Dasein - Monoskop

48 PART II
Especially since Dagfinn Follesdal's little classic Husserl und
Frege (1958), 151 it has been a much discussed question as to what
extent Frege was responsible for Husserl's turning against psychologism,
and to what extent Husserl simply takes over Frege's arguments.
It is an undeniable fact that many of the arguments that
Husserl employs can already be found in Frege's The Foundations of
Arithmetic (1884) 152 and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893). 153
However, from the vantage point of this study this question concerning
priority is only of marginal interest. What seems to me to be of
considerably greater interest are the differences between Frege's and
Husserl's respective treatments of the problem of psychologism and
the differences between their respective solutions. As I shall argue,
these differences reveal once again that these two most influential
figures in modern philosophy stand on opposite sides of the contrast
universal medium vs. calculus.
Follesdal drew attention to the fact that even though Husserl
and Frege employ similar arguments against psychologism Frege does
not consider them as conclusive as Husserl does. Frege probably
thought that only the completion of his entire project would provide
a convincing argument. 154 The reason why Frege thinks he cannot
refute the psychologist by particular arguments is his conviction that
all argumentation can only proceed by deduction: "The question why
and with what right we acknowledge a law of logic to be true, logic
can answer only by reducing it to another law of logic. Where that is
not possible, logic can give no answer." 155 In order to understand the
true motivation behind this statement, it is essential to remember
two interconnected implications of the logic as language (language
as the universal medium) conception that we discussed in the Introduction
of this study. An adherer to this view cannot step outside
of language or outside of the logical system, and he cannot regard
an analysis of the notion of truth (as correspondence) as feasible.
Now as pointed out by van Heijenoort, this is exactly what happens
in Frege's case. 156 Thus for Frege the relativistic psychologist that
denies the binding nature of logic can no longer be refuted by means
of explicit argument. Neither can it be demonstrated to him why an
absolute notion of truth must be accepted. This would presuppose
that the critic (Frege) would be able to demonstrate what truth is