Edmund Husserl on the Conscious and Unconscious Aspects of Immanent Life

Abstract

This chapter aims to present Husserl’s mature philosophy as a philosophy of life [Lebensphilosophie]. Husserl understood life first and foremost to be the immanent mental life of a subject, which has both conscious and unconscious aspects. Given the particular relevance of the notion of the unconscious for understanding the phenomenon of life, the first section of the chapter is focused on Husserl’s conception of the unconscious while the second presents important details concerning Husserl’s notion of life in general. It is the main conclusion of the second section that life, according to Husserl, is necessarily embodied. This insight leads to the third section exploring Husserl’s Notion of Animality which considers the fundamental features of organic nature in his philosophy. One of the most important results of this overall study is the sense that, from a Husserlian perspective, we are members of a universal community of living beings. This chapter concludes that we humans – as self-conscious rational subjects – are capable of acquiring apodictically self-evident ethical insights: absolutely certain, provable and necessarily true. These ethical insights inform us that if we want to live an ethically-authentic and responsible life then we have certain inevitable duties and obligations to fulfil with respect to other living beings – even towards non-human and non-conscious beings.KeywordsEdmund HusserlPhilosophy of lifeUnconsciousEmbodimentPhenomenology of naturePhenomenology of animalityEco-ethics