1. For a more thorough but still quite inadequate discussion of Husserl’s concept of the divine entelechy, see James G. Hart, “Divine Truth in Husserl and Kant: Some Issues in Phenomenological Theology”, in Daniel Guerriere, ed., The Phenomenology of Truth Proper to Religion (Albany: SUNY, forthcoming; also “A Precis of an Husserlian Philosophical Theology”, in Essays in Phenomenological Theology, ed. Steven Laycock and James Hart (Albany: SUNY, 1986). I wish to thank Professor Samuel IJsseling, Managing Director of the Husserl-Archives in Louvain for permission to use and quote from the Nachlass. I wish also to thank the Lilly Foundation for the grant which enabled me to spend the summer of 1988 in writing this essay.
2. H.-N. Castañeda, “On the Phenomeno-logic of the I” Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Philosophy (Vienna: Herder, 1968), Vol. III: 260–266. We do not find exactly this position in Husserl. Yet there are variations on an ontological argument. Because Husserl holds that the listener’s perception of occasional-indexical expressions involves reference to the speaker’s situation, “I” is an expression, a concept, to whose content the existence of the object belongs. (See Manfred Sommer, 188, of the work cited in n. 17 below.) Consider also, that whereas the being of eide typically is indifferent to the issue of real factual existence, the eidos “I” is inconceivable without the factual existence of the transcendental “I” (Hua XV, 385). Similarly, Husserl holds that the transcendental “I”, as the dative of manifestation (see the body of the text below), is nichtwegdenkbar, i.e., not able to be eliminated conceptually, in exercitu, in the presentation of anything — even the presentation of a world in which there are no human forms of consciousness. See, e.g., B IV 6 and B III 1; also, e.g., Hua VIII, 408–413; Hua IX, 477–488; Hua XIII, 290 ff.; Hua XIV, 151–154.
3. Cf. Roderick Chisholm, The First Person (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1981), 49.
4. Castaneda has orchestrated this theme in numerous writings. The seminal essay is “Indicators and Quasi-Indicators”, American Philosophical Quarterly IV (1967), 85–100; see also n. 2.
5. In a richly instructive article (which I discovered after completing this essay) Herbert Spiegel-berg holds that an authentic use of “we” is when the speaker addresses others whom he wants to include. “We” therefore tries to make the others listen and realize that they are appealed to as partners. This is its performative function. I hold this to be an improper use of “we” (see below). I owe the insight to my eleven-year old daughter Jenni’s instruction on how this use of “we” is a form either of imperialism or disingenuous presumption of the fulfillment of conditions which are still unfulfilled. See Spiegelberg’s “On the Right to Say ‘We’”in Phenomenological Sociology: Issues and Applications, ed. George Psathas (New York: John Wiley, 1973, 129–158).