Key Arguments

• Husserl introduces the verbal analysis ‘Alter signifies alter ego’ and stresses that the ego here is ‘I myself’ as primordial psychophysical unity, the personal ego governing in my animate organism and acting in my primordial surrounding world.
• He then considers the case of ‘another man’ entering my perceptual sphere, which, under primordial reduction, means that a body appears in my primordial Nature as an ‘immanent transcendency’, a determining part of myself.
• Given that within this primordial Nature my own animate organism is the only body that can be constituted originally as an animate organism, the other body ‘which is nevertheless apprehended as an animate organism’ must receive this sense via ‘an apperceptive transfer from my animate organism’.
• This transfer necessarily ‘excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial, showing’ of the specifically animate predicates in perception proper, and must be motivated by ‘a similarity connecting, within my primordial sphere, that body over there with my body’ as the basis for an ‘analogizing apprehension’ of it as another animate organism.

Source Quotes

What becomes uncovered as involved in the very complicated intentional performance of the appresentation, which does in fact come about? Initial guidance can be furnished by the verbal sense, an Other: an Other Ego. “Alter” signifies alter ego. And the ego involved here is I myself, constituted within my primordial ownness, and uniquely, as the psychophysical unity (the primordial man): as “personal” Ego, governing immediately in my animate organism (the only animate organism) and producing effects mediately1 in the primordial surrounding world; the subject, moreover, of a concrete intentional life, ‹and (?) › of a psychic sphere relating to himself and the “world”.

“Alter” signifies alter ego. And the ego involved here is I myself, constituted within my primordial ownness, and uniquely, as the psychophysical unity (the primordial man): as “personal” Ego, governing immediately in my animate organism (the only animate organism) and producing effects mediately1 in the primordial surrounding world; the subject, moreover, of a concrete intentional life, ‹and (?) › of a psychic sphere relating to himself and the “world”. All of that — with the grouping under types that arises in experiential life and the familiar forms of flow and combination — is at our disposal.

They belong to a distinct stratum and are the theme of vast investigations into which we did not and could not enter. Let us assume that another man enters our perceptual sphere. Primordially reduced, that signifies: In the perceptual sphere pertaining to my primordial Nature, a body is presented, which, as primordial, is of course only a determining part of myself: an “immanent transcendency”. Since, in this Nature and this world, my animate organism is the only body that is or can be constituted originally as an animate organism (a functioning organ), the body over there, which is nevertheless apprehended as an animate organism, must have derived this sense by an apperceptive transfer from my animate organism, and done so in a manner that excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial, showing of the predicates belonging to an animate organism specifically, a showing of them in perception proper.

Primordially reduced, that signifies: In the perceptual sphere pertaining to my primordial Nature, a body is presented, which, as primordial, is of course only a determining part of myself: an “immanent transcendency”. Since, in this Nature and this world, my animate organism is the only body that is or can be constituted originally as an animate organism (a functioning organ), the body over there, which is nevertheless apprehended as an animate organism, must have derived this sense by an apperceptive transfer from my animate organism, and done so in a manner that excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial, showing of the predicates belonging to an animate organism specifically, a showing of them in perception proper. It is clear from the very beginning that only a similarity connecting, within my primordial sphere, that body over there with my body can serve as the motivational basis for the “analogizing” apprehension of that body as another animate organism. / There would be, accordingly, a certain assimilative apperception; but it by no means follows that there would by an inference from analogy.

Since, in this Nature and this world, my animate organism is the only body that is or can be constituted originally as an animate organism (a functioning organ), the body over there, which is nevertheless apprehended as an animate organism, must have derived this sense by an apperceptive transfer from my animate organism, and done so in a manner that excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial, showing of the predicates belonging to an animate organism specifically, a showing of them in perception proper. It is clear from the very beginning that only a similarity connecting, within my primordial sphere, that body over there with my body can serve as the motivational basis for the “analogizing” apprehension of that body as another animate organism. / There would be, accordingly, a certain assimilative apperception; but it by no means follows that there would by an inference from analogy. Apperception is not inference, not a thinking act.

Key Concepts

• Initial guidance can be furnished by the verbal sense, an Other: an Other Ego. “Alter” signifies alter ego.
• the ego involved here is I myself, constituted within my primordial ownness, and uniquely, as the psychophysical unity (the primordial man): as “personal” Ego, governing immediately in my animate organism (the only animate organism) and producing effects mediately1 in the primordial surrounding world;
• Let us assume that another man enters our perceptual sphere. Primordially reduced, that signifies: In the perceptual sphere pertaining to my primordial Nature, a body is presented, which, as primordial, is of course only a determining part of myself: an “immanent transcendency”.
• the body over there, which is nevertheless apprehended as an animate organism, must have derived this sense by an apperceptive transfer from my animate organism, and done so in a manner that excludes an actually direct, and hence primordial, showing of the predicates belonging to an animate organism specifically, a showing of them in perception proper.
• It is clear from the very beginning that only a similarity connecting, within my primordial sphere, that body over there with my body can serve as the motivational basis for the “analogizing” apprehension of that body as another animate organism.

Context

Central part of §50, where Husserl applies the notion of appresentation concretely to the encounter with ‘another man’, explaining how, within the primordial sphere, a merely physical body is apprehended as a living body and bearer of an ‘alter ego’ through analogical apperception grounded in similarity to my own Leib.