Key Arguments

• Husserl notes a “momentous fact” revealed by the epoché: that he, with his life, “remain[s] untouched in [his] existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists and regardless of what [his] eventual decision concerning its being or non-being might be.” This shows that the ego that remains is independent of the world’s existence.
• He explicitly denies that the ego which now says ‘I exist, ego cogito’ is identical with the natural human subject: it “no longer signifies, ‘I, this man, exist.’” Thus the ego that remains after the reduction is not the empirical human being.
• He further excludes traditional philosophical and psychological construals of the self by insisting that he is no longer the man who, in natural self‑experience, finds himself as a man and, with abstraction, finds his own pure “mens sive animus sive intellectus”, nor “the separately considered psyche itself.”
• These natural or psychological selves are themes for ‘Objective, or positive’ sciences such as biology, anthropology, and psychology; but their very status as worldly objects is precisely what the epoché suspends, thereby excluding them from the remaining field of indubitable being.
• Thus, once the world is bracketed, any ego understood as worldly (a human, a psyche, or a psychophysical subject) is excluded, leaving only a non‑worldly ego that remains in and through the epoché.

Source Quotes

The psychological and the transcendental Ego. The transcendency of the world If I keep purely what comes into view — for me, the one who is meditating — by virtue of my free epoché with respect to the being of the experienced world, the momentous fact is that I, with my life, remain untouched1 in my existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists and regardless of what my eventual decision concerning its being or non-being might be. This Ego, with his Ego-life, who necessarily remains2 for me, by virtue of such epoché, is not a piece of the world; and if he says, “I exist, ego cogito,” that no longer signifies, “I, this man, exist.”3 No longer am I the man who, in natural self-experience, finds himself as a man and who, with the abstractive restriction to the pure contents of “internal” or purely psychological self-experience, finds his own pure “mens sive animus sive intellectus”; nor am I the separately considered psyche itself.

The transcendency of the world If I keep purely what comes into view — for me, the one who is meditating — by virtue of my free epoché with respect to the being of the experienced world, the momentous fact is that I, with my life, remain untouched1 in my existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists and regardless of what my eventual decision concerning its being or non-being might be. This Ego, with his Ego-life, who necessarily remains2 for me, by virtue of such epoché, is not a piece of the world; and if he says, “I exist, ego cogito,” that no longer signifies, “I, this man, exist.”3 No longer am I the man who, in natural self-experience, finds himself as a man and who, with the abstractive restriction to the pure contents of “internal” or purely psychological self-experience, finds his own pure “mens sive animus sive intellectus”; nor am I the separately considered psyche itself. Apperceived in this “natural” manner, I and all other men are themes of sciences that are Objective, or positive, in the usual sense: biology, anthropology, and also (as included in these) psychology.

This Ego, with his Ego-life, who necessarily remains2 for me, by virtue of such epoché, is not a piece of the world; and if he says, “I exist, ego cogito,” that no longer signifies, “I, this man, exist.”3 No longer am I the man who, in natural self-experience, finds himself as a man and who, with the abstractive restriction to the pure contents of “internal” or purely psychological self-experience, finds his own pure “mens sive animus sive intellectus”; nor am I the separately considered psyche itself. Apperceived in this “natural” manner, I and all other men are themes of sciences that are Objective, or positive, in the usual sense: biology, anthropology, and also (as included in these) psychology. The psychic life that psychology talks about has in fact always been, and still is, meant as psychic life in the world.

Apperceived in this “natural” manner, I and all other men are themes of sciences that are Objective, or positive, in the usual sense: biology, anthropology, and also (as included in these) psychology. The psychic life that psychology talks about has in fact always been, and still is, meant as psychic life in the world. Obviously the same is true also of one’s own psychic life, which is grasped and considered in purely internal experience.

Key Concepts

• If I keep purely what comes into view — for me, the one who is meditating — by virtue of my free epoché with respect to the being of the experienced world, the momentous fact is that I, with my life, remain untouched1 in my existential status, regardless of whether or not the world exists and regardless of what my eventual decision concerning its being or non-being might be.
• This Ego, with his Ego-life, who necessarily remains2 for me, by virtue of such epoché, is not a piece of the world; and if he says, “I exist, ego cogito,” that no longer signifies, “I, this man, exist.”3
• No longer am I the man who, in natural self-experience, finds himself as a man and who, with the abstractive restriction to the pure contents of “internal” or purely psychological self-experience, finds his own pure “mens sive animus sive intellectus”; nor am I the separately considered psyche itself.
• Apperceived in this “natural” manner, I and all other men are themes of sciences that are Objective, or positive, in the usual sense: biology, anthropology, and also (as included in these) psychology.
• The psychic life that psychology talks about has in fact always been, and still is, meant as psychic life in the world.

Context

Opening of § 11, immediately after the analysis of the ego-cogito, where Husserl clarifies what exactly remains after the radical epoché and distinguishes this remaining ego from any worldly or psychological conception of the self.