Eine vollständige Darstellung von Edmund Husserls Verhältnis zu Gottlob Frege steht noch aus, so dass es nicht verwundert, einige Missverständnisse, dieses Verhältnis betreffend, im Umlauf zu finden. Selbst scheinbar längst überwundene systematische Dogmen tauchen wieder auf, so z.B. die Auffassung, dass Husserl nicht nur entscheidend von Gottlob Frege beeinflusst wurde, sondern darüber hinaus auch seine schärfste Frege-Kritik 1891 zurückgenommen habe. Mein Beitrag enthält eine überwiegend historisch vorgehende Entgegnung auf solche fälschlich vertretenen Ansichten wie sie sich auch in dem neu erschienenen (...) und mit vielen dokumentarischen Belegen versehenen Frege-Kommentarbuch von W. Künne finden. Die wichtigsten Argumente, die in diesem Buch gegen Husserl gerichtet werden, stützen sich auf Stellen in Husserls Frühwerk, die zwar sehr aufschlussreich für die Beurteilung des philosophischen und menschlichen Habitus Husserls in den 1890er Jahre sind, nicht aber Künnes Thesen stützen oder gar beweisen können. Die als zurückgenommene Frege-Kritik verstandene Selbstkritik Husserls betrifft jedoch nach meinen Darlegungen gerade nicht die Kritik, die er an Freges Buch Grundlagen der Arithmetik geübt hatte, sondern seine eigene systematische Stellungnahme hinsichtlich der Begründung der Arithmetik. Ausgehend von dieser Einsicht werde ich auf ein wichtiges Spezifikum von Husserls Erstlingswerk (Philosophie der Arithmetik) aufmerksam machen, das voreiligen Interpretationen einen Riegel vorschiebt: Dieses Buch ist ein Mosaik aus Einsichten verschiedener Arbeits- und Denkperioden des Verfassers, die sich vor allem auch in dem zweifachen Begriff der Äquivalenz zeigen. Dies knüpft an einen langen geschichtlichen Entwicklungsprozess an, der in eine von Bolzano, Lotze, Brentano und Carl Stumpf geprägte Tradition zurückführt und das Problem der Unterscheidung zwischen Sinn und Gegenstand eines Aktes betrifft. (shrink)

A comprehensive and agreed-upon account of Husserl’s relation to Gottlob Frege does not yet exist. In this situation we encounter interpretations that allow systematic dogmas to reappear that should have long been vanquished—for instance, that the author of the Logical Investigations was not only decisively influenced by Frege, but also that he had already retracted his sharpest Frege-critique by 1891. The present essay contains a largely historical response to W. Künne’s new monograph on Frege that advocates such views. We will (...) concentrate on a small remark that turns out to reference a defining moment for any understanding of Husserl’s early philosophy. We shall argue that Husserl’s supposed self-criticism does not turn on the critique that he had earlier leveled at Frege’s Grundlagen der Arithmetik; rather, it has to do exclusively with his own earlier systematic positions on the grounding of arithmetic. In this context, an important particular of Husserl’s Philosophie der Arithmetik takes center stage: this book is a mosaic composed from old and new insights, a fact that becomes most evident in the two distinct concepts of “equivalence” that are founded there, which reflects Husserl’s transition from a theory of arithmetic based on the concept of number to one based on the parallelism between proper and symbolic (improper) presentations. This change involves a long historical development that goes back to a tradition marked by the work of Bolzano, Lotze, Brentano, and Stumpf, and it is closely tied to the problem of how to distinguish between the sense and the object of an act. Systematic neglect of the historical background of the Frege–Husserl relation has led to disputes over who owns the copyright to the sense/reference distinction, but it has obscured the very core of the original line of questioning. (shrink)

The sociology of art as synthesized by Arnold Hauser is based on a theory of knowledge and articulates the cognitive role of art. In a brief analysis, this paper elaborates on the sources of this epistemological enterprise. The pedigree of Hauser’s main thoughts was oriented towards a Kantian and Marxist framework, respectively. As a Kantian, he tried to take into account the philosophical consequences of two (or even more) different sources of cognition that are equal in value, correlative and necessarily (...) cooperating. Giving exclusive priority to only one of these leads to classical philosophical errors such as psychologism and intellectualism. As a Marxist, Hauser was anti-dogmatic and anti-deterministic, because he adopted an interpretive-hermeneutical meaning of Marxism and considered it an aid against distorting tendencies in our thinking. His basic insight that the different sources of value-equal and cooperating cognitive layers are in an everyday-life perspective intertwined, so that a kind of reservatio mentalis is needed to methodically separate them for the sake of better understanding, makes him a distant relative of classical phenomenology. This web of epistemological investigations is what I call the multilayer theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Beginning with the book of Robert Sokolowski about Husserl’s concept of constitution the Philosophy of Arithmetic have been revisited as an important document of Husserl’s constitution-theory. It is not only an unripe sketch but a work that even formulates one of the most progressive thoughts of Husserl’s later philosophy. In my analysis this statement will also be true, if we concentrate on the second part of Husserl’s book and on the text that was meant to build the opening section of (...) the second volume of this early treatise of Husserl. These works are focused on a problem of the later Husserl, namely how everyday life is the base of using signs, symbols and idealized concepts and how this world also becomes transformed by these means: so the whole problem-complex of the interaction of intuitive and ideal-conceptual. If we take into account that Husserl wants to clarify the basis of symbolization as such in the PA, then it is not surprising that he handles these problems. But it is surprising that he comes very close to the results which were obtained in the late 20s and 30s. This will be clear if we are attent to some points in Husserl’s 1892/93 text about the concept of space. I will conclude that he abandoned these very progressive results, because he had realized, that his mood of analysis wasn’t sufficient to go in this direction already. (shrink)