Consciousness (Bewußtsein) and Self (Ich)

Abstract

«Consciousness» (Bewußtsein) and «Self» (Ich) are intimately related concepts within phenomenology. In this article we intend to trace their evolution in the works of its founder, Edmund Husserl, treating them separately but underlining their simultaneous development.
The first section of the article is devoted to consciousness, whose centrality for the phenomenological project is due to the fact that it is the place where the phenomena are given. In the Logical Investigations (1900-1901), different senses of the notion are presented, establishing a crucial distinction between «reflection» and «pre-reflective self-consciousness». The development of the theses about the latter is settled in the Lectures on the Consciousness of Internal Time (1905). Finally, the turn that Husserlian phenomenology undergoes in Ideas I (1913) with the introduction of the epoché allows us to discover the region of pure consciousness. The second section of the article is devoted to the Self, that is, to the question about the subject whose consciousness the phenomenologist thematizes. In the Logical Investigations Husserl denies the Self as an entity distinct from the stream of consciousness itself. However, once engaged in the project of transcendental Phenomenology, he will acknowledge the need for a pure Self that makes the very structure of consciousness possible. The last period of Husserl’s Phenomenology is characterized, though, by the search of an experiential Self, which will give raise, first, to the personal Self of the Cartesian Meditations (1929), and later to the notion of Ur-Ich in The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936). The article concludes with some considerations about the reception of the concepts in later Phenomenology and the treatment they have received within analytic philosophy.

Keywords. Stream of consciousness, reflection, perception, pre-reflective self-consciousness, pure consciousness, empirical Self, pure Self, personal Self, Ur-Ich, Husserl.