Skip to main content

Husserl’s Layered Concept of the Human Person: Conscious and Unconscious

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Contributions To Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 88))

Abstract

Husserl’s mature phenomenology offers a complex and multi-layered account of the constitution of the human person through a developmental analysis of different stages of constitution, from the constitution and integration of the lived body upward to the full, free, rational functioning of the mature human person. The mature human person is, for Husserl, in the fullest sense, a self-reflective Cartesian cogito, a self-conscious rational agent exercising conscious “position-takings”, judgings, desirings, and willings. At the same time, a person is an intersubjective social being, a member of a family, a group, a community, a nation, a participant in empathic interpersonal relations with others in the context of a social world, an environment, and a life-world, what Husserl calls socius. But, for Husserl, the self is also necessarily rooted in nature, and lives through its sensations, drives and tendencies, affections, feelings, emotions and motor capacities and especially through its voluntary movements and decisions (Husserl’s “I can”). The ego has moments of wakeful alertness but can also be sunk in sleep or dreaming. It has dispositions, habits, a hexis or habitus, which gives it a network of habitual actions, stances and motivations. Husserl’s account is an extraordinarily rich phenomenological account of the person that contains analyses comparable to psychoanalytic explorations of the unconscious, with which Husserl was barely familiar. In this paper I shall chart Husserl’s conception of the person and explore some tensions in it especially between its unconscious and conscious dimensions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Freud attended Brentano’s lectures in Vienna as a young student from 1874 to 1876, whereas Husserl attended Brentano’s lectures 10 years later from 1884 to 1886. See Philip Merlan, ‘Brentano and Freud’, Journal of the History of Ideas vol. 6, no. 3 (Jun., 1945), pp. 375–377. The lectures appeared to have no lasting impression on the founder of psychoanalysis, but see Raymond E. Fancher, ‘Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and Freud’s Early Metapsychology’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, vol. 13 no. 3 (July 1977), pp. 207–227, who discusses some comparisons in their approaches.

  2. 2.

    For a thorough, recent discussion of the literature on the relations between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, see Nicholas Smith, Towards a Phenomenology of Repression – A Husserlian Reply to the Freudian Challenge, Stockholm Studies in Philosophy 34 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2010), especially pp. 10–38. See also Gunnar Karlsson, ‘Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis’, in his Psychoanalysis in a New Light (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 1–20. See also Evelyne Grossmann, ‘Inconscient freudien, inconsient phénoménologique’, Rue Descartes vol. 4 no. 4 (2010), pp. 106–112.

  3. 3.

    For an important discussion of psychoanalysis in relation to phenomenology, see Herbert Spiegelberg, Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry. A Historical Introduction (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), especially pp. 127ff. See also the work of Alphonse de Waelhens, especially his, ‘Sur l’inconscient et la pensée philosophique’, in L’ Inconscient (Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1966) and his ‘Réflections sur une problématique husserlienne de l’inconscient, Husserl et Hegel’, in H. L. Van Breda and J. Taminiaux, eds, Edmund Husserl 1859–1959. Recueil commemoratif publié à l’occasion de centenaire de la naissance du philosophe (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959). See also Herman Drüe, ‘Psychoanalysis’, in Lester Embree, ed., Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), pp. 568–572.

  4. 4.

    See Philip Rieff, Freud. The Mind of a Moralist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 187.

  5. 5.

    See Hannah S. Decker, “The Reception of Psychoanalysis in Germany,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 no. 4 (1982), pp. 589–602; and her Freud in Germany: Revolution and Reaction in Science 1893–1907 (New York: International Universities Press, 1977).

  6. 6.

    See Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology, trans. J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); and his Die geistige Situation der Zeit (1931), trans. as Man in the Modern Age (New York: Anchor Books, 1957). Jaspers is increasingly critical of psychoanalysis, see Matthias Bormuth, Life Conduct in Modern Times: Karl Jaspers and Psychoanalysis (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), and his “Karl Jaspers as a Critic of Psychoanalysis A Short Sketch of a Long Story,” Existenz. International Journal in Philosophy, Religion, Politics, and the Arts, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Fall 2015), pp. 1–10.

  7. 7.

    See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–50 m(Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973) and Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School. Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (London and Cambridge: Polity/The MIT Press, 1994). See also Joel Whitebook, Joel, “Fantasy and critique: some thoughts on Freud and the Frankfurt School,” in David M. Rasmussen (ed.), Handbook of Critical Theory. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), pp. 287–304.

  8. 8.

