Originally published in David Carr & Chr. Lotz (Eds.

): Subjektivität - Verantwortung -
Wahrheit. Peter Lang. Frankfurt am Main, 2002, 75-89. Please quote from the published
version.

Dan Zahavi
Danish Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities

Anonymity and first-personal givenness: An attempt at reconciliation

In this paper I wish to argue that it is possible to combine two apparently opposed
positions, both of which have had ardent phenomenological advocates. The first position states
that our consciousness is essentially characterized by its first-personal givenness, i.e., by what
ultimately amounts to a pervasive pre-reflective self-awareness. The second position states that
our consciousness at its most fundamental level is characterized by an elusive and anonymous
nature.1
I. The most famous spokesman for the essential givenness of consciousness is, of
course, Sartre. In the important introduction to L’Être et le néant Sartre claims that an
ontological analysis of intentionality leads to self-awareness since the mode of being of
intentional consciousness is to be for-itself (pour-soi), that is, self-aware. Just as an extended
object can only exist three-dimensionally, an experience can only exist as self-aware. This
reasoning might appear especially convincing when it comes to feelings like pain or pleasure -
pain is, as we all know, painful - but Sartre insists that it holds true for all intentional acts. As
he writes: “Cette conscience (de) soi, nous ne devons pas la considérer comme une nouvelle
conscience, mais comme le seul mode d’existence qui soit possible pour une conscience de
quelque chose.”(Sartre 1943, 20).
We find a rather similar thesis in Husserl, who claims that subjectivity is as such
characterized by its conscious givenness. No matter what worldly entities subjectivity might
be conscious of and otherwise occupied with, it is also given to itself. 2 In Husserl’s words:
“[J]edes Erlebnis ist ‘Bewußtsein’, und Bewußtsein ist Bewußtsein von... Jedes Erlebnis ist
aber selbst erlebt, und insofern auch ‘bewußt’.”(Hua X, 291). In short, the subjective or first-
personal givenness of the experience is not simply a quality added to the experience, a mere
varnish, but on the contrary constitutes the very mode of being of the experience. Husserl uses
a variety of terms to characterize this self-givenness, but the most frequent ones are ‘inner
consciousness’, ‘Urbewußtsein’, or ‘impressional consciousness’.3
II. When it comes to the view that consciousness at the very bottom is characterized by
elusiveness and anonymity one might for instance draw on Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, both
of whom question the power of reflection, and declare that there will always remain a difference
between the lived and the understood. Merleau-Ponty writes that our temporal existence is both
a condition for and an obstacle to our self-comprehension. Temporality contains an internal

1
A related issue which I will have to side-step in this article concerns the question
whether consciousness is at bottom egological or non-egological. For some reflections on this
question see however Zahavi 2000.
2
One can find numerous statements to this effect. See for instance Hua I, 81, IV, 318,
VIII, 189, 412, 450, XIII, 252, 462, XIV, 151, 292, 353, 380.
3
Cf. Hua IV, 118-119, X, 85, 89-90, 119, 126-127, XXIII, 321.

1
fracture that permits us to return to our past experiences in order to investigate them
reflectively, but as he points out, this very fracture also prevents us from fully coinciding with
ourselves.4 At the same time, he often speaks of our personal and conscious subjectivity as
being founded upon an obscure, impersonal and anonymous existence. As he puts it in
Phénoménologie de la perception: “...ma vie m’échappe de tous côtés, elle est circonscrite par
des zones impersonnelles.”(Merleau-Ponty 1945, 382). In a similar vein, Husserl argues that
there will always remain an unthematic and anonymous spot in the life of the subject.5 Even a
universal reflection will contain a moment of naivety, since reflection is necessarily prevented
from grasping itself. More generally, Husserl concedes that the intentional activity of the
subject is founded upon and conditioned by an obscure and blind passivity, by drives and
associations. He even argues that there are constitutive processes of an anonymous and
involuntary nature taking place in the underground or depth-dimension of subjectivity which
can only be uncovered through an elaborate ‘archeological effort’. 6 In fact, as Husserl
famously declares in Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, his investigation of the problem of
passivity could well carry the title ‘a phenomenology of the unconscious’.7
One obvious reason to question the legitimacy of a neat division between the two
outlined positions is of course that one can find thinkers who hold both to be true. As we have
just seen Husserl can be quoted in support of both, and even though one might simply take that
as proof of the incoherency of his thinking, I will in the following opt for a more positive
interpretation. I will try to show that a closer examination of respectively the nature of first-
personal givenness and of anonymity can allow for a reconciliation. Taking Husserl as my point
of departure, I will argue that a pervasive pre-reflective self-awareness neither has to imply
total transparency, nor allow for complete reflective appropriation, and that the anonymous
dimension should not be construed as implying some kind of undifferentiated and pre-
individuated field of experiencing.

