Human Studies

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-019-09527-1

THEORETICAL / PHILOSOPHICAL PAPER

The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental

and the Empirical Field: The Case of Husserl’s Philosophy

Remus Breazu1 

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract
In this article, I address the question of violence with respect to the phenomenologi-
cal difference between the transcendental and the empirical field. In the first part, I
phenomenologically address the notion of violence, developing a concept required
for an account of the phenomenon of violence. Thus, I correlate it with the notion
of vulnerability, arguing that violence cannot be understood irrespective of vulner-
ability. However, a proper phenomenological account has to indicate the subjective
conditions of possibility of a phenomenon as it is given in experience. Therefore, we
should ask: what is the status of violence when we are talking about the transcen-
dental field? This question leads to the second part of my article, where I address
the notion of violence from the perspective of the difference between the pure and
the empirical ego, as it has been traced out by Husserl. If from the point of view of
an empirical ego the concept of violence is meaningful, from the point of view of
the transcendental ego it seems to be absurd. This is particularly significant, because
Husserl is talking about the transcendental ego as being immortal. The pure ego
is thus invulnerable and this means that violence—understood from the point of
view of both the violating subject and the violated one—is something that cannot be
linked to the transcendental field. The question that arises—how is violence possible
on the empirical level, since it is impossible on the transcendental level?—is a ques-
tion to which Husserl cannot respond.

Keywords  Violence · Vulnerability · Death · Pure ego · Transcendental · Edmund

Husserl

The aim of this paper is to examine the possibility of violence in Husserl’s philoso-
phy. I will show that there are serious problems in Husserl’s philosophy if one wants
to account for the phenomenon of violence. First, I will make some general remarks

* Remus Breazu
remus.breazu@phenomenology.ro; remusbreazu@gmail.com
1
Institute for Research in the Humanities (ICUB), University of Bucharest, Dimitrie Branzda, no.
1, Bucharest, Romania

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 R. Breazu

about the phenomenon of violence. I will show that, in order to be able to speak
about violence, a necessary condition, although by all means not a sufficient one,
is vulnerability. Furthermore, in order for something to be vulnerable, it has to be
mortal. Second, I will attempt to trace some kind of vulnerability at the transcen-
dental level in Husserl’s philosophy. As I will show, vulnerability has to be a prop-
erty of the pure ego. Exactly this kind of vulnerability one cannot find in Husserl’s
reflections on the pure ego. On the contrary, Husserl emphasizes that the pure ego is
precisely invulnerable. Before I begin, I have to point out that, in this paper, “tran-
scendental violence” has nothing to do with the expression used by Derrida (1978),
which refers to the way we relate to the world through logos. In this paper, transcen-
dental violence means only violence at the transcendental level, that is the level of
the conditions of possibility.
In recent years, the phenomenon of violence has been analysed by a number of
phenomenologists, such as Staudigl (2006, 2007a, b, 2011, 2013, 2015), Mensch
(2008, 2013, 2017), Dodd (2009, 2017), Liebsch (2013), or, more recently, Cio-
can (2018). As far as I could see, all of them presuppose implicitly or explicitly
vulnerability as a necessary condition for the appearance of violence. For instance,
Staudigl (2007b: 687) says that “a phenomenological exploration of violence […]
involves integrating our insights on the unspeakable vulnerability of the embodied
subjected [my emphasis] on the one hand, with an inquiry into this phenomenon’s
symbolic determination and cultural codification on the other”.1 Or take the view of
Liebsch (2013: 9), who says that “[v]iolence in all its different forms is playing on
the registers of this ‘ecstatic’ kind of exposure [my emphasis] that can never fully
be overcome”. Indeed, if one has to account for violence, one would have to accept
vulnerability as a necessary condition. Starting from our everyday understanding of
violence, an understanding which is not delimited as a clear concept, I take vio-
lence in a very large meaning. By violence, I refer to physical violence, psychologi-
cal violence, linguistic violence, etc. We can say that violence has to be thought in
terms of harmful actions, or, to be more precise, actions that have the possibility to
be harmful. Likewise, by action I mean something very general. This broad mean-
ing of action can be understood by referring to Husserl’s notion of “I can”. E.g., I
can speak, and, because of this I sometimes act in the manner of speaking, I can
swim, and I act in the manner of swimming, etc. Of course, one can apprehend a
phenomenon, a situation as being violent, even though no one is harmed. However,
in order to be able to apprehend that situation as a violent one, I have to presup-
pose (most often passively) the possibility of harming, that is the vulnerability of
the target, even though I am not the aggressor. This lived presupposition shows itself
as an explicit presupposition in the theoretical reflective stance. In the middle of a
violent situation, vulnerability rather shows itself (even though implicitly). Take for
instance the murder scene from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment:
The old woman was bareheaded, as always. Her light-colored hair, sparse and
with gray patches, smeared generously with grease as usual, was braided into a

