Song:Das Problem des Selbstbewusstseins

This book is dedicated to self-consciousness in three stages of Husserl's thought development and addresses the epistemological question of how self-consciousness serves as an unquestionable and thus evident foundation. Unlike the typical approach in current research, self-consciousness is not examined from an ontological perspective within the framework of consciousness studies, but is instead closely linked to the question of epistemic justification in Husserl's sense. This is achieved by tracing Husserl's discussions on self-consciousness through the lens of three methods that primarily serve an epistemological critique: the reduction to the real content in the first edition of the Logical Investigations, the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, and the essential intuition. The focus on these three methods reveals three different conceptions of self-consciousness: Around 1900, Husserl initially defines self-consciousness as the inner perception of pure current experiential data. After the transcendental turn in 1907, he interprets it as a distinctive feature of self-awareness in purely transcendental-immanent conscious experiences. Finally, in Ideas I (1913), Husserl develops self-consciousness as a general and necessary essential determination, expressed through the concept of the pure ego. By contrasting these three conceptions, the author presents a new and systematic interpretation of Husserl's theory of self-consciousness.