To appear in The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Volume

18, Special Issue: Gian-Carlo Rota and The End of Objectivity, 2019. Edited by Burt Hopkins

and John Drummond. Routledge. Forthcoming in September 21, 2021. Please, cite the published

version.

7 Holism, contextuality, and compositionality:

Lotze’s influence on Husserl1

Mirja Hartimo

Abstract

The paper examines the Lotzean background of Husserl’s logic with respect to the so-called

Frege’s principles, the context principle (“the word has a meaning only in the context of a

sentence”), the priority thesis (the judgment is prior to the concepts in it), and the principle of

compositionality (the sense of a complex expression is compounded out of the senses of its

constituents). While some commentators hold that for Frege, the context principle, inherited

from Lotze, is an expression of his epistemological view of logic, Husserl’s indebtedness to

Lotze is diametrically opposite: he owes to Lotze a kind of ontological holism, which is

independent of the context principle.

Keywords:

Frege’s Principles; Context Principle; Compositionality; Lotze, Husserl

Apart from rather common general pronouncements that “Lotze was important for Husserl,” the

more precise nature of Husserl’s Lotzean background has not been much examined, while, for

example, Frege’s Lotzean background has been a subject to many studies since the 1980s. The

relatively few contributions on Husserl’s Lotzean background focus either on Lotze’s influence

1 Thanks are due to Leila Haaparanta for many interesting discussions related to the themes of this chapter.

on Husserl’s turning away from psychologism,2 or on Lotze’s view of abstraction and validity.3

The present paper complements these works by assessing Lotze’s importance on Husserl’s

conception of Mannigfaltigkeitslehre discussed in Prolegomena. It will be argued that in addition

to the features mentioned above, Husserl inherits a kind of holism from Lotze.

In the secondary debates on Frege, Lotze’s holism has been related to the so-called “context

principle” (“the word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence”), which Frege, so the

story goes, owes to Lotze. The context principle has also been related to the so-called “priority

thesis” (the judgment is prior to the concepts in it), but it appears incompatible with yet another

Fregean principle, the “principle of compositionality” (the sense of a complex expression is

compounded out of the senses of its constituents). The end of the paper is devoted to examining

Husserl’s views in the Logical Investigations in relation to these Fregean principles. Husserl’s

analysis shows how to solve the potential tension between compositionality and contextuality.

However, the “ontological” holism (or, better, structuralism) Husserl inherits from Lotze does

not follow from “grammatical” holism associated with the context principle. Furthermore,

contrary to Frege, Husserl does not seem to agree with the priority thesis. All this highlights the

2 K. Hauser, “Lotze and Husserl,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 85 (2003), 152–178; W. Huemer, “Husserl’s Critique of

Psychologism and His Relation to the Brentano School,” in Phenomenology and Analysis: Essays on Central European Philosophy,

eds. Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Wolfgang Huemer (Frankfurt: Ontos, 2004), 199–214.

3 C. Beyer, Von Bolzano zu Husserl (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996); K. Hauser “Lotze and Husserl”; R. D.

Rollinger, “Hermann Lotze on Abstraction and Platonic Ideas,” in Idealization XI: Historical Studies on Abstraction and

Idealization, eds. Francesco Coniglione, Roberto Poli, and Robin Rollinger (Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2004), 147–161.

way in which Husserl appropriates Lotze’s Platonism and how his version of transcendental

philosophy differs from the epistemological readings of Frege.

7.1 Background: Lotze, Frege, and the principles

Gottlob’s Frege’s Lotzean background has been a focus of several studies since Hans Sluga’s

ground-breaking work in the early 1980s. For example, Gottfried Gabriel has suggested that the

origin of Frege’s context principle (“the word has a meaning only in the context of a sentence”)

is in Lotze’s ontological holism.4 However, some commentators claim that instead of the context

principle, central to Frege’s views (and the development of analytic philosophy since then) is the

principle of compositionality (the sense of a complex expression is compounded out of the

senses of its constituents), which at the outset appears incompatible with the context principle.

