Adolf Reinach

In this article I present the phenomenological tradition as a new grounding for human rights as universal rights. The hypothesis defended is to conciliate Husserl’s phenomenological method and Reinach’s a priori law in order to offer a new grounding to human rights. In order to combine Husserl and Reinach’s ideas, I propose to expand the comprehension of a priori. It would be present as eidos of each object and I name it as material a priori; it also be present in (...) the eidetic relations and I name it as formal a priori. Yet the object would have an essence, a necessary content, a material a priori, and necessary states of affairs, necessary relations and connections, a formal a priori. Reinach, in The A priori Foundations of the Civil Law, describes eidetic relations, such as, the relation between promise, claim and obligation. I propose three eidetic universalities to ground law, these are what I will call human rights. I also face a few difficulties presented by DuBois and De Vecchi derived from the amoral approach of a priori laws. Then, I highlight the difference between this proposition and Albert’s. Finally, I defend the proposition that a priori laws are beyond natural and positive laws. (shrink)

This paper aims to present and evaluate the (unduly neglected) account of the essence of colours developed by the early phenomenologist Adolf Reinach. Reinach claims that colours, as regards their nature or essence, are physical entities. He is opposed to the idea that colours are “subjective” or “psychic”. It might be the case that the colours we see in the world do not exist but are mere appearances. However, their non-existence would not entail any change in their essence: that is, (...) they would not be psychic, but would just be non-existent physical entities. In Reinach’s view, we can be “ontic-neutral essentialists” about colours: we can remain neutral as to the existence of colours but still make claims about their essence. In the first part of the paper, I present Reinach’s take on the essence of colours. In the second part, I address his existential neutrality about colours; in particular, I argue that Reinach’s ontic-neutral essentialism brings to the fore a seldom noted but crucial distinction to be made in the discussion of colours, that between empirical and metaphysical non-realism about colours. (shrink)

Autobiography of Barry Smith; emphasizes the role of Dummett and Husserl, Austrian philosophy and economics, and the Munich-Göttingen-Kraków school of realist phenomenology.

This is a piece of experimental multi-perspectival writing in which four different personae adopt different methods and intellectual relationships to writing as a means of research, by using the topics of fiction, counterfactual history and not-being. The narrative line is provided by a novelist who retells Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon. In Saramago’s novel a wayward proof-reader mischievously adds the word “not” to the historical account, creating a fictional, counterfactual history. This “bringing into being” of a fiction (...) – of what didn’t actually happen – sets in train a series of perspectives or thought experiments by the four personae of the present text on the nature of “not-being”. They deploy methods from fictional writing and phenomenological practice informed by Saramago and Sartre, and phenomenological theory informed by Husserl and Meinong, thereby investigating the topic from four different perspectives. As a result, it is proposed that the legitimacy gap suffered by fiction-as-research may be bridged by so-called Meinongian objects, and the problem of whether such inexistent objects are facts, is less important than deciding whether they are useful. The conclusion is that artistic research methods offer techniques and a space to discuss the agency of not-being, of what-if, and of omission, through the legitimate deployment of fiction and falsehoods; and the benefits of so doing outweigh the existential discomfort that such ideas usually induce in researchers. (shrink)

It is well known that Husserl’s turn to a form of “transcendental” phenomenology troubled many of his followers in Munich and Göttingen. It was just as perplexing, though, for his contemporaries in the tradition of post-Kantian transcendental philosophy. Cohen had identified the living core of Kant’s philosophy as the “transcendental method,” and Natorp, in particular, had worked extensively to distinguish the principles of the Marburg recovery of Kant from his wayward appropriation by Fichte and others. In this chapter, I consider (...) what the stakes of Husserl’s transcendental turn looked like from the Marburg perspective. Natorp warmly welcomed Husserl’s attempt to steer the nascent phenomenological movement in a “transcendental” direction, but he continued to wonder whether Husserl’s turn towards this tradition was aligned with the true spirit of Kant, or whether, on the contrary, phenomenology would settle into a broadly Fichtean appropriation of Kant’s legacy. Though Natorp’s public position is markedly conciliatory, he barely conceals his suspicion that it was the Kant of Fichte’s Jena, not the Kant of Cohen’s Marburg, to whom Husserl was (perhaps unwittingly) turning. This, I argue, is the background against which the Natorp-Husserl encounter on the eve of World War I must be understood. (shrink)

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being (...) in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity. (shrink)