1
  See also Staudigl (2011: 214), Staudigl (2015: 255), and especially Staudigl (2006).

13
The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental and the…

thin pigtail tucked under a comb of horn that stuck out at the nape of her neck.
As a result of her small size, the blow came down on the crown of her head.
She cried out, but very weakly, and suddenly collapsed completely onto the
floor, although she’d managed to raise both hands to her head. In one she kept
hold of the “pledge.” Then he struck her a second time and a third with all his
might. (Dostoevsky 2017: 142)
In this case, the reader is the witness of the crime. Through the opening lines cited
(her “bareheaded”) one apprehends the old woman as someone vulnerable, and
because of that already apprehended vulnerability, possible here through the poetic
image, the reader is prepared to apprehend Raskolnikov’s action as a violent one. He
hit her, harming her, in fact, killing her. Another fact to be pointed out is that after
the first hit, she still manages to cry out, to raise her hands—i.e., she is still able to
act—but he hit her again, until she “tumbled backward”. Therefore, harming some-
one means limiting her Vermöglichkeit (the possibility to be able to), in this case
eliminating the “I can” as such—in the words of Mensch (2008: 13)—eliminating
“the ‘I can’ that allows an organic being to live by transcending itself”. Moreover, a
situation may be apprehended as being a violent one—and, thus, it is presupposed
in that situation some kind of vulnerability—from the point of view of the active
pole (the violent one), the passive pole (the violated one), or the “witness” (some-
one which is not directly involved in the “conflict”). Of course, these relations can
be further modified (see Ciocan 2018: 65 f.), but I think this is the core of a violent
situation if we are to understand violence essentially from a relational perspective
(see  Staudigl 2013). One can conclude from this that vulnerability is a necessary
condition, although by all means not a sufficient one, for the emerging of violence.
I consider violence, and, therefore, vulnerability, presupposes another thing, that
is death, or, to be more precise, mortality—the possibility of dying. The extreme
form of harmfulness—and, therefore, of violence—is the action that leads to death.
Levinas (1969: 233), for instance, said that “[i]n death I am exposed to absolute
violence”. Or, in Husserlian terms, “[u]ltimate violence is the cutting off of this pos-
sibility [i.e. the possibility to be able to, the ‘I can’]” (Mensch 2008: 13). One is vul-
nerable only because it has this essential characteristic, that is the possibility to die.
Of course, not every experience of violence is also an experience of mortality, even
though in every experience of violence one also experiences vulnerability. How-
ever, in order that something to be vulnerable, it must be “capable” of dying, that is
mortality is a necessary condition for vulnerability. One may say that vulnerability
is epistemologically founded2 in mortality, as a spiritual thing is epistemologically
founded in a corporal thing—I see pencils, books, etc., and not just bodies which
have certain spiritual functions. However, I cannot have the experience of a spiritual
thing if it is not also a corporal thing. Likewise, vulnerability presupposes mortal-
ity, even though when I experience vulnerability, I do not necessarily experience
mortality. However, the analogy stops here. Because, to be more precise, death is the
most striking appearance of vulnerability, and, in fact, it is the underling possibility

2
  For the difference between epistemological foundation and ontological foundation, see Nenon (1997).

13
 R. Breazu

for vulnerability. In death I am exposed to absolute violence, because death is the

