4 - Heidegger and the phenomeno-logic of judgment: methods of phenomenology in the dissertation of 1913

Summary

At the outset of these studies we distinguished three faces of judgment: psychology, logic, phenomenology. Our first three case studies have all concerned themselves in one way or another with issues at the meeting point of logic and psychology. In turning now to the work of Martin Heidegger we come at last to a figure explicitly associated with the so-called “phenomenological movement.” Even here, however, I propose to follow the strategy we have been using all along, and accordingly train our focus where phenomenology comes into closest proximity to the logical treatment of judgment. In this instance that means focusing on an almost entirely neglected source in Heidegger's corpus: his doctoral dissertation (1913), Die Lehre vom Urteil im Psychologismus. Heidegger's thesis has not been widely studied, and there are a number of misconceptions about it, so I begin by dispelling a few myths. First, Heidegger's thesis was not supervised by Husserl. Although it is common and partly accurate to cast Husserl and Heidegger in the archetypal Doktorvater roles (pioneering professor, brilliant patricidal student), Heidegger's doctoral work was undertaken prior to his personal contact with Husserl. As we shall see, the only extended discussion of Husserl in the dissertation is sharply critical. The thesis was in fact supervised by Arthur Schneider, who was mainly a medievalist, but also made a rather odd contribution to the history of psychology.