Moreover, the context principle has been related to the so-called priority thesis, which is the

Kantian view that the judgment is prior to the concepts in it. Whether Frege held these principles

(and when, many believe that Frege gave up the context principle in his later philosophy), and

whether they are contradictory to each other, has been debated much in the secondary literature,5

and depending on the author’s take on the issue, Frege’s philosophical outlook ranges from neo-

4 G. Gabriel, “Frege, Lotze, and the Continental Roots of Early Analytic Philosophy,” in From Frege to Wittgenstein: Perspectives

on Early Analytic Philosophy, ed. Erich H. Reck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 39–51, here 49.

5 See, for example, L. Haaparanta, Frege’s Doctrine of Being. Acta Philosophical Fennica, vol 39 (Helsinki: Philosophical Society

of Finland, 1985), and F. J. Pelletier, “Did Frege Believe Frege’s Principle?” Journal of Logic, Language, and Information 10,

2001, 87–114 for surveys on the secondary literature.

Kantian transcendental idealism (e.g. Sluga) to realism (Dummett), and a variety of views

between these. Here are the principles in question in detail:

1. The context principle found in Frege’s Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884):

Nach der Bedeutung der Wörter muss im Satzzusammenhange, nicht in ihtere Vereinzelugn

gefragt werden.

Never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation but only in the context of a proposition.6

2. The priority thesis, formulated by Frege in his Über den Zweck der Begriffsschrift (1883):

In der That, es ist einer der bedeutendsten Unterschiede meiner Auffassungsweise von der

booleschen und ich kann whol hinzufügen von der aristotelishen, dass ich nicht von den

Begriffen, sondern von den Urtheilen ausgehe.

In fact, it is one of the most important differences between my way of thinking and the

Boolean way – and indeed I can add the Aristotelian way – that I do not proceed from

concepts but from judgments.7

3. The principle of compositionality has two versions, one concerning senses and one references:

3.1. The sense of a complex expression is compounded out of the senses of its constituents.

3.2. The reference of a complex expression is determined by the references of its

components.8

The aim of this paper is not to decide how Frege should be read regarding these principles, but

examine them vis-à-vis Husserl’s relationship to Lotze. Here, the neo-Kantian epistemological

readings of Frege are particularly interesting. For example, Leila Haaparanta has argued that

Frege’s context principle is “an expression of the very idea that objects cannot be considered

6 G. Frege, Grundlagen der Arithmetik, x, Vorwort, cited from Leila Haaparanta, “Compositionality, Contextuality and the

Philosophical Method,” in Truth and Games, eds. Tuomo Aho and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen. Acta Philosophical Fennica 78

(Helsinki: The Philosophical Society of Finland, 1986), 289–301, here 290.

7 L. Haaparanta, “Compositionality,” 290–291.

8 L. Haaparanta, “Compositionality,” 290.

independently of our conceptual systems.”9 Her argument is (roughly) that the context principle

follows from the priority thesis that judgments are prior to concepts. Furthermore, since we get

to know objects only through concepts, this means that we get to know the objects only through

their sentential context.10 Thus in her view, Frege’s logic is a kind of transcendental logic that

provides us a conceptual scheme with which to understand the world.11 Against this background,

it is interesting to consider Husserl’s Lotzean influences that appear almost diametrically

opposite. I will argue that Husserl is primarily inspired by Lotze’s Platonism, which makes him

an ontological holist. In Husserl’s assessment, the context principle is not an epistemological but

a grammatical principle which is not obviously connected to Lotzean ontological holism. This

then shows the order of priority to be different for Husserl and the epistemological readings of

Frege. Moreover, while both are greatly influenced by Lotze, they are impacted by different

Lotzean doctrines. While for the epistemologists, Lotze’s context principle connected to the