    This was indeed the view of Elmar Holenstein in his Husserls Phänomenologie der Assoziation. Zu Struktur und Funktion eines Grundprinzips der passive Genesis bei Edmund Husserl (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972), see especially p. 322.

  9. 9.

    See Paul Ricoeur, De l’interprétation. Essai sur Sigmund Freud (Paris: LeSeuil, 1965), trans. D. Savage Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University, 1970), especially pp. 380 ff.

  10. 10.

    Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, op. cit., p. 376. Ricoeur is particular is referring to Freud’s 1915 paper on ‘The Unconscious’.

  11. 11.

    See Hao Wang, A Logical Journey: From Gödel to Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), p. 167.

  12. 12.

    See Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs- und Forschungsmanuskripten, 1918–1926, Husserliana (hereafter ‘Hua’) XI, ed. M. Fleischer ( (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962); trans. Anthony J. Steinbock, as Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001).

  13. 13.

    For a reading of Husserl’s phenomenology in relation to Freud, see Rudolf Bernet, ‘Le freudisme de Husserl: une phénoménologie de la pulsion et des émotions’, in Jocelyt Benoist, ed., Husserl (Paris: Cerf « Les cahiers d’histoire de la philosophie », 2008), pp. 125–147. See also Natalie Depraz, ‘Pulsion, instinct, désir. Que. signifie Trieb cehz Husserl? À l’épreuve des perspectives de Freud, Merleau-Ponty, Jonas et Scheler’, Alter 9 (2001), pp. 113–125; and Francesco S. Trincia, ‘Some Observations on Husserl and Freud’, in D. Lohmar and J. Brudzínska, eds, Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically, Phaenomenologica 199 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 235–242.

  14. 14.

    See E. Husserl, Phantasy, Image Consciousness and Memory (1895–1925), trans. John Brough, Husserl Collected Works vol. XI (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005), pp. 251–52.

  15. 15.

    Rudolf Bernet, ‘Unconscious Consciousness in Husserl and Freud’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2002), pp. 327–351; reprinted in Donn Welton, ed., The New Husserl. A Critical Reader (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U. P. 2003), pp. 199–222, especially, p. 201.

  16. 16.

    Bernet, ‘Unconscious Consciousness in Husserl and Freud’, The New Husserl. A Critical Reader, op. cit., p. 204.

  17. 17.

    See also Nicolas de Warren, ‘Time and the Double-Life of Subjectivity’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology vol. 40 no. 2 (2009), pp. 155–169. De Warren sees Husserl as recognizing the complex ways that consciousness can be split and doubled.

  18. 18.

    E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Hrsg. Marly Biemel, Husserliana IV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952); trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book. Husserl Collected Works III (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). Hereafter “Ideas II’.

  19. 19.

    See E. Husserl, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908–1937, ed. Rochus Sowa and Thomas Vongehr, Husserliana XLII (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), especially pp. 113 and 126.

  20. 20.

    E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, ed.Walter Biemel, Husserliana Vol. VI (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1954), substantially translated by David Carr as The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern U.P., 1970), with some supplements omitted. Hereafter Crisis, followed by page number of English translation and Husserliana volume and page number.

  21. 21.

    Eugen Fink’s discussion of the unconscious was included by Walter Biemel as an Appendix in his edition of the Crisis, pp. 385–87; Hua VI 473–75.

  22. 22.

    Husserl sometimes comment on the fact that the wakeful ego is punctuated by periods of sleep and has to actively join itself to earlier states through acts of synthesis. Husserl leaves it an open question as to whether there is ever pure ‘unconsciousness’ in the sense of there being no flicker of consciousness at all. See Hanne Jacobs, ‘Towards a Phenomenological Account of Personal Identity’, in Carlo Ierna, Hanne Jacobs, Filip Mattens, eds, Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences. Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), pp. 333–362.

  23. 23.

    For a discussion of Max Scheler’s relation with Sigmund Freud, see Lou Andreas-Salome’s reflections in her In der Schule bei Freud. Tagebuch eines Jahres 1912–1913 (Zurich: Max Niehans, 1958), pp. 197–203, trans. Stanley Leavey as The Freud Journal of Lou Andreas-Salome (New York: Basic Books, 1964).

  24. 24.

    See Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (London: Routledge and Kegal Paul, I954), especially pp. 22–26 (on the nature of pathological identification in a discussion of Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego); pp. 115–117 (for the critique of Freud’s view of sexual love); and pp. 177–79 (for a discussion of the difference between libido and sexual drive and the nature of repression and sublimation).