1. First-personal givenness

First to the question of the first-personal givenness of consciousness. What exactly is

it, and why claim that it ultimately involves some kind of primitive pre-reflective self-
awareness?
Experiences are normally taken to be characterized by having a subjective ‘feel’ to
them, i.e., a certain (phenomenal) quality of ‘what it is like’ or what it ‘feels’ like to have them.
Whereas we cannot ask what it feels like to be a piece of soap or a radiator, we can ask what it
is like to be a chicken, an alligator or a human being, because we take them to be conscious,
i.e., to have experiences. To undergo a conscious experience necessarily means that there is
something it is like for the subject to have that experience.8 This is obviously true of bodily
sensations like pain or nausea. But it is also the case for perceptual experiences, desires,
feelings and moods. There is something it is like to taste an omelet, to touch an ice cube, to

4
Merleau-Ponty 1945, 399.
5
Hua IX, 478.
6
Hua IV, 277, XI, 125. Cf. Mishara 1990.
7
Hua XI, 154. For some of Husserl’s rare references to psychoanalysis, cf. Hua IV,
222, VI, 240.
8
Nagel 1974, 436, Searle 1992, 131-132.

2
crave chocolate, to have stage fright, to feel envious, nervous, depressed, or happy. However,
it would be a mistake to limit the phenomenal dimension of experience to sensory or emotional
states alone. There is also something it is like to entertain abstract beliefs; there is an
experiential difference between hoping or fearing that justice will prevail, and between
accepting and denying that the analysis of self-consciousness in German Idealism is inferior to
the analysis one finds in the phenomenological tradition.
Is it possible to elucidate this experiential quality in further detail? Whereas the object
of A’s perceptual experience is intersubjectively accessible in the sense that it can in principle
be given to others in the same way that it is given to A, A’s perceptual experience itself is only
given directly to A. Whereas A and B can both perceive the numerically identical same cherry,
each of them has their own distinct perception of it, and can share these just as little as B can
share A’s bodily pain. B might certainly realize that A is in pain, he might even empathize with
A, but he cannot actually feel A’s pain the same way A does. We can formulate this by saying
that B has no access to the first-personal givenness of A’s experience.
This first-personal givenness of experiential phenomena is not something quite
incidental to their being, something that the experiences could lack without ceasing to be
experiences. On the contrary, it is this first-personal givenness that makes the experiences
subjective. To put it differently, with a slightly risky phrasing, their first-personal givenness
entails a built-in self-reference, a primitive experiential self-referentiality. When I am aware of
an occurrent pain, perception, or thought from the first-person perspective, the experience in
question is given immediately, non-inferentially and non-criterially as mine, i.e., I do not first
scrutinize a specific perception or feeling of pain, and subsequently identify it as mine. If I am
puzzled, I can neither be in doubt nor mistaken about whom the subject of that experience is,
and it is nonsensical to ask whether I am sure that I am the one who is puzzled. Every conscious
experience, even an anonymous one, belongs to a subject, i.e., either to me or to somebody
else. It cannot belong to nobody. But whether a certain experience is experienced as mine or
not, does not, however, depend upon something apart from the experience, but precisely upon
the givenness of the experience. If the experience is given in a first-personal mode of
presentation, it is experienced as my experience, otherwise not. Obviously, this form of
egocentricity must be distinguished from any explicit I-consciousness. I am not (yet)
confronted with a thematic or explicit awareness of the experience as being owned by or
belonging to myself. Nevertheless, the particular primary presence or first-personal givenness
of the experience makes it mine, and distinguishes it for me from whatever experiences others
might have.9
When Husserl claims that consciousness is per se self-aware, he is not advocating a
strong Cartesian thesis concerning total and infallible self-transparency, but simply calling
attention to the intimate link between experiential phenomena and first-personal givenness. As
Flanagan has recently put it: “...all subjective experience is self-conscious in the weak sense
that there is something it is like for the subject to have that experience.”(Flanagan 1992, 194).
The kind of pervasive self-awareness Husserl has in mind is consequently of a rather minimal
kind. He is not referring to any explicit self-thematisation, to any thematic consciousness of
oneself as a distinct pole of identity (the one having or possessing a variety of different
experiences), but simply pointing to the fact that consciousness is given to itself in a first-
personal mode of presentation.10

