PART I
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl
The so-called psychologism controversy is, in the narrow sense, a controversy concerning whether the task of establishing the validity of the logical laws rests on logic or psychology. In the broader sense, it concerns the delimitation of the boundary between philosophy and psychology. The fact that the dispute concerning the relationship of philosophy to the other sciences at the end of the nineteenth century erupted in a psychologism controversy (or, the fact that this controversy could become the venue for the dispute concerning the relationship of philosophy to the positive sciences) is indicative of a problematic specific to its time. This problematic showed philosophy to be tightly intertwined materially, personally, and institutionally with psychology, which was diversifying rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century in its line of inquiry and method as it was striving to gain independence. The case of psychophysics and experimental psychology makes it clear that this process was greeted by psychologists as one that made their research more scientific because it separated it from philosophy. It was this tendency that ultimately prevailed despite isolated protests raised for the sake of the quality of psychological research (e.g., from Wilhelm Wundt). Viewed externally, the historical end of the psychologism controversy was ushered in with the institutional division of philosophy and psychology. Viewed substantively, it lies in the restriction of the former epistemological or metaphysical logic to formal logic. At the same time, the separation of modern logic from the old philosophical logic, much like the separation of experimental psychology from philosophy, was promoted as a way of making their work scientific. It thus does not seem exaggerated to understand the psychologism controversy as a symptom of philosophy’s struggle for legitimation in the postmetaphysical era. This struggle was conducted internally as a dispute concerning direction and externally as a dispute concerning boundaries. In both cases the delimitation that was called for or rejected rested upon the (implicit) presupposition of a determinate conception of philosophy and science.
If the psychologism controversy is in fact such a symptom, then this strengthens the suspicion that its institutional and definitional termination cannot count as a “natural” end to the dispute, and that this dispute extends far beyond the primary controversy concerning the foundation of logic. The greater historical meaning of the psychologism controversy is not to be sought in its immediate object, but rather in that of which the controversy is a symptom. The fundamental problem is the problem of scientificity. It is the task of philosophy to clarify where this scientificity of the sciences is grounded and in the process to ground itself as scientific. With an eye toward the justification of claims to knowledge, this way of stating the problem can be developed in various directions and named in different ways: “genesis versus validity,” “empiricism versus apriorism,” “relativism versus absolutism,” and “subjectivism versus objectivism,” among others. Which terminology is selected and how it is understood is essentially dependent upon one’s view of the matter.1 Beyond all terminological and polemical disputes, every philosophical approach must take a stance on the problem of scientificity. Historical inspection shows that both psychologistic (e.g., Beneke, Lipps) as well as antipsychologistic conceptions of logic (e.g., Bolzano, Cohen) either were passed off as “rescue attempts” for a philosophical science or were intended as a scientific substitute for a philosophy that no one was willing to advocate any longer. Proponents and opponents of psychologism as well as the representatives of distinct psychologistic and antipsychologistic approaches disagreed about the concept of a philosophical science. The myriad definitions of psychologism proposed by the various parties also show that a conflict of scientific standpoints was at stake in the psychologism controversy. How psychologism was defined determined which strategies were pursued in combating or defending it. In a conflict of standpoints, it is to be expected neither that the opponents in the dispute will reach an agreement concerning premises nor that there are only material differences and not methodological ones. In this dispute, the exchange of material solutions to problems offers fewer prospects for acquiring knowledge than does reflection concerning the (respective) manners of stating the problem. To the extent that the psychologism controversy is to be understood as a conflict of standpoints (or, to the extent that it was conducted in a way that is representative of a conflict of standpoints), a confrontation between psychologistic and antipsychologistic arguments only promises to advance knowledge if it occurs on the basis of a determinate standpoint.
This essay clarifies the connection between the problem of psychologism and the problem of scientificity in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. First, I will summarize the principal arguments in the critique of logical psychologism from the first volume of Logical Investigations (Prolegomena to Pure Logic, 1900), interrogating the justification of this critique as well as its underlying concept of psychologism. Then I will advance the thesis that the problem of psychologism is a problem of standpoint and as such played a decisive role in the development of phenomenology. Specifically, this is so because the transition from the descriptive psychology of the second volume of Logical Investigations (Investigations in Phenomenology and the Theory of Knowledge, 1901) to transcendental phenomenology can be traced back to Husserl’s insight into the inadequacy of the critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations. The expansion of the line of inquiry that resulted from this insight occurred on the groundwork of a new conception of philosophical science. According to the tenor of the contemporary critique and of the recent reception of Husserl’s work, the critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations is recognized as overcoming an early psychologistic phase of phenomenology and as a refutation of psychologism that is fundamentally compelling. Although the later development of phenomenology is exposed to incomparably stronger criticism, the following considerations are intended to show why—in view of what can be called “philosophical progress in questions of foundations”—we should maintain an opposite evaluation of this developmental trend, even though it provided no progress with respect to the material arguments against logical psychologism. (The fact that there is progress in the awareness of the problem admittedly does not exclude the possibility that transcendental phenomenology produces new problems [of foundations] in other respects.) The methodological orientation of the question requires that the discussion of the problem of psychologism fade into the background in the context of the doctrines of intentionality and meaning.
The first volume of Logical Investigations seeks to lay the foundation for a pure logic as a universal doctrine of science. Logic is pure to the extent that it is a theoretical science that establishes its own foundations (fundamental concepts, principles) rather than inheriting them from other sciences. The initial contention of antipsychologism (“logical idealism”) is that only logic can ground itself. Accordingly, logic is an autonomous fundamental science. It is not dependent on other sciences. On the contrary, all knowledge in the individual sciences, with respect to its formal conditions, is dependent on pure logic. The principal arguments against a psychological interpretation of logic advanced in Prolegomena can be condensed into two groups: arguments against psychologism relating to its presuppositions and arguments against psychologism relating to its consequences.
Arguments against psychologism relating to its presuppositions include:
1. Psychologism presupposes (explicitly or implicitly) that logic is applied logic or normative logic. This presupposition is unjustified. The sense-content of logical laws contains neither a relation to a thinking subject and the nomological connection of experiences of thinking nor a normative (regulative) claim (“If you want to think correctly, you must think in a way prescribed by the logical laws”).2 Every normative discipline rests upon a purely theoretical discipline whose object is the purely theoretical content, separated from all normative content, of the discipline concerned. The laws of pure logic can, for didactic reasons, be interpreted as normative. However, this interpretation concerns only their practical application, not the content of the propositions themselves.
2. Psychologism neglects or obscures the difference between the logical connection of the contents of thought and the psychological connection of the experiences of thinking. It presupposes that there is no essential difference between the two domains, so that it would be possible to speak of the one domain (logical laws) in the terminology of the other (experiences of thought). The real [reale] relationship of cause and effect takes the place of the logical relation of ground and consequence. It is a mistake to confuse the two, for doing so contradicts the proper essence of the logical objects. The law of noncontradiction, for example, is not about the inability to think two propositions that contradict one another at one and the same time but the objective incompatibility of the contents of those propositions.
3. Psychologism disregards the difference between the sciences of idealities and the sciences of realities which is grounded in their respective object domain and the character of their respective laws. The laws of the empirical sciences are laws concerning matters of fact. The propositions of logic pronounce nothing concerning real objects and events. No logical law is a law of matters of fact. In particular, neither in accordance with their justification nor their content do logical laws presuppose anything psychological (“factuality of psychic life”). In Prolegomena to Pure Logic, the conflict between psychologism and antipsychologism bears the title “logical absolutism (logical idealism) versus relativistic (skeptical) psychologism.” In this title, the point of departure and the direction of the critique become clear. Its objective is to demonstrate the countersensical consequences of psychologism.
Arguments against psychologism relating to its consequences include:
1. If the psychologistic interpretation of logic were correct, then logical laws would be psychological laws referring to experiences of thinking, and accordingly they would be laws of matters of fact acquired by means of inductive generalizations. As such, they would have only probable validity. Formal-logical laws, however, have a validity that is exact and necessary in the strict sense (independent of all experience).
2. Psychologism is, as an individual or specific (anthropological) relativism, a form of skepticism. It cancels itself out by violating the conditions of possibility of any theory whatsoever, specifically (a) the subjective-noetic conditions (e.g., evident judgments are to be distinguished from non-evident judgments) and (b) the objective-logical conditions (e.g., each science is a science on the basis of the unity of the connection to its grounding, which is why sciences presuppose the validity of the rules of deduction).3 Psychologistic approaches confuse the subjective-anthropological unity of cognition (a methodological unity of the specifically human attainment of cognition) with the objective-ideal unity of the content of cognition (the idea of the theoretical unity of truth).