absolute actualization of vulnerability. If violence shows itself as the possibility or
the actual limitation of the “I can,” then every violent action that is also an actual
harmful one destroys something. The possibility to be able to, Vermöglichkeit, can
be harmed only because, in the last instance, it can be completely eliminated.
One can argue that I illicitly limit the notion of violence because it seems that I
restrict myself to the violence exercised over the living, given that only the living is
characterised by Vermöglichkeit. But we experience violence even when someone
destroys something inanimate. For instance, the destruction of the Roman theatre in
the ancient city of Palmyra was undeniably an act of violence. However, by death,
I mean something very general. Provisionally, one can speak of the death of some-
thing inanimate, as it is the case with the ruins of Palmyra. Indeed, the destruction
of the ancient theatre involved something like death. Although this way of speak-
ing can be seen metaphorical, I think it is grounded in the “things themselves”. If
we think in a Heideggerian or Sartrian way, the buildings enclose a world, that is a
historical-human world, a world which, of course, can die. The world enclosed by
the things has to be understood precisely as sense. The difference between the sense
proper to things and the sense proper to the living is a matter that I will not pursue
here. What is relevant for my purpose is that the problem of vulnerability involves
the problem of death, even if we are talking about the vulnerability of something
inanimate.
Now, looking at Husserl’s philosophy, one can easily see that he operates in his
writings with a conception that presupposes two levels—the empirical and the tran-
scendental level—a difference which can provisionally be equated, in broad terms,
with the one between what is constituted and what constitutes. Using this model
of understanding, i.e., using the phenomenological reduction in our analyses, if one
would like to account for violence, then one should trace the conditions of possibil-
ity of violence, that is, looking in the transcendental field, one should indicate how
violence emerges as violence. As I have shown above, one necessary condition for
the possibility of violence is vulnerability. Therefore, one should indicate vulner-
ability in the transcendental field. Apparently, this “should” shows a constructive
procedure, which is in opposition with a phenomenological endeavour. However, in
the short analysis made above, vulnerability showed itself as something that appears
whenever violence occurs. The appearing of vulnerability is not something that just
goes along with violence. On the contrary, precisely because there is something
like vulnerability, violence can appear. Therefore, Husserl’s phenomenology must
have the resources to account for the transcendental vulnerability of consciousness.
Because vulnerability presupposes mortality, that is the possibility of dying, I will
attempt in the following to find such mortality at the transcendental level, as it has
been thought by Husserl.
Operating the phenomenological reduction, Husserl distinguishes the empiri-
cal ego from the transcendental ego. In his thought, this distinction—between the
empirical and the transcendental ego—has a long history. It is known that in his
Logical Investigations he rejected something like a pure ego, but, after the so-
called “transcendental turn,” (for this expression see Cobb-Stevens 1990) he began
to speak about the pure ego or the transcendental ego. While he was living, this

13
The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental and the…

transformation has been seen once he published the first volume of Ideas Pertaining
to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, in 1913, but now,
after the publication of much of his manuscripts, one can see that he has changed his
mind long before the publication of Ideas I. Whatever his grounds were for accept-
ing something like the pure ego, one can see that there are many differences between
his concept of pure ego and the (neo-)Kantian one. These differences have been
studied by many authors and they arrived at different conclusions.3 For my purpose
here, we should remark that the Husserlian pure ego is not just a concept. It is some-
thing, a phenomenon, even though a special kind of phenomenon (see Carr 1977). I
emphasize this because, if it was just a concept, then the question of violence would
not even appear. I believe it is reasonable to argue that violence is something that
appears in the middle of “animals,” that is animated beings. I don’t want to enter
into the problem whether violence is something peculiar only to humans or whether
it is proper to animals as well. After all, when it comes to phenomenology as it was
conceived by Husserl, one has the point of view of a generic Ego (Ego in German),
and not of this or that instantiated ego (ich), for instance, the human ego. In Hus-
serl’s words, “[o]wing to this epoché human solitude has become something radi-
cally different: it has become transcendental solitude, the solitude of the Ego. Ego
I am for myself not a human being within the world that is in being” (Husserl 1997:
491; see also Husserl 1997: 495). Therefore, violence has to be understood from the
point of view of a generic rational consciousness, or, in Husserl’s terms, of a tran-
scendental Ego.
Significantly enough, when it comes to Husserl’s analysis of violence, he does
not treat it in terms of the pure Ego. To be clear, his analysis may be from the
transcendental Ego’s point of view, but, as we will see, violence is something that
occurs among humans, and not among pure Egos. In a manuscript from November
1932, entitled “Dealing with Things—Dealing with Humans (as if with Things and
as Humans). Nexus—Inhibition, Coercion, Concordance of Wills, Conflict,”4 Hus-
serl (1973b: 508 f.) considers violence strictly from the point of view of humans.5
Starting from this text, we can understand that, for Husserl, violence is something
that occurs strictly among humans (persons). To behave violently means to treat
someone as something (to act as if the other human would be a thing) and, more
precisely, to force someone to do something that she does not want to. Violence
is understood here as forcing (zwingen): “[i]f he does not want [to do what I want
him to do], then I eventually need violence, I force him”6 (Husserl 1973b: 509, my
translation). I behave violently if I impose my will upon someone else’s will, so I

3
  On this issue, see Ricœur (1955: 46–49, 61–65), Kern (1964: 286–293), Marbach (1974: 247–282,
319–329), Carr (1977), Mohanty (1996: 23–27), Pradelle (2012: 29–76), or Lohmar (2012).
4
  “Beschäftigung mit Sachen — Beschäftigung mit Menschen (als wie mit Sachen und Menschen). Kon-
nex — Hemmung, Zwang, Willenseinstimmingkeit, Streit (November 1932)” in Husserl (1973b: 508–
510).
5
  See also Staudigl’s (2015: 66 ff.) analysis of this passage. Incidentally, Staudigl himself analyses vio-
lence referring to humans. See, for instance, Staudigl (2007a: 238), who argues for explaining “how phe-
nomenology is able to conceive of the manifold vulnerability of the subject’s embodiment as an irreduc-
ible component of human existence [my emphasis]”.
6
  “Will er nicht, so brauche ich evtl. Gewalt, ich zwinge ihn”.

