Husserl on Truth and Evidence

Abstract

1. A relation of identity between evident and true sentences, and between evidence and truth in general, can only be established either by reducing evidence to truth or by founding truth on evidence in the sense that one can speak meaningfully of truth only where there is evidence. It is a permissible and perhaps useful simplification to say, that Husserl’s theory of evidence in the Logical Investigations is determined by the attempt to work out the first mode of connection, while his so-called ‘turn’ towards idealism which takes place in the Ideas — certainly anticipated through corresponding trends of thought in the Logical Investigations — can be characterised, briefly but appropriately, as the attempt to reduce truth to evidence.

E. Tr. By J. N. Mohanty. Reprinted and translate, with permission, from Neue hefte für Philosophie, Heft 1: Phänomenologie und Sprachanalyse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973, pp. 12–32