In Reinach’s works one finds a very rich ontology of states of affairs. Some of them are positive, some negative. Some of them obtain, some do not. But even the negative and non-obtaining states of affairs are absolutely independent of any mental activity. Now in spite of this claim of the “ontological equality” of positive and negative states of affairs there are, according to Reinach, massive epistemological differences in our cognitive access to them. Positive states of affairs could be directly (...) “extracted” from our experience while to acquire a negative belief we must pass a quite complicated process starting with certain positive beliefs. A possible and reasonable explanation of this discrepancy would be a theory to the effect that these epistemological differences have their basis in the ontology of the entities in question. Our knowledge of the negative states of affairs is essentially dependent on our knowledge of the positive ones precisely because the negative states of affairs are ontologically dependent on the positive ones. Such a theory has been in fact formulated by Roman Ingarden. According to him negative states of affairs supervene on some positive ones and on certain mental acts of the conscious subjects. (shrink)

Contemporary scholars have generally labelled Adolf Reinach, a founding member of early phenomenology’s Göttingen Circle, a Platonist. Because Reinach conceives of states of affairs as neither real nor ideal, as involved with timeless essences and necessary logical laws, many have hastily concluded that states of affairs are Platonic entities. In this essay, I analyse Barry Smith’s argument that Reinach is a Platonist. Smith’s widely accepted argument often becomes utilised to show that Reinach and other phenomenologists, including Husserl, are Platonic realists (...) (or, simply, Platonists). A closer look at Reinach’s text indicates, however, that he is notcommitted to Platonic realism. (shrink)

Provides a survey of the development of speech act theory from Aristotle through Reid and Peirce to Edmund Husserl, Anton Marty, Johannes Daubert, Adolf Reinach, and finally to Austin and Searle. A special role is played by Husserl's theory of objectifying acts (meaning, roughly, acts of naming or stating) and of the efforts by his followers to extend this theory to cover phenomena such as questioning and commanding. These efforts culminated in the work of Adolf Reinach, who developed the first (...) systematic theory of speech acts in connection with his monograph of 1913 on “The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law”. (shrink)

Logic is often conceived as a science of propositions, or of relations between propositions. There is an alternative view, however, defended by Meinong, Pfänder, Reinach and others, which sees logic as a science of “Sachverhalte” or states of affairs. A consideration of this view, which was defended especially by thinkers within the tradition of Brentano, throws new light on the problems of intentionality and of mental content. It throws light also on the development of logic in Poland. Here the influence (...) of Brentano’s student Kasimir Twardowski is especially important, and the paper concludes with a new interpretation of Tarski’s work on truth against the background of Twardowski’s thinking. (shrink)

The tradition of realist phenomenology was founded in around 1902 by a group of students in Munich interested in the newly published Logical Investigations of Edmund Husserl. Initial members of the group included Johannes Daubert, Alexander Pfänder, Adolf Reinach and Max Scheler. With Reinach’s move to Göttingen the group acquired two new prominent members – Edith Stein and Roman Ingarden. The group’s method turned on Husserl’s idea that we are in possession a priori (which is to say: non-inductive) knowledge of (...) entities (for example, colors, tones, values, shapes) of a range of different sorts. Pfänder applied this method in his descriptive psychology of willing and motivation, Reinach (anticipating the later speech act theory) to what he called ‘social acts’, Stein to the ontology of communities, and Ingarden to works of art and aesthetic phenomena. The movement latter, through Ingarden, lived on in Poland, where it influenced the young Karol Wojtyła. (shrink)

Where Humeans rule out the possibility of material or non-logical necessity, and thus of any associated knowledge a priori, the German legal philosopher Adolf Reinach defends the existence of a wide class of material necessities falling within the domain of what can be known a priori, for example in fields such as color and shape, rational psychology, law and economics. Categories such as promise or claim or obligation are, in Reinach’s view, exist as nodes in a system of necessary relations, (...) so that anyone who has experience of relevant instances of these categories is implicitly aware also of a corresponding family of relations to certain other categories – as for example that every promise implies a mutually correlated claim and obligation. Midway between the two extremes of Hume and Reinach stands Searle, who accepts necessary relations of the mentioned sorts, but sees them as human creations, following from ‘constitutive rules’ analogous to the rules of chess. We seek to demonstrate that Searle does not occupy a stable and acceptable half-way house between Hume and Reinach; that he, too, if he is to do justice to the very constitutive rules which form the center of his approach, must on pain of circularity embrace something like the Reinachian position. (shrink)

Both ‘Sachverhalt’ and ‘state of affairs’ seem to have been derived from the juridical ‘status’ in the sense of 'status rerum' meaning: state or constitution of things. ‘Status’ signifies also in an extended sense ‘the way things stand, the condition or peculiarity of a thing in regard to its circumstances, position, order’. We describe the history of usage of ‘Sachverhalt’ from these beginnings, addressing the role of Goclenius, Lotze, Stumpf, Husserl and Adolf Reinach, whose theory of the relations between judgment (...) and Sachverhalt served as one starting point for the development of Reinach’s theory of speech acts in 1913. (shrink)

