Truth and judgment in Husserl's logical writings (Edmund Husserl)

In the sixth of the Logical Investigations, Husserl offers a phenomenological understanding of truth. He describes truth as the fulfillment of an intention; that is, an intention is true when its object can be given in intuition. Truth can obtain in both simple intentions, such as acts of naming, and complex intentions, such as judgments. In the latter case, a judgment is brought to fulfillment in the intuitive presentation of a state of affairs, and such judgmental truth is connected to logic. The account of truth that Husserl presents in the Investigations, though problematic, is nonetheless considered one of his most important philosophical contributions. Still, what is found there is not Husserl's final word on the issue; for that, we must turn to the later accounts presented in Formal and Transcendental Logic and Experience and Judgment , where he addresses the topic of truth after his "transcendental turn," that is, after he introduces the phenomenological reduction and thus justifies the sort of analysis he carries out in the Investigations .; To date, there have been no studies that address the genealogy of Husserl's treatment of truth. The purpose of this dissertation is to provide such a study, considering the various accounts of truth in Husserl's logical writings. Although many of Husserl's writings are pertinent to his logical work, the dissertation focuses on Husserl's principal works in logic: the Logical Investigations, Formal and Transcendental Logic, and Experience and Judgment. It begins with Husserl's mature position and uses it to direct us to the salient features of his original account. The theme of judgment is singled out because for Husserl the highest form of truth is judgmental, and other kinds of truth find their completion in this kind. In tracing the genealogy of Husserl's understanding of truth and judgment, we see that Husserl appraises these themes as belonging to the core of his phenomenology. Moreover, we find that his understanding is telling in another important respect: it reveals his belief in the basic human orientation towards truth.