Analysis of Thought

Abstract

There is one dominating interest which runs through all the works of Husserl, from the earliest to the latest, and imparts to his philosophical career an almost tragic note: this is the search for a stable via media between Platonism and Anti-Platonism. Those who, following a well-known pattern, divide his philosophical works into the early psychological period of the Philosophie der Arithmetik, a middle Platonic period of the first volume of the Logische Untersuchungen, and a concluding idealistic phase beginning with the second volume of the Logische Untersuchungen and the Ideen, introduce a division which is too rigid to permit a correct appreciation of that equilibrium which Husserl was unceasingly seeking for. This search renders any demarcation of the phases impossible. The present work is not intended to be a study of the development of Husserl’s thought; it is also not intended to cover the entire range of his philosophical thought. The immediate purpose of this study is to bring out exactly those points in Husserl’s philosophy which are relevant to contemporary discussions of the problems of language, thought, meaning and experience. These points are varied in nature and importance, but all through, as we shall have occasions to show, Husserl attempts to steer clear of the two extremes of Platonism and Anti-Platonism.KeywordsImage TheorySign TheoryLinguistic ExpressionPhilosophical ThoughtContemporary DiscussionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.