9
Hua VIII, 175, XIII, 28, 56, 307, 443.
10
Elsewhere I have argued more extensively for the claim that phenomenal

3
 Let me add, that this way of characterizing consciousness has gained additional support
through the criticism that in recent years has been directed against the reflection-theoretical
paradigm of self-awareness. As Frank and Henrich have shown, reflection cannot by itself lead
to self-awareness. Reflective self-awareness always presupposes an immediate, tacit and non-
thematic kind of pre-reflective self-awareness as its condition of possibility. But if reflection
always presupposes pre-reflective self-awareness, and if we are capable of reflecting on all our
intentional acts and mental states, the conclusion seems obvious: Consciousness as such must
originally and intrinsically entail self-givenness since it is impossible to acquire it afterwards.
This conclusion then suggests the following metaphorical characterization of consciousness:
Consciousness is characterized by intentionality, but being intentionally aware of objects, it is
simultaneously self-given through and in itself. Its self-givenness is not due to a secondary act
or reflex but is a constitutive moment of the experience itself, and consciousness can
consequently be compared to a flame, which illuminates other things, and itself as well. Why
use the term self-givenness? Because whereas we in the case of the givenness of an object have
to operate with a distinction between the object that is given and the subject to whom it is given,
this distinction is no longer legitimate when it comes to the first-personal givenness of our
experiences. The experience is given in and through and for itself. The very duality involved
in intentionality, the difference between the intending subject and the intended object, cannot
be upheld.
How should one further characterize this pre-reflective self-awareness? In a regular
intentional act, Husserl says, I am directed at and preoccupied with my intentional object.
Whenever I am intentionally directed at objects I am also self-aware. But when I am directed
at and occupied with objects I am not thematically conscious of myself. And when I do
thematize myself in a reflection, the very act of thematization remains unthematic. In short,
when subjectivity functions it is self-aware, but it is not thematically conscious of itself, and it
therefore lives, as Husserl puts it, in anonymity. Thus, and this is obviously the key to any
attempt at a reconciliation, Husserl does not take anonymity and self-awareness to be
incompatible notions. On the contrary, he frequently describes pre-reflective self-awareness in
terms of anonymity. In Erste Philosophie I for instance, Husserl explicitly speaks of the
unthematic and anonymous life of consciousness and says that it is mitbewusst, i.e. co-
conscious (Hua VII, 262). In short, anonymity is a special mode of consciousness, it is not a
phenomenological nought.
The lesson to learn from this is obviously that it would be a mistake to overlook the
variety of different modes of consciousness, and to identify the realm of the conscious with the
realm of the thematically or attentively given. A mere reference to Husserl’s concept of a
horizon should corroborate this claim. For the very same reason, it is crucial not to conceive of
pre-reflective self-givenness as if it were an intentional, thetic and objectifying act. It is not,
and it is exactly for this reason that it might very well imply a fundamental ignorance. 11

consciousness is a (weak) form of self-awareness (Zahavi 1999, 2000). I consequently take it

to be legitimate to speak of self-awareness the moment I am no longer simply conscious of a
foreign object, but of my experience of the object as well, for in this case my subjectivity
reveals itself to me. That is, whenever I am acquainted with an experience in its first-personal
mode of presentation, whenever there is a ‘what it is like’ involved with its inherent quality of
‘mineness’, we are dealing with a (primitive) form of self-awareness.
11
To quote Hegel: “Das Bekannte überhaupt ist darum, weil es bekannt ist, nicht
erkannt.”(Hegel 1988, 25); and Heidegger: “Das ontisch Nächste und Bekannte ist das

