A twist of history: analogy, being and Husserl’s unexpected proximity to Aristotle

Was Husserl an Aristotelian? Of course not. The question sounds almost like a provocation and there is no shortage of reasons explaining the distance between Husserlian phenomenology and Aristotle. Nevertheless, a comparative reading is possible without necessarily surrendering to a Heideggerian inspired speculation. How? Following the vicissitudes of a metaphysical fundamental concept, the “analogy”: starting from Brentano’s Aristotelianism, passing by descriptive psychology up to the Logical Investigations. The very analogy, to which Aristotle confers the possible solution for the problem of being; that Brentano transforms into analogia entis, following the medieval exegetical tradition; and that Husserl employs in order to elaborate the most significant discovery of the Sixth Logical Investigation, the “categorial intuition”. By freeing himself of Brentanian psychologism, Husserl implicitly – and indirectly – frees himself of Brentano’s Thomistic Aristotelianism too. The result is an unexpected use of the analogy, which applies to what may be phenomenologically apprehended as “being”, in the sense of a multiplicity or it would be fair to say a manifold comparable to one of the most relevant thesis of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: τὸ ὄν λέγεται πολλαχῶς, “being is said in several senses”