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I. Husserl's first work in phenomenology was the Logical Investigations, originally published in German at the turn of our century. In it Husserl passed harsh judgment on psychologism and overcame the long psychologistic tradition which had been influential in Germany and other countries in the nineteenth century. This tradition involved above all the conflation of the objective validity of logical and mathematical formations (Gebilde) with their modes of givenness (Gegebenheitsweise) in consciousness, and the attempt to ground the laws of logic and mathematics in the psychic acts which correspond to them. In contrast, Husserl showed that any attempt to give these sciences or, for that matter, knowledge in general, such a basis was doomed to failure. For in the specific objectivity of the formations of logic and mathematics — numbers, propositions, truths, proofs, theories, etc. — there is nothing like subjective acts or psychic experiences (Erlebnisse) to be found.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8824-9_6

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