Key Arguments

• Husserl specifies that the other’s body, as part of my primordial world, is given in the spatial mode ‘There’: ‘The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There.’
• He denies that this ‘There’-body is paired directly with the current appearance of my own Leib in the mode ‘Here’, emphasizing instead a reproductive awakening: ‘Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather it awakens reproductively another, an immediately1 similar appearance included in the system constitutive of my animate organism as a body in space.’
• This reproductive awakening is an imagination of how my own body would look if it occupied that ‘There’ position: ‘It brings to mind the way my body would look “if I were there”.’
• Even though this awakening does not become a full memory-intuition, it nevertheless enters into pairing, so that both the awakened appearance and my body as unity participate: ‘In this case too, although the awakening does not become a memory intuition, pairing takes place. The first-awakened manner of appearance of my body is not the only thing that enters into a pairing; my body itself does so likewise: as the synthetic unity pertaining to this mode, and the many other familiar modes, of its appearance.’
• On this basis an ‘assimilative apperception’ becomes possible and fixed in which the external body receives, by analogy with my own living body, the sense ‘animate organism’: ‘Thus the assimilative apperception becomes possible and established, by which the external body over there receives analogically from mine the sense, animate organism’.
• This analogical bestowal of sense extends beyond mere organic life to the idea that the organism belongs to another primordial world analogous to mine: Husserl adds ‘and consequently the sense, organism belonging to another “world”, analogous to my primordial world.’, showing that the constitution of the Other already includes the sense of another primordial world or monadic sphere correlated to that organism.

Source Quotes

§ 54. Explicating the sense of the appresentation wherein I experience someone else Manifestly what has just now been brought to light points to the course of the association constituting the mode “Other”. The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There.

Explicating the sense of the appresentation wherein I experience someone else Manifestly what has just now been brought to light points to the course of the association constituting the mode “Other”. The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There. Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather it awakens reproductively another, an immediately1 similar appearance included in the system constitutive of my animate organism as a body in space.

The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There. Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather it awakens reproductively another, an immediately1 similar appearance included in the system constitutive of my animate organism as a body in space. It brings to mind the way my body would look “if I were there”.

Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather it awakens reproductively another, an immediately1 similar appearance included in the system constitutive of my animate organism as a body in space. It brings to mind the way my body would look “if I were there”. In this case too, although the awakening does not become a memory intuition, pairing takes place.

It brings to mind the way my body would look “if I were there”. In this case too, although the awakening does not become a memory intuition, pairing takes place. The first-awakened manner of appearance of my body is not the only thing that enters into a pairing; my body itself does so likewise: as the synthetic unity pertaining to this mode, and the many other familiar modes, of its appearance.

The first-awakened manner of appearance of my body is not the only thing that enters into a pairing; my body itself does so likewise: as the synthetic unity pertaining to this mode, and the many other familiar modes, of its appearance. Thus the assimilative apperception becomes possible and established, by which the external body over there receives analogically from mine the sense, animate organism, and consequently the sense, organism belonging to another “world”, analogous to my primordial world. The general style of this and every other apperception that arises associatively is therefore to be described as follows: With the associative overlapping of the data founding the apperception, there takes place an association at a higher level.

Key Concepts

• Manifestly what has just now been brought to light points to the course of the association constituting the mode “Other”.
• The body that is a member of my primordial world (the body subsequently of the other ego) is for me a body in the mode There.
• Its manner of appearance does not become paired in a direct association with the manner of appearance actually belonging at the time to my animate organism (in the mode Here); rather it awakens reproductively another, an immediately1 similar appearance included in the system constitutive of my animate organism as a body in space.
• It brings to mind the way my body would look “if I were there”.
• In this case too, although the awakening does not become a memory intuition, pairing takes place.
• Thus the assimilative apperception becomes possible and established, by which the external body over there receives analogically from mine the sense, animate organism, and consequently the sense, organism belonging to another “world”, analogous to my primordial world.

Context

Opening of §54, where Husserl refines his earlier account of pairing and appresentation by tracing in detail how the ‘There’-body in my primordial world, via reproductive awakening and pairing with my own Leib-as-it-would-look-there, is constituted as an animate organism belonging to another primordial world and thereby as the bearer of an alter ego.