Metaphysical neutrality in Logical investigations

Dan Zahavi

Københavns Universitet

pp. 93-108

in: Dan Zahavi, Frederik Stjernfelt (eds), One hundred years of phenomenology, Deventer, Kluwer, 2002

Abstract

One of the striking features of Logical Investigations is its metaphysical neutrality. What are the implications of this neutrality? Should it be counted among the many virtues of the work, or rather mourned as a fateful shortcoming? In an article published in the beginning of the 1990s, I answered this question rather unequivocally.1 At that time I considered the neutrality in question to be highly problematic. In the meantime, however, I have had the pleasure of reading Jocelyn Benoist’s recent work Phénoménologie,sémantique, ontologie, where he argues for the opposite conclusion, criticizing my own interpretation in the process. In the light of this criticism, I would like to use this occasion to reconsider the question anew.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund