Abstract
What has been established thus far as something given in marginal form is the phenomenological content of the empirical psychic Ego, more precisely, a certain aspect of this Ego as appearing in experience. For the present, we leave the existence of the body and corporeity out of consideration and confine ourselves to the psychic Ego, or rather the psychic side of the Ego.
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Notes
- 1.
The experience of our embodied existence will be discussed in Chapter IV.
- 2.
Husserl, Log. Unt., (1st Edition, 1900–1901), vol. II, pp. 325 ff.; the corresponding passages in the second edition are vol. II, Part I, pp. 346 ff. Between the first and the second editions, Husserl changed his position on the Ego, admitting a Pure Ego which formerly he had explicitly denied. This theory of the Pure Ego, which will be discussed briefly below, is expressed in the Ideen. In the second edition of the Log. Unt., which appeared in the same year as the Ideen, Husserl does not discuss his new theory but only refers through footnotes to its development in the Ideen. The admission of the Pure Ego does not, however, alter Husserl’s theory of the empirical psychic Ego in its substance. Thus the second edition of the Log. Unt. is a reformulation of the views of the first edition. Owing to the insights into the stream of consciousness gained in the meantime and also owing to the general growth and development of the idea of phenomenology, most of these reformulations seem to us more adequate expressions of the original views. These are the matured views that we are expounding in the text and to which we advocate a return, despite the later theory established in the Ideen. But the matter cannot be discussed in detail on this occasion. For the present discussion, both editions shall be used and referred to, except for passages that occur in one edition only.
- 3.
Cf. Ibid (1st ed.), vol. II, p. 332.
- 4.
Cf. Ibid. (2nd ed.), vol. II, p. 353n.
- 5.
Ibid. (both editions), vol. II, 5th Investigation, §§4 and 8.
- 6.
Ibid. (both editions), vol. II, 5th Investigation, §3.
- 7.
Husserl, Ideen, §80. “Jedes ‘cogito,’ jeder Akt in einem ausgezeichneten Sinn ist characterisiert als Akt des Ich, es ‘geht aus dem Ich hervor,’ es ‘lebt’ in ihm ‘aktuell’” [Each “cogito,” each act in a distinctive sense, is characterized as an act of the Ego, it “proceeds from out of the Ego,” it “lives” “actionally” in the act]. Cf. also §57.
- 8.
Ibid., §92.
- 9.
“The ego grasps himself not only as a flowing life but also as I, who lives this and that subjective process [Erlebnis], who lives through this and that cogito, as the same I.” Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), §31.
- 10.
Cf., e.g., Erf. u. Urt., §§ 17 ff.
- 11.
Cf. our article, “Phänomenologie der Thematik und des reinen Ich,” Psychologische Forschung, vol. XII (1929), Chapter II, §7, Chapter III, §19, and Chapter IV, §4; Jean-Paul Sartre, “La transcendence de l‘ego,” Reserches philosophiques, vol. VI (1936/1937); and our discussion and endorsement of Sartre’s thesis in “A Non-Egological Conception of Consciousness,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. I (1941) [The first and third of these are translated and reprinted in SPP, Chapters X and XI] Objections against Sartre’s views and our own have been raised by Alfred Schutz in “Scheler’s Theory of Intersubjectivity and the General Thesis of the Alter Ego,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. II (1942), p. 337 [reprinted in Schutz, Collected Papers, vol. I].
- 12.
James, Principles, vol. I, p. 434.
- 13.
Ibid., vol. I, pp. 314 ff. and 318 f.
- 14.
Ibid., pp. 316 ff.
- 15.
Cf. Ibid., p. 317: “… the distant selves appear to our thought as having for hours of time been continuous with each other, and the more recent ones of them continuous with the Self of the present moment, melting into it by slow degrees.”
- 16.
Ibid., p. 318.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 314.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 221.
- 19.
The question of whether or not a special Ego-principle must be admitted is closely connected with the problem of substance at large (cf. Ibid., pp. 325 ff.). James’s and—at least in his earlier phase—Husserl’s repudiation of a special Ego-principle must be seen in the light of the general tendency, prevalent in the history of thought, to account for order, unity, coherence, etc., in terms of the intrinsic relations existing between the facts that exhibit order and coherence rather than in terms of special arrangements by means of which order, coherence, and unity are, so to speak, enforced and guaranteed “from above”; cf. the pertinent remarks by Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology (New York: Liverwright, 1929), pp. 107 ff.
- 20.
Cf. James, Principles, vol. 1, pp. 283 f.
- 21.
Cf., Ibid., pp. 319 ff.
- 22.
Ibid., pp. 322 f.
- 23.
Ibid., pp. 320 f.
- 24.
pp. 453 f. above.
- 25.
Cf. Husserl, Ideen, §83.
- 26.
Husserl, Log. Unt. (both editions), vol. II, 5th Investigation, §6.
- 27.
James, Principles, vol. I, pp. 264 f.
- 28.
Ibid., p. 290: “… over and above these parts [i.e., “Self” and “not-Self”] there is nothing save the fact that they are known, the fact of the stream of thought being there as the indispensable subjective condition of their being experienced at all. But this condition of the experience is not one of the things experienced at the moment; this knowing is not immediately known. It is only known in subsequent reflection.” Cf. also p. 323.
- 29.
Ibid., p. 323.
- 30.
Husserl, Log. Unt. (1st ed.), vol. II, pp. 334 and 701 f. and (2nd ed.), vol. II, 1st Investigation, pp. 356 and 229 f. The critical discussion to which Husserl subjects Brentano’s distinctions of external from internal perception and of psychic from physical phenomena (Ibid., vol. II, Appendix) concerns points that are not pertinent in the present context.
- 31.
pp. 449 ff. above.
- 32.
[Cf. FC, 357 f.]
- 33.
Husserl, Ideen, §143.
- 34.
Husserl, Log. Unt. (2nd ed.), vol. II, 1st Investigation, p. 361.
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Gurwitsch*, A. (2010). The Empirical Psychic Ego. In: Zaner, R. (eds) The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973). Phaenomenologica, vol 194. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3346-8_13
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