On Not Living in the Primordial World:

Husserl’s Correction of his Fifth Cartesian Meditation

Robert Welsh Jordan

<This essay was presented in 1987 at

a. the 19th annual meeting of the Husserl Circle at Washington University

and later that year at

b. at the University of Notre Dame as part of the 24th annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy.

It has never appeared in print.>

Abstract of “On Not Living in the Primordial World”

In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity is flawed so seriously that the reader derives from it a quite distorted view of cognitive development. These flaws are widely acknowledged in the literature, but it has not been noticed that Husserl himself corrected the worst of them in manuscripts written only five to six months after the book manuscript was given to the French translators. These were first published in Husserliana XV (l973) some fourteen years ago.

The Cartesian Meditations do not distinguish primordial from solipsistic reductions, suggesting the utterly mistaken notion that the ego’s whole concrete being is something she could constitute by herself. The residuum of the primordial reduction is not distinguished sharply from that of the solipsistic reduction. This disguises the fact that what is designated by the derivative phrase ‘primordial world’ varies widely with the cognitive development of the mind, ego, or psyche. So that the intended ‘world’ may be either Objective[1] or pre-Objective but cannot be both. Disguising this makes it seem as if my consciousness of an Objective world were something I could accomplish even as a solipsistic ego. It then seems as if I, this single historical and cultural transcendental ego, could have achieved this sort of life all by myself so that I might identical with some one, single and solitary ego.

This was certainly not Husserl’s position. On the contrary, I cannot constitute even a solipsistic world except on conditions having to do with what is given in my experience. Only if my experience includes givenness of something as having been constituted by some other ego can I make myself exist in an Objective world. Empathic experience is possible only if there be given in my once solipsistic experience some appearance whose comprehension requires that the ego intend it as expressive of subjective being other than her “very own.” Only an ego who has made herself exist in the concrete life world and who has had to do so conditionally is an ego who, in order to be conscious of the other as another subject like myself, must intend the other as an ego who has achieved her own being on a similar condition. Only in this way is it possible for an ego to take part in the concrete social, cultural, and historical world.

The error of thinking that all actualities adequately given to the ego must belong to her very own being (primordial sphere) stems from a mistaken privatization of sensuous appearances. The tangible or visible is never given as private, and a belief that it might be private could arise only for a more highly developed mind but cannot be confirmed by the data themselves.

ON NOT LIVING IN THE PRIMORDIAL WORLD

In manuscripts published only in 1973 Husserl corrected an important flaw in the fifth of his Cartesian Meditations. The corrections were written in October of l929, i.e., 5-6 months after the completed MS for the Cartesian Meditations was sent to Levinas and Peiffer, its translators. The correction eliminates most of the equivocations and perhaps outright errors that had been made in characterizing the ego’s very own sphere of being, (Eigenheitssphäre or Eigenwesentlichkeit). This sphere is also termed the primordial sphere. These terms are used to designate the totality of constituents that belong properly to a given ego and so make up that ego as an individual entity. Any ego whatsoever has a primordial sphere. The primordial sphere of any American ego, Soviet ego, Korean ego, etc. will include all of that ego’s mental processes. All of her experiences, including those intentive to her fellow Americans or to any other artifact of a culture,[2] belong to her own being or individual essence. On the other hand, some egos might and do exist whose own being includes no experiences intentive to other egos or to any mental processes other than their own. Egos of this latter sort obviously are in a class which excludes egos of the former sort. Their respective individual essences belong to mutually exclusive subclasses within the class of primordial spheres.

But Husserl does not coin a separate designation for the latter, more primitive sort of primordial sphere. Worse still, once he has fantasied an ego whose primordial sphere is of the more basic sort, he speaks of this sphere as a stratum or layer of mental life. He thus creates the illusion that egos whose primordial spheres are of the higher sorts are beings composed of higher strata superimposed or built up upon a persisting stratum of the more primitive sort. No wonder Helmuth Plessner used to poke fun at what he called Husserl’s layer–cake theory of the mind. The illusion is greatly enhanced by persistent use of the one adjective for the ownness sphere of each and every ego, no matter how primitive or how complex. That the adjective used even for the less primitive owness sphere is ‘primordial’ makes the illusion virtually irresistible, especially for those who are looking for something to criticize anyway. When the same adjective is used in the phrase ‘primordial world’ to designate a unity that can only be intended by an ego of the more primitive sort, the illusion is complete, and misreading is as close to inevitable as error can come.

Observe the illusory creature, child of ambiguity and equivocation, if not Husserl’s then the reader’s: she is an ego who exists simultaneously as the primitive monad and the higher sort. Existing as the primitive, solipsistic ego, she is the foundation for her own higher existence, including her consciousness of egos other than herself. They, being the noematic correlates of these experiences that she produces, are generated by the ego. That is, the sole transcendental ego makes herself a primordial world and dwells solipsistically in that world which provides the sensuous natural stuff out of which the transcendental ego fashions and peoples the world of mortals, history and culture.[3] The suggestion that an ego could be conscious of a cultural world and still be operating in a solipsistic stratum would lend plausibility to the notion that the transcendental subject can devise other subjects without ever having anything at all given to it as an object for another’s consciousness. To constitute a world whose appearances depend on others as they do on herself, this illusory ego would need no originary consciousness of the being of others.

Yet the “primordial” (read “solipsistic”) world is no abstract stratum within the life world, and a solipsistic mental life is no primordial layer or level in a fully human mental life. Each of us once was a solipsistic ego, long before hearing of Descartes, Berkeley or Hume; each once intended no world beyond the solipsistic. Each once was unable to achieve being in the sort of world we now live in. If this be so, then the world we now take to be concrete is an achievement by a world constituting transcendental subject. But it is also an achievement impossible except insofar as there come to be, in the ego’s mental life, experiences through which something is given as having been constituted in another mental life. Properly understood, the transcending of the solipsistic world clearly cannot be the constitution by a transcendental ego of a plurality of non-transcendental empirical or mundane egos. What happens instead is that a transcendental ego, existing in a solipsistic world, becomes able through the analogical apperception of mental processes other than her own to constitute a world in which there dwell multiple egos each of whom is, like the ego herself, a transcendental ego who makes herself be in the world.

None of this can be shown unless we first are able to fantasy an ego who exists in something like a world yet has no awareness whatsoever of mental processes other than those occurring in her own life. On this point, the procedure of the fifth meditation is correct. The ego and her mental life must first be reduced to a solipsistically existing ego. That will be an ego who is conscious of no world other than the one called primordial in Cartesian Meditations. It may turn out that fairly modest improvements will make the whole thing work this time.

When I abstract from every noematic sense which points back to an intending of mental processes which could not themselves be adequately presented to me then the mental life of the ego whom I am now fantasying is one which no longer is intentive to an Objective world. Intending an Objective world involves intending components of that world as objects intended by other subjects. The effect of this abstraction is not that I am left with no noematic sense whatsoever. I have rather uncovered a “stratum” of objective sense which cannot be presented to me and would scarcely be clearly fantasies without such an abstraction. It is a stratum through which, as Husserl misleadingly says, the ego intends an Objective world. What Husserl meant by speaking of a stratification of mental life is not clear. The straightforward reading which would have it that right now a solipsistic stratum is present in my mental life is surely a misrepresentation, whether his or ours.

One acceptable implication of the claim that a solipsistic stratum can be uncovered is that the uncovered stratum is similar in its essential features to features of the Objective world. The solipsistic stratum is uncovered through Husserl’s eidetic method. It would be a fantasied or quasi-experienced mental life. The way it is conceived shows that Husserl thinks of it as a form which some mental lives genuinely could and do take. Moreover, if what is involved in uncovering it has been accurately described then every ego who is conscious of an Objective world is an ego whose mental life at one time included no mental processes intentive to Objective things. There is, for any ego no mental process through which mental processes other than her own are themselves presented adequately. It will, therefore, never be true that such processes have been given to the ego all along. The consciousness of others is not an innate feature of the ego who has it. It is rather an acquired feature and one which is not simply given but is rather an achievement. Every ego who has this feature is an ego who once did not have it.[4]

Experience of a primordial (solipsistic) world is not part of anyone’s consciousness of an Objective world. To make as clear as possible what is not said in talking of a solipsistic stratum, it should be added that Objective things do not even have solipsistic appearances. Only solipsistically intended noemata could have solipsistically intended appearances. Solipsistic things and their appearances are intentional implications of Objective things. But the impliedness of the solipsistic in the Objective is that of a necessary genesis or history of the ego. The structure of the Objective thing as intended points back psycho-genetically to the ego’s having achieved this form of intentionality, this way of existing.[5] That is to say, being in the Objective world is, in Husserl’s language, an achievement by the ego.[6]

