Judgment, Proposition and Sentence from Kant to Husserl

In this paper, we propose a genealogical study concerning the notions of judgment, proposition and sentence and their thematization in logic within the two traditions of logical studies in 19th century. Those two traditions are 1- algebraic tradition for which logic is a kind of algebra and calculus and 2- deductive-theoretic tradition for which deduction is different from calculus and itself serves as a foundation for this latter. We begin with Kant whose attempt to separate logic from metaphysics has had a crucial effect for both traditions and whose investigations on the issues around judgment forms a starting point for the deduction-theoretic tradition. We try to elaborate that how in the one tradition judgment and then proposition are considered as the central themes of logic and in the other tradition sentence, and thus well-formed formula, and the rules concerning them turn out to be the main concern of logic. We study those developments through the ideas of Kant, Bolzano, Boole and Frege; and finally we will survey Husserl’s phenomenological analyses about the aforementioned notions and their place in logic.