4
Although I cannot be unconscious of my current experience, I might very well ignore it in
favour of its object, and this is of course the natural attitude. In my everyday life, I am absorbed
by and preoccupied with projects and objects in the world, and do not single out my stream of
consciousness for special attention. Thus, pre-reflective self-givenness is definitely not
identical with total self-comprehension, but is rather to be likened to a pre-comprehension that
allows for subsequent reflection and thematization.

2. The unconscious

Now, it could be argued that the notion of a pervasive self-awareness remains

implausible for the simple reason that it leaves no room for the unconscious. However, I think
that this is too hasty a conclusion. As far as I can see, it would be more correct to say that it is
a particular and rather crude notion of the unconscious that is excluded, rather than any notion
of the unconscious whatsoever. The notion I have in mind, is the one claiming that the
unconscious experience has everything the conscious experience has, including intentionality
and egocentricity, but that it just lacks the conscious quality. It is in short exactly like the
conscious experience except that it is unconscious. Thus, consciousness is taken to be a
completely extraneous feature of the emotion or intention in question. It does not contribute in
any significant way to its constitution. One might illustrate this prevalent conception in the
following way: Our mental states and psychic processes are like fish in the sea. No matter how
deep the fish swim, they keep their shapes. The fish at the bottom which we cannot see has
exactly the same shape as it has when it surfaces. When the mental state is at the bottom, it is
unconscious. When it surfaces it becomes conscious.12 Basically, all psychic processes are
unconscious and to bring them to consciousness is like fishing a perch up in the daylight. Thus,
if the mind is compared to the sea, my conscious experiences only compose a minimal fraction
of the totality of mental states which I have at any given moment. That is, at any given moment
I (or something else in me) perceives, believes, wishes, remembers, imagines, wills, etc., a
variety of things, but I am simply not aware of it.
This reifying interpretation of the unconscious has on all days been criticized by
phenomenologists, since it appears to miss the true significance of both the conscious and the
unconscious. One cannot simply subtract the conscious ‘quality’ from a feeling or intention
and expect it to remain a feeling or intention. And just as importantly: the unconscious in the
proper sense is not at all to be identified with an ordinary intentional act devoid of first-personal
givenness, but rather with a quite different depth-structure in subjectivity.
Thus, when Husserl himself speaks of the unconscious, he is referring to a dimension
of opaque passivity which makes up the foundation of our self-given experiences. Thus, as I
understand him, Husserl would say, that it is exactly in and not behind or outside or
independently of our conscious experiences that we find these impenetrable elements. For that
reason, I think one could argue in favour of a pervasive self-awareness, and still accept the
existence of the unconscious in the sense of subjective components, which remain ambiguous,
obscure and resist comprehension. That is, one should distinguish between the claim that our
consciousness is characterized by an immediate and direct self-givenness and the claim that

ontologisch Fernste, Unerkannte und in seiner ontologischen Bedeutung ständig

Übersehene.”(Heidegger 1986, 43).
12
Searle 1992, 152.

5
consciousness is characterized by total self-transparency. One can easily accept the first and
reject the latter, i.e., one can argue in favour of the existence of a pervasive self-consciousness
and still take self-comprehension to be an infinite task.13
On closer examination, I think it is necessary to distinguish between the six following
claims: (1) there is much going on in our mental life that we pay no attention to; (2) our self-
comprehension is neither instantaneous nor infallible, but a matter of gradual disclosure; (3)
our present experiences are in part motivated and influenced by the sedimentations of previous
experiences, which are no longer conscious; (4) our present experiences contain aspects and
depth-structures that resist reflective appropriation and direct comprehension; (5) our
experiences are to some extent conditioned by neurophysiological processes, which are
absolutely inaccessible for reflection and first-person appropriation; and (6) we are currently
having experiences such as perceptions, thoughts, feelings, etc., of which we have no
consciousness. As far as I can see, the claim that subjectivity is essentially characterized by its
first-personal givenness is a claim that can be reconciled with theses 1-5. It is only the last
thesis that constitutes a problem and must be rejected.14

