Frege and Husserl on Intentionality and Truth

LUIS NIEL

San Pablo

Congreso; International Conference on the Origins of Contemporary Philosophy; 2018

Universidad Católica de San Pablo

The paper will proceed the following way: I will focus on certain passages spread throughout Frege?s works (from early texts to some late manuscripts) in order to highlight the concepts mentioned above (e.g. thinking, truth, grasping, etc.) and their fundamental meaning for his philosophy as well. Contrary to what has been held by some recent positions , I will argue that Frege does not develop a consistent and systematic philosophical account of such concepts; quite the contrary, I firmly believe that we can only find some fragmentary references, and due to this reason, I present the phenomenological account as complementary to it. Then, I will attempt to show certain connections?that may be implied in Frege?s position?to some central phenomenological concepts such as the concept of intentionality, in order to draw out the intentionalist aspects that underlie his thought and that might be interpreted in phenomenological terms. In this context, I will show the implications of manifold of intentional terms and concepts used non-thematically by Frege that appear in quite different contexts and referred to very different concepts. I will argue that this is the case, when Frege stablishes the relation between objectivity and reason, as it happens when he presents his conception of both the grasping of thoughts and the further step towards truth by means of an acknowledging judgment that, as I will argue, implies to the idea of the givenness of something in a judgment as being true as a condition for all possible knowledge. Based on these essential aspects of his philosophy, I will present the scope of this convergence between Frege?s and Husserl?s thoughts, and show how a phenomenological reading of these fundamental aspects of Frege?s philosophy might lead to the possibility of a complementary and non-reductive reading of Frege?s logical analysis by means of some tools provided by Husserl?s phenomenology.