Vittorio De Palma

It is the aim of the paper to demonstrate the more Aristotelian than Kantian character of Husserl’s theory of categories. In Brentano’s dissertation, the distinction between the domain of ontology and the domain of logic is traced back to the Aristotelian dichotomy between being according to the forms of the categories and being in the sense of the true. This approach is also traceable in the work of Husserl. Husserl distinguishes between material categories sensuously given to the subject, and formal categories engendered by the subject in its activities of thought and judgment. On this basis, he draws a contrast between formal ontology and material ontologies, formal and material a priori, and formal and material forms of unity. Husserl considers pre-given sensuous material the ground for real categories and their differentiation. The sensuous objects have categorial determinations in the Aristotelian sense, i.e. determinations which belong to them as a consequence of their peculiarity, independently from their being-thought by the subject. On the other hand, formal categories are not material structures of the world, and have no ontological range because they represent merely subjective additions. The material viz. sensuous structure is essential to a thing, while the logical viz. judicative structure is extrinsic. The real is the sensuous and the real categories are categories of the sensuous. mehr

This paper deals with Husserl’s theory of association and tries to show that this theory originates from a critical confrontation with Hume and represents a development of the idea of eidetic material legality, since for Husserl associative connections are relations of ideas based on the peculiarity of contents. I stress that Husserl distinguishes two types of conditions of possibility of associative synthesis: subjective-formal (pertaining to consciousness) and objective-material (pertaining to contents) conditions. Thus the last grounds of the associative constitution (and therefore of the constitution of the world, that for Husserl as for Hume is based on association) don’t lie in subjectivity, which is only the formal condition of the associative synthesis, but in the particularity of the sensuous contents and in their immanent legality. This also follows from the hypothesis of world-annihilation. After a discussion of Husserl’s thesis that associative contents are immanent and of the phenomenological concept of constitution, I conclude that – properly speaking – Husserl’s theory of association cannot be defined as transcendental. mehr