Development of the Constitutional Problems Pertaining to the Transcendental Ego Himself

Abstract

Objects exist for me, and are for me what they are, only as objects of actual and possible consciousness. If this is not to be an empty statement and a theme for empty speculations, it must be shown what makes up concretely this existence and being-thus for me, or what sort of actual and possible consciousness is concerned, what the structure of this consciousness is, what “possibility” signifies here, and so forth. This can be done solely by constitutional investigation — first, in the broader sense introduced initially, and then in the narrower sense just now described. Moreover there is but one possible method, the one demanded by the essence of intentionality and of its horizons. Even from the preparatory analyses leading us upward to the sense of the problem, it becomes clear that the transcendental ego (in the psychological parallel, the psyche) is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectivities.1 Among these, however, are necessarily included for the ego existing objects and, for him as related to a world, not only objects within his (adequately verifiable) 2 sphere of immanent time but also world Objects, which are shown to be existent only in his inadequate, merely presumptive, external experience — in the harmoniousness of its course.