BOOK REVIEW

D. Pradelle, Intuition et idéalités. Phénoménologie des objets mathématiques,

Paris, PUF, 2020 (550 pages)

To present and to discuss the recent work of Dominique Pradelle is not

a simple task. And this is for many reasons.
The first reason is the richness and the unbelievable akribéia by
which Pradelle proceeds, in fact, to reopen—in a very appreciable
critical way and not by doxography or episodical enquiries—the
question of a phenomenology of mathematical entities (objectivities–
Gegenständlichkeiten).
Even though in recent years the scientific literature on
Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics has largely increased, such
literature is always limited, in our view, to a presentation of certain
positions—not necessarily clear at first sight—of Husserl’s concerning
the philosophy of mathematics. This book, even though it is focused
on Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics, tries to go beyond Husserl on
philosophy of mathematics (and not only on that subject). It tries to ask
about the possibility and about the status itself of a phenomenology of
mathematical entities as such. That makes this enterprise something
remarkable—and enormous—from many points of views.
As just indicated, such a gigantic task goes beyond Husserl, and
Pradelle takes this task in the direction of the French epistemological
tradition, particularly that of Jean Cavaillès and Jean-Toussaint Desanti.
This task takes its stance beyond Husserl in order to try to understand
what problematic issues of a general conception of mathematics
Husserl has inherited (or passively accepted) in order to provide
foundation to his philosophy of mathematics and, to a certain extent, to
his idea of rationality.
The second reason is that the book presents itself not only as an
exposition linked to a single philosopher (Husserl, in this case), but also
as encompassing a huge and decisive step of mathematical and
scientific thought in general. The so-called “foundational debate” and
“crisis in foundation of mathematics” is but an episode – for
mathematics and a fortiori for philosophy. It doesn’t represent a single
problem in a single discipline, i.e. mathematical knowledge, but the
problem of rationality after and beyond metaphysics. Such problem can
be formulated in a single question: what is, or what should be rationality (i.e.
rational knowledge) without a strong, ultimate foundation? Far from being a
simple specific topic focused from a simple, specific (and personal)
philosophical stance, the problem of a phenomenology of mathematics
assumes a wider range. Such a wider problematic forces us to question
how:
a) we relate us to theoretical structures, and
b) how could such structures “appear” in their evidence, without
any presupposition of an ultimate foundation.
Because Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics is not a sort of distant
wasteland, deserted by phenomenologists and by those who, in the
analytic tradition, have tried to pursue such a debate. Far from it.
To think, from the position of Husserl’s phenomenological
scholarship, that a phenomenology of mathematics (or a
phenomenology of science in general) is not something radical
enough—because oriented to something “not fundamental”—has
become, since Heidegger (and many others), a classic maneuver, quite
widespread and unfortunately not surprising anymore. To think, from
the position of the analytic tradition–that a phenomenology of
mathematics cannot take a position in the foundational debate for the
sole reason that from phenomenology emerged existentialism and
hermeneutics, is nearly a dogma, even if many mathematicians and
logicians (Gödel itself in his philosophical writings, Rota, Tieszen and
many others) show how a phenomenological stance in philosophy of
mathematics is all but trivial.
From this perspective, Dominique Pradelle’s book presents a
patient and extremely detailed discussion, through the prism of a
central theme—that of the self-evidence of mathematical structures—
of all the central problems that animated the foundational debate from
19th to the first half of 20th Century.
The third reason is that, precisely through such a patient
discussion and critical reconstruction, the work exposes us to a larger
and more complex set of dynamics. Such dynamics, by their issues (a
negative issue as far as the search for an ultimate foundation is
concerned, but absolutely a positive one as far as the raising of another
form of rationality is concerned) lead us to ask the question of a
phenomenology of mathematics beyond Husserl, and partially
independently of him.
 In this way —and this is the fourth reason—such very precious
and difficult questioning does concern, in a metonymical way,
phenomenology in general as rationalism, and as a strong form of
rationalism. Moreover, Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics isn’t a
distant wasteland in the foundational debate, and it isn’t a fortiori just an
isolated topic for phenomenology only. It represents, on the contrary,
the model and the starting point of phenomenology itself (Ideas III, Hua
5, p. 57). Such a model was never abandoned or refused by Husserl
himself, even though it was implemented a) firstly, by the
transcendental turn and b) secondly, by a genetic method (or
approach). From this point of view the author pursues a long personal
questioning, structured in many previous steps, the essential issues of
which will be tested and strengthened throughout the book’s analyses.
For all these reasons, instead of measuring the difficulty of
such genuine philosophical inquiry, it would be better to measure its
performative nature, namely the effect that its complex and extremely
rich movement has on our understanding of rationality, science and
philosophy, a philosophy that has been developed—and must
remain—in an open and critical dialogue with scientific knowledge.
The key concept on which the whole enterprise is grounded is
that of intuition, i.e. the intuition of objects (objectivities—entities) in
the mathematical field or, better said, in mathematical practice itself.
Such a concept is introduced, in a critical way, in relation to Husserl
and to a phenomenology of mathematics, through three fundamental
steps.
The first step is to question the status of an intuition of
“general objects.” If
a) there is not a valid analogical derivation of the intuition of
general objects from the intuition of individual objects in the domain of
perception (pp. 126-133), and if
b) any paradigm of objectual intuition must be subject to
regional inquiries—being the “principle of all principles” (Ideas § 24,
Hua 3.1, p. 51), either simply as a methodological principle, or a
formally (regional) empty indication—
how should we think the intuition of an object as a
mathematical entity ?
In order to do that, we need to take a stance that we could
define as anti-Copernican, of course not because we are forced to
embrace any kind of medieval scientific approach. It’s rather time to
begin to think that the act of the intuitive grasping of entities (in this
case, of mathematical entities) must adapt itself to the genetic structure
of the field wherein such entities (the regional kind of something) could
be intuitively grasped. In such a field, which builds itself in a
phylogenetic way, a typical form of experience or a typical form of
knowledge takes place. Such a form of knowledge does not depend on
the constitutional power of a single subject.
In other words, there is neither only one “particular type of
object-oriented-consciousness” that could be considered as
paradigmatic, as “structural matrix of every object-oriented-
consciousness” (p. 20), nor a single cognitive agent allowing such
entities to arise with their own self-evidence. Consequently, the
phenomenologist must “adhere to the specificity of the field of objects
he takes as his topic” (p. 20): intuitive givenness regionalises itself
according to such specificity.
In this regard, if we take mathematical entities, we find
ourselves faced with the unfoundable ground of fundamental logical-
mathematical concepts, in the sense that neither formal ontology (or formal
apophantics) nor the general idea of the categorical intuition of a
singularity (which should be valid for every form of something)
explains the robust evidence of mathematical structures (p. 287 passim):
the historical-genetic “thickness” of the material ontology of
mathematical idealities plays a decisive role.
Such inadequacy indicates rather a regionalization of intuitive
evidence, and directs the approach to mathematical idealities into a very
peculiar horizon, with its own dynamics—including the essential
dynamics between the intuitive bearer of evidence and the entity itself.
For such “intuitive bearing,” the author presents a very interesting
hypothesis that shall be proved and articulated in the course of the
enquiry: the mathematical entity as an ideality is always of an intra-
theoretical kind and its evidence is provided intra- and inter-theoretically.
That is to say that the entity, with its own typical self-evidence, lets
itself be defined intuitively in a peculiar set of dynamics happening
between typical structural components.
According to Paul Bernays, the act of grasping a mathematical
entity belongs to another domain of entities (pp. 42-50). Before such a
pluralization and (ontological) regionalization of intuitive evidence, the
essential task—of a regionally oriented phenomenological inquiry—is
to “explore the manifold correlative meanings of object of intuition”
(pp. 44, 59-62) with explicit attention to the type (or mode) of
givenness of mathematical entities as such.
In search of the typical (regional) mode of evidence of
mathematical entities, the phenomenologist must first become aware of
the fact that evidence is “given” or “provided” in a completely different
way compared to the presence of the perceptual thing. Moreover, in
mathematics, we are dealing for example, in some cases, with “infinitist