So, when Husserl speaks of the solipsistic stratum of experience, he would seem to mean: first, a solipsistically existing ego can be fantasied by imagining a variation of the phenomenologist’s reflectively perceived mental life; second, the form of mental life thus uncovered is similar in her features to features of any monad that is conscious of Objective things; third, among these similar features of the Objective world as intended are to be found those features of it which are the ground for the noematic senses “Objective thing” and “Objective world.” These last are features without which no Objective world could be intended. They are, however, features of the Objective world, even from the point of view of static analysis,[7] despite their similarity to features of the world that would be intended by the solipsistically existing ego. Husserl appears to have applied to this solipsistic stratum the adjective “primordial (primordinal)” in part because consciousness of this “stratum” of noematic sense is the foundation psycho-genetically for consciousness of the Objective world. The choice of terms also had to do, it would seem, with Husserl’s view that the things belonging to this solipsistic world are the lowest order of sensuous objects that are also unities including appearances of which some are not themselves actually given. They are the lowest order of transcendent realities in as much as they have merely potential appearances as well as actual ones. These are, however, all of them ways in which the thing would appear to the ego herself. They are never given all at once so that even solipsistic things are never adequately given. But the further potential appearances of that thing are all of them appearances which would be given through mental processes occurring in the ego’s own stream of mental life. The visual or tactile appearance here points only to further appearances of “the same” thing to the ego.

This affords an important clue to the genuine phenomenon referred to when Husserl speaks misleadingly in Cartesian Meditations of the solipsistic thing as belonging to my very-ownness or to my own essence or my own being.[8] That thing “belongs” to the ego who intends it not in that it is part of the ego but rather in that all its appearances would be appearances to the ego and so are functionally dependent upon changes in the ego’s field of kinesthetic sensa. The solipsistic thing is not intended as having any appearances which would be independent of changes in the ego’s kinesthetic field. The kinesthetic field is one in which the ego (and any ego who would be able to achieve consciousness of solipsistic things) can generate changes “at will.” The ego can learn, and in the case of any ego who will be able to achieve intersubjective life has learned, to repeat patterns of kinesthetic sensa of the same type “voluntarily.” The ego has no ground, reason, or motive for positing the solipsistically intended thing as independent of herself.

Two different terms have so far been used for the things belonging to this sphere, for the sphere itself, and for the reductive procedure by which it is disclosed: on the one hand, the term ‘primordial,’ following Dorion Cairns’ usage in the English translation of Cartesian Meditations; on the other hand, the term ‘solipsistic’ is applied, following Husserl’s usage in a manuscript published for the first time in 1973 as appendix I to Text Number 3 of Husserliana XV, dealing with the treatment of intersubjectivity in Cartesian Meditations. The text to which it is an appendix is said by the editor to have been written between the end of October and the fourth of November, 1929.[9] The typescript for the Meditations had been sent to the French translators, Levinas and Peiffer, in May of that year[10] and there seem to have been no revisions in that text before the translation was published in 1931. The editor for the Husserliana publication finds that the manuscript for the appendix is most likely to have been written about the same time as the text it supplements, that is, October or November, 1929. The appendix is given the title, “Primordial and Solipsistic Reduction,” by the editor, Iso Kern. If, as seems plainly the case, the differentiation between primordial and solipsistic reductions makes possible a significant improvement over the position of the Meditations then it is most likely that the appendix was written subsequently to text number three. The latter (Text Number 3) operates with the same conception of the primordial sphere as that employed in the Meditations, where the primordial reduction is presented just as has been done above. That is, text number three conceives the primordial sphere to include whatever might be itself given adequately as something actual to mental processes in which the ego herself lives either actively or passively. But the text introduces an explicit distinction between an ego for whom the primordial sphere would be the world as intended and an ego for whom this would not be so. The former would be a solipsistic ego and quite ignorant of that condition, the latter would be an ego intentive to mental processes not belonging to her sphere of ownness, i.e., not belonging to her primordial sphere. The world intended by the latter sort of ego would include features like the only sensible things there are for the solipsistic ego. But these features would be intended by the less primitive ego as appearances of the Objective thing. This distinction between the solipsistic sphere and that of primordiality was left implicit, at best, in the Cartesian Meditations. The distinction between the solipsistic “stratum” of mental life and the sphere of the ego’s own being is certainly one easily overlooked by the reader of the Meditations. It may very well also have been overlooked by their author. If so, he caught the error some five to six months later in the October analogical manuscripts. In the appendix to text three, the only passage marked for emphasis reads, “The solipsistically reduced world is not to be confused with the primordial world, nor the solipsistic reduction with the primordial reduction.” The passage continues:

For (the primordial reduction) is the reduction, performed upon that aspect of the world which has validity in my experience, to that aspect of the world which I experience or ever can experience orginaliter. I thereby reduce myself to my primordial ego as stratum of my concrete ego. To the primordial one belong all of my empathic experiencing, but not the other egos, not even if they be properly experienced. And similarly for all the features of intersubjective culture. Nonetheless, a solipsistic world with its solipsistically experienced things can so unfold in further experience, can acquire new meaning (each further experiencing takes on new meaning, but something specific is meant in this case) in such a way that in me there develop those experiential motives whereby empathy arises, and in that case Others are properly there so far as there is the possibility of further harmonious empathic confirmation. Thus, the solipsistic world achieves in the course of further experience the sense that it belongs to an intersubjective world. And I become in the course of subsequent experience a person in the usual sense, and so forth.[11]

In his exposition of the reduction to the solipsistic world (there called primordial) in Cartesian Meditations, Husserl did not employ a separate term by which the solipsistic world “stratum” could be distinguished from the more inclusive primordial world, the Objective, intersubjective world which can be achieved by an ego starting out from the solipsistic one. Such an ego can, however, achieve being in the more concrete world only on the condition that the ego be conscious of mental processes other than those belonging to her primordial sphere as being given to the ego originarily that is, being given as themselves presented in person.[12] Husserl’s conception of empathic apperception is, therefore, a perceptual theory of the consciousness of other subjects, other psychophysical beings. Original empathy is a perceptual and intuitive consciousness of the other. It simply is not and cannot be an adequate intuition of other egos. Still, it enables the ego to achieve what she otherwise could not, being in the more concrete intersubjective and Objective world. Through that achievement, what was intended as the “solipsistic” world ceases to be solipsistically intended, taking on instead the meaning “appearance of the intersubjective and Objective world to a certain ego.”

The solipsistic “world” or “sphere” contrasts with the primordial one in that every solipsistic world is a primordial one while the reverse is false. Moreover, the more concrete intersubjective life world does not include any continuing "solipsistic world” of my own among its constituents. Husserl seems clearly to be convinced that every ego whose primordial sphere is not solipsistic is an ego who once intended no world other than the solipsistic one. Every human ego, for example, is an ego who once did not intend any thing at all as perceivable through mental processes other than her own, an ego who once had no consciousness of others whatsoever, no actual others, no possible others. The most basic reason for such an ego to transcend her way of being toward an Objective world is, therefore, not because she prefers that form of existence. The sort of achievement Husserl has in mind cannot be a voluntary one; it is not a deed. The solipsistic ego cannot value others nor can she value an Objective world. Positing others is not something the ego decides to do because she is lonely. There is no reason to agonize over the solitary situation of such a neophyte to our species. Her situation has nothing to do with being alone or being lonely. On the one hand, she exists in the very world which is overpopulated with others, but she has no consciousness of them. On the other hand, she does not miss others of whom she has no consciousness. Such egos are neither alone nor lonely nor, for that matter, human. They are not human even if, as is most probably the case, many of them are egos who engage actively in mental processes occurring within their respective mental lives.

Husserl’s considered opinion is that subjective processes other than my own are never themselves presented to my consciousness. The ego can become aware of mental processes other than her own only through an empathic apperception of something which is itself presented sensuously as expressive or in some way indicative of experiences other than her own. The ground for the ego’s achieving existence in an intersubjective world must be found within the solipsistically reduced sphere or region, not outside it. This sphere Husserl characterizes in Cartesian Meditations as that of the ego’s very own being. To that characterization should now be added that it is the region of the ego’s very own being, provided she exists solipsistically. But even this characterization will need further qualification. Still, the region being described is not a region of pure inwardness or interiority; it includes a sub-region of transcendent things. That is, it includes things transcendent in the sense that they are not genuine constituents of the monad which includes a consciousness of them. In the monadic architecture, they are the windows forbidden by the Leibnizian building code.

The windows had already been built into Husserl’s 1907 lectures on Thing and Space. There belongs to the unity of the unchanged thing, he had said, a certain outstanding continuity in the way the visual appearances change. The sensuous appearances of the thing change in conformity to rather definite typical patterns. The series is of one definite sort if the thing appears to be at rest. It is of a quite different sort if it appears to be moving, and the patterns it follows in motion differ, for example, when it rotates from when it moves keeping more or less the same side toward me. The thing has its own if-then patterns for changing its sensuous appearances.[13] But these patterns of continuity in change do not provide an adequate foundation on which to build up the consciousness of the thing as a unity enduring in its own right. For this, it would be necessary that the thing’s looks (or its form of whatever sensuous type) be intended to be independent of kinesthetic sensations.[14]

In his work for the second book of Ideas, Husserl took up this theme and elaborated. The egos in a “normal” community will have similarly structured bodies. Once such a community is constituted, each ego will intend sensuous things to be quite alike for them. The sensuous things will differ for them only in their manners of givenness but will differ in this dimension necessarily because of the varying orientation of space from subject to subject. Once such a community is constituted then subjects can exchange places. In such an exchange they would intend an exchange of their respective actual appearances. Other things being equal, the respective actual things would be intended as remaining the same in the How of their sensuous manners of appearing. The possibility of an intersubjective identification of Objects that were intended to begin with (or at one time) only in relation to a single subject is founded upon this interchangeability of appearances that is based in turn on comprehension (empathic apperception).[15] We see “the self-same” Object, each seeing it from her own position with its pertinent way of appearing, the way it would appear to me were I in the Other’s place instead of here. Then we take into account the differences and incongruities due to normal differences in our bodies. In this possibility of intersubjective comprehension there is involved, on the noematic side, a distribution, to each thing in my physical surrounding world (the world for the individual subject), of that ideal multiplicity of appearances which is required by the world as a spatial world. Through this distribution there would correspond to every spatial locus formerly intended solipsistically the ideal possibility to make there into here, to make it the center of orientation by means of a voluntary “I’m going over there.”[16]

In contrast to such intersubjectively constituted appearances, the appearances of solipsistically intended (=primordial) things are, each of them, “my own"; that is, each of them is an appearance “in me”. None of them is intended as enduring apart from kinesthetic sensa that are subject to the ego’s volitions.[17] “In me” is not a happy turn of phrase here. Its meaning had better be quickly and carefully explicated.

The “primordial” reduction seems to be reduction to just what can be itself strictly given, and this means adequately given, as something actual. To this sphere belong all of “my” actual mental processes. These are really immanent in my own being, but to this sphere there also belong what Husserl calls “immanent transcendencies”; these are the actually given appearances of solipsistically intended things. The solipsistically intended thing’s appearances are immanent in that they are adequately given; their not being independent of my body may also have a role in Husserl’s referring to them as “immanent.”[18] In any event, they are transcendent in that they are not genuine parts of myself; they are not genuinely immanent. They are immanent only in what might be called the broader, improper, and epistemological sense while being transcendent with respect to my own being. In this respect, solipsistic appearances are like universals.[19]

The solipsistic thing has its being “in me” only in that its being intended in any way at all is mediated by my lived body. It is “in my mind” in something quite like George Berkeley’s sense. It is transcendent in that its appearances follow rules to which my kinesthesia must conform if the thing is to appear and in that it is a unity of appearances some of which are merely potential ways of being given. However, for a “solipsistic” appearance, it seems, to be and to be given (to be "perceived") by the ego are equivalent. Each of the appearances pertaining to the solipsistic thing is an appearance whose way of becoming actual is correlative to a respective flow or process in the system of kinesthetic processes belonging to the ego’s lived body.

Even with all these hedgings and qualifications, it is likely that Husserl violates the constraints of phenomenological epochē when he calls solipsistic things immanent transcendencies. Doing so, he does not simply describe ‘belonging to me’ as a co-intended moment in the meaning her objects would have for the solipsistic ego.[20] Instead, he seems to accept, to co-perform, this thesis belonging to the solipsistic consciousness being described. He lapses into dogmatic metaphysics. If so, this might explain why he tends to think that a solipsistic stratum must persist even in the very own being of an ego who has achieved a more concrete way of being. Someone who believes in the dependence of solipsistic appearances upon the monad will tend to overlook the fact that, with the achievement of an Objective world, “the same” appearances lose their solipsistic status even for the ego and the fact that they are intended from then on as having been intersubjectively accessible all along. They are no longer intended as correlative just to the actual and possible sequential patterns among the ego’s kinesthetic sensations. They are identified as the “self-same” objects which might be given in another’s sensuous perceiving if the other were here and I were elsewhere.