Kantian priority principle is the crucial Lotzean element, for Husserl, the Lotzean ontological

holism is more fundamental. Accordingly, Husserl’s transcendental logic is drastically different

from Kantian view of it, as it aims to examine the conditions of possibility of us having

knowledge of the ideal and objective structures.12

9 L. Haaparanta, Frege’s Doctrine, 92.

10 L. Haaparanta, Frege’s Doctrine, esp. 83–84.

11 L. Haaparanta, “Compositionality,” esp. 294.

12 This is discussed in detail in Mirja Hartimo “Husserl on Kant and Critical View of Logic,” Inquiry, 2019..

7.2 Husserl and Lotze

Husserl knew Lotze’s work well. When Husserl was a student of mathematics in Berlin,

Hermann Lotze (1817–1881) was one the most influential philosophers in Germany. Husserl,

too, bought Lotze’s popular Mikrokosmos in 1880.13 The same year, Lotze was invited to Berlin,

where he arrived in April 1881, only to die on July 1, 1881.14 Husserl probably did not see Lotze

since he graduated from the University of Berlin in March 1881, after which he left to study in

Vienna (Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 9). Husserl’s next confirmed encounter with Lotze’s

thought took place when he arrived to Halle to work with Carl Stumpf. Husserl’s oral

examination for the nostrification of his doctorate in Halle (in 1887) included questions on

Lotze’s Lokalzeichentheorie that was Lotze’s physiologico-psychological account of our

perception of space. In 1895–1897, Husserl wrote a critical study on Mikrokosmos, which was

meant to be published in the Logical Investigations, but eventually was not, due to lack of

space.15 In 1912, and again in 1922, Husserl gave a seminar on Lotze’s Logik, Book III.16

Moreover, many of Husserl’s students worked on Lotze.

13 K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik. Denk- und Lebensweg Edmund Husserls (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, , 1977), here 8.

14 R. Pester. “Einleitung,” in R. H. Lotze, Kleine Schriften zur Psychologie (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo,

Hong Kong: Springer-Verlag, 1989), here 20, 36.

15 K. Hauser, “Husserl and Lotze,” 164; K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 59–60.

16 K. Schuhmann, Husserl-Chronik, 169, 259.

Husserl also explicitly said that Lotze influenced his work. In a 1905 letter to Brentano, Husserl

claimed that already the Prolegomena had been influenced by Lotze’s interpretation of Plato.17

In his attempt to rewrite the introduction to the 1913 edition of the Logische Untersuchungen,

Husserl again emphasized the importance of Lotze’s discussion of Plato, calling Lotze’s

interpretation genial:

The fully conscious and radical turn and the related “Platonism” I owe to the study of Lotze’s

Logik. As little as Lotze himself could overcome contradictions and psychologism, as much

his genial interpretation of Platonic ideas helped me and my further studies. Lotze’s discussion

of truths in themselves suggested to me the thought to place everything mathematical and a

good part of traditional logic into the realm of ideality.18

Lotze’s impact on Husserl appears to have been rather lasting: when in 1933 Husserl was asked

about his indebtedness to Plato, he still referred to Lotze’s Logik:

What role of my “Platonism”, my energetical entering for a universal ontology, hence for the

work on the essential intuition (for the genuine a priori) in all fields of knowledge, had for my

development and which new meaning it acquired in the ripening transcendental

phenomenology, can you best explain by Formal and Transcendental Logic, and especially

its second part, although there only the formal ontology is in question. I owe this Platonism to

17 E. Husserl, Briefwechsel I: Die Brentanoschule, ed. Karl Schuhmann (Dordrecht: Springer, 1994), 39, henceforth cited as

Briefwechsel I.

18 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen Ergänzungsband. Erster Teil, ed. Ulrich Melle, Husserliana XX/I (Dordrecht, The Hague,

Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 297. Henceforth cited as Hua XX/I.

the well-known chapter of Lotze’s Logik, as much as his theory of knowledge and metaphysics

always puts me off.19

Similar views are also expressed in Ideen III, §10. Thus, on the basis of Husserl’s own words, it

can be concluded that Lotze’s interpretation of Plato in Lotze’s Logik is what inspired Husserl

the most.

