Bezeichnung und Kennzeichnung. Theodor Conrads Bedeutungslehre in Auseinandersetzung mit Husserl

This paper aims to show how Theodor Conrad’s theory of meaning goes beyond that of Husserl. By drawing on an unedited typescript dating from the 1950s in which the Munich phenomenologist outlines the controversy between Husserl and the so-called Munich-Göttingen group, I interpret the Bezeichnung-Kennzeichung opposition that Conrad introduces in an article from 1910 as a realist position opposing Husserl’s act-phenomenological concept of meaning. This position stands in contrast not only to the phansisch or phänologisch theory of meaning in the Logical Investigations, but also to the new definition of meaning as phänomenologische Bedeutung that Husserl proposes in his 1908 lectures. Conrad advocates a Gegenstandsphänomenologie, for which the main point of a phenomenological theory of meaning is not, like for Husserl, the intentional acts of the subject but rather the qualities of the object to which the meaning refers.