HUSSERL The Arguments of the Philosophers EDITOR: TED HONDERICH The purpose of this series is to provide a contemporary assessment and history of the entire course of philosophical thought. Each book constitutes a detailed, critical introduction to the work of a philosopher of major influence and significance. Plato J. C. B. Gosling Augustine Christopher Kirwan ?“he Presocrutic PhilosopberJ Jonathan Barnes Plotinus Lloyd P Gerson TheScepticJ R. J. Hankinson &water Gerasimos Xenophon Santas Berkeley George Pitcher Descartes Margaret Dauler Wilson Ho&bar Tom Sore11 Locke Michael Ayers Spinoza R. J. Delahunty Bentham Ross Harrison Hume Barry Stroud Butler Terence Penelhum John Stuart Mill John Skorupski Thomas Reid Keith Lehrer Kant Ralph C. S. Walker Hegel M. J. Inwood Schopenhauer D. W. Hamlyn Kierkegaurd Alastair Hannay ~ietZJCbe Richard Schacht l&-l Marx Allen W. Wood Gottiob Frege Hans D. Sluga Meinong Reinhardt Grossmann HUJW~ David Bell G. E. Moore Thomas Baldwin Wittgenstein Robert J. Fogelin RuJJd Mark Sainsbury William James Graham Bird Peirce Christopher Hookway Santayana Timothy L. S. Sprigge Dewey J. E. Tiles Bergson A. R. Lacey J. L. Austin G. J. Warnock Karl Popper Anthony O’Hear Ayer John Foster Sartre Peter Caws HUSSERL The Argzlments of he Philosophers David Bell London and New York First published 1990 by Routledge First published in paperback 1992 Reprinted 1995 This edition reprinted in hardback 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Rot&edge ir an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Grorrp 0 1990 David Bell Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire All rights reserved.N o part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilited in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Catalogtting in Pttbhcation Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congtw Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN O-4 15-20376-7 ISBN O-4 15-20392-9 (set) Publisher’s note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original book may be apparent. For Diane, Alex, and Madeleine Contents Preface ix . . . Abbreviations and References XIII Acknowledgements xv PROLEGOMENON: BRENTANO’S LEGACY 3 Introduction 3 Philosophy and psychology 4 Phenomena, mental and physical .7 Zntentionality, primary and secondary 9 Presentations 12 Judgements 13 The analysis of phenomena 17 Self-evidence, self-knowledge, and self-perception 23 PART I NATURALISM 29 I The Philosophy of Arithmetic 31 Introduction 31 Powers of the mind 36 Authentic presentations of number 46 Symbolic presentations of number 53 The nature of numbers 59 Grounds for dissatisfaction 80 II Logical Investigations 85 Introduction 85 The nature of logic 87 Formal ontology 93 vii CONTENTS Meanings as objects 101 Categorial intuition 107 Meanings and intentionality 114 Meanings and language 125 Fulfilment and objectivity: experiencing the truth 142 PART II TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM 151 III Solipsistic Idealism 153 Introduction 153 From ‘naturalism’ to ‘rigorous science’ 157 The transcendental reduction: preliminaries 161 The transcendental reduction and subjectivity 163 Transcendental being 168 Structures ,oj consciousness 172 The transcendental reduction and meaning 184 Horizons and essences 188 IV The Indivdual and The Lebenswelt 198 Introduction 198 Harmony and the exploding noema 198 Disembodied egos 203 Conscious bodies 207 Subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and the world 215 Notes 233 Bibliography 252 Index 264 . . . vu1 Preface My original intention was to write a short, introductory, critical con- spectus of Husserl’s philosophical thought as a whole. I still indeed hope that something of this aim has been realized in what follows; but there have been many readjustments and compromises on the way. The desire to be brief, for example, was impossible to reconcile fully with the desire to be comprehensive; and likewise I found it difficult to be simul- taneously both introductory and critical, without, that is, becoming unacceptably dogmatic in the process. This book is introductory in the specific sense that it presupposes no acquaintance whatsoever with Husserl’s philosophy on the part of the reader, but instead aims to provide an account of the content, the context, and the development of his thought - an account which, it is hoped, may then itself form the basis for such an acquaintance. The book is not, however, ‘introductory’ in any sense which implies that it is elementary, or which presupposes no acquaintance with non-Husserlian philo- sophical problems, doctrines, concepts, methods, and terminology. And in this connection I am particularly aware that I have on a number of occasions invoked or alluded to the ideas of other philosophers - Kant, Frege, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein, for example - in ways that will not, perhaps, be perspicuous to those not already familiar with them, and, moreover, in ways that are often regrettably dogmatic, in that they assume without defence a possibly problematic or idiosyncratic interpret- ation of those ideas. In extenuation I can only plead the desirability of keeping the final size - and, indeed, price - of the book within reasonable bounds. The need for brevity has not, however, prevented me from including a prolegomenon whose subject matter is the early philosophy of Franz Brentano - and a word needs to be said here in justification of this apparent digression. Brentano stands to Husserl in very much the same relation in which, say, Frege stands to Wittgenstein: one can no more ix PREFACE hope to gain a sympathetic understanding of Wittgenstein’s pre- suppositions, preoccupations, and procedures in ignorance of his inheri- tance from Frege than one can hope to gain an understanding of Husserl’s in ignorance of his inheritance from Brentano. And in both cases the reason is the same: neither Wittgenstein nor Husserl enjoyed a widely- based, formal education or training in philosophy; on the contrary, their respective philosophical outlooks were initially formulated in the context of, and in response to, an extremely narrow set of philosophical concerns - the concerns, predominantly, of a single philosopher. Husserl’s early philosophy is Brentanian through and through (though this is not of course to deny the influence of others on him - Bolzano, Lotze, Stumpf, Kant, and Frege, amongst others). Nevertheless, the mere fact of Husserl’s indebtedness to Brentano, however great, would of itself be insufficient to warrant the inclusion of a lengthy section devoted exclusively to a consideration of the latter’s philosophy. Rather, that section is there because without it a large number of Husserlian doctrines, methods, and assumptions would remain at best arbitrary and unjustified, and at worst inaccessible. For Husserl himself writes, especially in his early works, as if for a reader already familiar with what is meant by such Brentanian terms as, say, ‘psychology’, ‘mental’, ‘physical’, ‘presentation’, ‘intuition’, ‘evidence’, ‘aggregate’, ‘moment’, ‘thing’, ‘intention’, ‘inexistence’, ‘real’, and ‘phenomenon’. What these terms of art mean is, however, very far from obvious, and familiarity with them, and with the doctrines that they are used to articulate, can hardly be presupposed on the part of present-day readers of Husserl’s works. The prolegomenon, it is hoped, will go some way towards filling this lacuna. There is a great deal in Husserl’s thought which I find objectionable. I- have not always made this disagreement explicit, however, and at a number of points I have consciously refrained from all critical comment, no matter how inadequate the ideas under discussion might seem to be. One reason for this omission is that Husserl himself is in many ways his own best critic: his philosophical development is characterized by a number of phases, each of which, with the exception of the first, is motivated by the need to overcome the perceived shortcomings and weaknesses of the one preceding it. It is often unnecessary, therefore, to indicate the ways in which a given doctrine or method is objectionable, or how it might be strengthened; for in his subsequent work Husserl very often does just this himself. I should stress, however, that in what follows absence of explicit critical comment on a particular point only rarely signifies acceptance of, or agreement with it. My original intention to write a short work covering Husserl’s philosophical thought as a whole was an early casualty. It simply proved impossible to deal adequately with every strand - even every major strand - of that thought. Two omissions are massive enough to demand mention X