Husserl's notion of the primal ego in light of the hermeneutical critique

pp. 155-174

in: Saulius Geniusas, The origins of the horizon in Husserl's phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2012

Abstract

The chapter aims to show how the hermeneutical critique of Husserl's phenomenology provides a new impetus to disclose the philosophical significance of the historicity of transcendental subjectivity. With this in mind, I situate Husserl's notion of the primal ego in between the hermeneutical critique and the "functional reading" of this concept. I trace the development of the notion of the primal ego by interpreting this concept in the framework of the Bernau Manuscripts, C-Manuscripts, and the Crisis. I argue that the primal ego is not to be thought of as an entity, but rather as a notion that indicates a number of different levels of transcendental subjectivity's constitutive accomplishments. On such a view, neither the hermeneutical critique nor the functional interpretation exhausts the significance of Husserl's notion of the primal ego. Accordingly, the primal ego is a notion, which is first and foremost designed to indicate the historicity of transcendental subjectivity.