Introduction

In 1888 at the University of Bordeaux, Durkheim gave the opening lecture of what is normally regarded as the first university course in social science. Comte had published what was billed as the “fourth and last” volume of his Cours de philosophie positive (Course of Positive Philosophy) in 1839. Two further volumes were published. Of the total of 60 lectures of his complete course, Volume 4 contained lectures 46 to 51, detailing “preliminary political considerations on the necessity and opportunity for social physics, according to a fundamental analysis of the contemporary situation” (Lecture 46) and “a summary appreciation of the main philosophical attempts undertaken up to now to constitute social science” (Lecture 47). Lectures 50 and 51 considered, respectively, “social statics” and “social dynamics.” Prior to his appointment at the University of Bordeaux, Durkheim had spent a term abroad in Germany in the academic year 1885– 86 at the universities of Berlin, Marburg and Leipzig. On his return to France, he published two articles in 1887, one of which was entitled “La science positive de la morale en Allemagne” (The Positive Science of Morals in Germany) in which he criticized the position adopted by Wilhelm Wundt in his Ethik (Ethics), published in 1886. Wundt had opened the first laboratory devoted to psychological research at the University of Leipzig in 1879, and his contribution to ethical philosophy derived from his experimental work in psychology.

Husserl's earliest philosophical work— his Habilitation thesis— appeared in 1887, entitled Uber den Begriff der Zahl. Psychologische Analysen (On the Concept of Number. Psychological Analyses), and, four years later (1891), he published his Philosophie der Arithmetik. Psychologische und logische Untersuchungen (Philosophy of Arithmetic. Psychological and Logical Investigations). He had studied mathematics at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin and Vienna, and had studied philosophy as a subsidiary subject with Wundt during his time at Leipzig. After gaining his PhD in Vienna in 1882, Husserl moved to Berlin to pursue a career as a mathematician, but he was soon back in Vienna attending the lectures of Franz Brentano between 1884 and 1886.