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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

148757

The critique of historicism and Weltanschauung philosophy in "philosophy as rigorous science"

Gail Soffer

pp. 29-57

Abstract

Husserl's next major confrontation with the relativism problematic takes place in the 1911 Logos article, "Philosophy as Rigorous Science." Despite the rather polemical and popular character of this text, it reflects a number of important developments in Husserl's position, both on the systematic and the historical levels. Whereas in the Prolegomena the main concern is to defend the non-relativity of logic, in the Logos essay the focus has shifted to philosophy. Further, although here too Husserl presents a number of formal arguments reminiscent of the Prolegomena treatment, these are now supplemented by ethical arguments and at least references to phenomeno- logical ones. These two developments are by no means unrelated. For in the time between the largely pre-phenomenological Prolegomena and the Logos essay, Husserl more clearly realizes the impossibility of grounding logic through logic alone, and hence the inadequacy of purely formal arguments when taken in isolation. Rather, the drive to found logic leads Husserl from logic to phenomenology. This latter is employed by him as a method but not explicitly thematized in the main text of the Logical Investigations (1901), and then first presented systematically as a discipline in Ideas I (1913). According to this more mature view, only philosophy — and indeed, only philosophy in the form of phenomenology — has the resources to combat the relativism and skepticism against which even logic, that most rigorous of sciences, has proven no match.

Publication details

Published in:

Soffer Gail (1991) Husserl and the question of relativism. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 29-57

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-3178-0_2

Full citation:

Soffer Gail (1991) The critique of historicism and Weltanschauung philosophy in "philosophy as rigorous science", In: Husserl and the question of relativism, Dordrecht, Springer, 29–57.