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Translator’s Foreword

1The name “Henry Lanz” undoubtedly is not commonly found in phenomenological literature, be it German, French, or English. Mentions of his name are only rarely encountered in Russian works on phenomenology. Yet, the lengthy essay that follows, published in 1909 in the foremost philosophy journal of Imperial Russia, Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii [Problems of Philosophy and Psychology] was the first thematic essay devoted specifically to Husserl’s thought in a non-German language. While much of the essay is a paraphrase of central tenets and arguments in Husserl’s critique of psychologism as found in the Logical Investigations, it also includes a discussion of the context of that critique, summarizing the notable positions taken by such now largely forgotten figures as Gerardus Heymans, Melchior Palágyi, and Christoph Sigwart. The Baden School of neo-Kantianism also comes into focus, however briefly, from Lanz. Although Husserl’s arguments may be quite familiar to the reader, the lucidity of Lanz’s presentation stands out for that fact and for its succinctness.

2 Lanz was neither the first nor would he be the last to see the dichotomy between psychology and epistemology as the most bitter dispute in the philosophy of his day. The boundary between the two was unclear even to the most engaged participants. Out of this quagmire, Husserl’s Logical Investigations appeared, broaching no compromise with any form of psychologism. Lanz appreciated Husserl’s arguments, which he contrasted with the views of various proponents of psychologism as well as with that of Kantian “Criticism” insofar as it took reality to be a product of subjective human cognition. Lanz found efforts by others, such as Wilhelm Windelband with his normativism, to be wanting, owing to their own implicit psychologism. Emil Lask opined that from Husserl’s viewpoint, even Rickert’s epistemology had at least a latent psychologism, in that it viewed judgments as valuating, and valuations presuppose an evaluating subject. In contrast, Lanz applauded Husserl’s effort to sever the connection between truth, which is transcendent to consciousness, and the fact of consciousness. But the question, then, becomes how a factual act of consciousness can grasp a transcendent something. Husserl’s proclamation that truth is an idea, a central tenet of his intentional theory of cognition, marked the high point of anti-psychologism, but it also held the seeds of a relapse into psychologism. Husserl adamantly maintained that, for example, a number is not a “real” object. It is not a real constituent element in a psychological act. This transcendency of the intentional object is a logical but not, as in Plato, a metaphysical transcendency. The intentional relation between the conscious act and its object is irreducible to simpler elements. We can only point to it and state it. In the case of a universal object, it is simply something meant.

3 Lanz passes on to a consideration of Husserl’s second investigation with its concern for universal objects, and additional questions arise. How can I, as an individual cognizing subject, come to have a universal concept? For Husserl, a new act, which he terms “ideation,” with a distinctive intentional character must be added to our concrete perceptions.

4 Lanz recognized that Husserl tried to eliminate any trace of anthropologism from his theory of cognition. Science is, as Husserl remarked, a complex of senses – the objective senses of our judgments. Lanz, however, accused Husserl of omitting a transcendental viewpoint. Echoing Hermann Cohen, Lanz sees science as the “self” that creates being and posits it as objective. He faulted Husserl for viewing the relationship of the subjective act to the objective object statically, a charge we know that Husserl himself would eventually recognize and address in his genetic phenomenology. However, from Lanz’s standpoint, Husserl’s position in 1900/1901 presupposes a multi-layered structure of objectifying aspects that must be elaborated through a transcendental philosophy. Husserl’s dichotomy between the intentional act and its object requires a dynamic explanation, such as the one Cohen provided. Thus, although Lanz ultimately finds inadequacies in Husserl’s intentional theory, he saw the refutation of psychologism to be beneficial both on its own terms as well as aiding Cohen’s project of separating the concept of science from that of the conscious investigator of science.

5 Unfortunately, our firm biographical information of Lanz is scanty. He apparently left no memoirs that could have revealed so much about not just his personal life and views, but also about the various philosophical circles he passed through. What can be established is that Henry Lanz ended his days at Stanford University as a professor of philosophy. Prior to his arrival in California, he surely led a quite tumultuous life. Born in Moscow in 1886, his father Ernest and mother Caroline arrived in Russia three years earlier from the United States, Ernest taking up a job in the former, serving as the director of a rail-rolling plant. Henry studied at Moscow University in the liberal arts faculty during the first decade of the new century. He, however, as was common at the time among Russian philosophy students, went to Germany for further “graduate” education, in Lanz’s case to Heidelberg, where in 1911 he defended a dissertation Das Problem der Gegenständlichkeit in der modernen Logik, under the supervision of Windelband and which appeared as a supplementary volume to the journal Kant-Studien in 1912.1 He then went to study with Cohen in Marburg, where he encountered Boris Pasternak, among others from Russia who came to the small city on the river Lahn to hear about Plato, Kant, and the latest directions in philosophy. We should also mention Lanz’s interest at this time in Fichte, which resulted in several lengthy articles in Russian and German and in which he demonstrated a broad familiarity with German philosophy of the time including the work of Lask.2

6Lanz remained in touch during these years with others from Moscow, particularly Boris Jakovenko and Gustav Shpet, both of whom played a significant role in the dissemination of phenomenology in Imperial Russia. The exact chronology of Lanz’s travels and whereabouts is difficult to establish with certainty, given the paucity of documentation. Nonetheless, in a puzzling letter from September 1914, Jakovenko in Italy wrote to Shpet that he was expecting Lanz to arrive from London after lengthy ordeals in Germany and Belgium, where, in Jakovenko’s account, he lived for a time in poverty.3 Jakovenko also mentioned a translation by Lanz of Cohen’s “commentary,” presumably a reference to Cohen’s 1907 Kommentar zu Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Whatever happened to the manuscript is unknown. Almost certainly, the translation was never completed. It was surely never published in any form.

7After returning to Russia, Lanz taught aesthetics at a music school in Moscow, and participated to some – most likely minor – extent in the publication of the Russian edition of the journal Logos. Following the events of 1917, Lanz left Russia. After a difficult period and some wandering, he secured a position teaching Russian at Stanford University in 1919 and would eventually gain a professorship in philosophy there. Unfortunately, despite his broad background in recent German thought, Lanz, perhaps sensing the inhospitable atmosphere to those ideas in the English-speaking world at the time, hardly mentioned them in his scant publications while he lived in California. He did show some familiarity with Husserl’s Ideas, Max Scheler’s Formalism, and even Moritz Geiger in an October 1924 article “The New Phenomenology” in The Monist, but otherwise he devoted his attention to aesthetics. In this sense, an opportunity was lost to introduce Husserlian phenomenology and Marburg neo-Kantianism to America. Lanz died in Palo Alto of natural causes in 1945.

8 In the translation that follows, quotations, particularly those from Husserl’s Logical Investigations, were made from Lanz’s Russian rather than taken from J.N. Findlay’s English translation of the Investigations. However, the footnote references are to that English translation, thereby allowing the reader to get some inkling of Lanz’s understanding of Husserl. It also allows for a more uniform set of terms across the range of German works that Lanz cited. Translations from those other German writings that Lanz cited were likewise done from Lanz’s own Russian translations, rather than the German original. However, in each case, I have consulted the original German texts. There were many instances where Lanz quoted Husserl, providing his own Russian translations from the original German text, but provided no footnote reference. I have tried, almost always successfully, to determine where the quotation appeared and have provided the full footnote reference when possible. My additions in such cases are indicated with a square bracket [ ].

9 Lanz gave no indication of any familiarity with the project to publish a Russian translation of the “Prolegomena” that would appear no earlier than October 1909. (I base this on the date given at the end of S.L. Frank’s editorial “Preface” to that translation – Lanz’s article appearing earlier in the May-June 1909 issue of Voprosy filosofii.) In any case, Lanz drew material from several of the individual “investigations,” whereas the 1909 Russian translation was limited to the “Prolegomena.” Finally, I have inserted into the translation that follows the page numbers of the original Russian text, likewise, in square brackets.

Thomas Nemeth

Edmund Husserl and the Psychologistic Thinkers of Our Day

Henry Lanz

104<393> Since Kant’s time, the problem of truth and knowledge has been the focus of philosophical investigations. All of the mighty philosophical figures of the nineteenth century devoted themselves primarily to re-working these basic concepts. Our own day is consumed almost exclusively with epistemological and logical research. The greatest philosophical figures of our own time have concentrated their attention on it.

11After a tumultuous period at the beginning of the nineteenth century and an anti-philosophical reaction during the 1850s and 1860s, philosophy entered a new era with the calm and gradual development of problems bequeathed to it by Kant. By no means was he himself fully aware of all the difficulties connected with the consistent development of his point of view in the theory of cognition. In his system, completely opposing tendencies coexist peacefully side by side, which in contemporary neo-Kantianism have given rise to a fierce struggle between schools. All the varieties of Criticism, which have sprung up in contemporary epistemology to become full and conscious opposites, can find and point out their source in Kant’s system. In it, these various sources peacefully coexist with each other; they went quite unnoticed by the creator of the Critique.

12 The arena of the fiercest war today is the issue of the relationship between psychology and theory of cognition. Much has already been clarified in this matter; much still remains far from clear. Philosophy seems to be gradually leaning toward the complete expulsion of psychology from the theory of cognition. At the present time, we can say almost with certainty that victory will ultimately be on the side of the anti-psychologistic direction.

13 <394> Psychologism and pure theory of cognition form two hostile camps. It is difficult to establish the bounds of these conceptions. They gradually and imperceptibly pass from one into the other. What for Windelband is pure logic, for Rickert turns out to be the purest psychologism, and Rickert himself appears to be a psychologistic thinker, from Cohen’s point of view.

14 Husserl’s Logical Investigations is the culminating point achieved by anti-psychologism today.5 Husserl refuses any compromise with psychologism. Neither normative logic nor the “fiction” of a “consciousness in general” meets his approval. He breaks with it completely, demonstrating that neither the method nor the object of logic has anything in common with psychology.

15What is the characteristic feature of every psychologism?

16 It lies above all in that it makes truth and cognition completely dependent on our subjective organization. This mythological conception is a kind of “virtus dormitiva” of every psychologism. When we come across something that for us is inexplicable, our reason instinctively hides behind conceptions that provide it fictitious satisfaction.

17 This conceptual game of “hide and seek”6 is characteristic of every scientific field. Until now, our scientific conceptions have often continued to hide in the dark corners of mythical fantasies, such as weightless liquids, atoms, forces, etc. There is no sphere where this “game” has been developed more powerfully than in that of psychology and theory of cognition.7

18Typical psychologistic thinkers, such as Heymans, construct their entire theory of cognition on this mythology of mental organizations.8 If you ask them what they actually mean by this notorious organization, they can hardly find a <395> more precise definition than that given to it by Cohen. “Our ‘physico-psychological organization’ is only an expression for all the determinations collected together that one might wish to recognize in detail. It, therefore, designates only the general X and a question mark.”9 This method of explaining the known by the unknown, hiding behind a fog of obscure concepts, is worthy of Molière's doctors, but must be expelled from science once and for all.

19A number of Husserl’s arguments, brilliant in their subtle wit, finally put an end, in our view, to the theory of the [human] organization.10 He leads the theory of the [human] organization to its complete absurdity.

201) Psychological theory, trying to explain truth from our real [human] organization, certainly must admit the fact of that organization, and at the same time the unconditional truth that that given organization actually exists. The psychologistic thinker, not conceding this truth unconditionally and without reservations, cannot follow his proof, since he really can explain truth only when we assume the real givenness of the human organization. Consequently, the psychologist assumes what he wants to explain. He wants to explain every truth from the [human] organization and already assumes as an unconditional truth that the given organization actually exists.