Psychologism is that position in the dispute about the grounding of the validity of logical laws according to which this validity can ensue only with the help of psychological regularities. These are generalizations of assertions about real acts of thinking. The universal hallmark of psychologism is an objective reductionism that reduces logic’s realm of objects to that of psychology and that results in a methodological and nomological reductionism. If the objects of logic are not ideal meanings but rather real, psychic experiences of meaning or thinking, then it is legitimate and appropriate to investigate these objects with psychological methods and to determine their mutual relations with the help of psychological regularities. Psychologistic conceptions of logic rest upon a mixing of domains that results not merely from a provisional delimitation of a domain too broadly defined but rather one that has a fundamental character.4 The view opposing logical psychologism, which can be designated as “logical idealism,” maintains, on the contrary, that the reductionism of psychologistic logic is untenable because, on the one hand, it is incompatible with the essence of logical objects as ideal objects, and, on the other, it leads to absurd consequences. The concept of validity, which includes no relationship whatsoever to a (real or ideal) subject, cannot be traced back to the fact of validity, that is, to the factual recognition of validity. An act of recognition of this kind presupposes the validity of logical laws.
The central position in Prolegomena’s critique of psychologism is occupied by the refutation of the thesis that logic is nothing other than a technology of (correct) thinking and that it is thus legitimate to carry out a psychological investigation of logic.5 According to the opposing view, that of the critic of psychologism, the conception of logic as a normative discipline can only refer to the fact that logical laws provide a norm for correct thinking in their application to real acts of thought. A thinking that is to be correct must accord with logical laws. The norm prescribes which means must be embraced if a determinate goal is to be reached. To the extent that this goal—to think correctly—can be recognized as purposive, logic has the characteristic of a practical discipline. (What Husserl calls “normative logic” and occasionally “methodological logic” could less ambiguously be called “instrumental” or “practical logic.”6) At the same time, there is no normative judgment underlying the goal itself. The advocate of a normative logic does not maintain that it is good to judge correctly. Consequently, she also does not attempt to justify the recognition of norms by way of a philosophy of value or a moral philosophy in which she seeks to prove the validity of certain values. The task of logic as a normative science is merely to formulate the universal conditions of conformity (or nonconformity) to a norm, specifically the norm of scientificity (or theoreticity). As Husserl writes: “For it is of the essence of a normative science that it establishes general propositions in which, with an eye to a normative standard, an Idea or highest goal, certain features are mentioned whose possession guarantees conformity to that standard or sets forth an indispensable condition of the latter. A normative science also establishes cognate propositions in which the case of non-conformity is considered or the absence of such states of affairs is pronounced.”7 Drawing on a distinction made by Max Weber, one could say that normative logic establishes the conditions of fulfillment of a relation to a value without itself performing valuations. In this sense, it is characteristic of normative logic to describe norms, not to posit them.
The critic of psychologism does not reject a normative interpretation of logic as such. The logical (and mathematical) laws have a “natural right to regulate our thought.”8 In its function as the universal doctrine of science, logic is normative with respect to the formal conditions of scientificity.9 If, however, the normative interpretation of logic serves as the basis [Grundlage] for a psychological grounding [Begründung] of logic, then the charge of confusing fields applies to this interpretation. Normative logic belongs to the “prejudices” of psychologism because it legitimizes the approach of psychologically grounding logic: The idea of normativization produces a relation between the logical object and psychic act, and with that it gives rise to the impression that psychic acts are of pressing relevance with respect to logic. A naturalistic fallacy is on hand if one maintains that the normativity of “ought” statements (“You ought to judge correctly”) is to be derived by establishing matters of fact about real processes of thought. The refutation of normative logic in Prolegomena is not to be understood eo ipso as a refutation of a naturalistic fallacy. Whether this objection pertains to a psychological logic in any given case depends on the position that logic takes with respect to the normative character of judgments. A normative interpretation of logic that takes itself to be an application of pure logic and whose laws are elucidated in reference to the logical ideal of consciousness in general does not represent a naturalization of the idea of correct judgment. On the contrary, we have a naturalistic reductionism in a psychological grounding of logic when two conditions are met: (1) One denies that a pure (theoretical) logic constitutes the basis of the normative interpretation (logical normativism). And (2) one does not merely make an assertion concerning acts that recognize logical norms as valid (i.e., an assertion concerning the facticity of validity), nor merely one concerning the factual (non)conformity to the conditions for the fulfillment of norms; rather, one presents statements of fact of this kind as grounding norms (naturalistic normativism). If one holds only (1) but not (2), then we have a psychologistic interpretation of logic. But this interpretation does not rest—at least, not necessarily—on a naturalistic fallacy. Just as it cannot be assumed that every psychologism is characterized by naturalistic normativism, neither can it be assumed that every logical normativism is connected to a psychologistic approach. Only when the latter is taken into account can it be established conversely, with Husserl, that an antipsychologism that operates with a normative logic cannot achieve an adequate critique of psychologism. When Husserl speaks in §41 of Prolegomena, in reference to the historical positions in the controversy, of an antipsychologistic normative logic, this refers to the self-understanding of some critics of psychologism and not to his own conception. A normative interpretation of logic can be the common presupposition of psychologistic and antipsychologistic positions. A conception that is not only normative, but, in accordance with assertion (1) above, normativistic, can be advanced in naturalistic-empiricist and in objective-idealistic form. Husserl’s own, non-normativistic, logical idealism is incompatible with both approaches. This nuanced assessment of the situation is admittedly still unsettled if the close connection of normative and psychological interpretations of logic in the introduction to Prolegomena is made the starting point of the investigation by identifying the problematic of psychologism versus antipsychologism with the option of logic as technology versus a pure, theoretical logic.10
If logic were an essentially normative discipline, then its theoretical basis would have to lie outside of itself in another discipline that would investigate the material content of logical rules. If psychology is introduced as this fundamental science of logic, then logic is dependent on an empirical, inductive discipline with respect to its grounding. A view opposing pure (purely theoretical) logic is only at issue in the normative interpretation of logic if this interpretation is presented as the only justified conception of logic.11 In this case, logical psychologism follows as a consequence of the normative conception, for this conception regards the validity of logical laws as grounded in their norm-giving function, that is, in the recognition of a relation of validity between logical laws and the thinking subject. The logical norms could be grounded on the relation to real subjects and also on an ideal, logical consciousness in general [überhaupt] that would serve the real subjects as a model for their meaning-intentions and judgment-formations. There is a relation to real thinking subjects on hand wherever one understands by “normative judgment” not the proper, logical norms, but rather methodological propositions, that is, propositions that give technical prescriptions for the production and critique of scientific cognition.12 A theoretical discipline, by contrast, is directed purely toward the investigation of “matters that really belong together theoretically, in virtue of the inner laws of things.”13 The fact that there is no place whatsoever in theoretical logic for the relation to a real or ideal subject means that in it the “relation of all researches to a fundamental valuation as the source of a dominant normative interest” is entirely lacking.14
For an evaluation of the psychologism controversy, it is essential to take into account the presuppositions contained in the argumentation of the generic positions. Both the justification of psychologistic reduction as well as its refutation rest upon determinate presuppositions. In Husserl’s case, the distinction between sciences of idealities and sciences of realities is at stake. A science is the ideal unity of a context of justification [Begründungszusammenhang], that is, a connection of truths, in which the connection of things, to which the truths are related, comes to objective validity: “Nothing can be without being thus or thus determined, and that it is, and that it is thus and thus determined, is the self-subsistent truth which is the necessary correlate of the self-subsistent being.”15 That is not to deny that a historical, psychological, or anthropological mode of observing scientific activity and its results is equally possible. However, it is to deny that modes of observing of this kind, which are related to determinate realizations or conditions of realization, could contribute anything to the question of the universal, formal conditions of the possibility of scientific cognition.16 This question can only be answered by logic as pure, ideal science. The advocate of a psychological grounding of logic, on the contrary, assumes that sciences of idealities and sciences of realities do not present absolutely heterogeneous domains. She thereby forfeits the claim of logic, as ideal science, to a rational grounding because she takes it to be dispensable.
