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Husserl's discussion of psychologism in his Logical Investigations led to a heated debate in German academic philosophy. While he, and earlier Frege, had been concerned only with psychologism in logic (and this variety will be my only concern in this essay), it was discovered that many other philosophical and humanist disciplines had been infected as well. It was found that there was metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, logical, ethical, aesthetic, sociological, religious, historical, mathematical, pedagogical and linguistic psychologism. Psychologisms were sub-classified into empiricist, a prioristic, sensualist, rationalist, critical, theological, evolutionary, pragmatist, transcendental. They could be old, new, false, genuine, objective, subjective, extreme or moderate, to cite from the lists in Martin Kusch's excellent account of psychologism (1995, p. 108). In almost all cases it ranged from regrettable to abject. Philosophers accused each other of this transgression. It must have been satisfying to find residual psychologism even in those who explicitly denounced it. Even Husserl was fingered, and accused in turn of "logicism" by Wilhelm Wundt, which term here meant that Husserl intended to reduce psychology to logic, and turn it into a "psychology without psychology" (Wundt p. 580, cited from Kusch, 1995, p. 180.). The term "psychological logicism", in contrast to "logical psychologism," had come to refer to the practice, as old as philosophy itself, of beginning with the logical analysis of thought, and postulating mental faculties or functions, like understanding, reason etc., that would account for the various logical accomplishments and capacities (cf. Kreiser, p. 237).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-0207-2_7

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