  25. 25.

    Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, op. cit., p. 115.

  26. 26.

    See Max Scheler, ‘Shame and Feelings of Modesty’ [1913], in M. Scheler, Person and Self-Value. Three Essays, trans. Manfred S. Frings (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1987), especially pp. 31 ff.

  27. 27.

    M. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l’invisible, texte établi par Claude Lefort (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), trans. A. Lingis, The Visible and the Invisible (Evanston: Northwestern U.P., 1968). Hereafter ‘VI’ followed by the page number of the English translation and the French original.

  28. 28.

    Thomas Fuchs, ‘Body Memory and the Unconscious’, in Dieter Lohmar and Jagna Brudzínska, eds, Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically, Phaenomenologica 199 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 69–82.

  29. 29.

    See Ludwig Binswanger, Die Bedeutung der Daseinsanalytik Martin Heideggers für das Selbstverständnis der Psychiatrie, in Carlos Estrada et al., eds, Martin Heideggers Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften (Berne, 1949), pp. 58–72.

  30. 30.

    See Medard Boss, Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis, trans. Ludwig Lefebre (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

  31. 31.

    See Ludwig Binswanger, Melancholie und Manie: Phänomenologische Studien (Pfullingen: Neske, 1960). See also Stefano Micali, Überschüsse der Erfahrung, Grenzdimensionen des Ich nach Husserl (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008).

  32. 32.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars. Protocols–Conversations–Letters, ed. Medard Boss, trans. Fritz Mayr and Richard Askay (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), pp. 188–195.

  33. 33.

    M. Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, op. cit., pp. 182–83.

  34. 34.

    Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars, op. cit., p. 183.

  35. 35.

    Jean-Paul Sartre criticizes Freud’s conception of the censor and his mechanistic way of treating self-deception or ‘bad faith’ (mauvaise foi) in L’être et le néant. Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), trans. Hazel Barnes, Being and Nothingness. An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (London: Routledge, 1995), see especially, p. 53. For Sartre, the Freudian accounts involving the unconscious masks the genuine double-sidedness of consciousness in bad faith. See Jerome Neu, ‘Divided Minds: Sartre’s “Bad Faith” Critique of Freud’, The Review of Metaphysics Vol. 42, No. 1 (Sept., 1988), pp. 79–101 and Ivan Soll, ‘Sartre’s Rejection of the Freudian Unconscious’, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle, IL: Open Court, The Library of Living Philosophers, 1981), and Jonathan Webber, ‘Bad Faith and the Unconscious’, The International Encyclopaedia of Ethics, ed. Hugh LaFolette, John Diegh, and Sarah Stroud (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).

  36. 36.

    See Jean-Paul Sartre, Existential Psychoanalysis, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1953).

  37. 37.

    For Merleau-Ponty’s relation to Jacques Lacan, see James Phillips, ‘Lacan and Merleau-Ponty: The Confrontation of Psychoanalysis and Phenomenology’, in David Pettigrew and François Raffoul, eds, Disseminating Lacan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 69–106. For the Heidegger/Lacan relation, see William Richardson, ‘Psychoanalysis and the Being-Question’, in Interpreting Lacan, ed. Joseph H. Smith and William Kerrigan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). For the relation between Husserl and Lacan, see ‘Edmund Husserl and Jacques Lacan: An Ethical Difference in Epistemology?’ in D. Lohmar and J. Brudzínska, eds, Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically, Phaenomenologica 199 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 133–147.

  38. 38.

    The focus has largely been on the relation between Merleau-Ponty and Lacan, see David Michael Levin, ‘A Responsive Voice: Language without the Modern Subject’ Chiasmi International vol. 1 (1999), pp. 65–102, and Rudolf Bernet, ‘The Phenomenon of the Gaze in Merleau-Ponty and Lacan’, Chiasmi International vol. 1 (1999), pp. 105–118.

  39. 39.

    See in particular, Sigmund Freud, ‘The Unconscious’ (1915), in Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol 14. On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (1914–1916), trans. James Strachey (London: Penguin, 2001), pp. 159–216. In this essay Freud discusses whether an unconscious presentation (Vorstellung) can again become conscious under a new ‘registration’ from a conscious act, employing much the same terminology (presentations, acts) as the school of Brentano.

  40. 40.