7.3 Die Ideenwelt

The chapter Ideenwelt of Lotze’s Logik starts with a consideration of the extent of the Heraclitian

flux. In the Theatetus, Plato construed the Heraclitus’ flux to extend, not only to the realm of

sensuous objects, but also to the determinations of thought. Lotze doubts that Heraclitus really

meant to extend the flux this far since that would render all inquiry impossible. Nevertheless,

Heraclitus’ doctrine, as Plato saw it, produced pernicious results especially in ethics. Against it,

Socrates defended the view that the concepts of good, bad, just, and unjust are fixed and

unchanging. Plato then expanded the view into his own doctrine of ideas, which according to

Lotze is “a first and most characteristic attempt to turn to account the truth which belongs to the

world of our ideas in itself, without regard to its agreement with an assumed reality of things

outside its borders.”20 This passage shows Lotze to be a coherentist about truth and that he

attributes a similar view to Plato, too.

19 E. Husserl, Briefwechsel VI, Philosophenbriefe, ed. Karl Schuhmann (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1994), 460.

Henceforth cited as Briefwechsel VI.

20 R. H. Lotze, Logik, Drei Bücher vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und vom Erkennen. Zweite Auflage. Verlag von Feliz Meiner.

Leipzig. English translation by Bernard Bosanquet (Clarendon Press, 1884), §313, 434.

According to Plato, there are ideas of everything that can be thought in a universal form, apart

from the particular perceptions in which it is presented. An idea can be distinguished as content

with a meaning of its own, as opposed to a mere affection we experience. Lotze likens his own

view of concept formation to Plato’s. Hence, I will here briefly digress to describe Lotze’s

discussion of concept formation in Book I of Logik:

To Lotze, impressions are first converted into ideas and in making the ideas objective, they are

given a logical form that is derived from grammar (most importantly, substantival, adjectival,

and verbal form). However, language does not fully cover the work of thought, according to

Lotze, and that is why, the linguistic forms have to be supplemented and some ignored (e.g. the

gender is not logical but “aesthetic” fancy).21 This objectification of impressions and the

simultaneous formation according to the parts of speech, is according to Lotze, “the most

indispensable, and in that sense the first, of all operations of thought.”22 But in addition, every

language presupposes employment of judgments and syllogisms, and even systematic scientific

investigation. This, according to Lotze, has given rise to the view that in logic the theory of

judgment must precede the treatment of concepts. However, Lotze considers this to be a

misconception:

for if those judgments, out of which the concept is said to result, are to be really judgments,

they themselves can consist of nothing but combinations of ideas which are no longer mere

impressions; every such idea must have undergone at least the simple formation mentioned

21 R. H., Lotze, Logik, 15.

22 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §8, 17.

above; the greater part of them, as experiment would show, will already practically possess

that higher logical form to which the very theory in question gives the name of concept.23

Lotze thus explicitly opposes the priority thesis. Lotze further explains that

in order to frame complex and manifold concepts, more especially in order to fix the limits

within which it is worth while and justifiable to treat them as wholes and distinguish them

from others, a great deal of preparatory intellectual work is necessary; but that this preparatory

work itself may be possible, it must have been preceded by the conformation of simpler

concepts out of which its own subsidiary judgments are framed.24

I will discuss the context principle later, but note that in this passage, Lotze appears to oppose it

and seems to endorse some sort of compositionality.

The second operation of thought, practically inseparable from the first, according to Lotze, is to

give position to the content in respect to other contents.25 Yet, we can distinguish red from blue

only on the basis of our understanding of what they are in themselves. The comparison may

occasion drawing attention to something that might have been overlooked, but even in this case

the immediate impression is prior to comparison (§11). It is not the case that the thought orders

the impressions, but thought “can make no difference where it finds none already in the matter of

the impressions.”26

23 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §8, 17–18.

24 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §8, 18.

25 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §10, 19.

26 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §19, 27.

The third operation of thought is universalization by which we abstract from varying impressions

their common content. Lotze distinguishes the first universal from the “other universal.” The first

universal involves an immediate experience of the common element as opposed to defining or

explaining, say, the universal concept of an animal or a geometrical figure. “This first universal,

therefore, is no product of thought, but something which thought finds already in existence.”27

On the basis of the first universals, we then produce “the second universal” by logical effort,

which is the fourth activity of thought. Christian Beyer has argued, convincingly, that this

process of abstraction is tantamount to the early phase of Husserl’s essential intuition.28 In

addition, one could argue that Lotze’s emphasis of the role of logical grammar resembles

Husserl’s later view of the logical grammar.