13
 R. Breazu

limit her possibility to be able to (her Vermöglichkeit), I reduce therefore her state
of free will. If we look at Husserl’s presuppositions from this passage, we can eas-
ily see that he also presupposes vulnerability as a necessary condition for violence
to emerge. To be able to impose my will upon someone else’s will, she has to be
vulnerable. Furthermore, Husserl (1973b: 508) gives the example of murder as a
case of violence: “as I sometimes ‘destroy’ […] things, for example I tear and then
I throw away a piece of paper […] likewise I may want to kill a human being” (my
translation).
What is then the problem with this analysis? What is wrong if we treat violence
as something that occurs among humans? I think that the problem lies in the relation
between the pure ego and the personal ego. The first one is a modification of the sec-
ond one, but it is a modification only if we understand it from the point of view of
the methodological device of the phenomenological reduction. Thus, using an Aris-
totelian expression, “by nature,” the personal ego is a modification of the pure ego.
To put matters more precisely, even though one arrives at the pure ego starting from
the personal, human ego, from the constitution point of view, the pure ego is more
original than the human ego. Operating the phenomenological reduction, one can
then see that the personal ego is just something constituted by (and on) the pure ego.
The personal ego is therefore a modification of the pure ego (see Husserl 1982: 131;
2000: 116f.). If this is the case, then the personal ego cannot experience violence if
there is not something like transcendental violence, that is violence that occurs at the
transcendental level. Of course, one can say that we should not duplicate the entities
in order to operate in a transcendental manner. One does not need to have a perfect
correspondence between the two levels. This would be an artificial way. However, in
order to phenomenologically account for violence, one has to indicate the conditions
of the possibility of violence, that is to account for the way violence constitutes itself
as violence. As I have said above, one necessary condition is vulnerability. Violence
occurs because a personal ego, the human being as living body, is essentially vulner-
able. But if the human being is essentially vulnerable—and, as we have seen, that
also means that it is mortal—then the transcendental ego, the modified personal ego
through phenomenological reduction, has to be also vulnerable, and, therefore mor-
tal. This relation of dependence is based on a constitutional phenomenological law,
the so-called “oriented constitution” (Husserl 1982: 133): what is more primordial
“enters” with its sense into what is secondarily constituted. Before beginning the
analysis of the mortality of transcendental ego, we have to give some context to the
discussion.
As I have said above, the transcendental ego is a phenomenon, although a special
phenomenon, i.e., it is the presupposition of the givenness of any phenomena. Given
the fact that Husserl has constantly refined his views, a general synchronic account
of the transcendental ego would be a too narrow perspective. Therefore, in the fol-
lowing, I will briefly discuss several concepts of the transcendental ego, from the
perspective of Husserl’s development.7 Before that, I have to say that, in the context

7
  On this issue, for more detailed analyses, see Mensch (1997, 2009), and Lohmar (2012).

13
The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental and the…

of the ego, I take “pure” and “transcendental” as synonyms. For Husserl (1956:
254 f.; 1982: 21), “pure” means purified from the mundane, that is from the natural
attitude, which posits the world. The pure ego is the transcendental ego, that is the
unreflected ego, which constitutes everything. Therefore, there is also a difference
between pure ego and eidos-ego (Husserl 1982: 69–72).8
It is known that during his Logical Investigations, Husserl rejected something like
the pure ego. During that period, Husserl (2005: 240) even said that he “must attack
the philosophical fiction of the pure Ego”. As Marbach (1974: 76–119; 2000: 79
ff.) showed, Husserl introduced the ego because he wanted to account for the objec-
tivity in terms of intersubjectivity, his older conception of a consciousness without
ego not being capable of accounting for such a theory. Thus, as Lohmar (2012) has
remarked, Husserl’s conception of pure ego has very little to do with the (neo)Kan-
tian notion of pure ego, even though in Ideas I, Husserl (1983: 133) refers explicitly
to the Kantian pure apperception.9 Moreover, the pure ego has to be understood as
something essentially private, i.e., what Husserl names “the primordial sphere” or
the “sphere of owness” (Husserl 1982: 108 ff.). The Aristotelian difference between
what is clear by nature and what is clear to us is likewise instructive here: when,
at the beginning of the “Fifth Meditation,” Husserl (1982: 92 f.) says that he must
operate a special kind of reduction—a reduction which he also names “primordial
reduction” (Husserl 1973b: 125)—in order to isolate, that is to abstract, the sphere
of owness, he says that the pure ego as a primordial sphere is an abstraction from the
point of view of the world that is already (from the point of view of worldly time)
constituted. However, “by nature,” the primordial sphere precedes transcendental
intersubjectivity, because of the oriented constitution law.10
In Ideas I, Husserl (1983: 64) understands the pure ego as a “part” of the pure
consciousness, which relates to the plurality of cogitata, the experiences which are
the “correlates of consciousness”. Because one cannot grasp the pure ego from a
single act, his way of delimiting the pure ego is through the variation method, just
as Husserl (2001a: 119–122), for instance, in his Logical Investigations, using the
same procedure, makes the difference between the matter and the quality of an act.
By comparing different acts, one can note that there is something identical from
which emerges different regards to the object—the Ego-regards (Husserl 1983: 75
f.). That is why Husserl (for instance, Husserl 2000: 105) often refers to the pure ego
as something essentially abstract, that is the pure ego and its experiences seem to be
moments—non-autonomous parts—of a single whole, i.e., the consciousness. How-
ever, the pure ego in its originality (when it is not reflected) is not even a moment
(Husserl 2000: 108 f.). The pure ego is not constituted, but constitutes everything.
Because of this—it cannot be bracketed, given the fact that every experience presup-
poses it—it is a “transcendency within immanency” (Husserl 1983: 133). However,
one can phenomenologically analyse a lot of things without referring to the pure

