The Life of the Transcendental I in Husserl’s C-Manuscripts

Abstract

The following paper traces Husserl’s late time-analyses (concentrated especially in the so-called C-manuscripts) in the context of the problem of the life of the transcendental ego. We proceed from the constitutive stage of primal life (Urleben), in which the streaming living presence is constituted as lasting now (nunc stans). Then we trace further the structural connections of the constitution of the so-called first transcendence, that is, the transcendence of the immanent stream of consciousness, and the second transcendence, in which life is constituted as living-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-Leben). It turns out that the life of the transcendental I is of the character of a striving life (strebendes Leben) and that the first and second transcendence belong to it essentially.