The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Development J. N. Mohanty New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xi + 447 pp., $55.00

摘要

The caliber of Mohanty’s work is well known among Husserl scholars; the depth of his ninsights, his amazing clarity concerning even the most perplexing of materials, and his ndedication to be as objective as possible with Husserl’s ideas and the comments or in-nterpretations offered by critics, are all things we come to expect of Mohanty and all are contained within this present volume. In this book, Mohanty explores the development nof Husserl’s thought from his days as a mathematician at Halle up to 1916 when nHusserl, now the master and artifi cer of the phenomenological movement, moved from nGöttingen to Freiburg. The relationship between Husserl’s early work in mathematics nand his later phenomenological work is rarely discussed in current phenomenological nliterature; albeit most scholars are aware of the feuds happening between Husserl and nFrege during this early period. So, Mohanty is treading novel ground here by clearly ndemonstrating that Husserl’s beginnings in the abstract entities of mathematics, inspired nby greats like Leibniz, Bolzano, Weierstrass, and his good friend Cantor, directly in-nform his anti-psychologistic views (and his ability to overcome the Brentanian psy-nchologistic theory of numbers), and his ideas concerning formal ontology, pure logic, nintentionality, and knowledge. With this work Mohanty establishes beyond a shadow of na doubt that understanding Husserl’s mathematical work allows one a more profound nunderstanding of the core ideas contained within Logical Investigations and Ideas I , nif not Husserl’s body of work inclusive.