Overview

By Husserl's own account, he composed the "Logical Investigations" over a century ago in order to solve two problems: the problem of providing a scientific, self-reflexive account of logical form and method, as a condition of science, and the problem of relating the subjectivity of knowing with the objectivity of the content of knowledge. The project took shape as six distinct investigations into the respective themes of meaning, universals, the logic of parts and wholes, the differences between absurdity and nonsense and between the contents of naming and judging, and, finally, the way knowing irreducibly combines meaning and perceiving. Husserl's "Logical Investigations" is designed to help students and specialists alike work their way through Husserl's expansive text by bringing together in a single volume six self-contained, expository yet critical essays, each the work of an international expert on Husserl's thought and each devoted to a separate Logical Investigation. These essays are complemented by three additional studies on, respectively, the import of Husserl's early philosophy of mathematics for the Logical Investigations, his criticisms of Brentano and modern philosophy in the Appendix, and the significance of the revisions in the second edition of 1913.