Historical research has recently made it clear that, prior to Austin and Searle, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1884-1917) developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts under the heading of what he called "social acts". He we consider a second instance of a speech act theory avant la lettre, which is to be found in the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Reid’s s work, in contrast to that of Reinach, lacks both a unified approach and the detailed analyses of (...) pertinent examples. But his writings leave no doubt that he is acutely aware of the very problems concerning language structure and use out of which contemporary speech act theory has evolved and that he goes a good way towards solving these problems in the spirit of the modern theory. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable convergence of Husserlian phenonenology and analytic philosophy of language, and the present volumes provide original and important texts of the phenomenological philosophy of language. Powerfully influenced by the writings of the early Husserl, Reinach fashioned Husserl’s ideas into a rigorous analytical methodology of his own, which he applied in particular to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge, and to the philosophies of law and psychology. The central role of (...) the concept of state of affairs in Reinach’s philosophy will bring to mind immediately the formal ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Reinach’s most significant contribution, however, is contained in his The a priori foundations of civil law (1913), above all in the detailed analysis of the a priori structure of the act of promising. This amounts to an elaborate phenomenological theory of speech acts which anticipates, and in some respects goes beyond, the later theories of Austin and Searle. The present edition is in two volumes. Volume 1, which includes a biographical and thematic introduction by the editors, contains critical editions of those pieces published by Reinach himself. Volume II is a collection of all those items in Reinach’s surviving Nachlass which are in publishable form, including a number of important pieces not hitherto obtainable on such themes as ethical predicates, speech acts (“soziale Akte”), perception and the theory of number, together with a comprehensive sketch of the problems in the theory of knowledge, logic and ethics. Appended to this is a text-critical apparatus which also contains extensive discussions of the origins and sources of the materials in question. (shrink)

The essay provides an account of the development of Reinach’s philosophy of “Sachverhalte” (states of affairs) and on problems in the philosophy of law, leading up to his discovery of the theory of speech acts in 1913. Reinach’s relations to Edmund Husserl and to the Munich phenomenologists are also dealt with.

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the corresponding (...) speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

Reinach is principally known for his anticipation in 1913 of many ideas subsequently developed by Austin, Searle and others under the heading of 'speech act theory'. This bibliography of primary and secondary literature by and on Reinach shows that his influenced extended more broadly into areas such as the theory of judgment, the ontology of states of affairs, and the philosophy of law.

Ever since its appearance in 1913, Reinach's work on a The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law has served as the principal representative of phenomenological, aprioristic and ontological/realist approaches to the philosophy of law. This annotated bibliography provides an overview of the reception of Reinach's thinking, which has been of influence also in the realm of speech act theory.

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the corresponding (...) speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the corresponding (...) speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking. (shrink)

It is now generally recognized that figures such as Reid, Peirce, and Reinach formulated theories of speech acts avant la lettre of Austin and Searle, in Reid and Reinach’s cases under the heading ‘theory of social acts’. Here we address the question as to what conditions would have to be satisfied for such theories to count as ‘theories of speech acts’ in the now familiar sense.

Material things have material (spatial) parts. Acts, events, occurrences, have phases, which we can view as their temporal parts. Spatial surfaces and volumes, stretches of time, they all have parts again; they can all be considered "extended". Entities, on the other hand, such as directions, numbers, temperatures, colors, tones, fictional characters, prices, numbers, values, ideologies, goals, are all unextended; they are partless. Let us call such non-extended objects “nodes”, in order to express the fact that we have a tendency to (...) grasp them as pure correlates of our thinking, often at the same time viewing them effectively as placeholders within systems of coordinates in various intellectual and social domains. My aim, here, is to clarify this rough idea of “node” for the purpose of providing a corresponding clarification of Ingarden's idea of a purely intentional object. I first consider purely intentional objects in general, and then focus in particular on fictional examples. (shrink)

A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.

Reinach’s essay of 1911 establishes an ontological theory of logic, based on the notion of Sachverhalt or state of affairs. He draws on the theory of meaning and reference advanced in Husserl’s Logical Investigations and at the same time anticipates both Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and later speech act theorists’ ideas on performative utterances. The theory is used by Reinach to draw a distinction between two kinds of negative judgment: the simple negative judgment, which is made true by a negative state of (...) affairs; and the polemical negative judgment, which is a performative utterance in which the truth of some earlier judgment – typically a judgment made by some other person – is denied. (shrink)

A collection of discussions of possible influences on Wittgenstein when he was writing the Tractatus, includes treatments of Reinach and Meinong.

One of the most contentious problems of contemporary philosophy revolves around the relation between idealism and realism in phenomenology. Husserl’s early students were the first to raise the question about the relation, noting a change of perspective from his Logical Investigations to his subsequent works, including The Idea of Phenomenology and Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy. Adolf Reinach was one of these students, and as Husserl’s assistant, he exercised a great influence on his own student (...) Edith Stein. (shrink)