Husserl ‘This is a first-rate volume...: The text is rich with historical background and comment. But it is the clarity and depth of understanding with which David Woodruff Smith explains the material that is so overwhelmingly present. An excellent work’. Gayle Ormiston, Kent State University, USA Routledge Philosophers Edited by Brian Leiter University of Texas, Austin Routledge Philosophers is a major series of introductions to the great Western philosophers. Each book places a major philosopher or thinker in historical context, explains and assesses their key arguments, and considers their legacy. Additional features include a chronology of major dates and events, chapter summaries, annotated suggestions for further reading and a glossary of technical terms. An ideal starting point for those new to philosophy, they are also essen- tial reading for those interested in the subject at any level. Hobbes A.P. Martinich Leibniz Nicholas Jolley Locke E.J. Lowe Hegel Frederick Beiser Rousseau Nicholas Dent Schopenhauer Julian Young Freud Jonathan Lear Kant Paul Guyer Husserl David Woodruff Smith Darwin Tim Lewens Forthcoming: Aristotle Christopher Shields Spinoza Michael Della Rocca Hume Don Garrett Fichte and Schelling Sebastian Gardner Rawls Samuel Freeman Merleau-Ponty Taylor Carman Heidegger John Richardson David Woodruff Smith Husserl First published 2007 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Tim Lewens All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Smith, David Woodruff, 1944- Husserl / David Woodruff Smith. p. cm. -- (Routledge philosophers) 1. Husserl, Edmund, 1859-1938. I. Title. II. Series. B3279.H94S54 2006 193--dc2 22006014634 ISBN10: 0-415-28974-2 ISBN13: 978-0-415-28974-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-415-28945-0 ISBN13: 978-0-415-28975-7 (pbk) ISBN10: 0-203-96843-3 ISBN13: 978-0-203-96843-7 (ebk) For Doug and Glad . and our Viennese heritage. List of illustrations viii Preface ix A chronology of Husserl’s life and works xii Introduction 1 Husserl’s life and works One 11 Husserl’s philosophical system Two 41 Logic: meaning in language, mind, and science Three 86 Ontology: essences and categories, minds and bodies Four 135 Phenomenology I: the new science of conscious experience Five 188 Phenomenology II: intentionality, method, and theory Six 236 Epistemology: beyond rationalism, empiricism, and Kantianism Seven 315 Ethics: values founded in experience Eight 356 Husserl’s legacy Nine 402 Glossary 428 Bibliography 449 Index 463 Illustrations Below is a list of the figures appearing in the several chapters, usually with cartoon illustrations. 3.1 A Husserlian logic for a simple language or theory 110 3.2 Husserl’s model of language expressing thought 111 3.3 Husserl’s philosophy of language 116 4.1 Aristotle’s system of categories 138 4.2 Kant’s system of (conceptual) categories 139 4.3 Husserl’s system of categories 157 5.1 The structure of intentionality 207 5.2 The structure of my consciousness of time 213 5.3 Experience of a thing in space–time 222 6.1 Reference via sense 262 6.2 Intentionality via sense 263 6.3 The constitution of an object in consciousness 302 Preface In this study, as befits the Routledge Philosophers series, I have sought to present Husserl’s thought from a wide perspective in the 21st century. This reading presents Husserl not only as a 20th- century revolutionary who launched a radically new type of philosophy called transcendental phenomenology, but more fundamentally as an original thinker who takes his place along with Aristotle, Kant, et al., in the pantheon of great systematic philosophers in the history of thought. Along the way, I lay out conceptual and historical details of Husserl’s development of the new science of phenomenology (a reflective study of consciousness as experienced from the first- person point of view), assessing Husserl’s role in the two traditions of continental and analytic philosophy in the 20th century. However, my main goal, in the course of the book, is to build an account of Husserl’s overall system of philosophy. Accordingly, I have framed Husserl’s philosophy as an integrated system of logic, ontology, phenomenology, epistemology, ethics, and more. In this account, the several parts of Husserl’s system, including his phenomenology, are tightly interwoven, and this interweaving is itself conceptualized in the system. As we come to appreciate Husserl’s unified philosophy, his originality becomes increasingly evident. When referring to Husserl’s works, I have cited the works in their extant English translations, where available, indicating the original German editions as well. I cite locations in Husserl texts by section numbers, which appear in all the respective editions. x Preface Most