Logical Truth Historicity: A Study in Genetic Phenomenology

The main goal of this project is to deal with the relationship between formal logic and historicity from a philosophical viewpoint. This nexus deserves attention because the historical transformations affecting logic’s basic concepts seem to challenge the standard interpretation of formal sciences. That is, any substantial change puts into question the assumed objectivity of these sciences and the transparency of their truths to human reason. How can the objectivity of logical thinking be reconciled with the historicity characterizing formal logic? The standard answer to such a question involves the elimination of the potentially disruptive effect of historical transformations through a linear, cumulative conception of scientific development.

The basic hypothesis of this project is that the phenomenological conceptuality first developed by Edmund Husserl at the beginning of the 20^th century has the theoretical resources to reconceptualize this question, criticize the standard response, and propose a non-skeptical alternative. This shall be done in three steps. First, I will develop the relevant concepts of Husserl’s so-called method of genetic phenomenology and justify its application to formal logic. Second, I will apply this method to reinterpret a historical case that has been decisive for the transformation of modern logic, namely Gottlob Frege’s theory of concepts. Third, I conclude that the historicity of a formal science like logic does not represent – if correctly interpreted - a threat to its objectivity, as it is rather an internal episode to the unfolding of rationality itself.

The project will rely on Husserl’s texts devoted to the topic, the recent growing literature in the phenomenology of formal sciences, and some relevant findings in analytic philosophy to provide an original view that integrates these various contributions into a unified perspective.