The solipsistically intended thing’s appearances had the sense “belonging to me” or “dependent on my lived body” as a function of the way they were intended; it was entirely a matter of their being intended solipsistically by a solipsistically existing ego. “Alterable at will” is a part of the meaning solipsistic things have for solipsistic mental processes. But through empathic apperception there cease to be solipsistic sensuous appearances. The appearances of the Objective thing include appearances which are quite like those which were or would be intended solipsistically. That is, some appearances of an Objective thing are quite similar, with respect to moments belonging to their internal horizon of meaning, to appearances which could only be intended solipsistically. But this does not imply that a stratum of solipsistic mental processes continues to occur in the mental life of an ego who is conscious of Objective things. Solipsistic life ceases for an ego who has attained existence in an Objective world. The solipsistic appearances formerly intended are retained as having been so intended. But they are, to use an Hegelian term, aufgehoben. In terms of the ego’s abiding beliefs, her habits and predispositions, the ego now intends the retended solipsistic appearances as having been Objective all along. There is, after all, nothing about them to exclude their being so apperceived.[21] This should be clear to anyone who does not make the mistake of thinking of their not having been objectively intended as a moment of their internal horizon of meaning. Only from the standpoint of being in a more concrete world can the ego intend the retended appearances as having been merely solipsistically intended.

The actually given appearances of the solipsistically intended thing do belong to the class of things of which it is true that they are — with respect to their internal horizons of meaning—adequately given. Together with potentially but not actually given appearances of the solipsistically intended thing, they belong to the class of objects which can be adequately given to the ego. But they are not genuinely immanent to the monad. And they probably should never have been included in what in the Meditations is called the sphere of my peculiarly own being, the domain of what I am in myself as this monad.[22] No sensuous appearances should have been included in this “region” unless Husserl meant to allow partial coincidence between my monadic self and other monadic selves. Making such allowance is by no means absurd, but it does not seem to have been what Husserl had in mind. What he seems to have wished to isolate through the “primordial” reduction in Cartesian Meditations is a domain of actual phenomena which belong only to my monadic self in that they can be adequately given only in and through mental processes occurring in my mental life. But in that case the sensuous appearances belonging to the solipsistic things (as well as those belonging to Objective things) should have been excluded from the ego’s own being.

The fields of sensuous appearances that are a component of my lived body would not then belong to the domain of my very own being. But the sensing of them would. In contrast, the flowing kinesthetic data on the other hand would be primordial along with the sensing of them. Understood in this way, the primordial sphere would never coincide with the solipsistic sphere. If a solipsistic ego could indulge in phenomenological description, she would necessarily make the mistake of including her sensuous appearances in her primordial sphere. But the residuum of reduction to the primordial sphere would, properly understood, include the ego with her lived experiences and her kinesthetic sensations but no sensuous data or appearances.

Husserl’s failure to distinguish primordial from solipsistic reduction in the Meditations is liable to create the utterly mistaken notion that the ego’s whole concrete being is something she could constitute by herself. The residuum of the primordial reduction is not distinguished sharply from that of the solipsistic reduction. It, therefore, seems as if my consciousness of an Objective world were something I could accomplish even as a solipsistic ego. This makes it seem as if I, the concrete historical and cultural ego, could constitute my concrete life all by myself. It then would seem as if my constitutive activity were by itself a sufficient condition for my being in an Objective world. This was certainly not Husserl’s position. On the contrary, I cannot constitute even a solipsistic world except on conditions having to do with what is given in my experience. The ego does not both continuously generate herself as being in the world and do so out of a continuously recurring solipsistic stratum of her life. I exist in the concrete world only so far as I have made myself exist that way. This I am able to do, however, only insofar as empathic apperception is possible. But empathic apperception is only possible if there has been given in my at one time solipsistic experience some appearance whose comprehension requires that the ego intend it as expressive of subjective being other than her “very own.” Only an ego who has made herself exist in the concrete life world and who has had to do so conditionally is an ego who, in order to be conscious of the other as another subject like myself, must intend the other as an ego who has achieved her own being on a similar condition. Only in this way is the existence of the concrete, social, cultural, and historical ego possible. And only in this way is the community she intends a genuine community of transcendental subjects. But the fact that this community is conditional upon an analogous conditional achievement by the others was disguised when Husserl wrote as if a single ego, belonging simultaneously to both regions, generated her full concrete life on the basis of her solipsistic existence.