Let us go back to Lotze’s discussion of Plato: for Lotze’s Plato, while the world of sense

undergoes constant change, we think about it with immutable determinations.29 These

conceptions constitute an unchangeable system of thought. Lotze concludes

[t]hus we readily understand the significance of Plato’s endeavour to bind together the

predicates which are found in the things of the external world in continual change, into a

determinate and articulated whole, and how he saw in this world of Ideas the true beginnings

of certain knowledge; for the eternal relations which subsist between different Ideas, and

through which some are capable of association with each other and others exclude each other,

27 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §14, 23.

28 C. Beyer, Von Bolzano,136–137n120,

29 R. H. Lotze, Logik, 435–436.

form at all events the limits within which what is to be possible in experience falls; the further

question what is real in it, and how things manage to have Ideas for their predicates, appeared

to Plato not to be the primary, and was for the time reserved.

(§315)

Lotze holds that to Plato ideas do not exist as things exist, but they possess validity, which is

primitive, “a conception of which everyone may know what he means by it, but which cannot be

constructed out of any constituent elements which do not already contain it.”30 Lotze’s concept

of validity is said to have influenced the value theoreticians of the Southwest neo-Kantians

(Windelband, Rickert). I find it is also justified to claim that Husserl’s view of ideality derives

from Lotze’s view of Geltung (cf. especially Husserl’s criticism of hypostatization of the

universal, in his second logical investigation). Indeed, as I have argued more recently elsewhere,

this makes Husserl and Lotze’s views species of structuralism as opposed to the more

traditionally conceived Platonism.31

Lotze holds that Plato was a victim of Greek language, which does not have a word for validity,

but instead the word Being had to be used for the mode of existence of the ideas. To combat the

Heraclitian flux, the ideas had to be described as eternal, without beginning, and imperishable.32

30 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §316, 440.

31 M. Hartimo, “On Husserl’s Combination View: Structuralism, Constructivism, and What Not,” in After Husserl:

Phenomenological Foundations of Mathematics, ed. Iulian Apostolescu. Special Issue of META: Research in Hermeneutics,

Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, 11(2), 2019, 526–546.

32 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §318, 441.

They are separable or separate from things because they can also be represented after the things

that originally occasioned their appearance vanish. The independent validity of ideas rescued

Plato from the Protagorean relativity. A deficiency in Plato’s view, Lotze points out in the end, is

that Plato considers his ideas individually:

An account of the necessary connexion of two contents of thought must always assume the

logical form of a judgment; it cannot be expressed in the form of a mere notion which does

not in itself contain a proposition at all. Thus we have always employed laws, that is to say

propositions, which express a relation between different elements, as examples to explain the

meaning of Validity in contradistinction to Existence… we can only say of concepts that they

mean something, and they mean something because certain propositions are valid of them…33

The ideas gain their validity from the way they are related to each other. Lotze thus here appears

to endorse something like context principle (as opposed to his view stated earlier in the same

work).

In the end of the chapter, Lotze’s ontological holism (or structuralism) is once again manifested:

“It is true the abstract thought that the Ideas are not only a multitude of individuals but that they

make up all together an organic and articulated whole …”34 Lotze criticizes Plato, not entirely

fairly, for not being structuralist:

instead of making a systematic collection of the flora of the Ideas, he ought to have turned his

thoughts to the general physiological conditions which in each single plant bind limb to limb

33 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §320, 448.

34 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §320, 449.

according to a law of growth. Or, dropping the figure, the existence of a world of Ideas

possessing a definite meaning and an unchangeable validity being once clearly and

emphatically established, the next task was to investigate the universal laws which govern its

structure, through which alone, in an Ideal world as elsewhere, the individual elements can be

bound together into a whole. Thus the question to be dealt with at this point was what are those

first principles of our knowledge under which the manifold world of Ideas has itself to be

arranged. This is the more precisely defined form which the systematic enquiry into Truth and

the source of Truth now assumes for us.35

The last two sentences are what I want to focus on at the moment. Recall how Husserl

emphasized Lotze’s “ingenius” interpretation of Platonism. Husserl held that:

Lotze’s discussion of truths in themselves suggested to me the thought to place everything

mathematical and a good part of traditional logic into the realm of ideality.

(Hua XX/I, 297)

Compare this with the way in which Lotze ends his chapter: the next task is to study the

universal laws which study the structure “through which alone, in an Ideal world as elsewhere,

the individual elements can be bound together into a whole.” This Lotzean holism is also

characteristic of Husserl’s view of logic, which is what I will argue in the next chapter. Indeed,

Lotze’s doctrine of Geltung presupposes some kind of holism (or structuralism), because the

notion validity presupposes the structure in which the ideas can be said to be valid.

35 R. H. Lotze, Logik, §320, 449.

7.4 Husserl’s idea of logic

To Husserl, the ideal structure mentioned above is studied in mathematics and traditional logic as

it becomes clear from the last chapter of the Prolegomena to Pure Logic (henceforth

Prolegomena). The chapter is devoted to Husserl’s idea of logic and thereby Husserl’s aim is to

reveal what makes science science. The answer lies in “a certain objective or ideal

interconnection which gives these acts a unitary objective relevance, and in such unitary

relevance, an ideal validity.”36 In other words, science owes its validity and objectivity to logic.

Logic, that is, the ideal interconnection, comprises an interconnection of the things to which our

thoughts are directed as well as an interconnection of truths, in which the unity of things comes

to count objectively as being what it is. In comparison to Lotze, Husserl thus includes the

interconnection of things into the realm of logic, while Lotze is only interested in the

interconnection of truths. Husserl, in contrast, holds that logic is about the world as well.

Accordingly, he continues to say: “In these truths or interconnections of truths the actual

existence of things and of interconnections of things finds expression” (Hua XVIII, 231/144).

Husserl then proceeds to discuss the unity of science. Science, according to Husserl, has a unity.

Not every putting of truths together constitutes a science. Scientific knowledge is grounded by

means of a theoretical unity (abstract sciences) or the unity of a thing, as is the case with

concrete sciences. The abstract sciences, however, are, according to Husserl, “the genuine

36 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik, ed. Elmar Holenstein. Husserliana XVIII (The

Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); English translation: Logical Investigations: First Part. Prolegomena to Pure Logic,

trans. John Findlay (London, New York: Routledge), 230/144. Henceforth cited as Hua XVIII, with German/ English page

references, respectively.

sciences, from whose theoretical stock the concrete sciences must derive all that theoretical

element by which they are made sciences” (Hua XVIII, 237/148). Ultimately, the science owes

its unity to its axiomatic structure. Husserl even claims that “When… our purely theoretical

interest sets the tone, the single individual and the empirical connection do not count

intrinsically, or they count only as a methodological point of passage in the construction of a

general theory…” (Hua XVIII, 238/148). Our theoretical understanding of the world means

ascribing the axiomatic structure to it and seeing everything in the context of the theory:

We must, in particular, as thinking beings, be able to see propositions as truths, and to see

truths as consequences of other truths, and again to see laws as such, to see laws as explanatory

grounds, and to see them as ultimate principles etc. but it is also, on the other hand, inwardly

evident that truths are what they are, and that in particular, laws, grounds, principles are what

they are, whether we have insight into them or not.

(Hua XVIII, 240/150)

Having described the preliminary idea of the pure logic emphasizing the idea of logical unity,

Husserl then proceeds to describe the idea of logic in more detail. He assigns three tasks to pure

logic. The first task of logic is to fix the pure categories of meaning (e.g. concept, proposition,

truth), the pure categories of objects, and their law-governed combinations. So here, primitive

concepts, elementary connective forms, objective categories (object, state of affairs, unity,

plurality, number, relation, connection, etc.), i.e. the first task is to fix the needed logical

grammar and the related laws of existence. These laws separate the realm of sense out of

nonsense.