3. The elusiveness of functioning subjectivity

Let me follow up on this by turning to the relation between self-awareness and

elusiveness. Can something be self-given and still remain elusive, that is, resist reflective
appropriation?
Generally speaking, Husserl of course takes reflection to be the method for
investigating consciousness, and he consequently rejects sceptical reservations concerning its
performance. To claim that reflection falsifies the lived experiences and that they consequently
elude it completely is self-refuting, since the very claim presupposes knowledge of those very
same lived experiences, and how should one obtain that except through reflection.15
But although reflection, rather than being necessarily a reification or falsification of
consciousness, might be nothing but an intensification or accentuation of the primary
experience, it nevertheless cannot be denied that it changes the givenness of the experience
reflected upon—otherwise there would be no need for reflection. Reflection does not merely
copy or repeat the original experience. As Husserl explicitly admits, it alters it. The experience
is now given thematically and no longer just lived pre-reflectively.16 As Husserl writes in a
lecture from 1917:

Das aktuelle Leben und Erleben ist zwar immer bewußt, aber es ist darum nicht
schon erfahren und gewußt. Dazu bedarf es eines neuen Pulses aktuellen
Lebens, der sogenannten reflektiven oder immanenten Erfahrung. Diese tritt
aber nicht bloß summatorisch zu dem früheren Leben hinzu, etwa zu dem
jeweiligen äußeren Erfahren oder Erfahrungsdenken, sondern sie wandelt es
eigentümlich (Hua XXV, 89).

13
Ricoeur 1950, 354-355.
14
For further discussions of Husserl’s view on the unconscious, cf. Mishara 1990,
Zahavi 1999, 203-215, and Joumier 1999.
15
Hua III, 174.
16
Hua I, 72.

6
One form this transformation might take is spelled out in Zur Phänomenologie des inneren
Zeitbewußtseins. There Husserl writes that the experience to which we turn attentively in
reflection acquires a new mode of being. It becomes accentuated (herausgehoben), and he
claims that this differentiatedness is nothing other than its being-grasped.17 Husserl also speaks
of reflection as a process that discloses, disentangles, explicates, and articulates all those
components and structures which were contained implicitly in the pre-reflective experience.18
As Husserl puts it, in the beginning we are confronted with the so to speak dumb experience
which must then be made to articulate its own sense.19 Thus, at its best the reflection is simply
an accentuation of the structures inherent in the lived experience rather than a process which
adds new components and structures to it. And in this case, the persistent fear that reflection is
somehow prevented from attaining true subjectivity seems unfounded.
But although reflection might not entail a self-reification, it does entail a kind of
doubling or fracture or, as Fink puts it, a kind of self-fission, since it confronts me with another
aspect of myself. It presents us with the coexistence of a double(d) subject: a reflected and a
reflecting. Following Husserl, Fink even speaks of reflection as a self-multiplication, where I
exist together or in communion with myself.20 Of course, this should not be taken too literally.
Reflection does not split me into two different egos; it does not turn me into a true Other to
myself. Reflection is neither a kind of empathy, nor a case of schizophrenia or multiple
personality disorder. It is a kind of self-awareness. But it is a kind of self-awareness which is
essentially characterized by an internal division. As Asemissen puts it:

Es ist das Eigentümliche der Reflexion, daß in ihr das Ich als erste Person
singularis eine Art innere Pluralisierung vollbringt und erleidet. Nur in der
Reflexion kann das Ich thematisch werden, aber es kann in ihr thematisch
werden nur um den Preis einer entzweienden Selbstentfremdung, in der es sich
von sich distanziert (Asemissen 1958/59, 262).