NOTES

[1]Here, the practice of Dorion Cairns in his translation of Cartesian Meditations will be followed when rendering Husserl’s uses of ‘Objekt’ and related adjectives and adverbs; these will be translated by ‘Object’ and the related English adjective and adverb will also be spelled with an initial capital. The word ‘object’ and the related adjective and adverb spelled with a lower case initial will be reserved for translating Husserl’s use of ‘Gegenstand.’ For Husserl’s very explicit differentiation of ‘Gegenstand’ from ‘Objekt’ see Edmund Husserl’s inaugural lecture at Freiburg i. Being-ready-to-hand., “Pure Phenomenology, Its Method and Its Field of Investigation” in Life-World and Consciousness. Essays for Aron Gurwitsch ed. Lester E. Embree (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1972) 4-18.

[2]Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, ed. with introduction by S. Strasser (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950) — hereafter cited as Husserliana I — p. 129.

[3]This illusion of the individual mental being who makes entire cultures as well as a pre-cultural world indicates how Michael Theunissen, for example, might have been led to think that the primordial reduction is really

a ‘repetition’ of the phenomenological reduction that is described in the Cartesian Meditations. More exactly, it brings to light the ‘solipsistic’ tendency that adheres to that reduction insofar as it abstracts from transcendental intersubjectivity…insofar as the Cartesian-phenomenological reduction leaves transcendental inter-subjectivity out of consideration, it also secretly abstracts from that which, in a transcendental sense, first makes the Other an Other, namely its constituting capacity. (The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber, trns. C. Macann, Cambridge, Mass. and London: MIT Press, 1984, p. 56 f.)

[4]Edmund Husserl Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil: 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) — hereafter cited as Husserliana XV. See “Das Kind. Die erste Einfühlung,” pp. 604–608.

[5]Edmund Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft with supplementary texts, ed. Paul Janssen (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke, vol. l7 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, l974)Appendix II, 2.b., pp. 316ff.

[6]There is no ground for supposing that any ultimate achievement will ever be disclosed by eidetic phenomenology (or any other method); there is not some day going to be a phenomenological disclosure that will show the ego to be not only self-generating but self-generating in the manner of a substance. Phenomenology is not someday going to show the sense of thrownness or guilt, in Heidegger’s sense, to be merely apparent.

[7]On this point, Husserl is in error when he writes, “Der Seinssinn objektive Welt konstituiert sich auf dem Untergrunde meiner primordinalen Welt...” (Husserliana I, 137).

[8]Husserliana I, 134.

[9]Husserliana XV, 40, 50, 678.

[10]Husserliana I, xxvi ff.

[11]Husserliana XV, 51. There is a great deal covered by and left vague by this "and so forth". Among the things that need to be said and that are left unsaid here is that a solipsistic world such as might truly be called mine belongs to the intersubjective world as a feature of its past, not as a continuing world or continuing world stratum. Such a solipsistic world is indeed now given but only as now retended. This will be taken up later in the present essay.

[12]See also Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl Gesammelte Werke, vol. VI), ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954) — hereafter cited as Husserliana VI — § 47.

[13]Edmund Husserl, Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907 (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke, vol. XVI), ed. Ulrich Claesges (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973) p. 128.

[14]Ibid. § 52.

[15]Edmund Husserl. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenoligischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch, Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, ed. Marly Biemel (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl, Gesammelte Werke, vol. IV) — hereafter cited as Husserliana IV — pp. 307f.

[16]Husserliana IV, p. 305; see also pp. 57ff.

[17]Husserliana IV, p. 305; see also pp. 57ff.

[18]Husserliana XV, “Einfühlung und Wiedererinnerung <als tertiäre und sekundäre Originalität. Deckung in Differenz. Modifikation meiner Zentrierung >,” pp.641ff.

[19]Edmund Husserl, Die Idee der phänomenologie, Fünf Vorlesungen (Husserliana. Edmund Husserl. Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11), ed. and intro. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1958), pp. 9, 35, 56, 59-62.

[20]A solipsistic ego could not be aware of anything at all as not being given to someone else.

[21]Something quite similar is true of other founded and acquired meanings such as “member of this set of twelve,” “subject of judgment,” or “being worthy of love.”

[22]Husserliana I, p. 135.