Those who advocate this approach do not acknowledge that there is a fallacy in the attempt to ground the validity of logical laws with the help of a science of matters of fact. Only from the opponent’s standpoint can it be maintained that a fallacy exists, and only on the assumption that it is valid to accept a strict partition of real and ideal science. Talk of “confounding domains” only makes sense when multiple domains are distinguished as heterogeneous. By contrast, the logical idealist, for whom the heterogeneity of psychic and logical objects and laws is evident, cannot accept the thesis that logical idealism maintains an inadmissible multiplication of entities and that a psychological grounding of logic is for that reason in order. It thus seems, so far as a noncircular grounding of their respective positions is concerned, that logical psychologists and logical idealists are on an equal footing. If we do not want to settle here for (methodological or scientific-systematic) arguments of practicability, then the problem must be posed as an ontological problem. It cannot be assumed that the solution to this problem can be provided with the help of a logic that views itself as free of metaphysics. It is necessary to take a position explicitly concerning the relationship between logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. That is precisely the problem hanging over the first volume of Logical Investigations. This conspicuous problem remains untreated because the argumentation assumes that the key to the solution of the problem is not to be found in the presuppositions of psychologism but in its consequences. Investigating these is supposed to show that acknowledging or rejecting the strict distinction between sciences of idealities and sciences of realities is not a matter that can be left up to subjective caprice. The goal of the demonstration is to confirm the legitimacy of this distinction. If this goal is achieved, then it must be accepted that logical psychologists and logical idealists are admittedly on an equal footing when it comes to the dependency of their respective arguments on determinate presuppositions, but not when it comes to the legitimacy of these presuppositions. That is where the dispute is to be decided.
Prolegomena seeks to achieve this goal with the help of a refutation of psychologism based on its consequences. Now, under what conditions can a reductio ad absurdum appear as a means suitable to this end? The strategy of refuting psychologism from its consequences depends on rendering inoperative the presupposition that leads to the stalemate between proponents of psychologism and logicists where the demonstrability of their positions is concerned. Specifically, this concerns the presupposition that the first and chief object of the psychologism controversy is an ontological assertion.17 Husserl declares the suspension of this presupposition by prefacing his investigations with a determinate definition of skepticism. According to this definition, the only skepticism that comes into question as a position opposing logical absolutism is logical or noetic skepticism. By this he means all theories “whose theses either plainly say, or analytically imply, that the logical or noetic conditions for the possibility of any theory are false.”18 Husserl’s assertion that every psychologism (and empiricism) is a form of skepticism pertains exclusively to this epistemological skepticism, not, however, to metaphysical skepticism, which “[tries] to limit human knowledge considerably and on principle.”19 It seeks especially to “remove from the sphere of possible knowledge wide fields of real being, or such especially precious sciences as metaphysics, natural science, or ethics as a rational discipline.”20 Only epistemological skepticism, not metaphysical skepticism, is to be rejected as countersensical. The concrete performance of the critique of psychologism in Prolegomena consists in demonstrating, with respect to various psychologistic approaches, that and how these approaches (contrary to the conception of their proponents, e.g., Mill, Bain, Sigwart, Lipps, Erdmann, Cornelius) lead to epistemological skepticism. Epistemological skepticism is by definition a theory that violates the conditions of the possibility of any theory whatsoever: it violates both the subjective conditions of cognition and the objective-logical conditions grounded in the concepts “object,” “proposition,” “truth,” “theory,” and so on.21 If logical psychologism in the above sense is to be understood as an epistemological skepticism, then it is not merely the case that a psychological theory has been set in the wrong place (or with the wrong grounding claims), but rather that there is no theory here at all. And if that is the case, then it is impossible to ground the validity of the logical laws, as was asserted, through a psychological theory.
What about the positive side of the critique, which is called for even if the refutation of a psychologistic grounding of logic succeeds based on the skeptical consequences of this approach? Is a self-grounding of logic possible? If the validity of the logic’s fundamental principles (principle of identity, principle of noncontradiction, principle of excluded middle) is presupposed in every grounding, then it is evident that these principles cannot themselves be deductively grounded. Their validity can only be discerned as evident, that is, can only be designated as “grounded” [begründet] on the basis [Grundlage] of a nondeductive concept of “grounding” [Begründungsbegriff]. The logical principles are not themselves to be grounded again by means of precisely these principles. Having said that, however, the logicist also cannot argue against a psychological grounding of fundamental logical principles by appealing to the circularity of grounding (understood in the usual sense). The assertion that psychology presupposes the validity of the logical laws is to be stated more precisely by explaining that a psychology does indeed have to proceed in accordance with the rules of logic if it is to be a science; it cannot say, however, that it employs the validity of logical laws as premises of its grounding. Inferences, then, are made in accordance with logical rules, but not from them. In such a case, there is not a direct circle (cirulus in demonstrando), but rather a reflexive circle.22 Of all sciences, only pure logic is not circular, for (1) in its case what is to be demonstrated (the conclusions) and the premises of the proof are homogeneous and (2) pure logic does not prove the principles governing the deductions in question in these deductions themselves but rather posits them as evidently discernible axioms. With this clarification, however, the problem is not solved. For someone who does not acknowledge the presuppositions of these considerations—that logical objects have an ideal characteristic—also will not see the necessity of a self-grounding of pure logic. Instead, she will be satisfied with the possibility of an inductive acquisition of logical axioms from matters of fact that have been established concerning psychic experiences. (Here, then, the matter can be decided by means of a reductio ad absurdum.) In relation to the self-grounding of a psychologistic or logicistic position—and only in relation to this (i.e., by disregarding the argument based on consequences)—the decision for one’s own standpoint is not the result of successful arguments but is presupposed in every argument.
The objection of a petitio principii can only be alleged in the case of deductive attempts at grounding, not against groundings that consist in exhibitions of evidence. An appeal to evidence, however, from whichever side it arises, can only end the dispute without both sides acknowledging the material result as binding.23 Only a decision reached by means of probative [beweisende] argumentation has an intersubjectively compelling characteristic: “That we should, however, be able to convince the subjectivist personally, and make him admit his error, is not important: what is important is to refute him in an objectively valid manner. Refutation presupposes the leverage of certain self-evident, universally valid convictions.”24 These convictions—for example, that truth is an idea and as such supratemporal—relate once more to the presupposition of an “essential, quite unbridgeable difference between sciences of the ideal and sciences of the real.”25 Even if the argument from the consequences of psychologism were unimpeachable, the psychologism controversy would still be decided from the standpoint of pure logic. However, the problem of psychologism would not be resolved without remainder to the extent that the proper problem of an antipsychologistic conception would still need to be mastered. The assertion of logical absolutism goes beyond the claim that logical psychologism is not and cannot be grounded. The logical idealist asserts that there are ideal meanings that are to be acknowledged in their objectivity even if they are never grasped as objects in an act of thinking. If the logical idealist wants to defend her position, she must clarify the sense of this assertion of ideality. In this connection, Husserl claims that he can get by without metaphysical assumptions. The distinction between reality and ideality is introduced in Prolegomena by means of a reference to the evidence of ideal objects that are utterly independent from the subject. How then is the ideality of logical objects, thus understood, to be kept free of metaphysical assumptions? Regarding the positive, systematic execution of an antipsychologistic position, the weakness of the Husserlian critique of psychologism from 1900 seems to lie precisely here: it is burdened with an ontological mortgage which it cannot shed as long as it wants to advocate a logical idealism; on the other hand, it cannot pay off this mortgage in the context of the phenomenological doctrine of knowledge, for this doctrine does not allow the thematization of such assumptions.
