Husserl and Frege: A New Look at their Relationship

Abstract

Husserl’s explicit rejection of psychologism as a theory of the origin of the logico-mathematical entities and his advocacy of a conception of pure logic as a science of objective meanings were first expounded in the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (1900), and Husserl tells us that the Prolegomena, in its essentials, is a reworking of lectures he had given at Halle in the year 1896.¹ Føllesdal, in his careful study of the relation between Frege and Husserl during these years, asks the question, at what point of time between 1890 (the year of publication of the Philosophic der Arithmetik) and 1896 did this change in Husserl’s mode of thinking take place?² The papers published during 1891–1893 do not, according to Føllesdal, bear testimony to any such change. In the paper “Psychologische Studien zur Elementaren Logik” of the year 1894, Husserl is still found to believe that the foundations of logic can be clarified with the help of psychology. Accordingly, the change must have occurred between the years 1894 and 1896. Frege’s famed review of the Philosophic der Arithmetik appeared in the year 1894. Follesdal therefore conjectures that it is Frege’s review which must have led Husserl to a complete revision of his prior mode of thinking.³ This view about the Frege-Husserl relationship is shared by many writers. A recent writer even speaks of Husserl’s “traumatic encounter with Frege.” ⁴

First appeared in Research in Phenomenology, V, 1975. Reprinted here with permission. J. N. M.