Key Arguments

• Husserl begins by analyzing ‘that analogizing apprehension whereby a body within my primordial sphere, being similar to my own animate body, becomes apprehended as likewise an animate organism’, and he immediately notes two ‘peculiarities’ that define this mode of apprehension.
• First, in this case ‘the primally institutive original is always livingly present, and the primal instituting itself is therefore always going on in a livingly effective manner’, so the original sense-bestowal on my own body as animate organism remains constantly operative as a living source in the experience of the other.
• Second, he reiterates the known feature that ‘what is appresented by virtue of the aforesaid analogizing can never attain actual presence, never become an object of perception proper’, thereby marking an essential limit: the other’s own original sphere remains permanently non-original for me.
• He then ties the first peculiarity directly to the fact that ‘ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original “pairing”’, so that the analogizing apprehension of the other is structurally grounded in an original, necessary pairing between self and other.
• He adds that, as far as such a pairing is actually present, ‘so far extends that remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension — its continuous primal institution in living actuality — which we have already stressed as the first peculiarity of experiencing someone else’, solidifying the connection between pairing and the ongoing, living primal instituting at work in empathy.
• Husserl further notes that because pairing and this kind of primal instituting are not confined to this particular experience, the structure at issue is general, though here it is specified in relation to the constitution of the alter ego.

Source Quotes

§ 51. “Pairing” as an associatively constitutive component of my experience of someone else If we attempt to indicate the peculiar nature of that analogizing apprehension whereby a body within my primordial sphere, being similar to my own animate body, becomes apprehended as likewise an animate organism, we encounter: first, the circumstance that here the primally institutive original / is always livingly present, and the primal instituting itself is therefore always going on in a livingly effective manner; secondly, the peculiarity we already know to be necessary, namely that what is appresented by virtue of the aforesaid analogizing can never attain actual presence, never become an object of perception proper. Closely connected with the first peculiarity is the circumstance that ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original “pairing”.

“Pairing” as an associatively constitutive component of my experience of someone else If we attempt to indicate the peculiar nature of that analogizing apprehension whereby a body within my primordial sphere, being similar to my own animate body, becomes apprehended as likewise an animate organism, we encounter: first, the circumstance that here the primally institutive original / is always livingly present, and the primal instituting itself is therefore always going on in a livingly effective manner; secondly, the peculiarity we already know to be necessary, namely that what is appresented by virtue of the aforesaid analogizing can never attain actual presence, never become an object of perception proper. Closely connected with the first peculiarity is the circumstance that ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original “pairing”. Pairing, occurrence in configuration as a pair and then as a group, a plurality, is a universal phenomenon of the transcendental sphere (and of the parallel sphere of intentional psychology); and, we may add forthwith, as far as a pairing is actually present, so far extends that remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension — its continuous primal institution in living actuality — which we have already stressed as the first peculiarity of experiencing someone else.

Closely connected with the first peculiarity is the circumstance that ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original “pairing”. Pairing, occurrence in configuration as a pair and then as a group, a plurality, is a universal phenomenon of the transcendental sphere (and of the parallel sphere of intentional psychology); and, we may add forthwith, as far as a pairing is actually present, so far extends that remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension — its continuous primal institution in living actuality — which we have already stressed as the first peculiarity of experiencing someone else. Hence it is not exclusively peculiar to this experience.

Pairing, occurrence in configuration as a pair and then as a group, a plurality, is a universal phenomenon of the transcendental sphere (and of the parallel sphere of intentional psychology); and, we may add forthwith, as far as a pairing is actually present, so far extends that remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension — its continuous primal institution in living actuality — which we have already stressed as the first peculiarity of experiencing someone else. Hence it is not exclusively peculiar to this experience. First of all, let us elucidate the essential nature of any “pairing” (or any forming of a plurality).

Key Concepts

• If we attempt to indicate the peculiar nature of that analogizing apprehension whereby a body within my primordial sphere, being similar to my own animate body, becomes apprehended as likewise an animate organism, we encounter: first, the circumstance that here the primally institutive original / is always livingly present, and the primal instituting itself is therefore always going on in a livingly effective manner;
• secondly, the peculiarity we already know to be necessary, namely that what is appresented by virtue of the aforesaid analogizing can never attain actual presence, never become an object of perception proper.
• Closely connected with the first peculiarity is the circumstance that ego and alter ego are always and necessarily given in an original “pairing”.
• as far as a pairing is actually present, so far extends that remarkable kind of primal instituting of an analogizing apprehension — its continuous primal institution in living actuality — which we have already stressed as the first peculiarity of experiencing someone else.
• Hence it is not exclusively peculiar to this experience.

Context

Opening sentences of §51, where Husserl links the special analogizing apprehension involved in experiencing another animate organism to two essential features—permanent non-originary appresentation and the original pairing of ego and alter ego—framing pairing as the basic associatively constitutive component in empathy.