8
  On the notion of eidos-ego, see Serban (2016).
9
  However, one must notice that, in one of his personal copies of the book, near his reference to Kant,
Husserl (1983: 133) made the following remark: “whether also <Kant’s> sense I leave undecided…”.
See also Husserl (2000: 115).
10
  On the same relation, but between the pure ego and the personal ego, see Dodd (2010: 62).

13
 R. Breazu

ego. That is why, in Ideas I, Husserl does not dedicate too much space for the pure
ego. However, in Ideas II, there is a whole chapter about it (Husserl 2000: 101–127).
What interests us is the sharp distinction that Husserl makes between the pure and
the empirical (or, as he often names it, the personal) ego. The first is the ego-pole
which remains essentially identical and relates to its experiences (cogitata); the sec-
ond is the human ego, which, on its part, can be phenomenologically analysed, that
is one can find a priori laws concerning its development (the so-called psyche).11
In Ideas II, using an Aristotelian expression, Husserl (2000: 109 f.) considers that
the pure ego is not affected by generation and perishing (Entstehen und Vergehen).
His reasoning is essentially Cartesian, and, as a matter of fact, Husserl explicitly
refers to Descartes’ Meditations: if the pure ego had been subjected to generation
and perishing, then I would have been able to grasp these features of it, for instance,
its possibility to perish. However, as soon as I attempt to do this, I find myself using
the same pure ego in order to account for its eventual nonexistence. For Husserl, this
is absurd, counter-sensical (ein Wiedersinn). The same argument is used in differ-
ent locations, such as Husserl 1973a: 154–158, or Husserl 2006: 438 (“Wanting to
experience death as death is a countersense”). Another similar argument refers to the
lived present, which is essentially related to the pure ego: given that every primor-
dial impression presupposes protention (and retention), then one cannot infer from
the present the absence of a future happening (protention). Therefore, the death of
the pure ego is absurd (Husserl 2001b: 466–471). If we refer to Husserl’s (2001a: 67
f.) grammatical distinction between absurdity and nonsense from “The Forth Logi-
cal Investigation,” and we corelate this distinction with the idea of a “material coun-
tersense” to which Husserl (1983: 108 f.) is referring in Ideas I, we can say that
the possibility of the nonexistence of pure ego is not absurd, but, on the contrary,
it is precisely nonsensical from a material (sachlich) point of view. Indeed, when
it comes to talk about the nonexistence of the pure ego or the consciousness, Hus-
serl (2013: 140) sometimes refers to it as nonsensical. Therefore, the pure ego is not
mortal. Before drawing some conclusions, we should elaborate a bit on this problem.
The problem of the death of the pure ego, along with its birth, its embryonal
childhood, its fainting, or its dreamless sleep, are the so-called limit-problems of
phenomenology. They are limit-problems (Limesprobleme; Husserl 2006: 160) or
limit-phenomena (Husserl 2006: 105), because phenomenology, in its Husserlian
version, cannot properly account for them, because it seems that one lacks the expe-
rience of these phenomena.12 I think that one of Husserl’s (1997: 358) marginal

11
 In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl (1982: 65–68; 72 f.) gradually describes the various notions of ego
from the point of view of constitution: from the pure ego to the human psyche.
12
  See, on the issue of the pure ego’s death, MacDonald (2007), Dodd (2010), Geniusas (2010), Sigrist
(2012), or Gérard (2016). Sigrist (2012) interestingly argues that death can be understood from the point
of view of the primordial sphere, if we take into account memory and sedimentation. He argues that
we understand death through the “death” of every moment, which passes away in the past. This pass-
ing away gives a clue for our finitude, i.e., for our possible death. However, if we look in one of Hus-
serl’s (2001b: 467) manuscripts, we can find a passage that directly contradicts Sigrist’s argument: “[o]ne
imputes the possible cessation of every conceivable particular being to a putative cessation of the stream
of life. The cessation itself as the cessation of the object presupposes a non-cessation, namely, conscious-
ness to which cessation is given”. Therefore, not only that Sigrist’s argument is invalidated, but, on the
contrary, it is an argument for the immortality of the ego.