The second task is to search for the laws that are concerned with the objective validity of the

formal structures. Theories of inference belong here, as well as, the number theory, the set

theory, etc. The second task is to construe the logic in the pregnant sense, that is “infinitely more

interesting [ungleich näherstehenden] in our cognitive practice” as he says in the fourth logical

investigation.37 Logical laws such as the law of contradiction, double negation, and the modus

ponens belong to this task. These laws guard against absurdity.

In the second level, several definite possible theories or pure “forms” of theories can be

constructed. This gives a rise to a more comprehensive theory, that is, the theory of theories. The

third task is to investigate the connections of these various theories with one another. This is the

highest goal for a theoretical science of theory in general, according to Husserl. It is what

Husserl claims modern mathematics is about, and the achievements of such mathematicians as

Riemann, Helmholtz, Grassmann, Hamilton, Lie, and Cantor are its partial realizations. The third

task manifests Husserl’s Lotzean holism. Inspired by Lotze, Husserl decided “to place all

mathematics and a good part of traditional logic into the realm of ideality” as he says in the

above quote. To him, mathematics of his time and much of traditional logic manifested a

structured and ideal (pure), whole. Formal theories express truths about the pure objectivities that

are ideally defined by structures.

7.5 Husserl and the Frege’s principles

Husserl’s ensuing analyses in the Logical Investigations then discuss the context principle,

compositionality, and the priority thesis. In the first investigation, Husserl works his way toward

37 E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Teil, ed. Ursula Panzer, Husserliana XIX (The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus

Nijhoff, 1984); English translation: Logical Investigations, trans. John Findlay, (London, New York: Routledge), 342/371.

Henceforth cited as Hua XIX/1 with German and English page references, respectively.

expressions that have an objective meaning. He, for example, distinguishes them from the

occasional expressions that require looking into the actual circumstances of the utterance in order

to be understood. However, this is not what is meant by Frege’s context principle (Never to ask

for the meaning of a word in isolation but only in the context of a proposition). The context in

question is the context of a proposition not the context of the utterance. These issues are

discussed in the fourth logical investigation.

The key to Husserl’s approach is his discussion of parts and wholes in the third logical

investigation. According to it, parts can be non-independent moments of the whole or

independent pieces of the whole. The analysis carries to the next investigation, in which Husserl

discusses logical grammar. The meanings can be likewise either independent or non-independent

(in other words, complete or incomplete, and yet in other words, categorematic or

syncategorematic). Husserl’s approach to the context principle and compositionality are stated in

paragraph five of the fourth logical investigation. First of all, he explains, the parts of the

complex expression have to be meaningful expressions, even if non-independent.

It is of course possible that meaning may so shift that an unarticulated meaning replaces one

that was originally articulated, so that nothing in the meaning of the total expression now

corresponds to its part-expressions. But in this case the expression has ceased to be genuinely

complex, and tends, in developed speech, to be telescoped into one word. We no longer count

its members as syncategorematic expressions, since we do not count them as expressions at

all. We only call significant signs expressions, and we only call expressions complex when

they are compounded out of expressions.

(Hua XIX/1, 314/55)

Thus to Husserl, if the parts of the complex expression do not have meaning, they cease to be its

parts. Hence, the parts have to be meaningful. But, even though the parts of complex expressions

are meaningful, nevertheless they are incomplete, in a need of completion. Husserl explains that

[i]t is part of the notion of a word to express something; the meaning of the word need not,

however, be independent. Just as non-independent meanings may occur only as ‘moments’ of

certain independent ones, so the linguistic expression of non-independent meanings may

function only as formal constituents in expressions of independent meanings: they therefore

become linguistically non-independent, i.e. ‘incomplete’ expressions.

