as an ideal being. Accordingly Husserl says that just as the self-identity of the triangle (or better, the idea of triangle) is permanent in contrast to the real presentations of triangles, so too the self-identity of adjudged propositions is permanent in contrast to the real multiplicity of the positings of those propositions. The adjudged proposition, i.e., the true proposition, is a truth. In cases regarding the ideal, what is asserted in each individual proposition is a truth.
Every truth presents an ideal unity in contrast to a potentially infinite, endless multiplicity of correct statements, each with the same form and matter.33Truth is something ideal [eine Idee] whose particular instance is actually experienced in an evident judgment.34
The being-experienced of the content of the proposition in the judgment is the realization of the ideal in a given case, in the same way that, analogously, the idea “table” is manifest in a multiplicity of tables a carpenter produces. As we shall see later, this interpretation is worthy of note—both the interpretation of the judgment’s content as ideal being, and the interpretation of its relation to acts of judgment as the realizations of that content. [59] In one regard, Husserl himself basically overturned and quietly dropped this interpretation right after his Logical Investigations. But nonetheless, he continues to hold on to the determination of truth as ideal being. That will show up in the fact that there is an ambiguity in the concept of the ideal (which for him was the guiding concept) to which he himself fell victim. For one thing, he claimed that this distinction between truth as valid meaning and judgment as its realization held for individual truths and propositions. But he also carried it through with regard to the connections of truths and the totality of propositions that we call a science.
In the first instance science is an anthropological unity, i.e., a unity of acts and dispositions of thinking along with certain pertinent external arrangements.35
Here science is understood as something mentally empirical, as acts and arrangements of thought as a whole, as an anthropological unity. Science is realized in particular individuals and their processes of
33. [LU, vol. 1, §50, p. 187 / tr. 192. In the second edition, Husserl changed the verb repräsentiert (“presents”) to ist (“is”).]
34. [LU, vol. 1, §51, p. 190 (Husserl’s emphasis) / tr. 194. The two prior sentences read: “Rather, evidence is nothing but the experience of truth. Of course truth is experienced only in the way that the ideal can be experienced in a real act.”]
35. [LU, vol. 1, §62, p. 228 / tr. 225.]