Abstract
Although the term ‘transcendental consciousness’ seems like a rather basic notion in Husserl’s philosophy, its precise meaning is in fact one of the principle dividing points among scholars. In this paper I first outline three different views on transcendental consciousness and identify reasons for maintaining them. The most interesting opposition this exposition yields is between the latter two positions. The rest of the paper is then devoted to developing a solution to this interpretative problem which should satisfy intuitions underlying both camps. Particularly novel about this solution is that it (a) understands Husserl’s notion of transcendental consciousness as involving a kind of metaphysical commitment, and (b) takes it not as any kind of object or regional ontology, but as encompassing the totality of being considered from a unique transcendental-phenomenological perspective.
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Notes
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Melle (2010, 94) correctly points out that Husserl’s metaphysical claim, or argument as Melle calls it, comes before the phenomenological reduction. The commitment at stake is therefore not strictly phenomenological, but can be made prior to that in the natural attitude.
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Phenomenology as such does not demand this a priori thesis. Husserl’s statements about e.g. physical thing constitution could still hold a priori within a certain region without it. More exactly, the phenomenological laws of physical thing constitution could then hold a priori within the now limited (ontological) region of consciousness. In short, an a priori phenomenology could do without the metaphysical commitment. However, it would then be a ‘de-transcendentalized’ phenomenology, and hence not the phenomenology the mature Husserl envisaged.
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van Mazijk, C. (2020). Transcendental Consciousness: Subject, Object, or Neither?. In: Apostolescu, I. (eds) The Subject(s) of Phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 108. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29357-4_4
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