The psychologism controversy is a controversy concerning the implementation of a determinate definition of logic. Of no less importance for the outcome of the argument is the definition of psychology that has been laid down by proponents and opponents of psychologism. The kind of psychologism that one wants to advocate or oppose depends on one’s conception of psychology. The critique of psychologism in Prolegomena is a critique of the grounding claim made by a natural-scientific, explanatory psychology in the domain of logic. When Husserl, in the second volume of Logical Investigations, inquires into the positive relationship between psychology and logic, he does this on the basis of a descriptive psychology. The capability and boundaries of this psychology’s accomplishments are determined by the so-called principle of presuppositionlessness. According to this principle, one cannot use metaphysical, physical, and psychic assumptions if they cannot be fully demonstrated phenomenologically in the description of the contents of intentional experiences. According to the concept of science in Prolegomena, descriptive psychology is not a science.26 It is description, not theory, even though it serves a purely theoretical interest, namely that of founding pure logic,27 and it is to be understood as scientific in the sense of freedom from metaphysics.28 According to Husserl, “[Descriptive psychology, or phenomenology of cognition, is a] philosophical completion of a pure mathesis in the widest conceivable sense, which includes all a priori, categorial knowledge in the form of systematic theories. This theory of theories goes together with, and is illuminated by, a formal theory of knowledge which precedes all empirical theory, which precedes, therefore, all empirical knowledge of the real, all physical science on the one hand, and all psychology on the other.”29 It is the task of descriptive psychology to determine the relationship between psychology and logic with the help of an investigation of intentional experiences and their contents. Descriptive psychology is to deliver a description of the origin of the fundamental logical concepts in determinate types of acts and to explicate a doctrine of the intentionality of consciousness that clarifies how a consciousness must be constituted such that an objective relation to objects [objektive Gegenstandsbeziehung] is possible for it. A major problem for the doctrine of meaning in the second volume of Logical Investigations is to clarify, on the basis of an analysis of consciousness (i.e., an analysis of the real [reellen] contents of consciousness), the sense of the assertion of the ideality of logical objects. In this context one can expect an answer to the question whether the antipsychologism advocated in Prolegomena is, contrary to Husserl’s own conception, to be understood as a conceptual realism.30
The content of purely logical representations (concepts) and the validity of logical laws are independent of whether they are thought by anyone. That is the fundamental thesis in which Husserl’s “idealistic intentions in logic” are expressed.31 In the second volume of Logical Investigations, it is stated to that end that the objective validity of thoughts and truths is not made “as if he [an individual—SR] were concerned with contingencies of his own or of the general human mind.”32 Rather, they are seen into, discovered. Everyone who sees into them knows that their ideal being does not amount to a psychological “being in the mind”: “the authentic objectivity of the true, and of the ideal in general, suspends all reality, including such as is subjective.”33 What is the meaning of this talk of “suspension” [Aufhebung], which manifestly refers to the refutation of skeptical relativism in Prolegomena? If there were no objectively valid meanings, propositions, and truths, then subjective being, too, would be suspended to the extent that no real beings would be cognizable. Cognition of something presupposes that thing’s being thought. The fact that there is correct cognition, and that truth is ascribed to what is thought, is not dependent on the experience of thinking in question. If what is thought in this sense were dependent on the experience of thinking, then what is thought would be as manifold and diverse as the experiences of thinking, which would make an objective identification and determination of objects—and with them all understanding of others and oneself—impossible. Psychic being in the mind cannot be ascribed to a meaning. If that is the case, then it becomes questionable how the independence of logical meanings from thinking can be made intelligible other than through the assumption of an autonomous meaning-objectivity existing independently from mind in opposition to the manifold of real occurrences of thinking. One possible answer is that meanings are ideal unities which, as one and the same, can be thought by any given subject at any given time. It is this idea of an intentional unity of thought that Husserl defends when he speaks of a “properly understood conceptualism.”34 The sense of “true, genuine ideality” is accordingly nothing other than “unified meaning in the dispersed multiplicity of experiences.”35 Is the independence of meanings from thought thus to be understood merely as independence from any given current performance of thinking and not as a hypostasization of meaning-entities? “Ideality of unities of meaning” would then mean “identical producibility possible at all times,” that is, omnitemporality in the sense of an intention toward the same object that is possible at any time. Yet there are expressions in Logical Investigations that go beyond this interpretation and that do so in such a way as to provoke the objection of Platonism from the critics of pure logic. In this way, it could be established, for instance, that there are innumerable meanings that “owing to the limits of human cognitive powers” will never be expressed and never could be expressed.36 It is not at all evident what the conception of independence from thought as omnitemporality is supposed to mean in relation to ideal objects whose producibility is ruled out for every possible time. Of course, the trait of omnitemporality excludes the dependence of the meaning-content from individual meaning-acts, but it nonetheless fundamentally preserves a relation of the logical objects to the sphere of a subject that exists temporally and judges in time.37 If, by contrast, every relation to temporality is suspended, then one will no longer be able to accept this standpoint as conceptualism, unless Husserl’s remark concerning the “limits of human cognitive powers” does not relate to the principled transgression of the boundaries of cognizability; instead it relates merely to the restricted number of meaning-unities that are realizable by a consciousness within these boundaries. Obscurities of this sort offer anti-Platonists a target for their critique, just as by the same token the leading principle of the descriptive-psychological investigation of meaning-acts must remain suspect to advocates of anti-psychologism: “Logical concepts, as valid thought-unities, must have their origin in intuition: they must arise out of an ideational abstraction founded on certain experiences, and must admit of indefinite reconfirmation, and of recognition of their self-identity, on carrying out anew this abstraction.”38 When objections are raised against Husserl’s early critique of psychologism from both sides—from proponents and opponents of psychologism alike—this is grounded in the matters at hand [Sache] themselves. Given this state of the problematic, it may appear doubtful that the problem of psychologism was, as Husserl himself initially assumed, resolved once and for all with Logical Investigations.
Because of their commitment to the principle of presuppositionlessness, the descriptive-psychological investigations of the second volume of Logical Investigations cannot rebut the objection of Platonism directed against Prolegomena. On the other hand, where descriptive psychology is concerned, a psychological investigation that does not raise a reductionistic grounding claim in relation to logical objects is not exposed to the objection of psychologism. If, in accordance with the methodological composition of descriptive psychology, there is no possibility that the epistemological investigations of the second volume of the Logical Investigations could lead to a logical psychologism, then the problem of subjectivization arises nonetheless in relation to the approach taken by the phenomenological doctrine of meaning. Since identical meaning is determined as an identity of a species that is individuated in acts of meaning and is thus to be acquired through reflection on those acts, Husserl’s early conception of meaning can be designated a “subjective” or “noetic conception of meaning.” The separation of the concept of meaning from the acts that give meaning is achieved with the introduction of a noematic conception of meaning in the lectures on the doctrine of meaning from 1908.39 Accordingly, identical meaning is to be extracted from the idea of categorial objectivity as such and from the objective content (of a proposition). This revision to the doctrine of meaning was made possible by surpassing the act-phenomenology of 1901.
The expression “descriptive psychology” is just as ambiguous as the expression “psychologism.” In both cases, it is only by taking into account the respective concrete conception of psychology that an evaluation of the material position becomes possible. Merely acknowledging the distinction between genetic and descriptive psychology is not sufficient to fend off the suspicion of psychologism. Thus, the following observation, for example, from an opponent of phenomenological anti-psychologism is thoroughly justified:
The word “phenomenology” was originally, even for Husserl himself, the name for the pure description of cognitive states of affairs that—even for other standpoints, especially psychologism and phenomenalism—must precede all epistemology. It has become a name for a special method of epistemology. We can clarify the sense of this method by saying that, every epistemology must first clarify the sense of our concepts before it can operate with them. Now, this clarification can only occur if one seeks to grasp just this sense, and to grasp it as purely as possible, to bring it to self-givenness, in order then to describe it purely. Every other way is a detour that does not instruct us concerning the sense of our judgments themselves, but at best concerning the evolution of this sense and thus, viewed materially, it presupposes precisely this sense.40
To this characterization of phenomenology there corresponds an opposing nominalistic position, one that “regards it as impossible to achieve a phenomenological description of the content of our concepts by simply plunging oneself into this content, and accordingly does not regard the results of Husserlian phenomenology as evident results of a pure, unbiased description.”41 This example makes it clear that the approach of a critique both of psychologism and of antipsychologism is dependent on the determination of the generic position and on the presupposed conception of psychology.42 The mere fact that logical objects can be made in various ways into objects of scientific investigations does not result in psychologism or subjectivism, neither in the formation of psychological theories nor in logic. In this connection, Husserl’s observation is on the mark: “as if subjectivity in the psychological sense disagreed with objectivity in the logical sense!”43 If, however, a grounding claim referring to a nonpsychological domain of objects is asserted from psychology (metabasis), then every psychology to which this claim pertains has the characteristic of psychologism. Epistemological psychologism, which determined the confrontation of phenomenology with the problem of psychologism after 1903, was designated “metaphysical skepticism” and excluded from the discussion of Logical Investigations.44 The assertion of this psychologistic standpoint would be “All knowledge as a conscious phenomenon is subject to the laws of human consciousness: the so-called forms and laws of knowledge are merely functional forms of consciousness, or laws governing such functional forms, i.e., psychological laws.”45 When Husserl abandoned the claim to a definitive refutation of psychologism after Logical Investigations, this pertained to both logical psychologism and metaphysical skepticism. Already in 1900, the latter had been excluded from the polemical intent of Prolegomena. Metaphysical skepticism is not countersensical; its “claim to validity is a mere question of arguments and proofs.”46 In contrast to the problem of logical psychologism, the problem of epistemological psychologism remains open in the second volume of Logical Investigations. Due to the claim to exclude all metaphysical problems and assertions (the principle of presuppositionlessness) and to the definition of epistemological psychologism as a metaphysical skepticism, there is no discussion concerning whether descriptive psychology can guarantee that its investigation of psychic acts does not culminate in an epistemological psychologism. (This would occur by setting a psychology of cognition in the place of epistemology.47) For Husserl’s new conception of the problem of psychologism after 1900, the following question would point the way: How can one establish a pure critique of cognition that makes possible a non-Platonic and nonpsychologistic critique of psychologism, that is, a rejection of logical and epistemological psychologism?