13
The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental and the…

notes on his own copy of Martin Heidegger’s book, Being and Time, is paradig-
matic: “[h]ow can I make that [the experience of my own death] intuitional?”13 For
Husserl, in order to account for something, one must experience it in its intuition.
One must attain evidence through intuition. In this case, one must experience one’s
own death, which is impossible. Therefore, Husserl holds throughout his life that the
pure ego is not mortal. Only the empirical ego is mortal. It must be pointed out that
Husserl is not referring to the pure ego as something outside of time. On the con-
trary, the pure ego is essentially related to (the immanent) time, even though Hus-
serl (2001c: 278, for instance) asserts sometimes that the pure ego is not temporal.14
However, I think that one must understand these assertions from the point of view
of the experiences (Erlebnisse) and objects, which are temporal in another kind than
the pure ego. Because the ego is a living ego, it is living in and through its experi-
ences, and because of that, it is also temporal, even though “in a secondary way”
(Husserl 2001c: 287). That is why the immortality of the pure ego does not have the
same signification as the idea of an immortal soul, which one can find in different
religions or philosophical conceptions. Returning to our matters, restricting myself
to the primordial sphere, I cannot grasp the possibility of dying. For Husserl (2013:
3), I am aware of my mortality only from the intersubjective point of view: I see oth-
ers dying, and, based on this, I conclude that I will die—but I, as a human being, as
a living body, not as a pure ego.
We can now draw some conclusions. Because the pure ego, in its primordial
sphere, is not mortal, then it means that it is invulnerable. Therefore, one can-
not account for something like transcendental violence. However, violence seems
to be essentially an intersubjective phenomenon. Therefore, one is not forced to
find something like violence in the primordial sphere. However, don’t I constitute
the other one as a transcendental ego as I am myself? Therefore, the other one
is likewise invulnerable, thus, even at the intersubjective level, there are serious
problems to account for the possibility of violence. Moreover, I think there is
a greater problem in Husserl’s perspective on these matters. Given the oriented
constitution law, it is very problematic to account for violence even at the empiri-
cal level. If every empirical ego is the modification of a pure ego, and the pure
ego is invulnerable, how can we account for the vulnerability of the human ego?
Of course, Husserl brings forward the living body, whose vulnerability is easy
to be apprehended and experienced. But shouldn’t the human psyche, which is
indeed just an abstract part of the living body, retain the property of the pure ego,
the latter being a more primordial stratum of it? How should we understand the
relation between the human psyche, the living body, and the pure ego? Does the
incarnation of the pure ego bring such a modification that the original stratum

13
 For an analysis of Husserl’s notes on Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics from the
point of view of death and finitude, see Geniusas (2010: 87).
14
  Eduard Marbach (1974: 215 ff.) pointed out that Husserl constantly hesitates when it comes to deter-
mine the temporal status of pure ego, sometimes stating that it is immortal, at other times stating that it is
eternal. However, as Husserl (2001b: 471) says somewhere, the ego “is an eternal being in the process of
becoming” (my emphasis). This shows the living character of the ego and, therefore, its essential relation
to time.

13
 R. Breazu

of the pure ego does not count anymore? I think Husserl, from his philosophical
framework, is not able to respond to these questions, and that is precisely why
the transcendental death is not only a limit-phenomenon for him, but it is also a
nonsense.
However, one must take into account that this feature of the pure ego—its immor-
tality—gives the possibility to the Husserlian phenomenologist to offer through her
endeavours a priori laws. From the standpoint of the pure ego, which elevates itself
outside all factual and worldly becoming, one can draw a priori laws in the proper
sense of the word. For a phenomenological endeavour such as the one made by Hei-
degger is not capable to support such a claim. On the contrary, due to the radical
finitude of human Dasein, for which he argued, Heidegger was forced to historicize
the a priori. However, this leads to another problem, which I will not expose here.
Those issues are exemplarily express by Eugen Fink in one of his conversations with
Cairns (1976: 25): for Heidegger “all knowledge is to be interpreted from the basic
fact of human finitude. […] Heidegger probably finds in Husserl a certain hybris, a
certain ‘superbity,’ forgetting the limits of humanity, and fleeing from certain prob-
lems, such as those of death, etc”. But this is another matter, which falls outside of
our current interrogation.
To sum up, a phenomenological approach to violence has to take into considera-
tion the question of vulnerability. Vulnerability presupposes mortality, even though
in the experience of vulnerability one does not have to necessarily experience mor-
tality. Mortality is rather the extreme form of vulnerability, but nevertheless its
essential underlying possibility. Given these facts, if one has to deal with violence
from the perspective of Husserl’s philosophy, there are serious problems, precisely
because the pure ego is immortal and thus invulnerable. A transcendental ego can-
not do violence to another transcendental ego. They are, so to speak, unable to hurt
each other, so there can be no form of violence at the transcendental level. This
means that the constituting can never be destroyed, in other words, the transcenden-
tal life is something that persists no matter what. Thus, the sense cannot be subject
of violence, and we cannot define violence as “destruction of sense”. It seems that
phenomenology has nothing to say about violence. Furthermore, a second problem
appears in Husserl’s phenomenology. Given the phenomenological law of “oriented
constitution,” which states that what is more original retains itself at the derivate
level, there seems to appear a greater problem, namely, if we are consistent, how can
a human exert violence upon another human, given that “every human-ego harbors
its transcendental ego” (Husserl 2001b: 471)? Through this critique, I do not intend
to say that one should abandon Husserl’s phenomenology. On the contrary, my own
very brief analysis of violence from the first part of the paper is guided by Husser-
lian phenomenological techniques. Rather, I would like to point out the necessity
to revive the question of the transcendental living ego, which has to be once again
reconsidered, if phenomenology wants to account for the things themselves, in this
case, for the violence itself.

Acknowledgements  This article is part of the project The Structures of Conflict: A Phenomenological
Approach to Violence (PN-III-P4-ID-PCE-2016-0273), funded by UEFISCDI.

13
The Question of Violence Between the Transcendental and the…

References
Cairns, D. (1976). Conversations with Husserl and Fink. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Carr, D. (1977). Kant, Husserl, and the nonempirical ego. The Journal of Philosophy, 74(11),
682–690.
Ciocan, C. (2018). Violence, animality, and territoriality. Research in Phenomenology, 48(1), 57–76.
Cobb-Stevens R. (1990) Husserl’s transcendental turn. In: Husserl and analytic philosophy. Dordrecht:
Springer.
Derrida, J. (1978). Violence and metaphysics. An essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas (A. Bass,
Trans.). In Writing and difference (pp. 79–153). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dodd, J. (2009). Violence and phenomenology. New York: Routledge.
Dodd, J. (2010). Death and time in Husserl’s C-Manuscripts. In D. Lohmar & I. Yamaguchi (Eds.),
On time—New contributions to the Husserlian phenomenology of time (pp. 51–70). Dordrecht:
Springer.
Dodd, J. (2017). Phenomenological reflections on violence: A skeptical approach. New York: Routledge.
Dostoevsky, F. (2017). Crime and punishment (M.R. Katz, Trans.). New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation.
Geniusas, S. (2010). On birth, death, and sleep in Husserl’s late manuscripts on time. In D. Lohmar &
I. Yamaguchi (Eds.), On time—New contributions to the Husserlian phenomenology of time (pp.
71–89). Dordrecht: Springer.
Gérard, V. (2016). «L’ego hors de soi»: sur la naissance, le sommeil et la mort. De l’Anthropologie du
point de vue pragmatique aux Textes tardifs sur la constitution du temps [“The Ego Beyond Itself:”
on Birth, Sleep, and Death. From Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View to the Late Texts
on the Constitution of Time]. Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Phi-
losophy, 8(2), 571–595.
Husserl, E. (1956). Erste Philosophie (1923/24). Erster Teil: Kritische Ideengeschichte [First Philoso-
phy (1923/24). First Volume: Critical History of Ideas]. In R. Boehm (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus
Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1973a). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Zweiter Teil:
1921–1928 [Concerning the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity. Texts from Literary Remains. The
Second Volume: 1921–1928]. In I. Kern (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1973b). Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil:
1929–1935 [Concerning the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity. Texts from Literary Remains. The
Third Volume: 1929–1935]. In I. Kern (Ed.). Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1982). Cartesian meditations. An introduction to phenomenology (D. Cairns, Trans.). The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Husserl, E. (1983). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy.
First book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology (F. Kersten, Trans.). The Hague: Marti-
nus Nijhoff Publishers.
Husserl, E. (1997). Psychological and transcendental phenomenology and the confrontation with Hei-
degger (1927–1931): The Encyclopaedia Britannica Article, The Amsterdam Lectures, “Phenom-
enology and Anthropology” and Husserl’s Marginal Notes in Being and Time and Kant and the
Problem of Metaphysics (T. Sheehan and R.E. Palmer, Trans.). Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, E. (2000). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy.
Second book: Studies in the phenomenology of constitution (R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, Trans.).
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2001a). Logical investigations. Volume II (J.N. Findley, Trans.). London: Routledge.
Husserl, E. (2001b). Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis. lectures on transcendental logic
(A.J. Steinbock, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Husserl, E. (2001c). Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/18) [The Bernau Time-
Consciousness Manuscripts (1917/18)]. In D. Lohmar (Ed.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Husserl, E. (2005). Phantasy, image consciousness, and memory (1898–1925) (J.B. Brough, Trans.).
Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, E. (2006). Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934). Die C-Manuskripte [Late Texts on the
Constitution of Time (1929–1934). The C-Manuscripts]. In D. Lohmar (Ed.). Dordrecht: Springer.
Husserl, E. (2013). Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte.
Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937) [Limit-problems of Phenomenology.

