Husserl

German Perspectives

John J. Drummond, Otfried Höffe, John J. Drummond, Otfried Höffe

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780823284474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

Edmund Husserl, generally regarded as the founding figure of phenomenology, exerted an enormous influence on the course of twentieth and twenty-first century philosophy. This volume collects and translates essays written by important German-speaking commentators on Husserl, ranging from his contemporaries to scholars of today, to make available in English some of the best commentary on Husserl and the phenomenological project. The essays focus on three problematics within phenomenology: the nature and method of phenomenology; intentionality, with its attendant issues of temporality and subjectivity; and intersubjectivity and culture. Several essays also deal with Martin Heidegger's phenomenology, although in a manner that reveals not only Heidegger's differences with Husserl but also his reliance on and indebtedness to Husserl's phenomenology.Taken together, the book shows the continuing influence of Husserl's thought, demonstrating how such subsequent developments as existentialism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction were defined in part by how they assimilated and departed from Husserlian insights. The course of what has come to be called continental philosophy cannot be described without reference to this assimilation and departure, and among the many successor approaches phenomenology remains a viable avenue for contemporary thought. In addition, problems addressed by Husserl—most notably, intentionality, consciousness, the emotions, and ethics—are of central concern in contemporary non-phenomenological philosophy, and many contemporary thinkers have turned to Husserl for guidance. The essays demonstrate how significant Husserl remains to contemporary philosophy across several traditions and several generations.Includes essays by Rudolf Bernet, Klaus Held, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dieter Lohmar, Verena Mayer and Christopher Erhard, Ullrich Melle, Karl Mertens, Ernst Wolfgang Orth, Jan Pato?ka, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Karl Schuhmann, and Elisabeth Ströker.

PART I

Phenomenology and Its Methodology

The Problem of Psychologism and the Idea of a Phenomenological Science

Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl

The so-called psychologism controversy is, in the narrow sense, a controversy concerning whether the task of establishing the validity of the logical laws rests on logic or psychology. In the broader sense, it concerns the delimitation of the boundary between philosophy and psychology. The fact that the dispute concerning the relationship of philosophy to the other sciences at the end of the nineteenth century erupted in a psychologism controversy (or, the fact that this controversy could become the venue for the dispute concerning the relationship of philosophy to the positive sciences) is indicative of a problematic specific to its time. This problematic showed philosophy to be tightly intertwined materially, personally, and institutionally with psychology, which was diversifying rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century in its line of inquiry and method as it was striving to gain independence. The case of psychophysics and experimental psychology makes it clear that this process was greeted by psychologists as one that made their research more scientific because it separated it from philosophy. It was this tendency that ultimately prevailed despite isolated protests raised for the sake of the quality of psychological research (e.g., from Wilhelm Wundt). Viewed externally, the historical end of the psychologism controversy was ushered in with the institutional division of philosophy and psychology. Viewed substantively, it lies in the restriction of the former epistemological or metaphysical logic to formal logic. At the same time, the separation of modern logic from the old philosophical logic, much like the separation of experimental psychology from philosophy, was promoted as a way of making their work scientific. It thus does not seem exaggerated to understand the psychologism controversy as a symptom of philosophy’s struggle for legitimation in the postmetaphysical era. This struggle was conducted internally as a dispute concerning direction and externally as a dispute concerning boundaries. In both cases the delimitation that was called for or rejected rested upon the (implicit) presupposition of a determinate conception of philosophy and science.

