Logic and mathematics in Husserl's formal and transcendental logic

Robert Sokolowski

pp. 306-327

in: David Carr, Edward Casey (eds), Explorations in phenomenology, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1973

Abstract

Formal and Transcendental Logic is as organic and independent as a written composition can be. It engenders its own parts, incorporates them, adjusts them when its growth demands, and finally subsists in a completeness achieved through its own work. But like an organism, no philosophical writing can live in sheer autonomy; Husserl's Logic must absorb words and meanings from its context—ordinary language and the tradition of philosophy and science—but it leaves none unchanged. The book builds itself in assimilating them; it is the assimilation and activation of sedimented tradition. In comments on his methodology Husserl says he intends to accept "intellectual formations" from the tradition and radically investigate their sense by bringing them to original clarification. But radical investigation and original clarification mean "shaping the sense anew," bringing it to clarity and understanding it has never enjoyed.¹ The completed book is a constellation of such clarified senses, each determined in function of the others and brought to its definitive philosophical exposition.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund