The Problem of Language in A. Reinach’s Theory of Negative Judgment

The article analyses A. Reinach’s work, Zur Theorie des negativen Urteils, from the perspective of how the problematic of language is addressed within it in connection with the development of logical themes. While the connections between Reinach’s theory of social acts and analytical theories of language are widely known, the present subject is examined for the first time. This fills a significant gap in the study of the work of one of the key participants in the early phenomenological movement. The central focus is the problem of the relationship between the logical and linguistic aspects of affirmative judgments. For an adequate analysis of the author’s position, we firstly reconstruct the four polemical contexts in which the argument under study unfolds: 1) the anti-idealistic and simultaneously anti-psychological stance of phenomenology in general; 2) the polemic with the Austrian successors of the Brentano school concerning the con­cept of Sachverhalt; 3) the dispute of the Munich phenomenologists with Husserl regarding the relationship between the concepts of intentionality, presentation (Vorstellen), and meaning (Meinen); 4) finally, the preconditions for the de­marcation between realistic and transcendental phenomenology, which are presumably already evident at this stage. Subsequently, a comparison of specific passages from Reinach’s text is proposed, allowing for the distinction of three successive arguments. Firstly, establishing the connection between language and judgment: phenomenological analysis reveals two kinds of judgments – convictions and affirmations – and it is clarified that the latter are essentially connected with speech expressions. Secondly, we differentiate the linguistic and logical aspects of judgment to avoid the reduction of thinking to linguistic forms. Thirdly, we reconstruct the connection between these two aspects by embedding them into a model that links judgments with knowable reality and by designating the mutual interaction between the logical and linguistic levels.