21If the psychologistic thinker, disentangling himself from this circle, asserts that this truth itself depends on the [human] organization and its laws, then it is not difficult to continue this ad absurdum. We agree that the main assumption in any explanation, its principle, can only be a definite true proposition, but by no means the real process itself or the objective law underlying the series of phenomena to be explained. Reality itself, of course, cannot be an assumption or an explanatory principle, since only a definite judgment can fulfill this function. Certainly, the force of gravity does not itself serve as an assumption or a principle for explaining celestial phenomena, but only a definite judgment expressing the essence <396> of this force. Reality always remains reality and never can fulfill a logical function. This proposition is obvious. It simply establishes the difference between two incommensurable concepts. Let us now show that the psychologistic thinker must reject this obvious proposition. His task is to explain truth from the laws of the [human] organization. The main assumption in this explanation is the truth that a given [human] organization and its laws actually exist. In this explanation, there is no higher assumption, and there cannot be one. This is its starting point. However, this very starting point demands an explanation, since it is also true and consequently depends on the [human] organization. Where do we seek an explanation for this truth? We cannot make assumptions, since this very truth is the main assumption of those possible concerning the given explanation. Its explanation can lie only in the very laws of the [human] organization, in the very fact of existence. This is impossible, since we agreed that the explanatory principle can be only the definite truth of a fact, and not the very fact itself.

22 Husserl, in the following formulation, expresses this confusing proof in an extremely vague manner: “The truth that such a given [human] organization and its laws actually exist would have taken its real explanation from the fact that these laws actually exist. Thereby the principles from which the explanation follows would have to be identical to the laws themselves, which is a complete absurdity.”11

232) The second argument is the following:

24 The world depends on our cognition; it is a product of cognition. But all of our cognition, insofar as it is true, depends on our [human] organization. Consequently, the real world also depends on it. But surely our [human] organization itself is only a part of the world, which is formed naturally as part of the world’s development. Consequently, in wishing to explain the world, we already presuppose it in terms of our [organization]. “Therefore, we are playing a harmless game: man evolves from the world, and the world evolves from man; God creates man, and man creates God.”12

25<397> The objection concerns an illusory contradiction between two contemporary grandiose worldviews, between evolutionism and Kantian Criticism. The world, according to the latter, is the product of our subjective cognitive activity. The forms of cognition are conditions of the possibility of the world. However, consciousness itself with all of its own forms is, in turn, a real product of this world. Consciousness appears at a certain stage of the world’s development. One day it was not, and one day it again will disappear. Consciousness is only an episode in the life of the world. How can the world be the product of its own origin? How can the law of causality (as a form of consciousness) develop in accordance with the law of causality? Here, we have a logical circle!

26 This objection certainly obliterates Kantian Criticism, misunderstood as a transcendental psychologism. This argument simply destroys any system of the theory of cognition that considers “consciousness in general” with all of its forms and laws as a certain real organization. But the fact of the matter is that “consciousness in general” and the transcendental forms of our cognition are not something real that can arise or be destroyed. The validity of the categories cannot emerge gradually from the world, since “their validity in general makes possible in the first place the concept of the world in which something gradually emerges.”13 For Husserl, the world is itself made possible only as an object of truth. Without truth, there is no object and, consequently, no world. However, this assertion does not make the world a real product of our subjective activity and in general of any activity. Truth, which makes possible the very concept of the world, does not itself belong to the world and does not emerge gradually during its development. It is eternal and unalterable, because it is extra-temporal. Consequently, the objection above by no means concerns Critical apriorism in general, but only its perverted forms, which approach psychologism. Evolutionary theory is in contradiction only with a Kantian Criticism that gets itself entangled in a web of psychological contradictions. Correctly understood, Kantian Criticism does not contradict it, but gives it, like any theory, its philosophical substantiation.

27<398> 3) Third argument. If relativism makes truth dependent on the [human] organization, then, logically granting the possibility of any organization, no matter how oddly arranged, relativism must admit the possibility of the existence of beings who, on the basis of their own organization, deny their own existence. But surely a negation is a truth, and a truth is possible for them only by admitting to their existence! How would we begin to relate to the very fact of their existence? Do they actually exist, or do they exist only for us human beings? If we now admit that all thinking beings, except for the species of the deniers themselves, were destroyed, then how in such a case is the question of their existence to be resolved? “The idea,” Husserl writes, “that the non-existence of a specific [human] organization has its foundation in this very organization is a complete contradiction.”14 Substantiating truth, consequently, the existing [organization] must, along with other truths, substantiate the truth of its own non-existence?!

28Such are the three most important points in Husserl’s critique of the theory of the [human] organization. The assumption of this unknown X in order to explain the possibility of true cognition leads epistemology to a complete absurdity and entangles it in hopeless contradictions. As an explanatory principle, [human] organization should be shelved in an archive along with living forces and weightless liquids. By accepting this unknown X, this mythical organization and its latent form-forces, we in no way create for ourselves a theory of cognition, but only a “mythology of cognition.”15 However, the role of the [human] organization in the latest theories of psychologism is not limited to the role of an explanatory principle. This unknown X in a theory of cognition turns out to be more dangerous than anywhere else.

29In originally conceiving this X as something absolutely unknown, the psychologistic thinker begins to endow it to the necessary extent with universal properties that supposedly contribute to the explanation of his problems. He begins to conceive it not as an aggregate of elements, subject to explanation, but as an aggregate of principles <399> in accordance with which an explanation in the theory of cognition must proceed. It begins to play for the psychologistic thinker the role of a symbol of his faith. It becomes for him equivalent to the requirement to explain our cognition from natural laws of a psychic nature. The psychologistic thinker does not exclude cognition and truth from the general system of nature. He demands their natural explanation, demands the physics16 or chemistry17 of thought. “[Human] organization” is dangerous not as a principle of explanation (as such a principle, it is a product of scientific naivety, a sort of alchemy of cognition). It is dangerous as a symbol of this demand for a natural-scientific, empirical explanation of cognition. It is dangerous to the extent that it expresses, or better it embodies, a quite definite method of epistemological investigation. It threatens to turn truth and knowledge into a function of natural and actual mental processes. This is why it is not enough to point out to the psychologistic thinker the non-scientific nature of his explanations. It is necessary to eliminate definitively his demands, to show the bankrupt nature of his fundamental directions. These fundamental directions of psychologism consist in its desire to understand truth and cognition as mental facts from the point of view of their causal origin. For the psychologistic thinker, truth is a part of reality, and the task of the theory of cognition for him amounts to an investigation of the causes, common to all humanity, of the emergence of judgments with the character of veracity or obviousness.18

30Arguments of a psychologistic direction can be presented roughly in the following form:

31 A truth is always expressed in a judgment. A judgment is a certain mental function that proceeds following certain natural laws. There is no truth outside a judgment. It is always subjective. As something objective, it exists only symbolically in the form of written propositions. “The judgment as such exists only in the active judgmental process, in an act of a thinking individual, who makes it subjectively at a given moment.”19 “The judgment itself never attains objective existence, <400> but only its sensible sign, the spoken or written proposition.”20 Truth, consequently, depends entirely on our subject, because it exists only in the subject. Logic has no other object apart from our mental processes and functions. However, what distinguishes it from psychology is its practical direction, viz., to create, in line with the laws of our natural thinking, norms for their correct use. In its theoretical part, it is only “a special branch of psychology.”21 Its task amounts to the investigation of the essence of the function for which in its practical part definite rules are established. All of the basic laws and forms of our thinking express nothing other than the very essence of our spirit. So, for example, the fundamental law of logic, the law of non-contradiction, expresses, according to Sigwart, the essence of our mental function of negation. A negation is not a separate form of judgment. It expresses only a special type of our attitude toward an affirmative judgment.22 The psychological impossibility of simultaneously affirming and denying one and the same theoretical dependency immediately follows from this. We cannot at one and the same time relate in different ways to one and the same object. If we desire something, we cannot at one and the same time and in the same way not desire that thing. If we express our negative attitude toward a definite proposition, we cannot at the same time refer to it differently. That is, we are affirming in other words the well-known formula that the two propositions “A is B” and “A is not B” cannot be simultaneously true. The law of non-contradiction expresses this psychological impossibility. It clarifies for us merely the meaning of negation, and “its essence and meaning are laid down in a proposition…which is, therefore, only of value as making us conscious of our own act when using the negation.”23

32<401> According to Sigwart, the basic laws of logic all bear the same psychological imprint. “The law of ground and consequence, for example, corresponds to the law of non-contradiction, as a fundamental law of the functioning of our thinking.”24 Therefore, the highest truths, on which all our cognition depends – since it collapses along with them – take on a relative character. They express the nature of our thinking, which is rooted in the organization of our mind. The natural conclusion that follows is that every truth possesses universality and necessity only for us human beings or for similar thinking creatures. Another organization would yield other laws of thinking and other truths. For us, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. For other creatures, living on a spherical surface and having as contingent content only the surfaces of a sphere, the shortest distance will be a great circle. Who is correct? Of course, the psychologistic thinker answers that neither is absolute and each is correct for oneself. We cannot link all thinking and intuiting creatures to the same conditional intuitions, which are peculiar to our mind. We intuit all things in three-dimensional space, and for us Euclidean geometry has significance, but there is a possibility that somewhere else, there are creatures for whom four-dimensional space is the form of the content. For them, our geometry loses any sense. They use somehow a non-Euclidean geometrical system. It all depends on how they are constructed.

33 We would strive in vain to refute psychologism by means of a reference to normative logic. At the present time, the most widespread view claims the distinction between psychology and logic is only a methodological one.25 The object of investigation in both sciences is the same. Both of them approach it only from different points of view and with different aims. Psychology explains to us the natural mechanism of our thinking. Logic evaluates the products of it from the point of view of definite demands. One describes how we actually think; the other points out to us how we <402> should think, if we want to acquire truth. “Psychological laws are principles of explanatory science”; the laws of logic are “norms,” i.e., “principles of valuation.”26 Every thinking act occurs under the influence of this “dual legislation.” On the one hand, it is a natural product of our psychological life, a cause among other causes. On the other hand, it is considered from the point of view of its relation to a system of scientific goals. Logic considers every act of cognition not as a part of nature, but only as one of the members of a teleological organization of a realm of truths, allowing psychology to investigate the question of its origin and causal dependence. As a principle of evaluation, the laws of logic are essentially distinguished from the laws of psychology. A “norm” manifests a practical, valuating side of our I, which by its teleological essence elevates them over the sphere of empirical laws and transfers them from the sphere of the relative into the sphere of the absolute.

34This normativism can in no way rescue logic from psychologism, precisely because it fundamentally contains an unavoidable psychologism.

35 The laws of logic, as such, are by no means norms for correct thinking.27 Like any theoretical proposition, they can be used for normative purposes, i.e., for the creation of regulations, but in themselves, by their intrinsic sense, they are purely theoretical truths. Let us take, for example, the basic law of logic, the law of identity: A is A. This law expresses only that the content of some concept is always identical with itself. It does not express any demands and does not present any demands to us. In order to think correctly, I must, certainly, follow this law. But by itself, it does not prescribe my desire to think correctly. It is true in itself quite independently of my desires. In order to calculate correctly, I also must follow algebraic laws. From this, it by no means follows that algebraic laws are the norms of correct calculating. <403> Every algebraic law can turn into a norm for a correct calculation. But by itself, it remains a purely theoretical law that contains no thought of normativity. Husserl says, “We must rigorously distinguish laws that only serve for normative purposes from rules that themselves contain the idea of this normativity.”28 Every theoretical proposition can obtain a normative formulation while remaining essentially purely theoretical. “Logical laws are by no means exceptions from this rule.”29 The distinction between the “proper content” of a law and its “practical application” cannot possibly be seen. Logical laws in themselves are not norms but can only serve as norms for our mental processes. They in no case appear as laws for the mental.30 As such, they would have to assume a mental existence, and their cognition would depend on a cognition of this existence, and at the same time also the veracity of logic from the veracity of psychology. Every formulation of logical laws taken only as rules for the normativization of mental processes31 leads therefore and inevitably to psychologism. Because in order to know how we should think, we must first know how we actually do think. Laws for the mental have inevitably a psychological foundation. Therefore, “normative logic” not only does not eliminate psychologism, but inevitably leads to it.

36We already said that it is not enough to lead the psychologistic thinker ad absurdum; it is necessary to eliminate at its root his basic direction, which is expressed in the demand to apply the investigative methods of natural science to the processes of cognizing truth. The primitive philosophical consciousness (psychologism is positioned precisely at this stage) does not know objects other than actual ones and does not know how to refer to them except from the viewpoint of a natural-scientific explanation. Science and its ideal laws appear as the objects of the theory of cognition. But for the psychologistic thinker, <404> science is transformed into a “complex of mental experiences,”32 and its laws are transformed into an “abstraction from the factual processes of thinking.”33 A negation of all that is truly ideal, the desire for nature, for reality, for the “natural” is the basic tendency of psychologism.

37These empirical tendencies are the result of one of the most dangerous psychologistic prejudices, against which Bolzano already rose up, and later Herbart battled with success.

38 In order to defend their views, psychologistic thinkers always refer to the factual content of logic. With what is it incessantly concerned? With judgments, concepts, conclusions, foundations, etc. Are not all of these really psychic facts, mental experiences? We find psychic activities or their products everywhere in logic as objects of a practical normativization. How can the desire to “cleanse” logic of psychology be justified if logic, “since it in general is a science, is merely a part or branch of psychology?” “It fully owes its theoretical foundations to psychology, precisely to the psychology of cognition.”34

39However obvious all this may seem, it must be wrong. The absurdity of the consequences inevitably associated with psychologism, and which we already indicated above, shows this. But our concern now is not with the consequences, but, vice versa, with the foundations themselves, the assumptions. Logic certainly deals with judgments and inferences, with reason and the understanding. However, “one would be very mistaken, if, on this basis, one expects in the logic of an investigation the mental laws by which our thinking takes place.”35 The laws that our mental activity follow are by no means identical with the laws of logic. Already the presence of logically incorrect thinking, i.e., thought processes inconsistent with these laws,36 inform us about this. <405> However, let us assume, for example, that we could not help but think logically, that we have achieved the ideal coincidence of “both legislations,” which Windelband considers the goal of human development, when “the consciousness of norms” would be the sole agent determining our mental and willful processes. Even then, though, the laws of logic and ethics would not coincide with the natural laws of our thinking and desiring. It is impossible to confuse the “content of a law” with the fact of recognizing it in consciousness, with the fact of “judging about it.”37 The latter is a mental reality and, as such, as a “motive of thinking” can causally condition our mental life in accordance with the content of a law. The content itself, the truth, that “must be brought to consciousness,” is not a mental reality and cannot become in any case a link in the chain of mental causes. Just as the mechanical laws governing the counting in a calculating machine are not identical with the very laws of counting, so the mechanism of our thinking is by no means identical with a logical schematism.

40From the viewpoint of psychologism, mathematical laws would also have to be precisely psychological laws.38 After all, a number is given to us only in the processes of counting. Addition, subtraction, differentiation, and integration are accomplished also by means of our mental activity. However, it would never occur to anyone to turn differential calculus into a branch of psychology on this basis. “The mathematician will merely smile if we wish to impose on him psychological findings, which supposedly contribute to his investigations.”39 “Psychology, of course, has to do with the processes of counting and arithmetical operations, as facts, as temporally determined mental acts. <406> Psychology is an empirical science of mental facts in general. The concern of arithmetic is quite different. Its sphere of investigation is well-known. It is completely determined by way of a well-known to us ideal series: 1, 2, 3…There is no talk in this sphere about individual facts, about what is temporally definite.”40 “The number five does not coincide with my or anyone else’s counting of five.”41 A number is an extra-temporal, ideal unity, completely independent of any consciousness whatever. My acts of counting do not create mathematics, and numbers themselves, as ideal unities, we would say, are branches of mathematical categories. Logic also has absolutely nothing to do with my judgments about the laws of truth, but only with these laws themselves. Logic is interested not in the act of cognizing truth, but in truth itself, as such, and its ideal laws.

41The basic error of any psychologism lies in the fact that it refers to truth as a mental fact, confusing the true sense of a judgment, namely its content, with the very act of judging. Here lies the source of all of its delusions. All of its empirical demands follow from this. If truth is a fact, it must be investigated as a fact, i.e., by the methods of the empirical sciences.

42 There is nothing more absurd, from Husserl’s point of view, than to ascribe a factual character to truth.42 Only our cognition of truth has a factual character, but by no means truth itself. Every fact has a temporal, individual character. It arises and disappears. It can stand in a causal relationship with other facts. It itself appears as the result of some real conditions, and in turn it is a condition for other facts. It appears as a link in the infinite chain of causes and effects and is subject to the law of the iron necessity of natural development. All of this sounds quite absurd when applied to the concept of truth. It is not something temporal; it cannot serve as the cause of anything; it cannot arise nor be destroyed. The sum of two angles in a triangle is always equal to two right angles, even if the human race knew nothing about triangles or right angles, and it will always be equal to it. <407> This proposition can never lose its true character when applied to three-dimensional space. Even if all creatures that intuit things in this space should happen to disappear, and at the same time this very form would disappear along with them (let us admit it!), the truth that the sum of the angles of a two-dimensional triangle in three-dimensional space can never lose its significance.

43Hardly anyone would seriously claim that the truth of Newton’s law arose only when he discovered it, that before him this law was not true.43 Only an act of cognizing the truth can arise and disappear, but not truth itself. The veracity of the judgment 2 x 2 = 4 does not arise and does not disappear along with the manifestation of this judgment in my head. The judgment is aroused in me under definite conditions, created by definite causes according to the laws of my psyche. Truth stands outside the sphere of the action of the law of causality, which loses any sense when applied to veracity. Only my experiences are causally conditioned, but by no means the veracity of the judgments expressed by me. It can be logically substantiated but in no case causally conditioned. Truth is not contained in me and does not depend on me or on my [human] organization. This is clear already from the fact that there is an entire series of truths that we still do not know and perhaps will never know, since they exceed our cognizing ability. It is possible that other beings, constructed differently, have a greater cognitive ability, that they can apprehend truths that are completely inaccessible to us. Nevertheless, there are truths the obvious cognition of which we do possess. They cannot lose their true character, cannot become false, whoever may know them, be they human beings, angels, or even God Himself.44 What is true is true in itself, independent of the organization of any being. Certainly, it is possible that there are beings for whom our truths seem inaccessible and who have, if not less than, at least a quite different logical mental outlook. <408> This does not mean that the truths that for us have an obvious meaning become for them false. They simply do not have any idea of them.

44In general, truth does not exist for someone. This is only an incorrect mode of expression. Truth is truth in itself. It is an ideal logical unity, free from any relation to any cognitive organization whatever, free in general from an obligatory relationship to a cognizing subject.45 There is no requirement for it to be acknowledged and known in its essence. There is only a “possibility of being realized in the acts of cognition.”46 However, it does not at all express the requirement and obligation of this realization.

45From this point of view, the theory of truth as a value crumbles. At the foundation of this theory lies the incorrect view of the essence of judgment as the “recognition of a value,” as a valuation. Every judgment, on the one hand, appearing as the theoretical connection of our representations, also, on the other hand, includes according to this view – insofar as it claims to be a truth – a valuation. Therefore, the “practical side of the I” that is manifested in a norm also participates in every judgment. Windelband’s theory47 about the practical essence of a judgment48 forms the basis of Rickert’s theory of cognition, according to which cognition is “a recognition or rejection” of transcendent value.49 Therefore, the absolute value of truth in the form of a “transcendent obligation” is manifested in every judgment, being its transcendental foundation. The adoption of a definite position50 on a transcendent value belongs to the essence of every judgment, to its logical “sense.” This value is an object of cognition, is a truth, is a transcendent obligation. The normative attitude reaches its climax in Rickert. The old Platonic idea of the priority of “the highest good” over being and truth finds its expression and completion in his system.51 <409> Truth is one kind of moral duty. The practical, moral will “logically precedes the will to truth.”52 Truth is an absolute value κατ᾽ἐξοχήν [par excellence]. Its practical, moral essence as a value replaces its theoretical essence as a meaning.

46From Husserl’s point of view we must assign Rickert’s theory of cognition to the psychological direction. Rickert’s psychologism is hidden in his assumptions and above all in his theory of the judgment as a valuation. Both valuation and a value always assume an evaluating subject. Although expressed with reference to a “consciousness in general,” truth is transcendent to any consciousness. It is a pure logical meaning, a unity independent of any consciousness. In itself, it is not a value. It becomes a value only in its relation to a recognizing and ethical consciousness. Moreover, this relation is not essential for it. It is essentially amoral. It remains true quite independently of its recognition by anyone. It does not take the form of a “decree,” but the form of the purely theoretical sense of a judgment, the form of its logical content.53 “Truth is truth in itself, and not for anyone.”54 The real possibility of its cognition by anyone, its realization in any thinking subject is for it a contingent and incidental circumstance. In itself, it is an extra-temporal and trans-subjective ideal <410> unity. It possesses an ideal being – a meaning in the logical realm of eternal and unalterable ideas. It does not “exist” anywhere, neither in the world nor in some Τόπος οὐράνιος, nor in a divine mind.55 It does not hover “somewhere in the void,” but belongs to a sphere of “absolute logical meanings,” “to the timeless realm of eternal and unalterable ideas,”56 in which the world with all of the twists and turns of its eternal mutability finds its ideal reflection. “If there were no intelligent beings, if in general they were excluded from the order of things and, consequently, from what is really possible – or if, for a certain class of truths, there were no beings which would be capable of cognizing them – then these ideal possibilities remain a fulfilling reality. The apprehension, cognition, coming to consciousness of truths is nowhere ever realized. But each truth remains in itself what it is, retains its ideal being.”57

47Thus, truth is not the product of subjective activity. Only our processes of cognizing, the acts that communicate sense to our experiences are subjective. Truth itself, as an idea, lies outside the sphere of any consciousness. Whether it is an individual or a universal consciousness, it is all the same. In this lies Husserl’s great contribution to the theory of cognition. He freed truth not only from individual subjectivity, but also from the notorious “consciousness in general.” Husserl says, “The constant reference to an ideal consciousness arouses an unpleasant feeling as though logical laws essentially possess meaning only for this fictitious, ideal case, instead of empirically given individual cases.” Truths in themselves “have no immediate relation to this ideal.”58

48The question now arises: how can a truth, transcendent to consciousness and absolutely independent and unalterable, relate in any way to consciousness? How can we by our acts of cognition “apprehend” it, if it, i.e., a truth, is never contained in those acts? How can a transcendent something “enter” into our consciousness? How can we “experience” it? The absolute transsubjectivity of truth makes its cognition impossible! <411> After all, entering into the sphere of consciousness, it ceases to be transcendent to it, and consequently changes its essence! But surely we admitted that truth is absolutely unalterable and is eternally transcendent!

49 This objection, however, which counted against Plato’s philosophy, by no means concerns Husserl’s system. Above all, we ask: What is the relation of which we spoke? What do we wish to “apprehend”? Is not this “apprehension” only a figurative expression? There is no real relationship between truth and an act of cognition, and there cannot be one, since truth is not a transcendent reality. One must be able to pose questions. In the given case, the question is devoid of any sense. It is impossible to ask about a real relation where one is, in general, impossible. For example, how do the four legs of a horse “apprehend” the number 4? What is the sense in the given case of our very question of “apprehension,” of “entering,” etc.? None. There is no real relationship between any four objects and the number 4, and there cannot be any talk here of apprehension. However, a relationship exists between the contents of these concepts, a relationship which, though not real, is solely logical. A logical relationship exists between a genus and a species. Four objects are always a particular case of the general concept of four, just as a definite nuance of a red color is a particular case of “redness in general.” The latter “is present” in each red object, just not really but only logically, since in general every species “is present” in its individual object. In the same sense, truth is present and is apprehended by an act of cognition. The relation between a truth and my judgment is precisely the same as the relation between “redness in general” and a particular individual instance of redness. “We do not apprehend truth as we apprehend any other empirical content that pops up and again vanishes in the process of mental experiences. It is not a phenomenon among phenomena. It is an experience in a completely different sense in which, in general, a universal, an idea, can be an experience. We are conscious of it as, for example, we are in general conscious of the color red.”59 Truth is an “idea.” <412> It occupies a small corner in the vast kingdom of universal objects. This is why there can be no talk of a real relationship of it to acts of our cognition. It does not belong to the sphere of real objects. Truth is not a reality. And just like the color red in general, consciousness in general is not a reality.

50“Truth is an idea.”60 This proposition is the central point of Husserlian philosophy. Here lies “the fundamentally new” point that Husserl introduces into logic. As with anything fundamentally new, it is only a principle and is by no means free of contradictions.

51In this proposition, anti-psychologism reaches its culmination. But it already also contains elements of a relapse, of falling into psychologism. Husserl himself is by no means free from the reproach of psychologism, and he encounters this psychologistic danger, which not one theory of cognition has so far escaped, precisely where, it would seem, he was furthest from it, namely with his brilliant theory of “ideas.”

52 In order to clarify his theory of truth or “pure logic,” as Husserl calls it, we must make a rather long digression into the very depths of his philosophical work, into his theory of intentional objects and of ideas.

53The intentional theory is, in our time, the dominant current in epistemology. The bifurcation of cognition and its object, of science and being, of truth and reality in this or that form is recognized by the majority of epistemological systems. The philosophy of identity has in our day few adherents.61 In contemporary <413> theory of cognition, Kantian dualism reigns: a dualism of form and content, a dualism of sense and understanding, science and nature, truth and cognition, etc. One manifested form of this general dualistic direction of contemporary logic (which has deep roots in the historical tradition and deep roots in the scientific interests of our day) is also intentional theory, i.e., the theory of the bifurcation and “directedness” of the act of cognition toward its object. It is usually a tacitly accepted assumption in investigations. Sometimes, it is a by-product of these investigations, as it is in the true transcendentalists such as Cohen. But it rarely appears as a fundamental point of view, as an actual, fully conscious theory. It appears as such, for example, in Brentano.

54An essential element of it is the theory of the objective directedness of psychic acts. “Every mental phenomenon is characterized, according to this theory, by what medieval scholastics called the intentional inexistence62 of the object and what we would now call a relation to a content, a directedness to an object…or immanent objectivity.”63 Additionally, Brentano stipulates that the object “need not be understood here as a reality.” This directedness or intention toward an object lies in any mental experience. Mental phenomena are distinguished from all others by this aspect of directedness or intention. The will always wants something; a representation represents something; a judgment judges something, etc. This is why Brentano defines mental acts as “those phenomena which contain an object intentionally within themselves.”64

55Brentano’s theory of the intentional nature of the mental is brought over by Husserl from the sphere of psychology to the sphere of logic. He thereby made possible, on the one hand, not a psychological, but a purely logical distinction between the act65 and its object. <414> On the other hand, he created a right for himself to apply the theory of intentionality to the logical realm of pure truths. With this, he laid the foundation for a theory of intentionality of the highest order, where the poles of an intention are not the mental act and its object, but an ideal science and ideal being.66

56We cannot dwell here in detail on his intentional theory and the intentional method. Therefore, we restrict ourselves to stating only the most essential aspects of his theory of objects in general and of ideal objects in particular. In this respect, the parallel with Kant is interesting.

57 For Kant, an object is the product of a synthesis of the manifold with the forms of intuition and thinking. Both aspects for him are equally necessary. Empty categorial thinking still does not give an object. A category must be schematized. That is, it must, by means of the schema of time, be directed to the manifold of pure sensible material. Only then, for Kant, are all the necessary formal conditions of the possibility of an object complete. However, they together create so far only a possible object. An object must be posited in connection with the material conditions of experience. Only then does it make for Kant an actual object. The object must be set or, as Cohen expresses, “indicated” to us by sensations67 in order that it receive for us the meaning of an actual object. For Kant, there are no objects outside reality and nature. The concept of an object coincides in him with the concept of an actual, real object.68 Therefore, reality itself, time itself, etc., by no means can be objects, because they cannot be conceived in categories.

58<415> This is not so for Husserl. He did not necessarily take the intentional object to be a real object. The concept of an “object” does not include for him the concept of “reality.” The number “5” is a definite object, distinct from our representation of five. We can add, subtract, give a logarithm, raise to a power, etc., any number. To obtain the logarithm of one’s representations or concepts is a complete absurdity. A number is not a psychological, but a mathematical object. It cannot be a real object. By an “object,” Husserl understands anything that we have in mind in an act of judging, of perceiving, or of representing. That to which our act is directed, what it intends is the object of this act, whether real or not, whether fictitious or even an absurdity is of no matter.69 It is never contained in the act as a real constituent part of it. It is always transcendent to the act.70 Let us suppose that I am imagining the god Jupiter. This means that I have a definite intentional experience, characterized as a representation. “I can dismember this intentional experience in a descriptive analysis as I please. Of course, I will not find anything like the god Jupiter in it. An immanent object does not belong, consequently, to the descriptive make-up of my experience.”71 Jupiter, of course, exists nowhere and even less in my representation. I can bestow quite varied qualities on Jupiter, such as omnipotence and physical strength, etc. I cannot attribute these qualities to my representation as a mental reality.

59Despite its fictional character, the object that I have in mind in the given case is fundamentally distinct from my act. It is “present” in my act only intentionally, but by no means really. The situation does not change at all, if the object of my intentional act is not fictional. It, nevertheless, always remains fundamentally distinct from the act. “Objectivity, speaking in general, is transcendent to the act.”72 What I have in mind in imagining an object is by no means the same as the very “act of having in mind” and is not contained in it. <416> I can ascribe predicates to objects that in relation to my act lose any sense.73 A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. To assert concerning my idea of a straight line that that idea is the shortest distance would be the height of absurdity. “A subjective experience is not intentionally present in it.” An object does not itself belong to experience. It is only perceived, but not experienced and not conscious.74 This means it is present in an act of experience only as an intentional object and by no means forms part of this experience and does not enter into the structure of the conscious act. “The world can never be experienced by a thinking subject. An experience is the representation of the world (das die Welt Meinen), but the world itself is only an intentional object.”75

60The object is always transcendent to the act. However, this transcendency is only a logical transcendency and by no means metaphysical. The object is distinct from the act not as a metaphysical essence, but only as the logical subject of possible predicates, as the center of definite relations. An intentional relation is not one of the types of real relation. There can be no talk here of a real relation of an act to an object, of their real interaction. The interaction between my idea of the god Jupiter and Jupiter himself, of course, is impossible, since the god Jupiter in general nowhere exists. An intentional relation is special, quite distinct from other types of relations. It is impossible to reduce it to either a logical, or a causal, or a mathematical type of relation. It is impossible to explain, because an explanation is a reduction to simpler elements, understandable to us. We can only point to it, describe it, by referring to our own experiences, but it is impossible to reduce it to some other type of relation better known to us. It is immediately known to us from our own experiences. An entire series of experiences that we have possesses this characteristic peculiarity of referring to an object, having it, an object, in mind. This logical projection <417> of the content of our acts outside itself is a basic fact of our life and of our cognition. Not recognizing it, we transform ourselves into lifeless and senseless bodies of dead nature.

61 “If one now asks us how we have to understand that some non-existent or transcendent thing can be taken as the intentional object in an act in which it is not, there is no other answer except the one already given and that in fact is wholly sufficient. The object is an intentional object. This means that there is an act with the definite character of an intention which by its own determinacy makes possible what we call an intention toward this object.”76 The relation of our self (or of our experiences) to the object is a characteristic of certain experiences we have, and these experiences are called (by definition) intentional experiences or acts.

62Let us rephrase what has been said. An object, as an intentional object of possible predicates, is transcendent to the act. The object is not really contained in the act and is fundamentally distinct from it. The relation between the two can by no means be conceived as real, but only as intentional. The object is not “apprehended” by the act. It is not experienced and is not acknowledged. It is only meant; our intention is directed toward it. This intentional relation is quite different from other types of relations, the character of which is immediately known to us from our own experiences.

63 Therefore, an object for Husserl is by no means a real formation, but is purely a logical intentional unity. It is seen by him merely as an object of possible predicates. In this logical sense, the object of an intention can be equally real, ideal, and fictional, and even a completely absurd, “impossible” object. Husserl says, “Logically, any seven regular bodies are to the same extent seven objects just as are seven sages. The law of the parallelogram of forces is as much a single object as is the city of Paris.”77 Phenomenological logic is completely indifferent to asking how this object is and <418> whether it in general exists. Husserl is not concerned with the metaphysical question of the essence of an object. He looks at it only logically, as the subject of possible predicates intentionally present in an act. Such a subject need not at all be an actual object. It can be a purely ideal unity, as, for example, all mathematical objects are. Real objects occupy only a very small sphere among all objects known to us. One of the most destructive scientific prejudices is to seek objectivity only within the sphere of the real. The majority of objects that we know are not real, but ideal.

64The entire realm of ideal objects is divided in turn into two spheres: 1) ideal individual objects, such as, for example, mathematical numbers, logical laws, etc., and 2) ideal general objects, such as, for example, a number in general, a color in general, etc. Our intentional act can be directed either toward particular real things or toward individual ideal objects, such as, for example, in the judgment: “Socrates is a man,” or “4 is an even number.” Or toward general objects, such as, for example, in the judgment, “A human being is mortal,” or “all logical laws are a priori.” In these examples, we do not have in mind a particular human individual, nor do we have in mind a particular law of logic, but general concepts – ideas.

65 Husserl's doctrine of universal objects or “ideas” forms the most original part of his Logical Investigations.78 On this point, he comes close to Plato. We can say that in the person of Husserl, the logic dating from Aristotle again returns to the principles of Platonism, only now clearing and freeing itself from the naivety of an ancient way of thinking, sifting it, so to speak, through the sieve of contemporary epistemology. This combination of contemporary theory of cognition with the greatest system of antiquity, in a combination that turns out to be fruitful for both the one and the other equally, freeing the former from any psychologism and the latter from its metaphysical realism, is an absolutely original feature of Husserl’s logic.

66<419> Husserl’s doctrine of universal objects differs from Plato’s only in its sharply expressed ideality. This, of course, is saying a lot and even too much. Perhaps there is a fundamental difference, and yet it does not destroy the inherent kinship between the two systems in other no less essential respects. Both oppose empirical theories of abstraction; both view the formation of universal concepts, which they both see as being formed only on the basis of empirical representations but by no means from them; both teach the transcendency of ideas. All of these commonalities, based on an opposition to opposing theories, bring them so close to each other that their respective systems are essentially related.

67 The method by which Husserl arrives at the assertion of the transcendency and ideality of universal concepts is the same intentional method, if one can call it that. That is, he considers the universal concept as the object of an intentional act. He analyzes our representation of this object not from the point of view of what is really contained in it and of what is the object of a psychological analysis, but from the point of view of what the act means, what it intends. He is interested not in the real construction of our acts, but only in their intentional relation to objects that are never really contained in them. This method is also used by Husserl in his theory of ideas.

68 Let us suppose we consider some red object. Directing our attention to the color of the given object, we can distinguish it from a number of the same object’s features and make its color an independent object of our intentional act, independent in the sense that we take it and, moreover, only it, apart from its relation to the object’s other features, the subject of other possible predications. In reference to this feature of its color, we can express certain judgments of an individual and temporal character. We can assert, for example, that this color, under the influence of certain chemical influences, can disappear or turn into another. What we mean in this case is a certain individual feature, an existing feature in a given place and at a given time. <420> It is one of the characteristics that really constitutes the object lying in front of us. It can arise; it can disappear; it can change into something else.

69 But based on the perception of the same object, we can have an act of a completely different character. Having the same object before us and focusing our attention on the features of its color, we can mean not the individual feature of the color red given here and now, but the color red in general, the idea of ​​redness, in relation to which the given feature is a particular instance of it.

70 What we mean in the first case is quite different from what we mean in the second. The object of the first act is not independent. However, the presently given instance of redness is really just like a concrete whole, something individual, some now and here, arising and vanishing with it, similar to various red objects, but not identical to them. The very same “redness” (die Röte) (the object of the second act) is some ideal unity, absolutely identical with itself. To speak of the appearance and disappearance of “redness” would be a contradiction.79 There are only concrete objects, individual things. Universal objects cannot have any real being either in the object, or outside the object, either in consciousness, or outside consciousness. “A concrete object does not contain an idea as a part.”80 A person in general is not contained in an individual concrete person, as his or her real constituent part. In an individual person, everything is concrete, and everything is individual. All of its real constituent parts vanish together with it. Everything is transitory in it; there is nothing eternal, unchanging, nothing “universal.” A person in general, as the content of our universal concept of person cannot vanish along with the disappearance of this individual person. Therefore, it is impossible to say that “a person in general” is a universal contour of a person, a set of its essential features, since they are given in an individual person. Precisely because they are given in an individual person, they are always something individual and transient. <421> The universal is eternal, therefore it can never really be contained in a concrete object. The real hypostatization of the universal outside of consciousness is absolutely impossible.81

71Equally impossible is the psychological hypostatization of the universal in our very consciousness in the form of generalized pictures created by separating and abstracting a number of features from their concrete foundation. This understanding of the universal was already destroyed long ago by the investigations of Hume and Berkeley. It makes impossible most of our universal concepts. It is impossible to present to oneself as a special image a triangle in general. Such a triangle would have to be neither acute nor obtuse, neither right-angled nor large or small. As an idea, it is absolutely impossible.

72 Mill’s “theory of abstraction through attention” is equally untenable. It, consistently carried out, leads to the rejection of the “universal.” Following it, we must accept that the concept of the universal arises in us when, using the function of attention, we isolate a number of features in a given object and make them the object of our exclusive interest. Performing such an operation, we thereby free the given complex of features from their individualizing unity with a number of other features and as a result get the universal. Is this the case? Do we get something universal by way of an isolation of a number of aspects or one aspect from a given concrete case? In no way. We can analyze a given object or a given representation as much as we please, isolating from it whatever aspects we please, but we will not find anything “universal” among them.82 Each feature, each aspect we have artificially isolated from a concrete object, is always something individual, existing here and now. Its isolation from its concrete foundation, even if only imaginary, produced only in an act of abstractive attention, does not transform it into the content of a universal concept, into an unchanging idea, cannot convey to it the character of timelessness, of eternity.

73<422> It continues to be the individual feature that it was earlier; the judgments expressed about it also have only a temporary, individual character. “A separate individual aspect is by no means an attribute in specie.”83 The “universal,” the “idea,” as the object of an intentional act, is always fundamentally different from the corresponding “concrete” thing. The predicates that we can ascribe to the latter lose all sense when applied to the universal. “Statements that make sense and are true about a single instance are false and senseless about the species. A color always has its own definite place and time. It extends to the whole object; it arises and vanishes. Regarding the ‘species’ of the color in general, all these predicates are complete nonsense. If, for example, a house burns down, then all its parts burn down. The individual forms and qualities, all of the parts and aspects that constitute it in general, vanish. Could it be that the relevant geometrical and qualitative ‘species’ (as the content of the universal concepts) burn with it, and is this not the height of absurdity?”84 The universal, therefore, is always distinct from the concrete and can never be reduced to it and explained. With this, the aforementioned theory of abstraction collapses. It attempts to explain the origin of the universal from an individual, imagining the former as a product of the generalizing power of abstraction with the help of attention. It thinks that by singling out with the help of this power a definite aspect of a concrete object and considering it by itself, it thereby transforms it into a universal attribute. At the same time, it forgets that the individual aspect remains individual as before and can never become an attribute in specie. Consequently, the given theory simply leads to a rejection of what it wants to explain, namely to a negation of universal concepts. Ultimately, it is forced to replace the universal concept with a verbal sign. A universal concept, as an act (and not as an idea), is not a product of abstraction. Abstraction cannot communicate to a concept its characteristic feature – “universality.” The result of abstraction is always something individual, <423> some individual aspect, singled out on a concrete basis. It is impossible for us to abstract anything more, such as the color red, at this very moment. As a separate aspect, it is the final product of abstraction, and in spite of this, we can refer to it as “generalizing.” We can turn it into an idea; it can serve as the basis for a completely new act, in which our intention is directed not toward a given individual aspect, which is present here and now, rising at a specific time and after a specific time subject to vanishing, but the same aspect in specie. The latter cannot be imagined in any way, either separately or on its own concrete foundation. Concretely, we can always imagine only a certain particular case of the color red in general, or a number of such cases, a number of its nuances. We cannot imagine and cannot single out the red color itself in general and cannot single it out in a concrete case, since the red color in general is not really contained in it.

74A new act, arising on the same concrete basis, an act of a “universal consciousness,” is not some new picture drawn against the background of our imagination. It expresses only a new “way of relating our consciousness” to this basis.85 This new attitude consists in the fact that, having before our eyes the same object and not creating any new pictures in our imagination, we mean not this object present here and now, but the same object in specie, in an idea. The new act signifies (subjectively) not a new difference in the material of our consciousness, but only a new “form of consciousness.”86 Having both subjectively and really (not intentionally!) the same material, the same concrete representation, we can relate to it differently, i.e., on its basis we can build formally different acts. “Like all fundamental epistemological differences, this distinction (individual and universal) is also categorial. It belongs to the form of consciousness. Its origin lies in a special mode of consciousness, and not in the changing matter of cognition.”87 <424> This phrase may, among other things, give rise to misunderstandings. The distinction between the particular and the universal “belongs to the form of consciousness.” Its origin lies in a special mode of consciousness. Does this mean that universal objects are created by this form of consciousness and have no meaning outside of it? In this case, they cease to be transcendent to consciousness! We strongly rebel against this interpretation of the above quotation. The fact is that here it is not about the universal and individual objects themselves, but about our “meant” acts. A distinction is established between our “awareness of the universal” and our “awareness of the particular,” and it is asserted that this distinction is categorial. By the matter of the act of cognition here is meant not the intentional content of the act, but only one of the real aspects of its concrete essence, i.e., all of those real, mental parts of an act that constitute it in its concrete real being and, moreover, only with respect to its content. The matter in this sense can change, leaving unchanged the character of the act, i.e., the very form of the conscious attitude toward its content. Vice versa, the matter can remain the same, and the character of the act can change. Our interest is in the latter case.88 The matter of both acts is the same; both are constructed on the same concrete foundation and contain only one pictorial representation, which determines the directedness of our act toward the fully definite object. Our way of relating to this matter, to the concrete basis of the act is different in both cases. That is, at one time we mean something individual, while at another time it is an idea. This difference in the mode of our attitude (not in the intentional object itself, which is by no means the matter of the act in the sense indicated) is attributed to the form and not to the matter.

75Briefly formulating the results of the critique of both theories (that of Locke and of Mill), we come to the assertion that universal concepts are not products of abstraction; the latter is unable to explain their characteristic intention, which is directed not toward the individual, but toward the universal.

76 <425> But what are we to make of this? We may face an objection from another, more extreme direction. It is said: with all your objections, you create only a new argument in favor of our theory. Indeed, we quite consciously reject all universal concepts. We are always given only either individual objects or individual features; only names have a general meaning; on the basis of a similarity, we apply the one and the same name to many objects. Finally, we get so “accustomed” to associating a certain complex of elements of a representation with a certain name, that it begins to assume the meaning of a common name for us. Everything is individual; this mythical “universal” belongs to the realm of empty fictions and completely unnecessary fantasies. “Generality” lies only in names, since we are “accustomed” to associate them when looking at similar objects. The term expresses merely the generality of a specific mental function, viz., to associate the same names with similar objects. We are never given an identical feature. Only this associative function of signs remains identical.89

77This nominalism, which in principle rejects the “universal,” confuses the sphere of the theory of cognition with psychology. “To the sphere of phenomenology and, above all, to that of the theory of cognition belongs what we mean when we make an assertion. Furthermore, it reveals what constitutes the sense of what we mean (des Meinens), how this act is constructed from other similar acts, and what are the essential forms and differences. What interests the theory of cognition must be indicated in the very content of our experiences. If, among the differences that can evidently be indicated in this sphere, we also find differences between universal and individual representations (which undoubtedly are there), then no talk about genetic functions or connections can either change or explain anything here.”90 In other words, the theory of cognition deals with our acts in their intentional relationship to objects, and if we find a specific difference in the character of the intention itself, then no psychology can smooth out this difference. <426> No matter how we analyze and explain both acts psychologically (for example, with a general and individual intention), no matter what conditions we put forward, as necessary for their realization in our consciousness, no matter how we understand their origin, the established difference in their intentional character unconditionally remains, and we cannot reduce it to any psychological difference in origin, since the relationship between an intentional act and its object is not real and, consequently, lies outside the sphere of psychological investigation. If the psychology of cognition undertakes to replace the given attitude with some other, psychological one, then it does not mind its own business. It can establish, from some new point of view, their mutual conditionality, but it certainly cannot change the intentional character of anything and replace the difference in their intentions with some other real difference. This is unconditionally not in its power. The distinction between universal and individual concepts is given to us immediately and cannot be washed away by anything. Everything universal is eternal; everything individual is transient.

78What is this universality?

79 Nothing in the real world or in our consciousness corresponds to the content of a universal concept. What is the essence of universal objects? In reality, they cannot exist either outside of our intentional acts or in themselves; realism and conceptualism are equally impossible. However, they also do not represent an empty fiction. This is clear already from the fact that true judgments of an objective character are possible with respect to these universal objects. It is inconceivable to consider such concepts as, for example, the concept of magnitude, causality, quantity, quality, etc., to be fictions. Judgments expressed about them, for example, that any extensive quantity can be measured or that every change in nature is subject to the law of causality, have absolute and a priori veracity. In our intentional act, every species is an object in the full sense of the word.91 Like any object of an intentional act, the species is different from the act, and not only <427> because every object is different from the act, but also by virtue of the arguments that were advanced against conceptualism. An idea is transcendent to our consciousness.92 An idea is given outside of consciousness, as a definite ideal unity; it lies outside space and time in the realm of “ideal objects,” in the sphere of timeless eternity. The predicates of arising and vanishing are absolutely inapplicable to it. The entire human race could vanish from the face of the earth, all thinking creatures in the world could perish – and, according to the teachings of modern physics, even must perish, since the temperature of the universe tends to absolute zero, along with this, all consciousness will vanish from the world – yet the kingdom of eternal ideas would remain in its absolute immobility outside the sphere of influence of any changes. All world upheavals, both past as well as future, are reflected as eternal types, in this kingdom of ideas, as in a motionless mirror. It contains a priori the entire development of the universe from beginning to end. Having broken through the prism of time, the world has already given its reflection in these spheres of the ideal in advance. These spheres themselves lie outside the world of reality, as transcendental ideas.

80Here lies the main point of contact between Husserl and Platonism. For both philosophers, the world of ideas is eternal and unchanging, an absolutely immovable kingdom of universal concepts, outside the world of phenomena and outside the sphere of consciousness where ideal unities lie.

81 This similarity, however, does not prevent these two from holding essentially divergent views on the nature of ideas. For Plato, the word “idea” is a symbol of an absolute reality. Ideal being is the highest degree of being, absolute being. The nature of Husserl’s ideas is completely different. An idea is nowhere. It is not given really either in the world or in consciousness. In general, it does not really exist. It possesses only an ideal (in the most extreme sense of the word) being outside time. It is a pure meaning, only a logical subject for possible predications, only an object of truth directed toward it. <428> Of course, “to someone who is accustomed to mean by ‘being’ only real being and by ‘objects’ only real objects, our real talk about universal objects and of their being will seem basically absurd. On the contrary, someone who takes them as an indication of the meaningfulness of certain judgments and understands them as correlates of the subjects of these judgments will find nothing difficult in this.”93 It is impossible to seek some metaphysical essence to which we could attach ideas, some epistemological bearer of them. They have no need of any bearer, no need of any attachment. The desire to find a support for everything ideal in some kind of “consciousness in general” or in a “divine spirit” seems to us to be a compromise with our “realist prejudice.” This imaginary support may temporarily satisfy a “metaphysical need” of ours, but it essentially only obscures the clear sky of pure logic with a metaphysical fog. Talk that without this support ideas remain “hanging in the air” is a product of philosophical naivety, which prefers to see them more in a metaphysical fog than in clear air, and strives to picture everything clearly in intuition. The “intuiting” of ideas could have been said in the time of Schopenhauer, but now we are skeptical of any mystical “inspiration.” In any case, there can be no place for these poetic fantasies in epistemology and logic. By referring to some “bearer” and to a “direct intuition” it is easy, of course, to get rid of all annoying questions. But science has no right to part from them with the ease of naive mythology and fantastic poetry.