    Rudolf Bernet, ‘Unconscious Consciousness in Husserl and Freud’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2002), pp. 327–351; reprinted in D. Welton, ed., The New Husserl. A Critical Reader, op. cit, and idem, ‘The Unconscious Between Representation and Drive: Freud, Husserl, and Schopenhauer’, in: John J. Drummond and James G. Hart, eds, The Truthful and the Good. Essays in Honor of Robert Sokolowski, Contributions to Phenomenology 23 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996), pp. 81–95.

  41. 41.

    E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935, ed. Iso Kern, Husserliana XV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). Hereafter ‘Hua XV’ and page number.

  42. 42.

    See Nam-In Lee, Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie des Instinkte (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993). Even in Freud the terminology is confused as ‘Trieb’ is translated into English as ‘instinct’ by James Strachey, as Lacan has noted, see Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1994) p. 49.

  43. 43.

    On Lipps’ influence in terms of psychoanalysis, see especially Günther Gödde, “Berührungspunkte zwischen der “Philosophie” Freuds und der Phänomenologie,” in Dieter Lohmar and Jagna Brudzinska, eds, Founding Psychoanalysis Phenomenologically: Phenomenological Theory of Subjectivity and the Psychoanalytic Experience ~(Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 105–131.

  44. 44.

    See D. L. Smith, Freud’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), pp. 16–18. Freud credits Lipps for his concept of the unconscious – in letters to Fliess in 1896 and again in his Interpretation of Dreams.

  45. 45.

    E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil. 1905–1920, hrsg. I. Kern, Hua XIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973). Hereafter ‘Hua XIII’.

  46. 46.

    See E. Husserl, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1908–1937, Hua XLII, op. cit.

  47. 47.

    See James Mensch, ‘Instincts – an Husserlian account’, Husserl Studies 14 (1997), pp. 219–237 and Nam-In Lee, Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte, Phaenomenologica 128 (Dordrecht: Springer, 1993). See also, Nicholas Smith, ‘Indirect Clarification: The Drives’, in his Towards a Phenomenology of Repression, op. cit., pp. 253–304.

  48. 48.

    Husserl: ‘Das Wort „Instinkt“ wird also von Husserl, wie er selbst sagt, „in ungewöhnlich weitem Sinn“ gebraucht; es bezeichnet „jede Triebintention, die ursprünglich noch nicht enthüllt ist in ihrem Sinn “Instinkte im engeren, „im gewöhnlichen Sinn“ sind jene Triebe oder Triebintentionen, die sich auf „auf ferne, ursprünglich verborgene Ziele “beziehen und der Erhaltung der Art bzw. der Selbsterhaltung des Individuums dienen’, in Husserl, Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, op. cit., p. xlviii.

  49. 49.

    For Husserl’s discussion of love, see Hua XIV 172–175.

  50. 50.

    See the entry “Instinct (or Drive),” in Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-analysis (London: Karnac, 1988), pp. 214 ff.

  51. 51.

    See Talia Welsh, ‘The Retentional and the Repressed: Does Freud’s Concept of the Unconscious Threaten Husserlian Phenomenology?’ The Retentional and the Repressed: Does Freud’s Concept of the Unconscious Threaten Husserlian Phenomenology? Human Studies Vol. 25, No. 2 (2002), pp. 165–183; and Nicholas Smith, Towards a Phenomenology of Repression—A Husserlian Reply to the Freudian Challenge, passim.

  52. 52.

    E. Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil. Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe (Prague: Academia-Verlag, 1938; 7th edition, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1999), trans. J.S. Churchill and K. Ameriks, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973). Hereafter ‘EU’ followed by the pagination of English translation and then German.

  53. 53.

    See Sara Heinämaa, ‘Transcendental Intersubjectivity and Normality: Constitution by Mortals’, in The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, ed. Dermot Moran and Rasmus Thybo Jensen, Contributions to Phenomenology Series (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), pp. 83–103.

  54. 54.

    Sometimes, Heidegger’s account of finitude and authentic being towards one’s own death is contrasted with Husserl’s account that claims that the transcendental ego is immortal and that it is impossible to experience any ‘final’ moment in time. But the issue is more complex and Husserl acknowledges the humans can experience the possibility of death as a disruption. See Sara Heinämaa, ‘Threat, Limit, Culture: Phenomenological Insights into Human Death’, in Mortality and Death: From Individual to Communal Perspective, ed. Outi Hakola, Sara Heinämaa, and Sami Pihlström, Collegium Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2015).

  55. 55.