(Hua XIX/1,134–135/55)

Syncategorematic, i.e. non-independent expressions are nevertheless understood even when they

occur in isolation: “they are felt to carry definite ‘moments’ of meaning content, ‘moments’ that

look forward to a certain completion which, though it may be indeterminate materially, is

formally determined together with the content in question” (Hua XIX/1, 135/56). Normally, a

syncategorematic expression occurs

in the context of an independently complete expression, it has always, as illustration will

testify, a determinate meaning-relation to our total thought; it has as its meaning a certain non-

independent part of this thought, and so makes a definite contribution to the expression as

such.

(Hua XIX/1, 315/56)

Thus with the distinction between non-independent (moments) and independent parts, Husserl is

able to have both the compositionality (in terms of senses) and the contextuality. The logical

grammar discussed above deals with the a priori laws that govern the combinations of meanings

and shows how the non-independent meanings can be combined with one another. Thus, one can

say that Husserl’s grammar shows a way in which both compositionality and the context

principle can be realized at the same time. Grammar, however, only deals with grammatical

structure of the sentences; it does not discuss the validity of the claims. Grammaticality is thus a

necessary, but not sufficient condition for validity. In particular, in Husserl’s view the context

principle is not obviously connected to ontological holism that is a matter of the second and third

levels of logic.

The priority thesis deserves still a few more words. Frege’s formulation of it was that “[i]n fact,

it is one of the most important differences between my way of thinking and the Boolean way -

and indeed I can add the Aristotelian way - that I do not proceed from concepts but from

judgments.” In other words, to Frege judgments are prior to concepts. But, around the time of the

publication of the Logical Investigations, Husserl would not agree with the priority thesis, which

in Husserl’s view might sound psychologistic. According to Husserl, the objectively valid

structure is what it is independently of anybody’s judgment:

Where the sciences unfold systematic theories, when they no longer merely communicate the

progress of personal research and proof, but set forth the objectively unified, ripe fruit of

known truth, there is absolutely no talk of judgements, ideas and other mental acts.

(Hua XIX/1, 98/225)

Instead of judgments, Husserl could talk about the priority of propositions over the concepts that

are parts of the propositions. Indeed, in his 1896 lectures on logic, for the fear of psychologism,

Husserl uses the term “proposition” (Satz) instead of “judgement” (Urteil).

7.6 Conclusion

Thus in conclusion it can be said that Husserl inherits from Lotze a kind of Platonism that shows

in his ontological holism. In Husserl’s analysis, Platonism and the rejection of psychologism lead

to the rejection of the priority thesis (that judgments are prior to the concepts). Moreover, his

analysis of parts and wholes takes care of the dependencies and independencies within this web

of meaning. His view of context principle is considered as a grammatical principle, which is

considered separately from ontological questions. It may be that the context principle follows

from ontological holism, but Husserl is not explicit about any such connection. However, it is

clear that the context principle is not an epistemological principle as viewed by Haaparanta (and

also Sluga). In such readings, the Kantian priority thesis leads to the adoption of the context

principle and then to an epistemological view of logic. Husserl’s view of logic includes all of

modern mathematics which studies abstract structures. Husserl sees these structures as

comprising Lotze’s Platonistic world of ideas. He eventually claims that the ideality of the

formations with which logic is concerned is “the characteristic of a separate, self-contained,

‘world’ of ideal objects.”38 In his later works, Husserl develops transcendental logic,

whichexamines the way in which these ideal structures are constituted (not constructed), that is,

what kinds of presuppositions and evidences condition our knowledge of them. The difference

between the epistemological readings of Frege and Husserl with regard to Lotze is that Husserl

inherits from Lotze this kind of ontological holism. For him, logic is about pure idealities –

whereas the epistemological readings of Frege, likewise inspired by Lotze, render logic as

38 E. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, ed. Paul Janssen, Husserliana XVII (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff); English

translation: Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969). 267/261 Henceforth

cited as Hua XVII, with German and English page references, respectively.

something more subjective, as something that conditions our conception of the world. This

difference also explains why Husserl criticizes Kant’s logic for being directed to the subjective

(Hua XVII, 267/260), and then complains that Kant raises no transcendental questions about it

(Hua XVII, 265/258).39

39 M. Hartimo, “Critical View,” for the detailed argument.