We have already dealt with this without being explicitly aware of it (cf. Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, Husserl’s doctrine of meaning).38
In contrast with performances of judgments, the content of the judgment is the ideal or the idea, i.e., the universal that is seen by way of abstraction [61] or in Husserl’s terms, “ideation” of the exemplary case as the thing’s “whatness.” It is seen from out of a plurality or (the plurality not being necessary) from out of one individual instantiation: from this table here, we see table in general.39
Thus Husserl:
[Truth is] individualized in the lived experience of the evident judgment. If we reflect on this individualization, and if we perform an ideating abstraction, then instead of the object [of the mental act of judgment], the truth itself becomes the object of our apprehension. In so doing, we apprehend truth as the ideal correlate of the transient subjective act of knowing and as a unity over against the unlimited plurality of possible acts of knowing and of knowing individuals {and thus over against all its realizations}. (vol. 1, 229–230)40
In that regard we should say: The content of the judgment, insofar as it is ideal, is not at all empirical. Nonetheless, it is not ideal in the sense of a Platonic idea, as if it were the universal, the γένος, the genus of the acts of judgment. And yet Husserl says precisely that: As an idea, the content, the ideal meaning of the proposition is likewise the genus of the acts of judgment.41
The genus—e.g., “color”—applies only to kinds and particulars, to these and those colors. But the universal, as the content and meaning of the judgment, applies only to this and that meaning, but never to the acts [of judgment]. At best, the universal—the idea corresponding to real acts [of judgment]—is the universal essence of “act in general,” but never the content [or meaning] of the act [of judgment]. To say that the content of the judgment is the γένος, the universal, the Platonic idea for the acts of (actual or possible) judgment, is as absurd as saying that the genus or concept “table in general” is the genus for a bunch of teacups. Husserl asserted that the content of the judgment was the genus of the acts of judgment by using the content of the judgment, the
38.[Heidegger refers to Logische Untersuchungen, vol. 2, First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Investigations, as Husserl’s “doctrine of meaning.” See GA 2, p. 220 n. 1 / tr. 492 n. x.]
39. [With help from the Moser (p. 127) and the Weiss (p. 34) typescripts.]
40. [LU, vol. 1, §62, pp. 229–230 / tr. 226.]
41. [Here and in what follows, the translation is aided by the Moser typescript. For example, the crucial word «Platonic» comes from Moser, p. 128.7, and the critical reference to Husserl comes from p. 128.9–11.]