Husserl's Logical Investigations

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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


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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


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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


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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


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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

Husserl's Logical Investigations

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