If the psychologism controversy is in fact such a symptom, then this strengthens the suspicion that its institutional and definitional termination cannot count as a “natural” end to the dispute, and that this dispute extends far beyond the primary controversy concerning the foundation of logic. The greater historical meaning of the psychologism controversy is not to be sought in its immediate object, but rather in that of which the controversy is a symptom. The fundamental problem is the problem of scientificity. It is the task of philosophy to clarify where this scientificity of the sciences is grounded and in the process to ground itself as scientific. With an eye toward the justification of claims to knowledge, this way of stating the problem can be developed in various directions and named in different ways: “genesis versus validity,” “empiricism versus apriorism,” “relativism versus absolutism,” and “subjectivism versus objectivism,” among others. Which terminology is selected and how it is understood is essentially dependent upon one’s view of the matter.¹ Beyond all terminological and polemical disputes, every philosophical approach must take a stance on the problem of scientificity. Historical inspection shows that both psychologistic (e.g., Beneke, Lipps) as well as antipsychologistic conceptions of logic (e.g., Bolzano, Cohen) either were passed off as “rescue attempts” for a philosophical science or were intended as a scientific substitute for a philosophy that no one was willing to advocate any longer. Proponents and opponents of psychologism as well as the representatives of distinct psychologistic and antipsychologistic approaches disagreed about the concept of a philosophical science. The myriad definitions of psychologism proposed by the various parties also show that a conflict of scientific standpoints was at stake in the psychologism controversy. How psychologism was defined determined which strategies were pursued in combating or defending it. In a conflict of standpoints, it is to be expected neither that the opponents in the dispute will reach an agreement concerning premises nor that there are only material differences and not methodological ones. In this dispute, the exchange of material solutions to problems offers fewer prospects for acquiring knowledge than does reflection concerning the (respective) manners of stating the problem. To the extent that the psychologism controversy is to be understood as a conflict of standpoints (or, to the extent that it was conducted in a way that is representative of a conflict of standpoints), a confrontation between psychologistic and antipsychologistic arguments only promises to advance knowledge if it occurs on the basis of a determinate standpoint.

This essay clarifies the connection between the problem of psychologism and the problem of scientificity in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. First, I will summarize the principal arguments in the critique of logical psychologism from the first volume of Logical Investigations (Prolegomena to Pure Logic, 1900), interrogating the justification of this critique as well as its underlying concept of psychologism. Then I will advance the thesis that the problem of psychologism is a problem of standpoint and as such played a decisive role in the development of phenomenology. Specifically, this is so because the transition from the descriptive psychology of the second volume of Logical Investigations (Investigations in Phenomenology and the Theory of Knowledge, 1901) to transcendental phenomenology can be traced back to Husserl’s insight into the inadequacy of the critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations. The expansion of the line of inquiry that resulted from this insight occurred on the groundwork of a new conception of philosophical science. According to the tenor of the contemporary critique and of the recent reception of Husserl’s work, the critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations is recognized as overcoming an early psychologistic phase of phenomenology and as a refutation of psychologism that is fundamentally compelling. Although the later development of phenomenology is exposed to incomparably stronger criticism, the following considerations are intended to show why—in view of what can be called “philosophical progress in questions of foundations”—we should maintain an opposite evaluation of this developmental trend, even though it provided no progress with respect to the material arguments against logical psychologism. (The fact that there is progress in the awareness of the problem admittedly does not exclude the possibility that transcendental phenomenology produces new problems [of foundations] in other respects.) The methodological orientation of the question requires that the discussion of the problem of psychologism fade into the background in the context of the doctrines of intentionality and meaning.

The first volume of Logical Investigations seeks to lay the foundation for a pure logic as a universal doctrine of science. Logic is pure to the extent that it is a theoretical science that establishes its own foundations (fundamental concepts, principles) rather than inheriting them from other sciences. The initial contention of antipsychologism (“logical idealism”) is that only logic can ground itself. Accordingly, logic is an autonomous fundamental science. It is not dependent on other sciences. On the contrary, all knowledge in the individual sciences, with respect to its formal conditions, is dependent on pure logic. The principal arguments against a psychological interpretation of logic advanced in Prolegomena can be condensed into two groups: arguments against psychologism relating to its presuppositions and arguments against psychologism relating to its consequences.

