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Husserl’s Discovery of Philosophical Discourse

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Abstract

Husserl’s Idea of Phenomenology is his first systematic attempt to show how phenomenology differs from natural science and in particular psychology. He does this by the phenomenological reduction. One of his achievements is to show that the formal structures of intentionality are more akin to logic than to psychology. I claim that Husserl’s argument can be made more intuitive if we consider phenomenology to be the study of truth rather than knowledge, and if we see the reduction as primarily a modification in our vocabulary and discourse and not as simply a change in attitude. I briefly compare Husserl’s concept of philosophy with those of Plato and Kant.

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Notes

  1. See also Hua II, p. 34, “Sehen wir näher zu, was so rätselhaft ist und was uns in den nächstliegenden Reflexionen über die Möglichkeit der Erkenntnis in Verlegenheit bringt, so ist es ihre Transzendenz.”

  2. See Williams (2002) for a study of the virtues of truthfulness and their relation to truth.

  3. Aristotle, for example, calls his first philosophy a “theorizing of truth.” See Metaphysics II 1, 993a30; 993b16–31.

  4. Husserl (Hua II, p. 24) says, “Die Philosophie aber liegt in einer völlig neuen Dimension.” On p. 25 he says, “Die Philosophie liegt, ich wiederhole es, in einer gegenüber aller natürlichen Erkenntnis neuen Dimension…”

  5. See Philosophie der Arithmetik (Hua XII, p. 6), where Husserl says that his book will treat “psychological questions” concerning the concepts of multiplicity, unity, and number. As regards Logical Investigations, see Investigation V §7, where he conflates “scientific epistemology and psychology” (II: 91). Husserl dropped this section in the second edition.

  6. In the Crito, for example, Socrates speaks and argues as a philosopher while Crito, who is trying to get his friend Socrates to run away, speaks and argues as a good citizen and a decent man. In the Republic, we have a description of the city as it would be constituted by philosophers, while in the Laws we have a description of a city that makes room for philosophy but is not taken over by it. As V. Bradley Lewis puts it, “Where the Republic presents a philosophic regime, the Laws presents a regime with philosophy” (Lewis 1998, p. 16).

References

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  • Williams, B. (2002). Truth and truthfulness: An essay in genealogy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Correspondence to Robert Sokolowski.

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Sokolowski, R. Husserl’s Discovery of Philosophical Discourse. Husserl Stud 24, 167–175 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-008-9043-5

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