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Hare, Husserl, and Philosophic Discovery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2010

John J. Compton
John J. Compton
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
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Extract

The question whether linguistic philosophy and phenomenology have any significant common ground has been raised increasingly in recent years. It seems to me that one useful means of exploring this question is to examine descriptions of the very concept of philosophical analysis which each involves so as to suggest relevant similarities in aims and methods. There are many such affinities—and I shall want to mention some, ones which are important for establishing communication between these traditions customarily considered so disparate. There are also fundamental differences not only in techniques and doctrines but in style and, one might say, in cultural temper. This is to say nothing of the extensive variation and bitter disagreements internal to each tradition itself—among the proponents of early and late Wittgenstein, among followers of the early and late Husserl, and, of course, within the personal evolution of these formative giants themselves.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , June 1964 , pp. 42 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1964

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References

1 “Philosophical Discoveries”, Mind, LXIX, 1960, pp. 145–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; published also in part in a symposium on the “Nature of Analysis” in the Journal of Philosophy, LIV (1957), 741–758Google Scholar. Further references on my part will be to the fuller version in Mind.

2 Professors Henle and Körner, commentators in the symposium (op. cit.), show reasons to consider statements in analysis analogous to “decisions” (753 ff.) and “rules” (761 ff.) concerning word usage, respectively, but clearly in an extended sense, since these decisions or rules must, it is admitted, formulate and “accord” (in some manner) with the philosopher's (or someone's) actual usage. Apparently, Braithwaite, R. B., on the other hand, in An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief, Cambridge: University Press, 1955, p. 11Google Scholar, is willing to consider these statements as plainly empirical. 3. p.159.

4 Oliver A. Johnson has boldly carried the argument one step further. Not only is the statement “No synthetic statements are a priori” false, it is necessarily false-for it itself is synthetic a priori and, therefore, self-contradictory. From this, he concludes that the statement “Some synthetic statements are a priori” is necessarily true and is itself an example of one. See his “Denial of the Synthetic A Priori,” Philosophy, XXXV, July, 1960Google Scholar.

5 Flew, Antony, “Philosophy and Language,” in Essays in Conceptual Analysis, London: Macmillan, 1956Google Scholar.

6 Husserl, Edmund, Ideas, New York: Macmillan, 1931Google Scholar, sections 27–32, 88–90. See the Introduction and notes by Ricceur, Paul to his edition and translation, Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie, Paris: Gallimard, 1950Google Scholar.

7 On the modes of intentionality: Ideas, sections 93–95; on meaning as function: Ideas, section 86; on language and meaning: Logische Untersuchungen, Halle: Niemeyer, 3rd Ed., 1922, Vol. II, part 1, and Formate und Transcendentale Logik, Halle: Niemeyer, 1929, sections 1–5.

8 Ideas, section 70.

9 Ibid., Author's preface to the English edition, pp. 11–16.

10 Ibid., section 53.

11 Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1960, pp. 150–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 It further follows that these modern forms of philosophical analysis are continuous with more ancient (and “metaphysical”) ones, notwithstanding their obviously different account of its import and foundations. Classical metaphysical statements can no longer be dismissed as either tautologies or proto-scientific hypotheses. Or, if one prefers, statements expressing conclusions in philosophical analysis and in metaphysics are of the same logical type. For statements of the type “If there are composites there must be simples” (Leibniz) or “To be is to be one” (Aristotle) are proposed as both necessary and factual, if true then true on pain of self-contradiction when denied, yet possibly false and requiring argument; in short, they show, on examination, precisely the characteristics above described of statements expressing (alleged) philosophic discoveries. See the extended defense of this point by Veatch, Henry, “Matrix, Matter, and Method in Metaphysics,” Review of Metaphysics, XIV, June, 1961, P- 592 ffGoogle Scholar.