The transcendental ego is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectivities, essentially including both immanent objects within its own time and worldly objects that are given only in inadequate, presumptive external experience whose harmonious course functions as their evidential basis.

By Edmund Husserl, from Cartesian Meditations

Key Arguments

  • Drawing on the prior analyses, Husserl claims: "it becomes clear that the transcendental ego (in the psychological parallel, the psyche) is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectivities", explicitly defining the ego relationally through its intentional correlates rather than as a self-sufficient substance.
  • He adds that "Among these, however, are necessarily included for the ego existing objects", indicating that the ego’s very being essentially involves relating to objects posited as existing.
  • He then distinguishes two basic kinds of such objectivities: "and, for him as related to a world, not only objects within his (adequately verifiable)2 sphere of immanent time but also world Objects", thereby including both immanent temporal objects and transcendent worldly objects within the intentional field that constitutes the ego.
  • He specifies the evidential status of worldly objects: they "are shown to be existent only in his inadequate, merely presumptive, external experience — in the harmoniousness of its course.", thus arguing that worldly objects are constituted as existing through the concordant, but in principle inadequate, flow of external experience.

Source Quotes

Moreover there is but one possible method, the one demanded by the essence of intentionality and of its horizons. Even from the preparatory analyses leading us upward to the sense of the problem, it becomes clear that the transcendental ego (in the psychological parallel, the psyche) is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectivities.1 Among these, however, are necessarily included for the ego existing objects and, for him as related to a world, not only objects within his (adequately verifiable)2 sphere of immanent time but also world Objects, which are shown to be existent only in his inadequate, merely presumptive, external experience — in the harmoniousness of its course. / It is thus an essential property of the ego, constantly to have systems of intentionality — among them, harmonious ones — partly as going on within him , partly as fixed potentialities, which, thanks to predelineating horizons, are available for uncovering. Each object that the ego ever means, thinks of, values, deals with, likewise each that he ever phantasies or can phantasy, indicates its correlative system and exists only as itself

Key Concepts

  • it becomes clear that the transcendental ego (in the psychological parallel, the psyche) is what it is solely in relation to intentional objectivities.
  • Among these, however, are necessarily included for the ego existing objects and, for him as related to a world, not only objects within his (adequately verifiable)2 sphere of immanent time but also world Objects, which are shown to be existent only in his inadequate, merely presumptive, external experience — in the harmoniousness of its course.
  • for him as related to a world, not only objects within his (adequately verifiable)2 sphere of immanent time but also world Objects

Context

Middle of §30, where Husserl applies the earlier analyses of immanent time and external world-experience to characterize the transcendental ego as essentially a nexus of relations to different types of intentional objectivities with differing evidential modalities.