ABSTRACT
Phenomenology is oriented to sensibility. It regards sensible perception as the source of all relations towards objects. Perception is the process in which the sensibly given material is apperceived (respectively: interpreted) as a representation of the intended object. Ordinary forms of knowledge can be traced back to sensibility. In this rather empirically oriented framework we can pose the question of the possibility of formal sciences 1 as follows: How can mathematical and logical knowledge be understood as knowledge at all? In the formal sciences sensibility has an insignificant role, mainly in its formal-axiomatic forms. To answer this question I will discuss Husserl’s analyses of the special character of knowledge in mathematics and logic. Finally I will also discuss Kant’s conception which views sensibility in the form of a “pure intuition” as also at work in mathematical knowledge.