methods” or “transfinite cardinalities,” which can never provide a
“complete” entity to grasp, while maintaining evidential and structural
robustness (Ch. IX). In many cases, in many procedures of
mathematical accounting for “structures,” we are not dealing with the
thing hic et nunc in its fully “ontological” presence.
The third factor of which the phenomenologist must become
aware (and it is this thesis which gives great weight to the anti-
Copernican stance) is that the evidence has its own historicity, which
relativizes its scope and contextualizes it in an operational “evidence-
providing” (p. 311). What at any given historical stage of knowledge is
declared to be fundamental is not absolutely evident or certain: it is
necessary to dissociate rationality from first notions (and principles)
and intuitive certainty.
The relation of any theoretical stance to a system of axioms, a
phylogenetic one—due also to the intertwining between every
mathematician’s subjective project and the system on which he works
(to provide evidence to structures)—leads to a radical questioning of
the Platonic stance in the philosophy of mathematics. This perspective
of a regional-dependence of every theoretical stance becomes possible
only by replacing the monolithic idea of self-evidence with a concept
that is more flexible and adaptive to the contexts (context-sensitive),
and horizons of meaning, in which evidence is obtained (and provided)
by rigorous argumentative practices.
The first two chapters address a) the key concept of intuition in
phenomenology, and b) the relationship between the intuition of
perceptual objects on the one hand and intuition of categorical object
on the other. Through a patient, extremely detailed and very
enlightening questioning of the notion of intuition in phenomenology,
the author shows firstly that an “analogical derivation” of categorical
intuition from perceptual intuition is first of all very problematic. By a
more detailed approach, the author shows secondly that not only is
such a derivation problematic, but that it would also be erroneous,
since in this case the analysis should rather adhere to the
methodological principle of regionalization of intentional analysis (as
formulated in the § 138 of Ideas I). If we consider the “thing itself” the
paradigm of givenness (in French “donnéité) – and even less of a “gift”
(in French “donation” [p. 501]) – of the whole object by articulated
sketches, then it fits neither mixed idealities (pp. 76-84) nor, a crucial
point for the book, purely categorical idealities (pp. 85-92, 93, 197,
428). If the notion of intuition is thus relativized and made field-
dependent by the ontological neutrality of every regional enquiry, the
true task of a phenomenology (p. 466), must be the same for the notion
of “object.” It must be acknowledged that the “object” (or the “thing”
as universal bearer of ontological properties, and as its own self-
evidence) must disappear as individual ontological quid and be made
dependent from structures arising from regional types of entities.
What remains of the concept (p. 106) of the object is a pure
thematic stance—is the “thematic” (das Thematische) (pp. 134, 444) as
such—a minimal structural operative concept: “What is then an object?
It’s a content of thinking able to enter into a system of relations, the
consistency of which is integrated into a discursive system of
propositions: pure substrate of propositions or of valid statements, the
ontological content of which depends purely upon the domain of
idealities” (p. 111). This very useful concept frees the regional
investigation of mathematics precisely by cutting the notion of intuition
from every ontological-perceptual presupposition and by opening up to
a radical questioning the mode of “evidence-providing” of the structure
itself, what naively—but only very naively—could be considered “the
givenness of a mathematical object.”
The essential operation of the entire book consists precisely in
substituting, for the regional inquiry of mathematical idealities, the
notion of an “intuitive givenness” (showing itself in “one input”) with
the concept of the “act of fulfilling.” This act, in relation to this special
regional dimension, is the proof itself, which emerges by working at the inter-
theoretical thresholds among structures, and by linking them with newly
grasped invariances. However, this dimension of practical fulfillment,
which does not consist in an ontologically conceived singularity (not a
even mathematical one) but in proofs dealing with an inter-theoretical
activity of connecting and deriving, implies rethinking such regional
phenomenology:
a) in relation to the idea of mathematics itself which was
presented by Husserl (and many others);
b) in relation to its basic (and often not enough considered)
philosophical implication, i.e. anti-Copernicanism and the idea
of a historical (pragmatist-transcendental (pp. 251-255))
sedimentation of structures in the field of mathematical
entities.

