Husserl’s Critique of Formal Logic

Abstract

The role of logic taken in a strict sense within the philosophical discipline at large has not always been an undisputed problem with philosophers. Even though pure formal logic had been recognized — and hardly could it be overlooked — its place has been variously indicated. Thus, in certain theories, logic has been taken as philosophically comprehensive; Leibniz, for example, went in for “mathesis universalis” as yielding a complete and automatic language of reasoning. At other place — for instance, in Aristotle — logic would provide one philosophical discipline among others. And sometimes again, it is conceived as having a very restricted field of operation, namely, as the theory of demonstration without any further bearing on philosophical thought (as in Hume). Modern logic, again, with its mathematically oriented generalized apparatus of thought, claims to go further than traditional logic, so far as — at least with a substantial section of contemporary philosophers — “it is the method of philosophizing itself”, as Carnap states it.