The change in the way of stating the problem of psychologism ensued with the help of the idea of the phenomenological reduction, which Husserl developed in the years 1903 to 1907. This was a methodological measure that resulted in a change in the object domain of phenomenological statements. Under the condition of the withdrawal (epochē) of all existence-theses, judgments were no longer made concerning the objects of experiences nor concerning the experience of objects in the sense of the act-phenomenology of Logical Investigations. By making the intentional relation as such into an object, judgment was passed exclusively concerning the mode and manner of the experience of objects. If all (implicit) presuppositions concerning the existence of act and object are omitted, then one can speak of “pure intentionality” or “pure subjectivity.” This is the “working field” of transcendental phenomenology.48 To the extent that the newly grounded phenomenological idealism was understood to be the only allowable kind of metaphysics, the phenomenological reduction made good on the promise to respond explicitly to the problem of metaphysics. In 1900/01, the question of the existence of the external world was, as a metaphysical question, excluded from the investigation, and phenomenological analysis was restricted to the real [reellen] contents of consciousness, while logical analysis was occupied with ideal contents. A consequence of this was that descriptive analysis could not deal with the Platonism objection, which was related to the objectivism of the ideal contents. In the context of the intentional idealism of the later years, both the real as well as the ideal objects were investigated merely in their function as act-correlates. On the one hand, the domain of objects available to phenomenological analysis was thereby expanded, and on the other hand, the objection of a hypostasization of meaning-entities became untenable. Regarding the problem of psychologism, the introduction of the phenomenological reduction had an essential consequence: The ontological price of a refutation of logical psychologism is avoidable as soon as the problem of logical psychologism is placed in the context of an ontologically neutral phenomenology that makes its judgments from within the epochē. But has the state of evidence in the dispute between advocates of psychologism and antipsychologism thus been clarified to the extent that a decision would be possible that would be independent of particular standpoints and that could be carried out merely argumentatively? That is not the case.
One can understand the phenomenological reduction as an instrument for making presuppositions explicit. Husserl’s claim to make possible a presuppositionless ultimate grounding with the help of the reduction is not an obviously unachievable claim only if it is understood in a gradualistic sense with regard to the “matters themselves,” that is, the phenomena. In the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, every phenomenon is given in such a way that in it no presuppositions are contained that cannot be “excluded” by means of absorption in the phenomenon. The assertion that the material content of the phenomenon in question could at some time be utterly exhausted (that is, utterly cognized), by contrast, is not a necessary constituent of a phenomenology of consciousness. Not certainty, but purity of the phenomenon is necessary if an investigation is to be a phenomenological investigation. The phenomenological reduction can only be a suitable instrument of the philosophical critique of cognition if the idea of philosophy that underlies it is presupposed as valid. This is the conception of philosophy as an ultimately grounding universal science whose domain of objects circumscribes the senses or propositions of all scientific and nonscientific experiences. This conception of philosophy is a posit that, with regard to the problem of psychologism, seems to lead to a paradoxical situation: The epochē makes possible a new, “neutral” way of posing the problem of psychologism by anticipating the decision in favor of an antipsychologistic position. The preceding refutation of logical psychologism is the condition of the viability of the phenomenological reduction. For the pure relation of intentionality can only become the object of investigation if it is available in objectified form, that is, in objective unities of meaning. These unities must have an ideal characteristic if they are not to be reduced to conscious experiences, a reduction by means of which consciousness would cease to be intentional, that is, would cease to be consciousness. On the other hand, pure phenomenology can only be understood as pure idealism (i.e., as nonmetaphysical idealism) if epistemological psychologism is rejected. If the idea of a transcendental phenomenology is the presupposed fundamental norm of all the phenomenologist’s descriptions, then the theory of the phenomenological reduction (which is to reflect the new way of posing the problem of psychologism) can be designated as a “normative discipline” in the sense of Prolegomena. The phenomenologist cannot assert that this fundamental norm is to be acknowledged. What she can assert is merely that if a philosophy is to be possible as rigorous science in the sense of the phenomenological (and eidetic) reduction, then logical and epistemological psychologism must be rejected. The procedure of phenomenological description can only be applied if the assertions of logical and epistemological psychologism are not valid. (It is objectively impossible—i.e., in accordance with the thing [Sache] and not merely the constitution of the subject—to endorse the standpoint of logical and epistemological psychologism within the attitude of the epochē.) That does not mean, however, that the falsity or countersensical nature of psychologism can be demonstrated with the help of pure descriptions. Only the material content lying in the pure phenomena, in the absence of all transcendent (“naively” ontological) interpretations, will be established. As pure phenomena, even the assertions of proponents and opponents of psychologism can be made into the object of phenomenological investigation. In this way, phenomenology, as a neutral science of sense, can generate communication between the generic positions in the dispute concerning logical psychologism.
It can only be said that epistemological standpoints (e.g., empiricism or rationalism) are indifferent when it comes to the opposed positions in the psychologism controversy (concept realism or psychologism) if one is not concerned about the systematic integration of epistemology and logic into one consistent philosophical edifice. The obscurities connected to the logical idealism of Prolegomena do not ultimately rest on the fact that the distinction between realism and idealism is applied both in ontological and epistemological meanings.49 In 1900, the relationship between logical idealism or psychologism and “metaphysical skepticism” was naturally not regarded as a problem, since metaphysical skepticism remained excluded from phenomenological inquiry. One finds only the following observation: “When metaphysical subjectivism [i.e., skepticism—SR] thus favors epistemological skepticism, the latter, contrariwise, if taken to be self-evident, seems to provide powerful arguments for the former.”50 That epistemological skepticism, as Husserl labeled psychologism in logic in 1900, facilitates a metaphysical skepticism (i.e., in the later terminology, a transcendental or epistemological psychologism) can likewise be established from the standpoint of pure phenomenology. However, the cautious formulation in Prolegomena does not yet assert (and cannot assert because of the restrictions of descriptive psychology) that the inverse does not hold: The critique (refutation) of logical psychologism does not eo ipso facilitate a critique (refutation) of epistemological psychologism. Whether that is the case depends much more on the way in which the problem of psychologism is embedded in the given nexus of thought. For transcendental phenomenology, logical and epistemological antipsychologism are necessary if the idea of a scientific phenomenology is to be realizable. It is a reflex of phenomenology’s way of thinking and a judgment on the deficient awareness of the problem in the historical psychologism controversy when Husserl declared, from the viewpoint of the 1920s, that the “fundamental, transcendental psychologism, which is lethal to the possibility of a scientific philosophy, is yet totally unscathed by refutations of the psychologism in pure apophantic logic or of parallel psychologisms in formal axiology and [theory of] practice.”51 If the origin of the idea of the epochē lies in the problematizing of the relationship between the first and second volumes of Logical Investigations, and if the related obscurities in fact are to be eliminated only with the help of a redetermination of the phenomenological critique of cognition, then it is not surprising that Husserl’s interest in the question of psychologism distinctly shifts after 1900/01 from a refutation based on the consequences to an understanding of the presuppositions of both the psychologistic and the logicistic position. This interest concerns in the first instance the way of posing the problem of psychologism in view of the grounding of a phenomenological philosophy, and only in the second instance the material problem that is to be clarified through description. It is also owing to the interest in the presuppositions of thought that, after the introduction of the phenomenological reduction, Husserl no longer asks which arguments are to help in the refutation of psychologism and skepticism. Rather, he asks which manner of procedure can aid in securing the non-reducibility of the ideal to the real without (implicit) ontological assertions and thereby cut off in advance the skeptic’s charge of dogmatism.52 The central position of the phenomenological reduction is thus confirmed. If this is not successfully defended, then only two ways remain open where the problem of psychologism is at issue: either recourse to the dogmatic position of Prolegomena, or the concession that phenomenology’s critique of psychologism has failed.
