Foucault, reader of Husserl: the Philosophie der Arithmetik

Abstract

The volume entitled Phénoménologie et psychologie (2021) is almost entirely dedicated to Edmund Husserl. It is a manuscript by Michel Foucault composed in the mid-1950s, which has remained unpublished for almost seventy years. The first chapter of this volume deals with two works by the Moravian philosopher: Philosophie der Arithmetik and Logische Untersuchungen. For Foucault, already in the Philosophie der Arithmetik, Husserl had moved away from the dominant psychologism of the time and discovered the properly phenomenological dimension of consciousness.

This article analyses this anti-psychologistic reading of Philosophie der Arithmetik. It examines the interpretation, firstly, of the historical location of phenomenology and, secondly, of the notion of number. With regard to the historical location of phenomenology, the author examines the path that, according to Foucault, leads from Malebranche to Husserl and where the two general postulates of 19th-century psychologism would have originated: the theological dimension of truth and, correlatively, the denial of the constitutive dimension of consciousness. With regard to the notion of number, the aim is to show how, according to Foucault, with the notions of collective connection and heterogeneous acts, Husserl avoids the aforementioned postulates. This article also aims to show the specificities of the Foucauldian position, the relationship between this manuscript and other works by the author, and the influence of this writing by the young Foucault on his subsequent intellectual journey.