Intuition and Conceptual Construction in Weyl’s Analysis of the Problem of Space

Hermann Weyl adopted the Kantian definition of space as a form of intuition and referred to Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological approach for the philosophical characterization of space in the introduction to Raum-Zeit-Materie (1918) and other writings from the same period (1918–1923). At the same time, Weyl emphasized that subjective factors are completely excluded from the mathematical construction of physical reality in Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, with the sole exception of the setting of a coordinate system, which for Weyl is what remains of the original perspective of the self in becoming aware of one’s own intuitions. This paper reconsiders Weyl’s philosophical position as a possible response to the earlier debate on the relation between intuition and conceptual construction in the foundation of geometry, key figures of which, besides Husserl, included Hermann von Helmholtz, Felix Klein, and Moritz Schlick.