The new look for the problem in the psychologism question was integrated into the more pronounced methodological interest of later phenomenology. This becomes clear in the considerations concerning the mode of experience of real and ideal objects in Experience and Judgment (1939) and Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), which seek to implement concretely the idea of a genetic phenomenology. This same orientation toward questions of method holds for the determination of the relationship of philosophy and psychology in the Encyclopedia Britannica article (1927) and in Crisis (1936). While the years following Logical Investigations stood under the sign of a rigid delimitation of pure phenomenology from all psychology, Husserl promised in the 1920s and 1930s a definitive clarification of the psychologism problem precisely from a discussion of the relation between philosophy and psychology. In the center of this analysis stands the idea of an eidetic-phenomenological (“rational”) psychology as propaedeutic to transcendental phenomenology. The foundational shift of the problematic had already been completed a few years after the publication of Logical Investigations. According to this shift, the primary object of phenomenological interest is no longer the relationship between logic and psychology but that between philosophy and psychology. With that, the balance of power between pure logic and phenomenology was also reversed. In 1900/01, the latter merely had the role of an appendix to pure logic. When in the 1920s, by contrast, logic once again became the preferred object of phenomenological investigations, this occurred in the context of a transcendental logic that sought to clarify the validity-sense of logical objects through a recourse to the accomplishments of transcendental subjectivity. For pure phenomenology, there is no longer a logic as an independent positive science in the sense of Prolegomena. Pure phenomenology is universal critique of theoretical, practical, and evaluative reason: philosophy of pure subjectivity.
It has at times been opined that the difference in the approaches to the grounding of logic in early and late phenomenology can be traced back to the fact that the latter forfeits the primacy of theory in favor of beginning from the life-world. In Prolegomena, Husserl doubtless understood the primacy of pure, theoretical logic as an antidote against logical psychologism. But is it also true that late phenomenology bases and can base its logical foundation and critique of psychologism upon the forfeiture of the priority of theory (epistemology) in favor of a life-world praxis? Since the objectivity of logical objects can also be grounded in other ways than the one taken in Prolegomena (e.g., through convention or consensus), it should be noted that the subjectivity-objectivity distinction intersects with the theory-practice distinction. Moreover, various approaches that can be distinguished in relation to the determination of the concepts “objectivity” and “subjectivity” can be characterized with respect to their position in the “intersectional space” of the two distinctions. In view of the psychologism question, the conception of logic represented in the Prolegomena is to be designated as “objective-theoretical,” while the point of view of the second volume of Logical Investigations is “subjective-theoretical.” (The expression “theoretical” is here understood merely as standing in opposition to praxis. In this meaning, the theoretical orientation contains both theories in the strict sense of Prolegomena and purely descriptive investigations.) The proposal of a life-world–practical approach, or a pragmatic-constructional one, aims at an objective-practical foundation. In later phenomenology, the look of the problem had in fact changed in such a way that in a certain, restricted sense, one can speak of a “practical” orientation, specifically, a subjective-practical one. In §8 of Formal and Transcendental Logic, Husserl establishes that already in the case of the merely normative function of logic—without the norm in question having been recognized as a practical setting of an end—a certain intention aimed at practical usefulness is present, and thus a transgression of the purely theoretical interest. Admittedly, the distinction between theory and practice “is after all a relative one: because even purely theoretical activity is indeed activity—that is to say, a practice (when the concept of practice is accorded its natural breadth); and, as a practice, it is part of the universal nexus comprising all practical activities and is subject to formal rules of universal practical reason (the principles of ethics), rules with which a science pour la science can hardly be compatible.”53 With regard to this seeming convergence with a pragmatic foundation of logic one should keep the explanatory addendum in view: Only under the presupposition of a “natural breadth accorded to the concept” can one speak of praxis and a relativization of the theory-praxis distinction. The distinction between theoretical and practical interests, or between theoretical and practical logic, is not canceled.54 The new, “practical” orientation consists in revealing the purely theoretical interest as a praxis in the sense of a habitual scientific-ethical orientation. The purely theoretical interest is still foundational for every science. Logic is primarily pure, theoretical logic. But if it is not a grounding with reference to praxis that constitutes the difference we seek from the procedure in Prolegomena, then where does this difference lie?
It is not the theory-praxis distinction that is decisive for the distinct strategies in the critiques of psychologism in early and late phenomenology, but rather the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. It is a difference in the methodological framework of the critique of psychologism, not in the determination of the relationship between pure and practical logic. This setting of the framework is closely connected in both early and late phenomenology with the question of scientificity. In 1900, Husserl aimed to end the conflict of opinions concerning the definition of logic and to delimit an objective material composition of logical doctrines, “a sum total of substantial propositions or theories.”55 In this way, he aimed to make logic into a science.56 The general goal was thus to exclude subjectivism in the sense of the dependence of logical conceptions on personal convictions or philosophical systems and in the sense of a psychologistic grounding of logic.57 In Formal and Transcendental Logic, the lack of a clear awareness of its goals and methods, as well as its “fundamental sense,” is named as the chief deficiency of traditional logic. Because of this lack, logic’s “sure progression from stage to stage” has been impeded, so that “logic, after thousands of years, has not yet entered the steady course of a truly rational development—it has not become, as its peculiar vocation unconditionally demanded, a science.”58 But Husserl now sees the reason for the failure of a scientific logic up to this time in the objectivistic attitude of logical investigations, which separates the logical objects from every relation to subjective acts of thinking. A transformation in phenomenology’s conception of science underlies this turn against objectivism: Pure logic, as “objectivistic” universal doctrine of science, is not the fundamental science, but rather pure phenomenology, whose object is the intentional relation (conceived in abstraction from existence). Phenomenology’s chief opponent is thus no longer logical psychologism, which makes impossible a pure logic as science but rather epistemological psychologism, which makes impossible a philosophy as science. Against this background of the problem’s development, it should be noted that the rejection of a normative grounding of logic in Prolegomena was founded not only on the theory-praxis distinction. It must be counted as equally essential that in this way every relation to the subject was excluded. Such a relation would have been incompatible with the absolute validity of logical laws according to Husserl’s conception at the time.59 The idea of normativizing thinking entails the idea of something that thinks. On the other hand, pure phenomenology’s specific subjectivity-standpoint, which also distinguishes a subjective (noetic) and objective (noematic) thematic in logic, is not grounded in a cancellation of the theory-praxis distinction (or especially in the question of logical normativism).60 In Prolegomena, the exclusion of the subjective dependency of logical contents is grounded, on the one hand, in the approach to the critique of psychologism as a refutation of skeptical relativism, and on the other hand, in early phenomenology’s conception of the subject. According to the latter, even the concept of a transcendental subject is to be counted among the subjectivistic tendencies because it was understood in the sense of a species relativism, that of the reason characteristic of humankind.61 In early phenomenology, the antagonisms in the psychologism controversy were cast as the opposition “psychologism vs. logical objectivism.” Thus, both empiricism and “subjectivistic,” idealistic apriorism were assigned to the side of psychologism. The opposition could also have been stated “psychologism vs. objective-logical apriorism” but not “psychologism vs. apriorism.” The shift of the problem that occurs with the introduction of the phenomenological reduction manifests itself in the new determination of the antagonisms. Now, the problem of psychologism is discussed according to the opposition “psychological naturalism vs. transcendental philosophy.”
In the context of phenomenological idealism, a nondogmatic answer to the problem of logical psychologism becomes possible for the first time. Of course, the attempt is made to grasp the peculiarity and irreducibility of ideal contents of consciousness by means of a description of those contents. However, this attempt is no longer connected with the claimed refutation of the psychologistic position. This forfeiture of a refutation does not arise from a retraction of the distinction between ideality and reality, but rather from a new interpretation of this distinction. Pure phenomenology can only make assertions concerning this distinction in reference to the various modes of givenness of ideal and real objects. It cannot set up absolute ontological assertions. This abstention results from the insight that psychologistic and antipsychologistic positions (as they were discussed in Prolegomena) are both bound to a standpoint. The reflection on the problematic of epistemological psychologism discovers another manner of being bound to a standpoint. The problem of epistemological psychologism lies in the question, what distinguishes a philosophical critique of reason from the psychology of cognition? Seeing a problem in this question at all presupposes that it is posed from the standpoint of a philosophy of consciousness. In pure phenomenology, as a descriptive-intuitive philosophy of consciousness, a definitive solution to the problem of epistemological psychologism is, however, impossible. As opposed to the refutation of logical psychologism in Prolegomena, a refutation of epistemological psychologism that argues against psychologism under the assumption of the invalidity of psychologism is excluded. The irrefutability is based on the fact that the conception of consciousness is determined by an essential ambiguity. This “transcendental semblance” is not to be set aside once and for all. Consciousness must be conceived as both the pure (nonempirical) function of intentionality and as empirical instance (psychic subject). The critique of epistemological psychologism is directed against a confusion of the philosophical and the natural attitude, or against a confusion of their respective problematics. A metabasis is present when the question of the possibility of cognition (quid iuris) is not distinguished from the question of the real conditions of cognition (quid facti). The latter question is posed under the presupposition that cognition is actual. In this sense, the radical, philosophical question of the possibility of cognition is presuppositionless: It refrains from taking over any “natural” claims to cognition.
