The Porosity of the Husserlian Self

This thesis presents an alternative approach to understanding the philosophical problem of the self through a thematic reconstruction of Edmund Husserl’s work. The account developed here is achieved by highlighting the genetic and generative strains in Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as elucidating the porous nature of the self. Such facets of the Husserlian self as embodied lived experience, habituality and social habitus, and the relation between self and lifeworld come to the fore in this investigation. Accordingly, thematic elements such as embodiment, temporality, personhood, intersubjectivity, and sociality are revealed to be fundamentally interdependent and inextricable dimensions that together, constitute the complex unity of the Husserlian self. It becomes apparent that the defining mark of the self lies within Husserl’s account of the lived through double-sidedness of sameness and difference, and their constitutive relationality expressed through the unifying medium of the living body, which is intimately embedded in a social nexus. The main argument of this thesis is that no one element of the self in Husserl is experienceable in isolation, and that Husserl’s understanding can equally accommodate the uniqueness of subjective experience as well as social, cultural, and historical inflections, without yielding constitutive priority to one dimension over the other. Through a reconstruction that highlights the porous nature of the self, this thesis demonstrates that Husserl’s account can offer an alternative to prevailing philosophical views of the self that tend to provide predominantly one-dimensional accounts. The understanding of the Husserlian self as porous also demonstrates the continued relevance of Husserl’s phenomenology, and highlights how it could provide a supplementary perspective for fields such as critical phenomenology and feminist philosophy. There are further philosophical implications of this reconstruction of the self for developing a renewed way of engaging with Husserl’s work, which can counter the more critical traditional readings of Husserlian phenomenology.