The Task and the Significance of the Logical Investigations

Abstract

A complete transformation of the inner and as quickly also of the outer situation of Dilthey took place about the turn of the century. In the year 1900–01 appeared my Logical Investigations which were the results of my ten year long efforts to clarify the Idea of pure Logic by going back to the sense- bestowing or cognitive achievements being effected in the complex of lived experience of logical thinking. To put it exactly, the specific investigations of the second volume were concerned with the turning back of intuition upon the logical experiences which take place in us when we think but which we are not able to see, which we do not have in the field of attentive glance when we perform the act of thinking in the naturally original manner. The thinker does not know anything of his thought-experiences, he knows only of his thoughts (Gedanken) which his acts of thinking continually produce. It was necessary to bring this hidden life of thought under our grasp through subsequent reflection and to identify it through faithfully descriptive concepts; it was also necessary to solve the problem that arises for the first time: namely, to make it intelligible, how in the achievements of this inner logical experience there takes place the formation of all those spiritual forms which emerge in statement-making, judging thought as concepts, judgments, inferences etc., and which find their general expression, their universal objective, and spiritual expression in the fundamental concepts and principles of logic.

E. tr. by J. N. Mohanty. Reprinted from E. Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie (Husserliana vol. IX) with permission.