The early Husserl’s critique of psychologism is to be understood as a defense of the idea of science as such against subjectivistic tendencies. The revision of the problematic that took place between 1903 and 1907 places the critique of psychologism in the service of a defense of the idea of philosophy as rigorous science. The guiding idea is now the following: If there is to be a scientific philosophy at all—a science of subjectivity that cannot be reduced to explanatory or descriptive psychology—then a methodological approach must be found that makes it possible to adhere to the fundamental characteristic of philosophy as doctrine of consciousness while at the same time excluding a naturalization of consciousness. Because of the “transcendental semblance” attached to the concept of consciousness, the exclusion of naturalism is only possible by habituating [oneself] to the attitude of the phenomenological reduction and in this way establishing the distinction between philosophical and psychological analyses of consciousness. In Logical Investigations, the discussion of the problem of psychologism was supposed to decide whether a reduction of ideal objects to real objects (of sciences of idealities to sciences of realities) was legitimate. In the context of transcendental phenomenology, the problem of psychologism is related to the question of the legitimacy of a reduction of the domain of transcendentality to the domain of positivity. To the latter belong both real science and ideal science in the sense of Prolegomena.
The sphere of transcendental subjectivity poses no ontological expansion of the positive world. It is the domain of the relation of pure intentionality that is transcendental, and this is not part of the empirical world. “Just as the reduced ego is not a piece of the world, so, conversely, neither the world nor any worldly object is a piece of my ego, to be found in my conscious life as a really inherent [reeller] part of it, as a complex of data of sensation or a complex of acts.”62 If there is talk in phenomenology of an “intentional (irreal) closure” of the world in the pure subject, there is no ontological interpretation of the pure object-relation associated with this. The result of the phenomenological reduction—the orientation not toward the objects of experience but toward the manner of the experience of objects (i.e., of the world as appearing world) means the following with respect to the distinction of reality and ideality: The real and the ideal are not ontologically but rather functionally distinguished, according to the manner of relation to the real and the ideal (“mode of givenness”). Since pure phenomenology speaks of objects exclusively in their function as intentional objects of conscious experiences, it is possible to say of any object that it is “ideal” to the extent that it is made into an object merely as an intentional unity and not as transcendent to consciousness. The previous distinction between real and ideal objects thus becomes subordinated to this methodologically grounded ideality of the intentional relation. At the same time, it holds even of the logical objects that transcendental phenomenology does not change the world but leaves it just as it is. Logical and epistemological psychologism are problems of grounding, that is, problems that only present themselves when occasioned by the reflexive assurance of the validity of products of thought.
Both with respect to the evidential circumstances in Prolegomena (according to which the self-grounding of logical idealism and of psychologism can only succeed with the help of evident assertions concerning the ontological structure of the world) as well as with respect to the rejection of the “prejudice of worldliness”63 in pure phenomenology, it can be declared from the standpoint of later phenomenology that the thesis of logical psychologism (in the sense of Logical Investigations) is just as dogmatic (i.e., unphilosophical) as that of transcendental psychologism, even if the latter is associated with a logical antipsychologism. The decision concerning the existence or epistemological function of a nonempirical ego cannot be made with the help of empirical science. However, in the context of transcendental phenomenology, the actuality of this ego is equally indemonstrable where cognition is concerned because every cognition presupposes a relation to an object. The function of intentionality cannot occurrently (i.e., in its performance) be its own object unless an infinite regress of consciousness is to be accepted. “Subjectivity of pure consciousness”—in a nonegological sense (prior to Ideas I)—and “pure ego”—in an egological sense (after Ideas I)—are different names for the function of pure intentionality, which, as the groundwork of the phenomenological doctrine of consciousness, is not to be objectified or reduced to a causal relation. The last question put to the phenomenologist in the context of the problem of psychologism is the question, how is it possible that a subject can be understood both as empirical ego and as nonempirical ego? The fact that the ambiguity of consciousness as psychic and pure consciousness cannot be set aside means, on the one hand, that an epistemological psychologism is not definitively excluded. On the other hand, however, it also means that overcoming it is possible at any time by means of a change of attitude. The decision as to whether there is to be a philosophy in the sense of pure phenomenology resides with every individual thinking subject. The only thing that is certain according to this idea of philosophy is that there is no philosophy if the transcendental semblance of consciousness is taken back into the facticity of the empirical subject.
What is to be learned from the preceding considerations concerning the greater historical meaning of the psychologism controversy? As was seen in the development of phenomenology, the special characteristic of the problem is that the presuppositions of the problematic are an essential constituent of the problem and its possibilities of resolution. In the systematic nexus of phenomenology, it was a consequence of the close association of the problem of psychologism with the idea of a philosophical science that, according to Logical Investigations, the emphasis in the dispute lay on the side of methodological questions. That the respective definition of psychologism determines, as was established at the outset, the choice of strategies for combating or defending psychologism has been confirmed by the development of phenomenology. But it has also been confirmed that in questions of standpoint, reflection on the presuppositions of argumentative strategies retains decisive importance. That can lead to a revision of the problematic even if the refutation of psychologism has been successful under the given “strategic” presuppositions. In the development of phenomenology following Logical Investigations, this did in fact occur. The problem of psychologism thereby reveals itself to be a problem of standpoint to the extent that it provides an occasion to clarify phenomenology’s philosophical standpoint. There are good reasons for no longer concerning oneself with the historical psychologism controversy to the extent that this is understood in the narrow sense as a controversy concerning the groundwork of logic. The inter- and intradisciplinary problematic that underlies this controversy has changed in the meantime. However, there are also good reasons for taking seriously the psychologism controversy in the broader sense as an expression of a fundamental philosophical problem that is alive in all historical configurations. That problem is the determination of the subjective in the field of tension between subjectivity and objectivity and in its relation to the dimensions of positivity and transcendentality.
Translated by Hayden Kee
NOTES
This essay originated as part of my collaboration with the interdisciplinary special research division Modernity: Vienna and Central Europe around 1900 at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz. I thank the Austrian Science Fund (Vienna) for supporting this research project.
1. In this way, a psychologistic conception can smoothly merge into a sociologism or biologism. That can be seen, for example, in Wilhelm Jerusalem’s pragmatically oriented response to the conflict concerning logical foundations, “Apriorismus and Evolutionismus,” in T. Elsenhans, ed., III. Internationaler Kongreß für Philosophie: 1. bis 5. September 1908 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter’s Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1909), 806–814. Different evaluations of the respective opposition views likewise depend on the standpoint of the statement and designation of a problem just as much as differing material opinions do. Thus the “subjectivism” immanent to pragmatism is rejected, from the standpoint of phenomenology, as a relativistic anthropologism, while, conversely, Richard Rorty just as decisively rejects the “subjectivism” of the philosophy of consciousness as a form of mentalism. Disputes of this kind stand above history to the extent that their core content is current in philosophizing at every time in some form and terminology.
2. That the logical laws have no essential relation to a subject is an assertion that, according to the conception of the “logical absolutist,” applies not only to the concrete, individual subject but also to a consciousness in general: “It does not seem to me helpful, furthermore, to relate the law to [an ideal] consciousness in general. In [an ideal thinking] all concepts (more exactly all expressions) would be used with absolutely identical meanings: there would be no flux of meanings, no ambiguities or quaterniones terminorum. The laws of logic have, however, no intrinsic, essential relation to this ideal, which we rather construct to fit them.” Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Band, Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), 108; cf. 97 [translated by J. N. Findlay as Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 127; cf. 118–119].
3. The subjective-noetic conditions of cognition are not the real conditions “rooted in the individual judging subject, or in the varied species of judging beings (e.g., of human beings), but ideal conditions whose roots lie in the form of subjectivity as such and in its relation to knowledge.” Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:119 [136]. With respect to the cognition-function of judgments, Husserl appeals to a consciousness in general, a move he rejects in relation to the validity of the pure, logical laws presupposed in all cognizing.
4. See Husserl, 1:21–22 [55–56].
5. Cf. esp. Husserl, 1:§§11–16.
6. For example, Husserl, 1:168–169 [175–176].
7. Husserl, 1:41 [71].
8. Husserl, 1:161 [170].
9. Husserl, 1:§6.
10. Cf. Husserl, 1:22–24 [56–57].
11. Analogously, one could speak of a “theoreticism” if a normative interpretation were excluded as such. This standpoint would be equally reductionist as the psychologistic position, although it would concern not the proper essence of logical objects, but rather the grasping and presenting of them. Whether or not psychological investigations have a psychologistic characteristic depends on whether or not they make a grounding claim for the domain of logical objects. From this it becomes clear that psychological considerations presented in the context of the propaedeutic or didactic of logical theories, for example, are not to be understood as psychologisms, aside from the (unusual) case where grounding claims are raised in this context. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:28–29, 153, 163 [72–73, 163–164, 171].
