The Ineluctable Double: Phenomenology’s Other

Abstract

This chapter takes up the problem of the double in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. In Cartesian Meditations, and through his commitment to the transcendental Ego, Husserl has created an aporia. On the one hand, he has devoted himself to the axiomatic thought that all sense arises from the Ego’s intentional life, effectively constructing a fundamental solipsism. On the other hand, and in order to obtain his aim of confirming an objective world, he knows he must establish an other, that is, in order to have objectivity, he must work out intersubjectivity. I show that this project is a failure. Without a double, Husserl is locked inside of himself, and his commitment to the Ego confirms this to the very end. Finally, I return to the theme of intersubjectivity in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, which I had touched on in Chap. 2.