Self and Self-Ownership in the Husserlian Phenomenological Tradition

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."

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, I examine Husserl’s conception of the self as both an identical I-pole ( Ichpol ) for-all experience and as a developing, unfolding unity whose self-explication is its history. As Husserl proclaims in the Cartesian Meditations § 37, “time is the universal form of all egological genesis.” He further states: “The ego constitutes itself for itself in, so to speak, the unity of a history,” (Husserl, Cartesian Meditations § 37, p. 75; Hua I 109). In this paper, I will explore how Husserl understands the temporalization of the ego, including the ego’s essential historicity in the life-world. The Danish philosopher Dan Zahavi has spoken about the “minimal self” as a requirement that all experience have the character of “for-me-ness,” i.e., an immediate, non-objectifying, self-acquaintance of the self with itself. I broaden out this account to analyze the nature of the sensory basis for our experience of the self and the need to understand the self in its habitual and developmental character as a form of “ownship”.