13
 R. Breazu

Analyses of the Unconsciousness and the Instincts. Metaphysics. Late Ethics. Texts from the Literary
Remains (1908–1937)]. In R. Sowa und T. Vongehr (Eds.). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kern, I. (1964). Husserl und Kant. Eine Untersuchung über Husserls Verhältnis zu Kant und zum Neu-
kantianismus [Husserl and Kant. A Research on Husserl’s Relationship with Kant and Neokantian-
ism]. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and infinity. An Essay on Exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Pittsburgh, PA:
Duquense University Press.
Liebsch, B. (2013). What does (not) count as violence: On the state of recent debates about the inner con-
nection between language and violence. Human Studies, 36(1), 7–24.
Lohmar, D. (2012). Ego and arch-ego in Husserlian phenomenology. In R. Breeur & U. Melle (Eds.),
Phaenomenologica: Life, subjectivity & art (pp. 277–302). Dordrecht: Springer.
MacDonald, P. (2007). Husserl, the monad and immortality. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology,
7(2), 1–18.
Marbach, E. (1974). Das Problem des Ich in der Phänomenologie Husserls [The Problem of the Ego in
Husserl’s Phenomenology]. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff.
Marbach, E. (2000). The place for an ego in current research. In D. Zahavi (Ed.), Exploring the self. Phil-
osophical and psychopthological perspectives on self-experience (pp. 75–94). Amsterdam/ Philadel-
phia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Mensch, J. (1997). What is a self. In B. C. Hopkins (Ed.), Husserl in contemporary context (pp. 61–77).
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Mensch, J. (2008). Violence and embodiment. Symposium, 12(1), 4–15.
Mensch, J. (2009). The phenomenological status of the ego. Idealistic Studies, 39(1/3), 1–9.
Mensch, J. (2013). Violence and selfhood. Human Studies, 36(1), 25–41.
Mensch, J. (2017). Senseless violence: Liminality and intertwining. The European Legacy, 22(6),
667–686.
Mohanty, J. N. (1996). Kant and Husserl. Husserl Studies, 13(1), 19–30.
Nenon, T. (1997). Two models of foundation in the Logical Investigations. In B. C. Hopkins (Ed.), Hus-
serl in contemporary context (pp. 97–114). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Pradelle, D. (2012). Par-delà la révolution copernicienne: sujet transcendantal et facultés chez Kant et
Husserl [Beyond the Copernican Revolution: Transcendental Subject and Faculties at Kant and
Husserl]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Ricœur, P. (1955). Kant et Husserl [Kant and Husserl]. Kant-Studien, 46(1–4), 44–67.
Serban, C. (2016). L’ego a-t-il un eidos comme les autres? [Does the ego have an eidos like the others?].
Revue roumaine de philosophie, 60(1), 103–117.
Sigrist, M. (2012). Death in Transcendental Phenomenology. In 43rd annual meeting. Husserl Circle.
Boston College. Proceedings (pp. 127–136).
Staudigl, M. (2006). The vulnerable body: Towards a phenomenological theory of violence. In A.-T.
Tymieniecka (Ed.), Analecta Husserliana (Vol. LXXXIV, pp. 259–272)., Logos of phenomenology
and phenomenology of the logos. Book two Dordrecht: Springer.
Staudigl, M. (2007a). Towards a phenomenological theory of violence: Reflections following Merleau-
Ponty and Schutz. Human Studies, 30(3), 233–253.
Staudigl, M. (2007b). The many faces of violence a phenomenological inquiry. In I. Copoeru & H. R.
Sepp (Eds.), Phenomenology 2005. Selected essays from Northern Europe, Part 2 (pp. 685–716).
Bucharest: Zeta Books.
Staudigl, M. (2011). Esquisse d’une phénoménologie de la violence [Outline for a Phenomenology of
Violence]. Revue germanique internationale, 13, 205–220.
Staudigl, M. (2013). Towards a relational phenomenology of violence. Human Studies, 36(1), 43–66.
Staudigl, M. (2015). Phänomenologie der Gewalt [Phenomenology of Violence]. Cham: Springer.

Publisher’s Note  Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

13