Husserl and Wittgenstein on Positivism, Philosophy and Natural Science

Abstract

Husserl and Wittgenstein held quite different philosophical agendas despite their similarities on some major points of great cultural and analytic interest. To explore at length and in full detail these differences and similarities is a theoretical project yet to be done, although some important work has been advanced in this direction. More attention has been paid to the possible connections and controversies between Wittgenstein and Heidegger, although this task has been carried out many times in an indirect way through a number of themes that both of them share with the American pragmatist movement. Nevertheless, we can take Husserl’s and Wittgenstein’s attitudes towards philosophy and its relationship with natural science as a case study from which we can begin to analyze their wider philosophical disagreements. As I shall try to show, their attitudes towards philosophy and natural science can be explained, if not fully, at least to a great extent, by the way they place themselves in relation to positivism and by the general arguments they use to overcome it.