transcendental ego

is a kind of substance whose contents may change without itself changing.

a kind of substance in which the contents may change without it itself changing (Safranski Heidegger 80).

is a part of the subject which cannot be an object. An appeal to its existence is a flight from freedom.

is not a human being within the world, but the 'I' which places the world in question, and regards it in this way or that.

Owing to this epoche human solitude has become something radically different: it has become transcendental solitude, the solitude of the Ego. As Ego I am for myself not a human being within the world that is in being... rather, I am the ego that places the world in question regarding its entire being, and hence too regarding its being in this way or that. (Husserl 1931: 5-6)

is not a part of the world, husserl says, this is not me, a human person knowing itself in the 'natu ral' experience.

Moreover, we do not know what the transcendental Ego, remaining after the reduction, really is. Nor is it clear why the word 'Ego' is used. This is not a part of the world, Husserl says, this is not me, a human person knowing itself in the 'natu ral' experience. This distinction between psycho logical and transcendental Ego (the latter being a pure unpsychological subject of cognition), when we repeat it often enough, begins ultimately to (43) seem intelligible. But this is an illusory intelligibil ity. The transcendental Ego is an empty recipient of cognitive content and nothing else, a place where phenomena appear. (kolakowski: 'husserl' : 44)

is not some speck located in the brain, rather it is the person insofar as he is a player in the game of life. When, for example, one dies young, what is lost is not just a biological life. But it is the termination of a human life full of deliberations, choices, and human exchanges that that she would have carried out had she lived. What vanished was the way the world would have seemed to those eyes.

When we talk about the transcendental ego, we may be tempted to imagine it as a wispy sort of thing lodged within us, a speck located somewhere in the middle of our cortex, living a secret life. Such an interpretation would be incorrect, and to counter it I would like to provide a more concrete picture of what the transcendental ego is. As I write these pages, it is the month of November, and people are recalling the armistice, the end of the First World War, which occurred on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918. Stories about the war are being presented on television. In one of them, photographs were shown of three young British men who went to the war and did not return. Consider one of these pictures, an image of a twenty-one-year-old man. He was once alive, he was photographed in uniform, and he was killed in the war. A sense of sadness surrounds the picture, the kind we project onto images of those we know have died in combat, during that war or others... the eyes in the picture seem ready to be closed. What was lost when that young man died' Not just a biological life, but the life of reason that would have taken place in him and in his surroundings had he filled out his three-score-and-ten. This life of reason would have been not only the true and false utterances he might have made during those years, but also the deliberations, choices, and human exchanges that he would have carried out. What he would have done as a responsible agent of truth vanished with the extinction of his organic life. The way the world would have seemed to those eyes and ears never came to pass. His death was not just the reshuffling of chemical elements, or the termination of a living organism, but the conclusion of a human life, a life in which reason illuminates the things around it and permits moral interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . The ego in that young man, his transcendental ego, was not an entity distinct from him... it was that man as a player in the game of truth, one who could claim and confirm, quote and infer, deceive and unmask, deliberate and decide. The ego is not a separate thing, but the man as capable of living a rational kind oflife. (sokolosky intro to phenomenonlogy)

 has the world in its head but this head is no longer properly in the world.

Husserl's transcendental ego has the world in its head, but this head is no longer properly in the world' (Safranski 80).

is the bare rational self considered only in terms of its basic cognitive structures.

the bare rational self or ego considered only in terms of its basic cognitive structures [or forms] is called the 'transcendental ego' by both Kant and Husserl' (Dostal in Guignon: 144)

is the idea that though I am indebted to others for quite a bit, perhaps for almost everything, they are first of all, others for me, others who get from me whatever meaning and validity they have for me. And only because I possess their meaning and validity from out of myself can they be of help to me as fellow subjects.

. Thus, as transcendental ego I am the absolute subject of, and the subject responsible for all of my validations of being. When, by virtue of the transcendental reduction, I become aware of myself as this kind of Ego, I assume a position above all worldly being [weltliches Sein], above my own human being and human living. (Husserl 1931: 8)

transcendental ego, n.All

transcendental ego