of the quotations from Husserl that appear in my text are in my own translation, but I cite the relevant location in the extant English translations where available. The extant translations have been an invaluable guide even where I construct my own transla- tions. If I vary the translation, it is because I want to ferret out a technical term and keep track of it in various texts. Husserl, the lapsed mathematician, kept to his choice of technical terms over decades of writing – expanding his overall theory rather in the style of a growing body of mathematical results. For their work in conceiving and organizing the present series, I am grateful to Tony Bruce, editor-in-chief for Routledge’s philosophy books, and Brian Leiter, editor of the Routledge Philosophers series. I wish to thank three anonymous reviewers of the penultimate manuscript, for their many helpful comments and observations. For detailed suggestions on the penultimate manuscript, I thank Jeffrey Ogle. For specific remarks on a key part of Chapter 6, I thank Martin Schwab and Amie Thomasson. For discussions of constructivist ethical theories pertinent to Chapter 8, I thank Aaron James. Also regarding Chapter 8, I thank Christopher Lay and Gary Hartenburg for discussion of passages on normativity in the Prolegomena of Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In more general terms, I would like to express my appreciation to the many colleagues and students who have engaged with me on ideas that have somehow found their way into the following interpretation of Husserl’s thought. Especially, I would mention my colleagues in some three decades of discussion and writing related (more or less directly) to “California” phenomenology: Dagfinn Føllesdal, Jaakko Hintikka, Ronald McIntyre, (the late) Izchak Miller, Hubert Dreyfus, John Searle, Richard Tieszen, Martin Schwab, Dallas Willard, Allan Casebier, Amie Thomasson, Kay Mathiesen, Wayne Martin, Jeffrey Yoshimi, Paul Livingston, Jason Ford, Charles Siewert. I would also mention Anglo-Austrian colleagues whose studies of Brentano and Husserl have deepened my historical and ontological perspectives on Husserl: Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons, and Barry Smith; also Edgar Morscher and Johannes Brandl. In the Parisian scene, I would mention Jean Petitot, Jean- Michel Roy, the late Francisco Varela, and Bernard Pachoud, who Preface xi have looked to cognitive science, and Clair Ortiz Hill, who has looked to Husserl’s ties into early philosophical logic. I’ve long benefited from J. N. Mohanty’s perspectives on Husserl. My sense of Husserl’s systematicity has benefited, indirectly, from many discussions with the late Charles W. Dement, exploring what we have called ontological systematics. Finally, the book has benefited further from studies of Husserl by a variety of scholars, including David Bell, Christian Beyer, David Carr, Richard Cobb-Stevens, Steven Crowell, John Drummond, Lester Embree, Denis Fisette, Klaus Held, Edouard Marbach, Dermot Moran, A.D. Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert Tragesser, Donn Welton, Dan Zahavi. Needless to say, Husserl’s rich texts have occasioned significantly different lines of interpretation, and so, as my narrative progresses, I try to indicate alternative views of Husserl where appropriate, without losing the reader’s focus. Thanks for their excellent work to Lisa Williams for copy- editing, Jeffrey Ogle for preparing the index, Christina Chuang for crafting the Chinese script in Chapter 6, and Jason Mitchell for supervising production. Finally, I wish to thank my wife Mary for her wonderful support in so many ways. David Woodruff Smith 2006 A chronology of Husserl’s life and works 1859 Edmund Husserl is born, 8 April, in Prossnitz (Prostejow), Moravia, second of four children. 1876–82 Studies at the Universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna. Studies mathematics with Kronecker and Weierstrass. 1882 Doctoral dissertation, “Contributions Towards a Theory of Variation Calculus”, accepted 8 October. 1884–6 Studies with Franz Brentano in Vienna and Carl Stumpf in Halle. 1887 Marries Malvine Steinschneider, 6 August. 1887 Habilitationschrift, “On the Concept of Number, Psychological Analyses”, accepted and printed. 1887–1901 Lectures as Privatdozent in the University of Halle. 1891 Philosophy of Arithmetic, Psychological and Logical Investigations. 1892 Frege published critical review of Philosophy of Arithmetic. 1892–5 The Husserls’ children are born: Elli, 1892; Gerhart, 1893; Wolfgang, 1895. 1900 Logical Investigations, First Part: Prolegomena to Pure Logic, first edition. 1901 Logical Investigations, Second Part: Investigations into Phenomenology and Theory of Knowledge Logic, first edition.