12. For example, Husserl, 1:161–167 [169–174].
13. Husserl, 59 [86].
14. Husserl, 68 [86; trans. modified].
15. Husserl, 231 [225–226].
16. Husserl, §§62–69.
17. Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 111–112 [translated by J. N. Findlay as Logical Investigations, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 337–338].
18. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:120 [136].
19. Husserl, 120 [137].
20. Husserl, 120–121 [137].
21. Cf. Husserl, 164, 238–241 [172, 232–234].
22. Cf. Husserl, 69–70, 164–165, 168–169 [95, 172–173, 175–176].
23. For example, Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:113–114 [339–340]. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:123 [139]: “It [individual relativism] is a doctrine no sooner set up than cast down, though only for one who recognizes the objectivity of all that pertains to logic. One cannot persuade the subjectivist any more than one can the open sceptic, a man simply lacking the ability to see that laws such as the law of contradiction have their roots in the mere meaning of truth, that from these it follows that talk of a subjective truth, that is one thing for one man and the opposite for another, must count as the purest nonsense.” The skeptic, too, can refer to evidence, specifically to the evidence of the present experience of the mode of appearing of something. By contrast, it speaks to the conception of skepticism as a self-refuting (theory of) knowledge concerning the impossibility of (a theory of) knowledge when Husserl introduces as an argument against skepticism the consideration that skepticism puts into question even the evidence of the “I am” and “I experience this and that.” Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:128 [143]. Only under the presupposition that this experience of evidence must be understood in such a way that it does not ground (or fulfill) an objective claim to knowledge can one deny the skeptic this evidence by drawing on the self-refutation argument.
24. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:123 [139].
25. Husserl, 1:181 [185].
26. See Husserl, 1:223 [227–228].
27. Husserl, §64.
28. Cf. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:225–226 [221–222]; Logische Untersuchungen, 2:124–125 [348–349]. “An epistemological investigation that can seriously claim to be scientific must … satisfy the principle of freedom from presuppositions” (2:19 [263]).
29. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:27 [265; trans. modified].
30. Cf. Husserl, 2:115–116, 127–131 [340–341, 350–353].
31. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:89 [111].
32. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:100 [325].
33. Husserl, 2:100 [325].
34. Husserl, 2:147 [368].
35. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:220 [217].
36. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:110 [333; trans. modified].
37. Cf. Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Prague: Academia/Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1939), 312 [translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks as Experience and Judgment (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 260]: “Objectivities of the understanding make their appearance in the world (a state of affairs is ‘discovered’) as irreal; after having been discovered, they can be thought of anew and as often as desired and, in general, can be objects of experience according to their nature. But afterwards we say: even before they were discovered, they were already ‘valid’; or we say that they can be assumed—provided that subjects which have the ability to produce them are present and conceivable—to be producible precisely at any time, and that they have this mode of omnipresent existence: in all possible modes of productions they would be the same.”
38. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 2:10 [251–252; trans. modified] (emphasis SR).
39. [The reference is to Husserl’s lectures on the theory of meaning from the Summer Semester of 1908. See Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen über Bedeutungslehre: Sommersemester 1908, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague: Marinus Nijhoff, 1987).—HK]
40. Cf. Ernst von Aster, Prinzipien der Erkenntnislehre: Versuch zu einer Neubegründung des Nominalismus (Leipzig: Quelle and Meyer, 1913), iv.
41. Von Aster, iv–v.
42. Aster, for example, does not understand his critique of antipsychologism as psychologistic because he does not classify that which is immediately given (with which, according to him, one must begin) as psychological.
43. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:123 [139; trans. modified].
44. See Husserl, §33.
45. Husserl, 1:121 [137; trans. modified].
46. Husserl, 1:121 [137].
47. In fact, Husserl would later declare that the difficulties adhering to epistemological psychologism in Logical Investigations were “not yet entirely overcome.” Edmund Husserl, Formale und Transzendentale Logik, ed. Paul Janssen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 160 [translated by Dorion Cairns as Formal and Transcendental Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), 152].
48. The eidetic reduction will be set aside in the present context, although it universally secures the phenomenal constitution of nonindividual objects. It is obvious that phenomenology’s claim to be a science can only be fulfilled on the groundwork of eidetic judgments. In relation to the problem of psychologism, the phenomenological reduction nonetheless has priority. Only with its help can the Platonism objection be rebutted without falling prey to the “counter-dogma” of psychologistic subjectivism. In a letter to Julius Stenzel dated March 28, 1934, Husserl observes, “I also note that, following the suggestions of Scheler and Heidegger, you, too—as is now common—regard me as something like a Platonist, or, what amounts to the same thing, you confound the phenomenological and the eidetic reductions.” Edmund Husserl, Briefwechsel, Band 4, ed. Karl Schuhmann (The Hague: Kluwer, 1994), 428–430.
49. For example, Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:190–191 [193]; Logische Untersuchungen, 2:111–112 [337–338].
50. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:121 [137].
51. Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie: Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925, ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 346 [translated by John Scanlon as Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 258–259; trans. modified].
52. “It is not the task of epistemology to refute skepticism, but rather to eliminate the embarrassments in which cognition finds itself enmeshed through reflection on its own possibility, and to clarify this possibility: the essence of cognition and the correlations with the object that belong to cognition. Of course, the motives that force one to skepticism are thereby removed while skepticism remains there as countersense for those with insight (which does not change the fact that it is irrefutable).” Edmund Husserl, Einleitung in die Logik und Erkenntnistheorie: Vorlesungen 1906/07, ed. Ullrich Melle (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), 405.
53. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 36 [32].
54. “Logic becomes normative, it becomes practical; with a suitable change of attitude, one can convert it into a normative-technological discipline. But intrinsically it is itself not a normative discipline but precisely a science in the pregnant sense, a work of purely theoretical reason—like all the other sciences.” Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 35 [31].
55. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:20 [54].
56. Cf. Husserl, 1:48–49, 51–52 [77–78, 80–81].
57. The Logos article of 1911 sets out for this same destination in taking a stand against the “perspectivism” in the (historicist) philosophy of the time and seeking to ensure an objective doctrinal composition for philosophy and thereby the capacity for advancement in the sense of the positive sciences. See Edmund Husserl, “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft,” Logos 1 (1910–11): 289–341 [translated by Quentin Lauer as “Philosophy as Rigorous Science,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 69–147.
58. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, 38–39 [35].
59. Husserl, §11c.
60. According to the above, the reasons for the “attenuation of ontology” in late phenomenology lie both in the new determination of the subject-object relationship as well as in the method of phenomenological investigation. Anyone who ascribes an objective-practical orientation to late phenomenology (as ontology of the life-world) takes a different view: “Insofar as Husserl integrates the philosophy of logic into the transcendental reformulation of phenomenology after Ideas I, the possibility is presented to him of attenuating the theoreticism of logic (which is tightly bound up with the ontology of ideal states of affairs and the conception of categorial intuition).… To the extent that phenomenology is pushed back into the foundational sphere of transcendental subjectivity, the ontological costs of the avoidance of psychologism can be cut.” Carl Friedrich Gethmann, “Phänomenologische Logikfundierung,” in Phänomenologie im Widerstreit: Zum 50. Todestag Edmund Husserls, ed. Christoph Jamme and Otto Pöggeler (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989), 192–212, 204. The author goes on to comment that “methodologically” the later Husserl “tendentiously overcomes idealism, … but ontologically still adheres to the dualism between reality and ideality” (207). If that were true, then admittedly the acquisition of phenomenological idealism—the cutting of the “ontological costs” of the critique of psychologism—would once again be bartered away. If there is an objective-practical approach to be found in pragmatically founded proto-logic, then what is at issue in it is the attempt to reduce the problem of psychologism to the question of logical psychologism and to establish an anti-psychologism “without having to bear the high costs of mentalism and idealism” (210). But there is certainly nothing without a cost in philosophy. The price paid for the “foundation of logic that begins with the pragmatics of language (and is thus not mentalistic) and is oriented towards an operationalistic theory of meaning (and is thus not idealist)” (209) is the forfeiture of the investigation of the subject of consciousness whose philosophical interest (in the phenomenological sense) aims at a “final” grounding of the possibility of cognition.
61. For example, Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 1:130–131, 216–217 [145–146, 214].
62. Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. S. Strasser (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 65 [translated by Dorion Cairns as Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 26].
63. Edmund Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923/24), Zweiter Teil, Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, ed. Rudolf Boehm (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), 479.