Abstract

In this paper I shall present two elements of Husserl’s theory of the life-world, facticity and historicity, which are of exemplary importance for his late phenomenology as a whole. I compare these two notions to two axes upon which Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world becomes inscribed. Reconsidering and reconstructing Husserl’s late thought under this viewpoint sheds new light on a notoriously enigmatic problem, i.e., the concept of the transcendental and its relation to the „mundane“ – to the world as constituted by transcendental consciousness. Drawing on unpublished manuscript material I claim, specifically, that the transcendental subject, in its „self-enworlding“ activity, as it were, „covers its tracks“ so as to obscure the transcendental origin of the worldly ego. This self-obscuring is itself an eidetic law of transcendental consciousness. The ambiguity in the transcendental/mundane ego is thrown into relief through Husserl’s analyses concerning the corporeal functioning of the lived-body. These considerations help further clarify Husserl’s claim that the transcendental and the factical are „moments of one structure“, while also incorporating the problem of historicity.