“Erlebnis” and “Logos” in Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences

Abstract

“Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist — Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge”.¹ These statements from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus do not define the world in its immediate existence, but rather the structure of the totality of cognizable objects in front of the cognizant subject. This statement is presupposed by the aim of the Tractatus, which is to establish a criterion of knowledge based on logic. The subjective activity which the world is facing is not that which occurs in the world, but that which knows it; therefore the world is seen not as the totality of things, but as the totality of facts. The world of the events (Fall) is not the world of arbitrariness: “Die Tatsachen im logischen Raum sind die Welt — in der Logik ist nichts Zufällig: Wenn das Ding im Sachverhalt vorkommen kann, so muss die Moglich des Sachverhaltes im Ding bereits präjudiziert sein,”² but is grounded in the logically structured object. This structure is independent of the cognitive subject, of its present will and projects, of its hopes and desires, and is enclosed in the past, impervious to all relations with the subject other than purely cognitive ones. As a structure of meaning, logical space has only one temporal phase: the past. By Tatsache, in fact, is meant an event which has taken place, ein Geschehenes, as Wahrig explains.³