Husserl unlike some Western thinkers, such as Sigmund Freud, and Rene Descartes, envisages the objective and apriori existence of transcendental consciousness. The following questions, I think, can throw some lights to have clear understanding of the ontological constitution of Husserlian transcendental consciousness: Whether there are two types of consciousness: one is empirical and the other is transcendental? If at all, there are two consciousnesses, what is the relationship between the two? What is the ego or the “I”? Whether the “I” or the ego is the consciousness? Do I need the “I” to affirm the existence of the transcendental consciousness? Does the “I” inhabit all the representations of the transcendental conscousness or. In other words, are the “I-Experiences” instantiations of the transcendental consciousness?
What is the nature of the transcendental consciousness? Some say that the transcendental consciousness that constitutes the empirical consciousness, the “I” is unconsciousness. But for Kant, it is matter whether the empirical consciousness is de facto (in fact) constituted or it is deduced from a higher consciousness, a constitutive hyperconsciousness in some Neo-platonic procession. For him, the transcendental consciousness is the condition for the happening of the empirical consciousness. There is also view which says that the transcendental consciousness constitutes the de facto empirical consciousness. This is against what Kant says about the nature of consciousness.
Regarding the relationship between Descartes’ “I think” and the consciousness, Sartre mentions some three question which are to be raised. The first question is: Does the “I=think” accompany the consciousness or consciousness happens even outside the accompaniment of the “I-think”? The second question: Is the unity of our representations, directly or indirectly, made a reality by the ‘I think’? — or are we to understand that the representations of a consciousness must be unified and articulated in such a way that an ‘I think’ can always be uttered in regard to them? And the third question will be: Is the I which we encounter in our consciousness made possible by the synthetic unity of our representations, or is it the I that in fact unifies the representations among themselves?
The De Facto Existence of the “I” in the Consciousness
I think Husserl can explain the de facto existence of the “I” in the consciousness. Phenomenology is the scientific study of consciousness; therefore, it is a de facto science (science about the ontological existence of consciousness). The essential way of going of going about it is through intuition. Intuition is the presence of the object. In our sense here, the object is the consciousness. The problems it raises regarding consciousness is de facto problems.
The problems of the relations between the I and consciousness are thus existential problems. Husserl grasps the transcendental consciousness by intuition by the method of phenomenological reduction. This consciousness is not merely a logical condition but an absolute fact. In this sense, we will all be able to grasp it once we have done the “reduction.” For Heidegger, Sartre and Merleu Ponty, this consciousness is always the consciousness with a psychical and psychophysical me. For them, this psychical and psycho-physical me is sufficient. But for Husserl, it is not sufficient because, for him, the transcendental “I” is the structure of absolute consciousness. According to Husserl, it is transcendental consciousness that constitute the world by imprisoning itself in the empirical consciousness. Husserl says that transcendental consciousness becomes rigorously personal.
To defend the existence of the transcendental consciousness, Husserl proceeds from the very structure of consciousness itself namely, the intentionality. According to Husserl, consciousness unifies itself by transcending itself or going outside itself through its structure, intentionality. Secondly, Husserl explains how consciousness constitutes the identity of itself or subjectification of itself. According to him, the identity and the subjectivity of the consciousness must be the synthesis of the past consciousness with the present consciousness. This subjective unification he studies in “Phenomenology of consciousness of internal time” or in other words, “Internal Time Consciousness.” Consciousness unifies itself, concretely, by an interplay of ‘transversal’ consciousnesses. It means that consciousness constantly retains the past consciousnesses (retention of the past consciousnesses) and anticipate the future consciousnesses (protention of the future consciousnesses). In this way, consciousness continually refers back to itself: to speak of ‘a consciousness’ is to speak of the whole of consciousness (past, present and the future). In this sense, consciousness unifies itself in time and becomes a solid entity in the world.
We can also see the individuality of the consciousness in another angle. The individuality of the consciousness stem from the nature of the consciousness namely, that consciousness cannot be limited by anything else except by itself. Therefore, it constitutes a synthetic, individual totality of itself, completely isolated from other totalities of the same kind (other consciousnesses). The “I” or the empirical ego is the expression of this incommunicability and this inwardness of consciousnesses (the individual, synthetic totality of consciousness).
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