    ‘Das Unbewusste, der sedimentierte Untergrund des Bewusstseins, der traumlose Schlaf, die Geburtsgestalt der Subjektivität bzw. Das problematische Sein vor der Geburt, der Tod und das ‚nach dem Tode”, Hua XV 608.

  56. 56.

    E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträg, ed. Stephan Strasser, Husserliana I (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1950), trans. Dorion Cairns, Cartesian Meditations (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967), § 49.

  57. 57.

    See Dermot Moran, “Ineinandersein and l’interlacs: The Constitution of the Social World or ‘We-World’ (Wir-Welt) in Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” in Dermot Moran and Thomas Szanto, eds, Discovering the We: The Phenomenology of Sociality (London & New York: Routledge 2015).

  58. 58.

    Husserl: Ebenso ist jedes ego, jede Monade konkret genommen Substanz, aber nur relative Konkretion, sie ist, was sie ist, nur als socius einer Sozialität, als „Gemeinschaftsglied“ in einer Totalgemeinschaft, Hua XV 193.

  59. 59.

    Husserl 1923/1924 Kaizo articles on ethical renewal (Erneuerung) are reprinted in E. Husserl, Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–1937, ed. Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, Hua XXVII (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), pp. 2–94.

  60. 60.

    The term ‘person’ was widely in use among phenomenologists, especially by Max Scheler and Edith Stein. Husserl associates personhood specifically with ‘position-takings’ (Stellungsnahme, see E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil. 1921–1928, ed. I. Kern, Husserliana XIV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), p. 196). For a broad and illuminating discussion, see James G. Hart, The Person and the Common Life. Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics, Phaenomenologica 126 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), esp. pp. 52–75.

  61. 61.

    I prefer to translate Husserl’s Persönlichkeit as ‘person’ rather than ‘personality’, which is misleading in this context given the connotations from social and behavioural psychology. See Dermot Moran, ‘Defending the Transcendental Attitude: Husserl’s Concept of the Person and the Challenges of Naturalism’, Phenomenology and Mind (2014), pp. 37–55.

  62. 62.

    Husserl, ‘Natürlich ist die Persönlichkeit, so wie die Substanz der Dinge, kein phänomenologisch vorfindliches Datum, es ist ja „Einheit in der Mannigfaltigkeit”, Geltungseinheit, nicht phänomenologisches Moment’ (Hua XIII 2).

  63. 63.

    Husserl, ‘Das Ich ist Menschen-Ich im Naturzusammenhang. Die Akte sind real zum Menschen und psychophysisch zum Menschenleib gehörige Naturvorkommnisse, reale Zustande des Menschen etc. Objektive Welt-Natur-Forschung. Real-kausale Zusammenhänge’ (Hua XIII 245).

  64. 64.

    Husserl, ‘In manchen Fällen sprechen wir von Ichnähe und Ichferne, oder das Ich sei in der tiefsten Tiefe betroffen oder es werde nur oberflächlich betroffen, es habe inneren Anteil oder nur mehr äusserlichen und dgl. In jedem Fall weist dergleichen auf phänomenologische Unterschiede hin: Ist das Ich, ist ein reines Ich überall ein identisches, und <sind> Eigentümlichkeiten dieses Ich im cogito damit bezeichnet?’, (Hua XIII 248).

  65. 65.

    See Dermot Moran, “‘The Ego as Substrate of Habitualities’: Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Habitual Self,” Phenomenology and Mind, vol. 6 (July 2014), pp. 27–47; and idem, “Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 42 no. 1 (January 2011), pp. 53–77.

  66. 66.

    Husserl, ‘Das Ich als Ich personaler Überzeugungen, Meinungen, Entschlüsse, Handlungen, und diese selbst als eine Art identischer Gegenständlichkeiten. Bleibende Überzeugungen etc. (S. 402 fl.). Das personale Ich als ihr Subjekt. Hexis und Habe’, in E. Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Erster Teil. 1905–1920, hrsg. I. Kern, Hua XIII (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973), p. 400.

  67. 67.

    E. Husserl, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. From the Lectures, Winter Semester, 1910–1911, trans. Ingo Farin and James Hart (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), p. 96, translation modified: Hua XIII 82.

  68. 68.

    Edith Stein, Beiträge zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften, Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung Vol. 5 (1922), pp. 1–116 esp. p. 71; trans. Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 2000), especially p. 79.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dermot Moran .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Moran, D. (2017). Husserl’s Layered Concept of the Human Person: Conscious and Unconscious. In: Legrand, D., Trigg, D. (eds) Unconsciousness Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 88. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55518-8_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics