of mea ning, resting on his twin theories
of
species
and
dependen
Accor
ding
to this earlier theory each mental event which
is an
act
language use, either
for
itself or taken t
ogether
with other associated
upo
n whi ch it
is
dependen t,
instantiates a species
of
a certain sort.
t
is
t
th is very species whi
ch Hu
sser identifies as the
meaning
of the lingui
expression in que stion .
Thi s (, Aristotelia n ) theory of mean ing, which is of cour se in need
consi
de
rab
le ref
inement , has a
numbe
r
of immediate
advantages. In the
place it yields a simple account of the natu re of linguistic communicaf
(men tal acts of com munic
ati
ng subjects
ma
y ins tantiate identical m
ea
species).
t
yie lds also an elega nt accoun t
of
the relation between Ian u
and thoug
ht
and of
the rel
ation
between logical necessity
and
the
contin
fl ux of mental events of
ju
dging
an
d inferring.
Mo
re
over
, th is earlier th
appeals in its
onto
lo
gy
onl y to the relatively fam ili
ar
relations of instan
tion
(between ins
tan
ce and species) an d intentionalit y (between act
object) . On
th
e la t
er th
eory, in c
ont
rast, in which
noemata
fu
nction b
senses and as (mysterious counterp
ar ts
of) reference, we have
to
acce
ad
di t
ion to instan t iati
on
and the in ten tionali ty of act and object also
further sui g eneris rela ti ons between the act and its noema and betwc
noema and its referent. Now it is a st ri king fact tha t , although the vol
u
nd
er review conta in a
num ber
of refe rences
to
the seco
nd
theory,
various t
ermino
lo
gi
cal alter
ations
designed
to
ease the transition t
latte r, one finds no
arguments
fo r th is seco
nd
theory,
just
as no
argu
are to be found in
Huss
erl's later writ ings f
or
his change of mind.
t is s
ti
ll unfo rt
unate
ly the case
that
the first ,
second, fourth and
207
Investigations
are
without
any sort of
detailed exegesis
or co
mme ntary, in
spite of the fact
th
a t the
problems
they deal with
are
one and all the s
ub
ject
of great contemporary interest.
The
first Investigation
contains
a n
umbe
r of
distinctions that have since become sta ndard within the philosophy
of
language, though Husser draws these distin ctions in ways t
hat
involve
greater atten tion to cogniti ve
deta il
t
han
has been usual among ana lyt
ic
philosophers.
The
second Investigation argues
that
the
notions
of species
an
d generality
cannot
be made sense of in
de
pendently
of
an und erstandin g of the
noti
on
of
necessary
or
universal law. The fourth
de
a
ls
with the
notion of
syntactic
~ m p l e t e n e s s and incompleteness
( unsaturatedness )
and presents a
theory
of syntactic
and
semantic
depend
ence which inl1uenced Lesn iewski in his
development of the first 'categoria l g rammar'. (Thus consider the relation
between a name, a verb
and
the sen tence they belong to.
Hus
serl's accou
nt
allows him to dis tinguish the relation of unilateral dependence of verb on
name fro m the rel
atio
n of bilatera l necessary c
onst
ituency between verb a nd
sentence - every sentence necessarily
co
ntains a
ve
rb
and
every verb
is
necessarily a
part of
a sentence.)
The
fift h In vestigatio n
contains not
only
one
of the most s
ub
tle ac
co
un ts of in dexicality in the litera ture of
ph
iloso-
ph y, bu t also de tailed
accounts
of
the distinctio n between
propos
itional
and
non-propositional attitudes and
of the
connection
between force and
con tent (phrastics
and neustics)
fo
r a ll
menta
l acts and states.
Panzer's edi tion wi ll, it
is hope
d , prepare the way for a d
eta
i
le
d
commentary
on the whole of the Investiga tions of the sort that already exists
in plenty
for
Wittgenstein's
ra fus. Now
that the re is a revisa l of nterest in
a
numbe
r of
qua rter
s in just that combina tion of themes th at the
Investiga-
tions
develop so maste rful ly - c
og
nitive
and
perceptual psychology, formal
ontology
and formal
meaning-theory
and the thorny pro b
le
ms posed by any
attempt to give these a un ified treatment - such a det ailed commentary
w
ou
ld be
mor
e than welcome.
Kevin MULLIGAN
Barry SMITH
Universite de
Ge
neve
University
of
Manchester