Arguments against psychologism relating to its presuppositions include:

1. Psychologism presupposes (explicitly or implicitly) that logic is applied logic or normative logic. This presupposition is unjustified. The sense-content of logical laws contains neither a relation to a thinking subject and the nomological connection of experiences of thinking nor a normative (regulative) claim (“If you want to think correctly, you must think in a way prescribed by the logical laws”).² Every normative discipline rests upon a purely theoretical discipline whose object is the purely theoretical content, separated from all normative content, of the discipline concerned. The laws of pure logic can, for didactic reasons, be interpreted as normative. However, this interpretation concerns only their practical application, not the content of the propositions themselves.
2. Psychologism neglects or obscures the difference between the logical connection of the contents of thought and the psychological connection of the experiences of thinking. It presupposes that there is no essential difference between the two domains, so that it would be possible to speak of the one domain (logical laws) in the terminology of the other (experiences of thought). The real [reale] relationship of cause and effect takes the place of the logical relation of ground and consequence. It is a mistake to confuse the two, for doing so contradicts the proper essence of the logical objects. The law of noncontradiction, for example, is not about the inability to think two propositions that contradict one another at one and the same time but the objective incompatibility of the contents of those propositions.
3. Psychologism disregards the difference between the sciences of idealities and the sciences of realities which is grounded in their respective object domain and the character of their respective laws. The laws of the empirical sciences are laws concerning matters of fact. The propositions of logic pronounce nothing concerning real objects and events. No logical law is a law of matters of fact. In particular, neither in accordance with their justification nor their content do logical laws presuppose anything psychological (“factuality of psychic life”). In Prolegomena to Pure Logic, the conflict between psychologism and antipsychologism bears the title “logical absolutism (logical idealism) versus relativistic (skeptical) psychologism.” In this title, the point of departure and the direction of the critique become clear. Its objective is to demonstrate the countersensical consequences of psychologism.

Arguments against psychologism relating to its consequences include:

1. If the psychologistic interpretation of logic were correct, then logical laws would be psychological laws referring to experiences of thinking, and accordingly they would be laws of matters of fact acquired by means of inductive generalizations. As such, they would have only probable validity. Formal-logical laws, however, have a validity that is exact and necessary in the strict sense (independent of all experience).
2. Psychologism is, as an individual or specific (anthropological) relativism, a form of skepticism. It cancels itself out by violating the conditions of possibility of any theory whatsoever, specifically (a) the subjective-noetic conditions (e.g., evident judgments are to be distinguished from non-evident judgments) and (b) the objective-logical conditions (e.g., each science is a science on the basis of the unity of the connection to its grounding, which is why sciences presuppose the validity of the rules of deduction).³ Psychologistic approaches confuse the subjective-anthropological unity of cognition (a methodological unity of the specifically human attainment of cognition) with the objective-ideal unity of the content of cognition (the idea of the theoretical unity of truth).

Psychologism is that position in the dispute about the grounding of the validity of logical laws according to which this validity can ensue only with the help of psychological regularities. These are generalizations of assertions about real acts of thinking. The universal hallmark of psychologism is an objective reductionism that reduces logic’s realm of objects to that of psychology and that results in a methodological and nomological reductionism. If the objects of logic are not ideal meanings but rather real, psychic experiences of meaning or thinking, then it is legitimate and appropriate to investigate these objects with psychological methods and to determine their mutual relations with the help of psychological regularities. Psychologistic conceptions of logic rest upon a mixing of domains that results not merely from a provisional delimitation of a domain too broadly defined but rather one that has a fundamental character.⁴ The view opposing logical psychologism, which can be designated as “logical idealism,” maintains, on the contrary, that the reductionism of psychologistic logic is untenable because, on the one hand, it is incompatible with the essence of logical objects as ideal objects, and, on the other, it leads to absurd consequences. The concept of validity, whic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Phenomenology and its Methodology
• Part II: Aspects of Intentionality
• Part III: Subjectivity and Culture
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Index