Revisiting Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology of the Ego: Existence and Praxis

Two views have characterized the mainstream reception of Husserl’s work based on his lifetime’s publications. One considers his method and philosophy as primarily theoretical and dependent on the Cartesian paradigm. The other regards his eidetic method as caught in a “logicism of essences.” Both endured after Husserl’s 1936 Crisis and the later publications of his Nachlass. Thus the view has prevailed that his work was unable to address questions concerning concrete existence, historical facticity, ethical life, and metaphysical problems. Offsetting this view, this paper examines the origin and underlying arguments of these two interpretations and attempts to shed new light on both. In doing so, the paper accomplishes two tasks. First, it uncovers the eminently practical nature of Husserl’s transcendental subjectivity as a functioning active (constitutive) ego. Second, it reveals the existential roots of his transcendental ego. Both approaches stand together, and their upshot is a non-conventional, “unitary,” interpretation of Husserl’s work.