Logos as Signifier: Husserl in the Context of Tradition

Abstract

The present article has tried to establish a bond between the phenomenology of Husserl and the philosophic tradition of the West, between intentionality and the logos. However, the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition, in which logos has been taken to be mere reason, cosmic or human, helps little in understanding Husserl, because that actually is based on the separation between thought and its object. The real meaning of logos Heidegger finds in pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus and Parmenides. The tradition I take into consideration is the Heideggerian interpretation of pre-Socratic philosophic heritage in which logos means “basic gathering”. If Husserl revives antiquity, he does so by re-establishing this “basic gathering” in the name of intentionality. The concept of intentionality may be looked upon as the reunion of thinking and being.