On The "transcendental Ego" Of Kant's Two Meanings

Kant’s concept of transcendental ego has two connotations. On the one hand it suggests an empty intellectual representation of a quite unique kind which accompanies each of other representations as an identical "correlate". Due to this accompanying, all "my" representations are regarded as being "for me". On the other hand, transcendental ego means transcendental apperception which synthesizes and unites the manifold representations of intuition and thus ensures the identity of self. Although we can be conscious of these two forms of transcendental ego, they can’t be cognized either. Based on transcendental ego, Kant clarifies the three meanings of Descartes’ proposition "cogito, ergo sum" and reveals a new approach to the problems of self-identity and "outer world". Descartes confuses transcendental ego in the first meaning, namely the identical "correlate", with empirical ego. Kant changes the thinking mode of binary opposition between subject and object drastically. The subjectivity as a real moment of the world is insidious traditionally in people’s understanding of the world all the time and "comes on the stage" or becomes "visible" for the first time in Kant’s new understanding. When Kant has done away with the thinking mode of binary opposition between subject and object and its relevant prejudices—"corresponding", for example, the problems such as "outer world" and "mind-body" could be easily solved. A lot of critics ignore the distinctions of the two meanings of Kant’s transcendental ego. As a result, great interpretive difficulties of a number of Kant’s expositions of transcendental ego arise. Although both in Kant and Husserl the concept "transcendental" is used to identify the questioning way of tracing or reflecting the ultimate source of cognition and the result of this tracing or reflecting, namely subjectivity, this concept in Kant differs greatly in many aspects from the one in Husserl. A reason of these differences is that unlike Kant the concept "evidence", which is inherited from Descartes, plays an important role in Husserl’s thought. Kant wants to analyze the transcendental element in "Erfahrung" and thus there is not a phrase "transzendental Erfahrung" in Kant’s text. By contrast, Husserl wants to understand "Erfahrung" from different levels or dimensions. Thus in Husserl there are both naive "Erfahrung" obtained from "natural stance" and "tranzendental Erfahrung" obtained from "transzendental stance". While "xian yan de" is not a good Chinese translation of the concept "transcendental", it is better than "chao yue lun de", the main reason of which is that the concept "transcendent" has unique connotation and usage in Kant. In Husserl "chao yue lun de" as a Chinese translation of "tranzendental" is appropriate while "xian yan de" is not. Kant’s "transcendental ego" in the first meaning and Husserl’s "pure ego (Ichpol)" are really alike. Kant’s theory about "empirical ego" is seriously deficient. The way of constitution about empirical ego is not the same as that about outer objects. The category "substance" can be applied in the latter but not the former. Besides, empirical ego does not manifest itself in inner-sense representations.Husserl’s thinking about "person" is an important supplement on this aspect.