Husserl and Frege (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 121 his theory of truth in his later years, pieced togethcr from a variety of sources. Evident judgments have become the standard of truth, rather than correspondence with a state of affairs or, in the case of values, state of values. Whilc the changes arc certainly important to those concerned with ontology and theories of meaning, they appear to make little difference to Brentano's theory of ethics, as McAlister notes in her conclusion. She is, I think, correct in arguing that the changes do not furnish satisfactory answers to the two major points that were to be considered all along: whether evident judgments actually exist, and whether the theory accounts for all types of true judgments. McAlister quotes Brentano's 19o4 letter to Kraus in which he acknowledges that, as described in his theory, our knowledge of moral principles is not what would ordinarily be called empirical, but a priori. One assumes that she did not come upon any material showing that he followed out this line of reasoning, which would have meant forfeiting either the certainty of his principles or their ability to generate practical ethical guidelines. McAlister furnishes both German and English page numbers for Wahrheit und Evidenz, which had already been published in translation when she wrote this book. It would have been helpful had she added page references for translations which appeared later, in addition to the page numbers in the German editions. This would have enabled the interested non-German-speaking reader to easily locate passages. On page lo 4, and again later, there is an intriguing mention of"impounded letters" and a reference to a certain page, but in an unidentified location; enlightenment would have been welcome. Professor McAlister notes that accidents of history and Brentano's own distaste for preparing works for publication deprived him of the role he might have played in the course of philosophy. As Professor Chisholm and others have done for other aspects of Brentano's philosophy, she has helped us to see Brentano's ethics in a truer, and more favorable light and to judge what that greater role could have been. ELIZABETH HU6HES SCHNEEWIND j. N. Mohanty. Husserl and Frege. Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Pp. VII + 147. Anyone interested in such a question as what it is one grasps when one understands an expression will find reading this thoughtful and timely essay an unusually stimulating experience. Husserl and Frege is an outstanding critical contribution to persistent issues in the practice of philosophy today. The book consists of four chapters on historical matters, psychologism, theories of sense, and logic and the theory of knowledge. A brief conclusion is added together with an appendix (the only four letters extant of the Frege-Husserl correspondence), extensive notes, and an index. Mohanty aims to provide his readers with a more accurate picture of the relationship between two founders of the phenomenological and analytic strains in contemporary philosophy, to exhibit the interest in several philosophical issues they shared, and to suggest if not demonstrate how insights about mind and meaning might be integrated. 122 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY 1985 Mohanty addresses his first concern largely in the opening chapter which is a revised version of his well-known 1974 article, "Husserl and Frege: A New Look at Their Relationship." Arguing against the views of Fr Dreyfus, and Kt~ng, Mohanty uses the Frege-Husserl correspondence and Husserl's early reviews of work in logic to make three points. Husserl arrived at the distinction between Vorstellung and Sinn independently of Frege. His rejection of logical psychologism in favor of a theory of objective logic was also independent of Frege's 1894 review of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. And while agreeing with Frege that a concept's extension presupposes its intension, Husserl developed a different understanding of logic than Frege's. Logic on Husserl's view is a pure, theoretical science whose cardinal concept is meaning rather than a normative science which turns on the concept of truth value. This is an excellent historical reconstruction and, if not entirely uncontroversial in its own right (see Follesdal's recent rejoinder...