Self and Self-Ownership in the Husserlian Phenomenological Tradition
Research in Phenomenology May 12, 2026 Dermot Moran
The self, for Husserl, is both an unchanging pole of identity and a developing unity that unfolds through time. Time is the universal form of all ego genesis, and the ego constitutes itself in the unity of a history. This paper examines how Husserl understands the temporalization of the ego and its essential historicity within the life-world. It builds on Dan Zahavi's concept of the "minimal self"—the immediate, non-objectifying self-acquaintance of experience—to analyze the sensory basis of self-experience and to argue for understanding the self in its habitual, developmental character as a form of "ownship."