Chapters III-IX, which contain these approaches, show in fact that

almost all of Husserl’s conception of an ultimate foundation of
mathematics (particularly inspired by Hilbert’s formalism) and his
three-layered conception on logic, providing such a foundation, does
not work. Such three-layered logic is articulated in a pure morphology
of meaning [Chp. III-V], in a logic of coherence [Chap. VI-VII] and in
a logic of truth [Chap. VIII]. It doesn’t work, firstly, if we consider the
negative issues of a complete and static axiomatic theory as such. It
doesn’t work, secondly, if we hold it in the horizon of a dynamic,
plastic activity of fulfilling (that is “evidence provided by proofs”).
Because such activity is taking place within a horizon of theoretical
structures which do not have one single (once and for all) fixed meta-
structure, but are subject to variability and characterized by their open
scope of application and inter-theoretical operativity.
To do this, the author engages not only Husserl with the
philosophy of (foundation of) mathematics of his time, but engages
(dialectically) the foundational debate with the negative issues of the
foundation itself arising in the Thirties. Such negative issues for an
ultimate foundation (Gödel (pp. 206-214, 243-251), Lowehneim-
Scholem (p. 320 passim), Gentzen (p. 243-251) etc.), are instead absolutely
positive for the inner life of every mathematical practice. Such issues
dismantle first of all the idea of a building, built once for all, wherein
such inter-theoretical activity should find one and only one topological map of
proof-paths.
Thus the idea of a complete meta-theory, of Hilbertian (and
logicist) inspiration (p. 155 passim), as well as the uniquely professed
relationship between pure apophantics and its ontological field of
application (p. 482), are to be abandoned. They are to be abandoned,
not by virtue of an arbitrary philosophical stance but in virtue of
negative issues (on the one hand incompleteness, on the other,
problems for example concerning the use of infinitistic proofs (p. 349-
385)). Such issues show how mathematics, while keeping safe its
robustness and stability does work in a more fluid and dynamical way.
On the one hand, therefore, the idea of a mathesis universalis as the
theory of forms of theory, conceived in a static-architectonic way (Hua
18, §§ 67-71) is simply to be abandoned (p. 155). On the other hand,
the idea that a single and unique correspondence (and self-mirroring)
between logical forms (or pure apophantics) and formal ontology (Hua
17, Ch. 4, §§ 37-54) is also to be abandoned, that is relativized (p. 481
passim).
The openness of mathematical “evidence-providing” as an
intra- and inter-theoretical practice (p. 177), thus the dimension of a plastic
and genetically productive meta-theoretical dynamics (always by maintaining
stability and robustness), is what the author proposes as transcendental
pragmatism. This expression, which may seem like an oxymoron (p. 481),
reveals nevertheless how evidence in the regional enquiry on
mathematical idealities—but, pars pro toto, everywhere, because to avoid
a general condition for one case means to avoid it as a general
condition as such—presupposes neither an architectonic of Kantian
(and thus a fortiori Copernican) heritage nor a fixed, a-historical idea of a
close correspondence between logical form and object. Many inter-
theoretical approaches can achieve the categorical fulfillment of the
same mathematical ideality—and thus provide evidence for it (p. 230, p.
469)—just as inter-theoretical work on certain components can
broaden, at the same time and without losing stability and robustness,
the panoply of entities of a given region.
The working hypothesis of the “meta-mathematical fulfillment
with an interlocked structure” (“rémplissement méta-mathématique à
structure entrecroisée” (pp. 252, 227-231, 243-254, 480 passim)) is
consequently essential, not only from the point of view of a
phenomenology of mathematics, freed from foundational worries or
presuppositions (which have been logically proved to be inconsistent),
but also from several other point of view. Firstly, the conception of a
transcendental subject which, for any regional objectivity without
exception, would be constitutive, while for the categorical fulfillment in
mathematics, “the phenomenological subject is therefore only the
interiorization of a set of ideal objective laws” (p. 269). In this sense,
the subject follows, reactivates, and refines a (transcendental) history of
the meaning/grasping of mathematical entities in a certain field of
idealities (p. 429) of which it is not the depositary and the ultimate
guarantee. Secondly, this hypothesis, and its effects, a) on the general
conception of theories (and their interactions), and b) on the idea of a
single correspondence (self-mirroring) between logic and ontology, is
radical for a general conception of knowledge as such. Because, as
already mentioned, by the figure of metonymy, it is enough to have a
regional inquiry for which a static conception of the “meta-theoretical”
(i.e. inter- and intra-theoretical procedures (p. 413)) and a fixed
correspondence (self-mirroring) between logic and ontology does not
work, in order to show that it is to be abandoned as general thesis and as
foundational thesis of a phenomenological first philosophy as such.
This has implications that should be considered from three
closely related and interdependent points of view: the point of view of
evidence (of knowledge), the idea of history (historicity), and the idea
of rationality. The conclusion of the book—which is a philosophical
“pièce” per se—takes up more explicitly such problem of the
background of the work that the author has been doing for decades in
phenomenology, philosophy of science, and philosophy from a broader
point of view. Such work shows in what ways the pluralization on the
one hand and the historicization on the other do not constitute a
weakening a) of phenomenology itself, and b) of the idea of rationality
of which phenomenology (as hyper-rationalism [Hua 27, p. 239]) is the
bearer. This can now, at the end of this journey, be easily read in the
light of the anti-Copernican thesis, according to which ideal structures
(and structures of rational knowledge in general) neither emerge from
an isolated, demiurgic, constituting subject, nor from a simple
abstraction.
They emerge from a common work that belongs to the history
of meaning (Sinngeschichte) (p. 483) and that is done through writing (p.
442), i.e. through transmission and re-transcription of never absolute
evidences, by the variation of perspectives and strategies (of “evidence-
providing “) (p. 485) concerning idealities and ideality-entity
correspondences. It’s a plastic rationality that frees itself, on the one
hand, from the myth of the ultimate foundations, and, in so doing,
places itself beyond, or behind, the dichotomy between idealism and
realism. It’s a rationality that is not afraid, on the other hand, to mirror
itself in its own (theoretical) history, i.e. in the history of knowledge,
while maintaining the certainty of its (relative) stability and (also
relative) robustness.
The frontier between evidence and non-evidence is always
something mobile (p. 385), never fixed and determined, neither
ontologically nor epistemologically: on this boundary lies the patient
work of (phenomenological) reason.

Fausto Fraisopi