Abstract

Among the various lecture courses that Edmund Husserl held during his time as a Privatdozent at the University of Halle (1887-1901), there was one on "Ausgewählte Fragen aus der Philosophie der Mathematik" (Selected Questions from the Philosophy of Mathematics), which he gave twice, once in the WS 1889/90 and again in WS 1890/91. As Husserl reports in his letter to Carl Stumpf of February 1890, he lectured mainly on “spatial-logical questions” and gave an extensive critique of the Riemann-Helmholtz theories. Indeed, in K I 28 many lectures on this subject can be found, which are for the greater part published in Husserliana XXI. The lecture contained in K I 28/4-12 at the Husserl-Archives Leuven, however, was left out of the selection, because the lecture contained “an analysis of the concept of number” whose content is “already known” from the Philosophie der Arithmetik. Indeed, since the lecture is from the WS 1889/90, the manuscript allows a glimpse of Husserl’s ideas halfway between his Habilitationsschrift (1887) and the Philosophie der Arithmetik (1891). Among other things, in this lecture we find the first documented use of the terms "Gestalt" and "Gestaltmoment" in Husserl.