Husserlian and Fichtean Leanings: Weyl on Logicism, Intuitionism, and Formalism

Abstract

Around 1918 Hermann Weyl resisted the logicists’ attempt to reduce mathematics to logic and set theory. His philosophical points of reference were Husserl and Fichte. In the 1920s, Weyl distinguished between the position of these two philosophers and separated the conceptual affinity between intuitionism and phenomenology from the affinity between formalism and constructivism. Not long after Weyl had done so, Oskar Becker adopted a similar distinction. In contrast to the phenomenologist Becker, however, Weyl assumed the superiority of active Fichtean constructivism over the passive Husserlian view of essences. The present paper discusses this development in Weyl’s thought. Though not all of Weyl’s claims about Husserl and Fichte can be maintained in detail, I will argue for the general plausibility of Weyl’s distinction.