Notes on the Husserlian conception of the term ‘I’

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how to understand the husserlian conception about the term ‘I’. It also implies taking charge of the variants of said term, which appear in multiple Edmund Husserl’s manuscripts, such as, for instance, ‘the I’, ‘empirical I’, ‘transcendental I’, etc. Thus, in the first section of this writing, certain methodical-systematic clarifications will be established in order to understand what Husserl means by the expression ‘I’, placing special emphasis on §26 from the first of The Logical Investigations, with the aim of pointing out that Husserl would be sensitive to the peculiarities of ‘I’. Then, certain interpretative keys will be offered which allow understanding what are the internal differences that are played between some variants of the term ‘I’, in a manner that establishes that they obey the methodical framework of transcendental phenomenology. Finally, having shown that the variants of the term ‘I’ are functional to the husserlian phenomenological-transcendental project, it is pointed out how the husserlian split between empirical and transcendental subject should be understood. In this way, it is intended to call attention that a statement about how to understand the term ‘I’ and its variants depend on how the phenomenological enterprise of E. Husserl is interpreted.