Heidegger's Logical Investigations: A Critique of Husserl, Neo-Kantianism, and Plato

Abstract

This dissertation interprets Martin Heidegger's views of logic in his works up to and including Being and Time. Through an examination of his historical context, I argue that Heidegger’s philosophy of logic plays a pivotal role in his attempts to work out the question of being. I trace the development of Heidegger’s views from his earliest writings. Heidegger’s first philosophical writings treat widely debated topics in the logic literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the neo-Kantian tradition. His positive contributions to a robust philosophy of logic are worked out against this background and in tandem with his criticisms of neo-Kantianism and the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. As such, I start with a presentation of the state of logic in the nineteenth century culminating in an investigation of the main differences in the works of Paul Natorp and Edmund Husserl as a backdrop for the rest of the thesis where I engage directly with Heidegger’s views on logic. I argue that Heidegger’s early break from his neo-Kantian affiliation does not demonstrate a turning away from logic, but rather a turning toward the origins of the discipline. Heidegger’s engagement with his teacher, Heinrich Rickert, sets the scene in the second chapter. As I show, Heidegger’s phenomenological initiation contains the first stirrings of his more mature philosophy where questions surrounding the origins of logic provide the impetus behind the central questions which he pursues during his phenomenological decade. In particular, I maintain that Heidegger’s Being and Time can be fruitfully read as a response to the debate over psychologism. As I demonstrate, his criticisms of both Husserlian phenomenology and neo-Kantianism are rooted in his views on this debate. Finally, I uncover the source of Heidegger’s criticism of logic in his reading of Plato. This dissertation demonstrates that Heidegger’s interpretation of Plato in his Sophist lectures can best be understood in light of his views on logic and, conversely, that Heidegger’s interpretation of the Sophist informs his philosophy of logic. At the heart of Heidegger’s philosophy, I contend, resides a robust philosophy of logic awaiting excavation.