82The question of our experience of the “universal,” of its “apprehension” and cognition belongs among the most difficult questions of psychology and logic. What is the origin of our universal concepts from the subjective side, as acts in which we conceive an idea? What does it mean to conceive the universal and with the help of what methods is it possible to “apprehend” and cognize it? The usual explanation for this amounts to the theory of abstraction. The method by which we come to a universal concept is the method of gradual abstraction; universal concepts are abstract representations. <429> However, as is already known, Husserl considers it impossible to explain by means of abstraction, in whatever form we understand it, the specific feature of universality. Through this mental function we can only single out, on a given concrete basis, some individual aspect or a complex of aspects. But never in this way will we obtain the characteristic form of consciousness that is inherent in any universal concept, namely, its “universality,” its relation to the idea. The theory of abstraction, consistently carried out, leads to the rejection of the universal, i.e., to pure nominalism. Moreover, it in general destroys any possibility of thinking, assuming that thinking is a process of pictorial, figurative representation. If our thinking were to proceed in concrete, well-defined intuitive representations and did not know how to use symbols, then most thought processes would become impossible.94 Let us try, for example, to think pictorially about the concept of “religion.” What do we imagine thereby? What images rush through our heads when we hear this word? First of all, the image of the illuminated church and manifest worship-service. Later, when we try to imagine more precisely the meaning of this word, images of Greek and Indian deities and temples, individual religious figures, e.g., Buddha, Christ, Luther sweep through our minds. We then imagine religious books and teachings and, finally, we are satisfied, probably, with the judgment that religion is the history of the “content” of these teachings, and the words “content” and “teaching” are initially presented only in the form of sounds. If we wish to present them in the same way, then again in front of us will hover various appropriate images but which by no means correspond to their sense. We cannot picture figuratively in intuition most of our elementary concepts. We use symbols everywhere and are satisfied with only a certain mental desire to discard from this symbol everything that does not correspond to the actual concept and add everything required. However, in most cases we are limited only to this desire, the realization of which usually turns out to be quite impossible. <430> Most of our thinking is symbolic. The understanding of these symbols does not need a pictorial intuition of their sense.95

83We understand, for example, the meaning of completely absurd expressions, such as a round square, but we absolutely cannot pic|ture to ourselves their content.96 “We must once and for all clearly recognize that in most cases of not only relaxed and daily thought, but also rigorously scientific thinking, imagery plays no role whatever, or only an insignificant role, and that we can...judge and reason...solely on the basis of symbolic presentations.”97 In the majority of these cases, we confine ourselves and are satisfied with a simple intention, a claim to sense, and rarely “fulfill” it in an actual representation. We limit ourselves to this intended sense even with all our universal concepts. A concrete object, hovering before our imagination along with any universal concept, serves only as a symbol, with which a special form of mental desire for generalization, a special form of intention, is associated. For the formation of a universal concept, just like for any act of cognition, a definite concrete basis is, of course, necessary. Some concrete intuitive material is a necessary condition for generalization. We can produce the latter only on this material, indeed only on it, but not from it. No matter how we analyze this material and no matter what we abstract from it, we will not find anything universal in it. We will always have before us only an individual object or some individual aspect singled out in it. In order to obtain a universal concept, a new act with the quite special character of the intention must be added to this act of concrete perception or representation.98 This new act on the same concrete basis builds a new object. Its intention is directed not on an object or aspect that is present here and now, but on its idea. It refers to the object not through a process of abstracting, but of ideating, that is, through seeing or apprehending its idea. <431> This new act of consciousness, by which the object, so to speak, liberates itself from its individuality and reveals its ideal essence to our “logical gaze,” Husserl calls ideation.99 Ideation is precisely that special mental function of generalization that enables us, based on a definite representation of the concrete, to apprehend its idea and construct a general concept on it. It must be rigorously distinguished from abstraction; both are mental functions but are completely different.100 Both are methods of constructing general concepts, but both construct it from different sides. Abstraction makes it possible for us to apply a given concept as a general predicate to a number of separate objects included within it. Ideation frees this predicate from its individual character and imparts to it the absolute identity of the idea (of course only intentionally). “Generality” means something different in the two cases. In the first case, it is a generality of predication. It is based on the similarity of objects in a certain relationship. But similarity always assumes the absolute identity of the relationship in which the similarity is established.101 Consequently, generality in the first sense presupposes generality in the second, as the absolute identity of the concept with itself, as the absence of any individuality in it. Individuality is created by a definite position in time and space; everything that is in time is individual; everything outside of time is ideal. A definite position in time and space conditions the individualization and the “realization” of the idea. Vice versa, the liberation of an aspect from the individualizing influence of its position in time and space is its idealization. If we take a series of geometrically straight lines and consider them outside of time and outside their definite spatial position, then they will all merge into one and the same straight line in general, absolutely identical and devoid of any individuality. This line is expressed by the analytical equation: Ax + By + C = 0, <432> which by its literal symbolization deprives it of any spatial determinacy. This symbolization, so to speak, raises it above space and frees it from the individualizing influence of space. At the same time, this symbolization deprives it of its reality. The equation expresses only the pure law of its construction in its ideal generality. Only by determining the numerical values for ​​A, B and C, which determine the position of the line relative to the coordinate axes, i.e., returning it to the individualizing influence of its spatial position, do we again return it to its individuality. The latter is created by its spatial determinacy. Considered outside this determinacy, any line turns into one and the same complex of ideal features and is expressed by the same equation: Ax + By + C = 0. The same goes for time.

84The essence of ideation should be sought in an elevation above time and space, in the liberation of the object from the individualizing influence of these “principia individuationis.” This function must not be confused with the function of abstraction from time and space. Having removed the aspects of its extension, form, and temporality from a given object, we do not obtain any object, but only a certain irrational remnant, a number of unconnected and disordered “elements of sensation,” as Simmel calls them, devoid of any objectivity.102 In other words, abstracting from time and space, we get the epistemological concept of “irrational material,” and not a logical representation of a universal object. It is quite inconceivable to abstract from a straight line its extended form. We will get absolute zero as a result. However, we can deprive the same concrete straight line of the individualizing influence of its position in space and time, which is analytically expressed by the fact that we deprive the coefficients of the unknown terms of its equation of their definite numerical value, turning it into an equation of a general form. The latter does not express an abstraction from space, but rather, on the contrary, a quite definite law of spatial construction, only in its general form.

85<433> It may be objected that no object can be given to us outside of time and space. We cannot intuit anything apart from these conditions, and this is quite correct. But we are not claiming that we can “intuit” universal objects. The new act that is the result of ideation does not present us with a new intuitive picture. What we have before us in intuition remains the very same concrete object. But on this concrete foundation, a new act is being constructed, one which expresses only our new attitude toward the object, a new form of intention. No new pictures arise in our psyche. Only a new form of intention, i.e., of being meant, arises, but “not every being-meant” (das Gemeintsein), Husserl said, “is an intuition.”103 We never “see” universal objects; we only strive to free the concrete object from the individualizing influence of all principia individuationis.104 Ideation is expressed psychologically in this striving for identity.

86In this act of ideation, we “experience the idea.” We rise to consider things sub specie aeternitatis. Palágyi105 makes this “rise to eternity” the basic law of logic and identifies it with the law of identity. He sees in this law the embodiment of the entire essence of logic. “The law of identity is logic itself.”106 It does not express the simple identification of A with A; it expresses the rise of a given A to eternity. It makes every A the eternal content of the concept. This formula “A is A,” symbolizes the transition of the concrete into the realm of eternal meanings. It does not express the “reiteration, in which we, making ourselves our own echo, reduce ourselves to the level of an automaton and mimic ourselves.”107 It raises any A to the level of an absolute, ideal identity.

87In the act of ideation, we do not “create” an idea; we only “apprehend” it. We stand in an intentional relation to it. One abstraction can never create a universal concept for us. It cannot arise from a given concrete intuition, <434> but only on its basis, with the help of a special act, viz., ideation, which catches immediately and a priori the idea in all its aspects. The given concrete foundation and all acts of abstraction are only an occasion for ideation and in no case can replace its original generalizing action.

88 Husserl’s teaching about ideation is, in essence, Plato’s teaching of “recollection,” devoid of a metaphysical lining and of poetic unscientificity. Eliminating the naïve-metaphysical teaching of the intuition of ideas of the mind before its earthly existence, we get a view with the greatest degree of similarity to Husserl’s view. Universal concepts do not arise from our impressions. The latter only awaken the intuition of ideas dormant in our consciousness. They are only an occasion for their emergence and do not contain them at all. A separate concrete perception serves only as the basis on which a new act of “recollecting” is constructed, which immediately and a priori apprehends the corresponding idea. The function of “recollection” is the very same function of ideation, encased in a metaphysical shell. For both philosophers, our concrete perception is not something from which we derive our universal concepts, but only the basis on which we construct a new act of an immediate relation to the idea. For both, in essence, every universal concept is a priori by its origin, in the sense that it is obtained only on the basis of experience but not from experience.108

89Husserl’s theory of ideas plays a huge role in his entire logical system. It is the basis of his entire logic. We have already said that he also understands truth as an idea. To clarify this, we must add one more small remark.

90 Each concrete object has a corresponding idea in the realm of universal concepts. Our intentional acts and experiences are also definite concrete objects, namely mental phenomena. A definite idea, consequently, also corresponds precisely to each of them. We can refer ideally not only to objects, but also to the very acts <435> in which we apprehend the sense of some expression or the meaning of some word. The sense and the meaning of words are completely distinct from our acts, since the acts constantly change, while the sense and the meaning remain the same. “A sense is what a given expression expresses; it remains the same, whoever may express it, and under whatever circumstances...it is made.”109 The sense of a judgment does not consist of the mental processes that accompany its statement. The judgment says nothing about these processes. These processes do not enter at all into its “sense.” The judgment 2 x 2 = 4 says nothing about my psychic experiences and about the acts that give a sense to my experiences (bedeutungsverleihende Akte). Of course, certain acts in the mind of the person judging correspond to every judgment, but they do not belong to the sense, to the content of the judgment. “The investigator advances certain propositions. He, of course, thereby judges, but he does not want to talk about his own or about anyone else’s judgment process (das Urteilen). He wants to talk precisely about the corresponding relations in the object itself (Sachverhalt).”110 The sense of his judgment is eternal and unchanging. It is a certain ideal unity. All mental acts are individual and transient. The sense, or meaning (Bedeutung), is an idea from individual acts of the corresponding “meaningful” experience.111 “The ideality of sense is a particular case of the ideality of the general in general.”112 The “sense” is an idea, and the individual concrete cases of this idea are the corresponding individual experiential acts of this sense.113The “sense” is not included as a real component in our concrete experiences. It is trans-subjective and absolutely identical. Our experiences of it are only special cases of its realization.

91Every expression has a definite ideal sense, and every sense corresponds to a definite intentional object, distinct from it.

92 <436> As already mentioned, we can understand the sense of any expression without having before us a representation or an intuition of the corresponding object. In certain cases, the immediate presence of the object in an intuition or perception is possible. In such a case, Husserl says that the sense can be “fulfilled.” The acts (of intuition or perception), in which the given sense finds its concrete “fulfillment,” he calls “meaning-fulfilling acts” (bedeutungserfüll|ende Akte).114 Thus, for example, the fulfillment of the meaning of the word “religion” is ideally possible, possible in a whole number of acts from various sides, gradually approaching its “fulfillment.” Ideally, we can, therefore, imagine the possibility of a complete fulfillment of it in one single act.

