La limitation de l’ontologie par la logique

This paper argues that Husserl’s concern with the development of pure logic as a theory of science limits his conception of ontology. Formal ontology is, for Husserl, a formal theory of the objects of cognition, and its fundamental categories are substantiality, property, and relation. Moreover, regional ontologies work within the categorial boundaries defined by formal ontology. Lost from view in this ontology are activities and processes of various kinds, of which “minding” is the most significant. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is an account of being-conscious-of-the-world, a being-conscious, however, that is inseparable from being-in-a-world. This phenomenology is aimed at the same ontological terrain as Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Hence, while Husserl’s notion of ontology is limited by his concerns with logic as a theory of science and the interest in truthful cognition that belongs to it, there is more “ontology” in Husserl than his own ontology