On Kant and Husserl on transcendental logic
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On Kant and Husserl on transcendental logic Mohammad Shafiei1
· Ahmad Ali Akbar Mesgari1
Received: 30 January 2020 / Accepted: 17 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract It is well known that the notion of transcendental logic has a prominent role in both Kant’s and Husserl’s theories of knowledge. The main aim of the present paper is to study the links between formal and transcendental logic in Husserl on the one hand, and the links between general logic and transcendental logic in Kant on the other. There is a debate about the proper relation between transcendental logic and general logic in Kant’s philosophy. By means of our definition of transcendental logic, mainly drawn from Husserl’s analyses, we will try to offer an appropriate interpretation of Kant’s view. Keywords Transcendental logic · Formal logic · General logic · Kant · Husserl · Phenomenology
1 Introduction Both Kant and Husserl make reference to ‘transcendental logic’, and this notion plays a prominent and distinctive role in their philosophies. However, considering the substantial developments in logic since their times, and the concomitant evolution of the common concept of logic, one may reasonably ask what the term ‘logic’ means in the expression ‘transcendental logic’. In what sense it is a logic, if indeed it is? The question can be cashed out as the following: Is ‘transcendental logic’ supposed to be a specific branch of logic? Is it intended to develop a particular logical system? Or is it supposed to offer a different approach to logic, or, at least, to enrich our conception of logic as such? It seems at first glance that ‘transcendental logic’ must be of the third sort. That is, first of all, we are to encounter a peculiar conception of logic. However, it is also possible that such a conception contains a normative standpoint that endorses
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Mohammad Shafiei [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
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Synthese
a particular logical system, or rather contributes to developing such a system: this depends on our delimitation of transcendental logic, or rather on the delimitation that transcendental logic proposes for logic as such and the task that it accordingly sets for itself within this delimitation. In this paper we first examine the phenomenological conception of transcendental logic, and then compare it with Kantian conception, discussing the status of transcendental logic as compared to formal logic. There is a debate about the proper relation between transcendental logic and general logic in Kant’s philosophy, as recently discussed by Tolley (2012). By means of our definition of transcendental logic, we will try to offer an appropriate interpretation of Kant’s view.
2 Phenomenological conception of transcendental logic According to the general phenomenological distinction between act and product, ‘a sharp distinction must be made’ between thinking and thought (Husserl 1969, p. 25). On the one hand, we have the
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