93But often we associate with a certain expression a sense, the fulfillment of which in an intuition is absolutely impossible, for example, the expression “a square circle.” This expression has a quite definite sense and a quite definite intentional object corresponding to it, namely an “impossible object.” The round square is far from being just a symbol, a simple vibration of air. Meinong quite correctly points out the complete difference between both objects: a “vibration of air” and “round square.” As written or spoken expressions, “they contain neither any roundness nor quadrangularity. In addition, as spoken or written, they are provided with the most faithful existence, which, of course, could not be asserted with respect to the impossible object, namely, the round square itself.”115 This expression “round square” has its own sense and has its own object. But its sense can never find its “fulfillment.” Its object can never be “given” in intuition; both aspects cannot be united in one intuitive whole.116

94Therefore, any sense can be characterized as possible or impossible, depending on whether or not it can have his own fulfilling act. <437> This fulfillment can have various degrees. It can be partial or complete. Where the sense is completely fulfilled in a comprehensive, ideal perception, there we “have an absolute coincidence of what is given” with what we “mean,” what we intend. Then, the “objectivity is given to us exactly as we intended it.” It is “actual”; it is “present” in front of us. We have, in the given case, absolute “adaequatio rei et intellectus.”117 This is the absolute correspondence of the intended sense of a certain act with the fulfilled givenness of the object in a possible intuition. The ideally conceived correlate is truth.118 Truth is the idea of ​​absolute adequacy as such.119 It does not assume an actual coincidence, a real fulfillment. This coincidence is conceived in it only as possible, only ideally. Separate, isolated acts of this coincidence are acts of the experience of truth or acts of evidence. Evidence is an “adequate perception of truth,” an “experience” of truth, while truth itself is an idea. Like any idea, it is absolutely independent of our consciousness and of our experience. It refers to our individual experience, just as any idea refers to a particular case, as, for example, the color red in general refers to various shades of red. Truth is not contained in our acts; it is only apprehended and experienced, but it is never really contained in our mind. Its realization in our consciousness means the same as the realization of the universal in the particular; this realization is by no means essential and is not obligatory for it. It is only possible. There is no real relationship between truth and the act of its cognition, and there cannot be one, just as there cannot be one between my five fingers and the number “5.” Truth does not “enter” our consciousness; it only finds its concrete realization in it, just as any idea finds its realization in a definite particular case, as the number “5,” for example, is realized in my five fingers.

95<438> Therefore, truths occupy only a small corner in the wide sphere of ​​universal objects. This is the realm of pure science. The world of being in all its details is reflected in this realm as in a motionless mirror. Every object, even the smallest part of the object, casts its shadow there, its ideal phantom, and this phantom, born earlier than the object itself, lives there forever outside space and time. The world of truth is the world of these disembodied and timeless shadows, the world of the ideal phantoms of objectivity. To being in itself, there always correspond truths in themselves.120 A truth is always a truth about something. Therefore it necessarily presupposes – it would be better for us to say “supposes” – an object. Truth and being are two correlative concepts, fundamentally different121 and transcendent to each other. We must rigorously distinguish between these two aspects – the object itself and the truth about it. The latter can itself be made the object of a new truth directed toward it, but both will be completely different in their “sense,” which fully proves the difference in their objects, i.e., the difference between the first truth and its object.122 Consider this truth: a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. If we consider precisely this truth about a straight line and, consequently, make it the object of a new truth, then we cannot ascribe to it those predicates that it itself ascribes to its object. Truth is not <439> a straight line and cannot be the shortest distance. Conse|quently, both aspects – on the one hand, a straight line and its definite relation to other lines, namely its property to be the shortest distance and, on the other hand, the truth about the same property of this line – are quite different and transcendent to each other. However, both inevitably presuppose each other. Every object is given only insofar as the truth that affirms it is directed toward it. “Nothing can be without being determined in one way or another. The fact is that it is determined in one way or another. There is truth in itself, which forms the necessary correlate of being in itself.”123 However, “this obvious inseparability is not an identity.”124 The world of being is an intentional object of science.

96Husserl tries to banish all anthropology from the concept of science. Science does not consist of our gradually developing knowledge. It is given, like a ready-made, eternal system of truths, regardless of the state of our knowledge. “Every science, in terms of its objective content, as a theory is constructed from a single homogeneous material. It represents a complex of senses (Bedeutungen) in specie.”125 The matter of which it consists is not our subjective processes of judgment, but only objective content, the objective sense of these judgments. Science does not develop or progress; only our knowledge develops and progresses. Science and the world are not products of an investigating “scientific consciousness.” For Husserl, the world not only is not the creation of the cognizing self, but it cannot even be considered the product of pure science. It should not be forgotten that the transcendental point of view is absent in Husserl’s logic – and this is its major flaw. From the point of view of transcendental philosophy, a true judgment must create from itself, with the help of certain “methods of objectification,” its object, projecting it outside, as distinct from itself. The non-self is different from the self. But it, like the non-self, is posited, <440> nevertheless, by means of the self. We are not obliged to understand the “self” as a metaphysical subject or as a consciousness in general. The “self” is science, and science creates the world of being, posits it as objective. The task of the transcendental method is to find the fundamental means or methods, the basic “categories,” by means of which this projection of an object outwardly takes place, its objectification or determination. Husserl examines the relationship of the act to the object, of truth to being, of science to the world, always only statically, establishing their factual difference and their necessary correlativity. For him, a dynamic, transcendental examination does not exist, precisely because he takes his stand solely on the basis of intentional theory. The theory of intentionality, as such, finds its limit in the fact of the intentional relation. Intention (directedness) is inexplicable from its factual side. It is a fact and, as such, must be recognized. However, objectivity, despite the difference in objects, is the same everywhere and consists of definite underlying elements to be established. These elements and objectivity in general, these various aspects of it or “categories,” are at the same time the main elements of an intention. Therefore, although with respect to its factual side, an intention is simple, i.e., irreducible into any other kind of relation, it breaks up into a whole series of objectifying or projecting aspects, which only in their aggregate yield an object. Intention presupposes objectification. Intentional theory, thus, seeks its completion in transcendental philosophy. By itself, it is incomplete. What it accepts as fact, the transcendental method must, if not explain, then substantiate. The fact of the difference between an act and an object, truth and being, requires not only a static, but also a dynamic examination. It turns out, then, that the object, in spite of its complete difference with the act, “is created” by this act. This “dynamism” is not to be understood mentally, and standing precisely on the point of view of Husserl, we can find arguments against the psychological interpretation of the dynamic theory of cognition. An intentionality, subject to transcendental substantiation, is not at all psychological, but logical. It is an intentionality of a higher order, a duality and a correlation between <441> pure, ideal science and the world. Science creates the world out of itself. But this creativity is not an activity. It is the logical positing of an object, as a subject of possible predications. Any judgment by the very fact of its logical meaning objectifies its content, and it cannot help but do this. It posits its content as the subject of predicates that lose all sense in relation to it itself. A judgment necessarily makes it its object by the fact, for example, that it thinks (meint) it as extended. This objectification belongs to the essence of its logical sense. It is not the mental act of judging, but only the sense of it that objectifies. This function is inherent in the logical meaning, and not in the mental activity. The world is not an object of my mind, for my mind itself is a part of this world. But it is only an object of science, as an ideal and complete system of logical meanings.

97Science is an ideal system, and the world is its object. In a clear and distinct formulation of this position lies the historical value of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. Science does not arise and does not develop in the process of investigating scientific consciousness, as the Marburg School with Cohen as its head wants. It is a ready, completely finished system. It is not mental consciousness and not “pure thinking” that constructs the world. Science constructs it with the help of its exclusively constitutive categories. From this point of view, from the point of view of pure science in the Husserlian sense, all of the “reflexive categories” of Windelband126 and the “methodological categories” of Cohen's Logik 127are unnecessary and redundant. Psychologism finds its last refuge in this “methodology of investigating consciousness.” Husserl, with his concept of science, expels it from here. Logic is concerned neither with investigating consciousness nor with the methodical means with the help of which it “attains” its object. Logic leaves aside the transcendental conditions of investigation. They are not constitutive elements of science and bring nothing new to the construction of the <442> world, because the world is a product and an object of science, and not of an investigating consciousness. Physics can use both “hypotheses” and “sensation” as methods in its scientific investigations. In pure science, though, neither hypothesis nor sensation has a place. The methodological significance of sensation in the investigative process is enormous and therefore requires a special epistemological “postulate.” The role of sensation in “our” cognition must be determined in this postulate.128 It is not the content of sensation that is objectified here (this is not the task of the categories of reality), but the sensation itself in its methodical meaning for the cognitive process.129 The only possible means for “us” to recognize something as actual is an appeal to sensation. Therefore, sensation, as a postulate, can have only a subjective-transcendental meaning. It indicates to “us” the actual presence of the object and demands its cognition. But cognition itself is carried out with the help of constitutive categories. Therefore, sensation remains only a “task.” It would be better to say that it poses a task for us, namely the task of cognizing the object indicated by the sensation, i.e., to objectify it in a “scientific consciousness.” In the realm of truths itself and, consequently, for the theory of pure science, this “postulate,” as well as all other methodological foundations, has no meaning, since for pure science there are no “tasks,” no requirements. It neither seeks nor investigates anything, for in it everything is found, and everything is decided. Psychologism, in this case, lies not in the fact that the methodological foundations – in Kantian terminology – of the postulates are in general advanced. They unconditionally have their place in the theory of cognition, precisely as transcendental conditions of the investigation. Psychologism lies in the fact that they are seen as factors that substantiate science itself. It is rooted in the confusion of the concept of science with the concept of the investigating scientific consciousness. Husserl’s separation of the “noetic” (the subjective) and ideal (the objective) conditions of science130 protects the theory of cognition from this confusion and thus drives psychologism out of its last refuge.

98<443> With this, we conclude our task of presenting a critique of contemporary psychologism from Husserl’s point of view.

99 However, Husserl is by no means free of psychologism himself. We have already said that psychologism finds him at the very point where it, seemingly, was furthest from him, precisely in his theory of ideas. It is rooted not in this theory itself, as such (by itself, it is the culmination of anti-psychologism), but in its application to the theory of truth and the sense of judgments. If the sense of a judgment is an idea, i.e., a universal concept for particular individual judgments,131 what, then, distinguishes it from the psychological concept of a “judgment in general,” or from the “content of a judgment in general”? In the same way, if a number is an idea from separate acts of counting,132 how does it differ from these “acts of counting in general”? He, of course, realizes this and tries to free himself from this psychologism. But where he actually frees himself from it is where the concept of sense loses, for him, the meaning of an idea from individual mental acts and turns into the inadequately defined concept of “content.”133 In this respect, he encounters constant vacillations. It is not our intention to criticize Husserl. Therefore, we are unable to trace these vacillations in detail. We have pointed only to a major gap in his system, the filling of which is a task for the future. It is the most difficult task in the entire theory of cognition, viz., the relationship between truth, the ideal sense of a judgment, and the mental process of judging itself. Husserl’s attempt to conceive this relationship as that between a universal and a particular contains in itself an inevitable anthropology. Therefore, it must be constructed differently. But how? The future must answer this. For the time being, it remains for us an inexplicable “miracle.” One thing that can be said is that this problem must be resolved positively. Any attempt in principle to deny this relation leads to the destruction of the theory of cognition and thus destroys itself. We agree to declare this relationship an inexplicable miracle, but we cannot deny it, for that would be tantamount to denying a knowledge of life.

Notes

• 1 Lanz’s dissertation incorporated much of the material in his two 1909 articles and ends with a short discussion of Cohen’s 1902 Logik der reinen Erkenntnis.
• 2 See, for example: Lanz, Heinrich. “Fichte und der transzendentale Wahrheitsbegriff.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 26(1913), 1. In his 1924 piece, “The New Phenomenology,” Lanz referenced not only Husserl’s Ideen, but also Max Scheler’s Formalismus. In 1914, Lanz published two articles on Fichte in a special issue of the Russian journal Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Fichte’s death.
• 3 Shchedrina, Tat’iana (ed.). Gustav Shpet: Filosof v kul’ture. Dokumenty i pis’ma. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2012, 79.
• 4 [Originally appeared as “Edmund Gusserl’ i psikhologisty nashikh dnei,” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, Маi-Iun 1909, kniga III (98), 393–443. Lanz refers to Husserl several times in a subsequent piece on Wilhelm Schuppe published in the November-December 1909 issue of the same journal. There, however, Lanz seeks to contrast Schuppe’s “immanentism” to what he calls the “transcendental school,” which includes principally the neo-Kantians of his day. See “Vil’gel’m Shuppe i ideia universal’noj immanentnosti,” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, Noiabr’- Dekabr’ 1909, kniga V (100), 757–799.]
• 5 Husserl, Logical Investigations.
• 6 Lipps, “Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie und die Wundt'sche Logik,” 533, 537.
• 7 Lipps himself, despite his clearly expressed desire to eliminate “anthropomorphism” completely and any mythology from the theory of cognition, is by no means free from this “game.” He introduces such conceptions as “mental organization” and others. Cf. for example, Lipps, Osnovy logiki, §§274–276.
• 8 Cf. Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 38, 64–65, 90, 181–188, 242, and others.
• 9 Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 210.
• 10 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, §36, 139–144. [Husserl’s term here is “Konstitution.” However, Lanz uses here the same Russian word “organizacija” as he did earlier to render Cohen’s term “Organisation,” who, in turn, follows Kant in the use of this word. In the first Critique (A45/B62), Kant writes, for example, “...auf eine besondre Stellung oder Organisation dieses oder jenes Sinnes gültig ist.” For the sake of consistency, the Russian word will be rendered throughout as “organization.”]
• 11 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 143.
• 12 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 143.
• 13 Rickert, Heinrich, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis, 202.
• 14 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 142.]
• 15 Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege. Palágyi himself by no means avoids this “mythology” as Lipps does his “game of hide and seek.” See, for example, Palágyi, 2411. [Lanz surely gives an incorrect page reference, since Palágyi’s book has only 342 pages. Possibly, he was referring to page 241. Palágyi uses the expression “Erkenntnismythologie” in his work, particularly on page 9 in the context to which Lanz refers.]
• 16 Lipps, Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnistheorie und die Wundt'sche Logik, 531.
• 17 Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 26.
• 18 Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 3, 9, 22, 24, 26, 97.
• 19 [Sigwart, Logic, vol. 1, 25.]
• 20 Sigwart, Logic, vol. 1, 25.
• 21 Mill, John Stuart, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of thePrincipal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings, 461.
• 22 Sigwart, Logic, vol. 1, 119.
• 23 Sigwart, Logic, vol. 1, 140.
• 24 Sigwart, Logic, vol. 1, 189. [Translation slightly modified.]
• 25 Sigwart, Lotze. Windelband in his Preludien expressed this normative attitude in a particularly clear formulation.
• 26 Windelband, Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 257.
• 27 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §§41–43, 168–177.
• 28 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §41, 168.]
• 29 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena,. §41, 170.
• 30 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §23, 104–108.
• 31 Windelband expresses his conception of a norm in the following way: “A norm is a specific form of the psychic process brought about by the natural laws of mental life.” Windelband, Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 291.
• 32 Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 23.
• 33 Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 52, 59.
• 34 [Lanz does not provide a reference for these quotations. However, they resemble fairly closely Husserl’s own of Mill 1878: 461. And for Husserl, see Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §17, 90.]
• 35 Herbart, Sämtliche Werke, Band 4, 67. [Lanz’s quotation is slightly abridged.]
• 36 It is true that Heymans, objecting to Husserl, rejects in general the fact of incorrect thinking, trying to show that incorrect thinking is, in essence, incomplete “lazy” thinking. He rejects the possibility of conscious logical incorrectness. Heymans, Die Gesetze und Elemente des wissenschaftlichen Denkens, 66-67. This changes little the essence of the matter. All the same, an unconsciously incorrect conclusion logically remains an incorrect conclusion. A false presupposition, even if made unconsciously, always remains false. A fact is not psychological, and logically incorrect thinking remains firm by this psychological analysis of incorrectness.
• 37 Windelband, Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 284–285.
• 38 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §22, 102, 103-104, 106, 108–109.
• 39 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §45, 178.
• 40 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §46, 179.]
• 41 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §46, 179–180.
• 42 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 139–140.
• 43 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 148.
• 44 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 140.
• 45 Cf. Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §29, 126–127; §36, 140; §39, 150; §50, 189ff.
• 46 [Lanz did not reference this particular quotation, but the train of thought here mirrors that of Husserl in Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §50, 190–191.]
• 47 We find the embryo of it already in Sigwart’s doctrine of negation and in B. Erdmann.
• 48 Windelband, Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 31–33.
• 49 Rickert, Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis,102–116 and 125–132.
• 50 Stellungnahme zu einem Werthe.
• 51 Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters, 744. (Republic, VI: 509 B.)
• 52 Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaften Begriffsbildung, 697ff.
• 53 Kant’s doctrine of the primacy of practical reason over the theoretical is logically inconsistent by the mere fact that any “command” of practical reason presupposes, on the one hand, an obedient subject and presupposes, on the other hand, as a purely formal factor some content of the “command” as a purely theoretical unity. This content cannot be the product of the command, since it arises only in the activity of the subject, who is subordinate to this command. It is impossible to command the acceptance of a command. One can only command something be done (e.g., the truth), recognizing this command. This something must be given as the idea of a theoretical reason before any command as a logical ideal unity to be realized. Every “command” must originally know what it commands. Without this theoretical knowledge of the object of the command, the very act of commanding is logically inconceivable and consequently without theoretical reason – practical. A “transcendent duty” commands us to realize the truth. To do this, we must be given the theoretical difference between truth and falsity, for otherwise the command will be an empty formal tautology.
• 54 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §36, 140.]
• 55 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §32, 330.]
• 56 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149.
• 57 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149.
• 58 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §29, 127.
• 59 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 148.
• 60 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149.
• 61 In a quite recently published work, Palágyi’s Logik auf dem Scheidewege stands in fundamental opposition to any “dualism” in the theory of cognition and in particular to intentional theory. Despite its psychologistic and metaphysical elements, which are abundant in this outstanding work, it is of great epistemological interest for its sharply expressed monism. With its basic monistic principle of “the unity of truth and reality in God,” it introduces elements of the now long-forgotten Schellingian philosophy of identity into contemporary epistemology. Unfortunately, Palágyi deals only with the psychological theory of intentionality, insofar as it finds expression in Brentano’s psychology and completely ignores the attempt by Meinong and Husserl to carry it over to the theory of cognition (in Meinong’s Gegenstandstheorie) and logic.
• 62 Intentionale Inexistenz.
• 63 Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 68.
• 64 [Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, 68.]
• 65 Husserl takes an “act” to be any intentional experience.
• 66 A certain, albeit, minimal portion of psychologism remains in this doctrine, since a psychological theory still serves as its starting point.
• 67 Sensation itself is not contained in an object. It only indicates to us the presence of an object, just as a magnetic force indicates the presence of a magnet. Therefore, a sensation and along with it the category of actuality have a purely methodological, and not a constitutive character. Cf. Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 483–493.
• 68 These two concepts are not the same for Kant. Reality is only one selected aspect of an actual object. Reality is a constitutive category. Actuality is only methodological, but both are necessary.
• 69 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §11, 559.
• 70 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §14, 563–569; §20, 586–590.
• 71 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §11, 558–559.
• 72 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §20, 587.
• 73 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §2, 539.
• 74 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §2, 537.
• 75 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §14, 568.
• 76 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §20, 587. As published, the footnote reference is placed at the end of the following sentence rather than here.]
• 77 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §32, 330.]
• 78 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, 337–432.
• 79 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149.
• 80 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149.]
• 81 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §7, 350.
• 82 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §11, 359; §15(b), 370; §19, 377, etc.
• 83 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §10, 357.
• 84 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §19, 377.
• 85 See, for example, Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §1, 339–340.
• 86 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §1, 339–340.
• 87 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §1, 340.
• 88 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 5, §20, 586–590.
• 89 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §15(b), 370.]
• 90 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §15(b), 370.
• 91 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §8, 351–353.
• 92 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §§ 11–12, 359–362; §14, 366; vol. 2, Investigation 5, §20, 586–587, etc.
• 93 Cf. Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §3, 330. [Emphasis Lanz’s.]
• 94 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §§17–23, 299–311.
• 95 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §19, 303–304.
• 96 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §18, 301–302.
• 97 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §20, 304. [The appropriate open quotation mark is absent in the Russian text.]
• 98 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §15(b), 369.
• 99 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149. He also often says this proves “abstraction” in a purely logical sense. See, for example, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, investigation 2, §3, 254-257; Prolegomena, §46, 180.
• 100 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §4, 344; §16, 372–373.
• 101 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §3, 342–343.
• 102 Simmel, Vorlesungen über Kant, 37.
• 103 [Cf. Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 2, §23, 385: “The mere existence of a content in the psychic interplay is, however, not at all this being-meant or being-referred-to.”]
• 104 We doubt that these principles are only space and time.
• 105 Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege, 210–229.
• 106 [Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege, 223.]
• 107 Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege, 223.
• 108 It should be noted that in this understanding, general concepts turn out to be a priori only in origin, but not in their meaning for cognition. The term “a priori” does not mean here the necessity and universality of their relation to the objects of experience.
• 109 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §11, 285.
• 110 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §29, 324.
• 111 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §§30–32, 327–331. [As the reader may have already observed, Lanz is not always consistent in his rendering of the German word “Bedeutung.”]
• 112 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §32, 331. Lanz’s translation is questionable. Husserl writes, “Die Idealität der Bedeutungen ist ein besonderer Fall der Idealität des Spezifischen überhaupt.”]
• 113 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §30, 327; §32, 330.
• 114 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §9, 281.]
• 115 Meinong, Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften, 16.
• 116 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 6, §§30–35, 749–759.
• 117 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 6, §37, 762.
• 118 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 6, §38, 765.
• 119 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Investigation 6, §39, 766.
• 120 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §28, 322,
• 121 Palágyi, as a consistent monist, denies this. Truth and being are for him only different ways of apprehending and seeing one and the same content. Every judgment has, in his opinion, two sides, has “a dual content.” On the one hand, it expresses something about the object itself, on the other about my experience. “The ball is rolling” means, on the one hand, that the ball itself is rolling. On the other hand, it means that I see that the ball is rolling, or I am thinking about this. The content in both cases is one and the same, the only difference being our way of considering or reflecting (Besinnungsweise) on it. Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheidewege, 232–235. “We have two ways of interpreting what we immediately experience. One time, we speak of what is experienced, i.e., of the fact itself, and at another time of the experience, i.e., of the impression. Palágyi, Die Logik auf dem Scheideweg, 238. If Palágyi were to apply Husserl’s intentional method to these different ways of considering the matter, to these opposite “pairs of judgment,” as he calls them, we would see that their content is quite different.
• 122 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §62, 226.
• 123 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §62, 225. In this respect, Husserl turns out to be somewhat inconsistent. The “impossible objects,” which Meinong counts among his “homeless objects,” have a certain ideal being. However, no truths about them are possible.
• 124 [Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §62, 226.]
• 125 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Investigation 1, §29, 325.
• 126 Windelband, Vom System der Kategorien.
• 127 Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 349–499. Of particular importance in this respect is the chapter “Das Urtheil der Wirklichkeit.” Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 391–428.
• 128 Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 484ff; Cohen, Logik der reinen Erkenntnis, 391ff.
• 129 Cohen, Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 487.
• 130 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §32, 135–137; §62, 225ff.
• 131 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §39, 149; §46, 179–180; §50, 192; Investigation 1, §30, 327; §31, 330.
• 132 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §46, 180.
• 133 Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, Prolegomena, §46: 181; §50, 190; Investigation 1, §30, 327; §31, 330.