One of the significant consequences of this is, as already mentioned, that there will
always remain an unthematic spot in the life of the subject. It is, as Husserl says, evident that
the very process of thematization does not itself belong to the thematized content, just as a
perception or description does not belong to that which is perceived or described. 21 Even a
universal reflection will consequently contain a moment of naivete, since reflection is
necessarily prevented from grasping itself. It will forever miss something important, namely,
itself qua anonymously functioning subject-pole.22 As Husserl writes, I cannot grasp my own
functioning subjectivity because I am it: that which I am cannot be my Gegen-stand, cannot
stand opposed to me.23

17
Hua X, 129.
18
Hua X, 128, XI, 205, 236, XXIV, 244.
19
Hua I, 77.
20
Fink 1987, 62. Cf. Hua VIII, 93, IV, 253.
21
Hua IX, 478.
22
Hua XIV, 29.
23
Hua VIII, 412, XV, 484. Let me just add that there are some passages in Erste
Philosophie II and Krisis that have occassionally been taken as an expression of Husserl’s
unlimited confidence in the disclosing powers of reflection. In these passages Husserl initially

7
 We are obviously confronted with a fundamental limit here. When I reflect, I encounter
myself as a thematized ego, whereas functioning subjectivity eludes my thematization and
remains anonymous.
The crucial question then is whether or not this outcome constitutes a major sceptical
challenge to the phenomenological enterprise. Have we reached a dead end, so to speak, or are
we rather faced with an unavoidable but rather harmless impasse? Let me give two reasons for
taking the latter to be the case. The first is quite simple. It is true that reflection cannot
apprehend the anonymous life in its very functioning, but neither is it supposed to. The aim of
reflection is to lift the naivete of pre-reflective experience, and not to reproduce it.
The second reason trades on a striking similarity between the problem of functioning
subjectivity and the problem of the Other. It is now commonplace to argue along with Levinas
that the absence of the Other is exactly his presence as Other. 24 In other words, the self-
givenness of the Other is inaccessible and transcendent for me, but it is exactly this
inaccessibility, this limit which I can experience. 25 And when I do have an authentic
experience of another subject, I am exactly experiencing that the Other evades me. To demand
more, to claim that I would only have a real experience of the Other if the originary self-
givenness of the Other were given to me, is nonsensical. It would imply that I would only
experience an Other if I experienced her in the same way that I experience myself, i.e., it would
lead to an abolition of the difference between self and Other, to a negation of the alterity of the
Other.
Now, just as it can be argued that the Otherness of the Other is exactly manifest in her
elusiveness and inaccessibility, something similar can be argued when it comes to the
subjectivity of the subject. Although the anonymous functioning subjectivity cannot be
thematized in its very anonymity, this does not prevent it from being given. Not only is it
exactly characterized by its pre-reflective self-awareness, but we even encounter its elusiveness
every time we try (and fail) to catch it in reflection, i.e., the reflection points toward that which
both founds it and eludes it, and these features are not deficiencies to overcome, are not results
that threaten the phenomenological enterprise, but are rather the defining traits of pre-reflective
self-givenness.
At this point it might be retorted that the existence of an anonymous life will remain a
problem for a Husserlian phenomenology for as long as the latter adheres to the principle of

acknowledges that whenever we thematize something reflectively, the reflection itself remains
unthematic and anonymous. He then says that the unthematic act of reflection can itself be
thematized in a higher-order reflection, but that this will only reiterate the problem, since the
higher-order reflection will itself remain unthematic. Husserl then asks whether the iteration of
such higher-order reflections will continue to disclose new aspects, but he argues that we are
merely dealing with a repetition, and that the decisive duality is the one between the thematic
first-order intention, and the unthematic second-order reflection (6/458, 8/89-90). Some have
interpreted this in the following way: Husserl is basically claiming that the anonymity can in
fact be lifted by a higher-order reflection, and that the new anonymity inhering in the higher-
order reflection is identical to the anonymity which has just been repealed, for which reason
there is no principal limit to the power of reflection. However, I would read the passages in
question differently. As I see it, Husserl’s point is merely that we are not dealing with a whole
variety of different anonymities, but only with a single persisting one.
24
Lévinas 1979, 89.
25
Hua I, 144, XV, 631.

8
principles, i.e. the principle put forth in § 24 of Ideen I, which states that phenomenology is to
base its considerations exclusively on that which is given intuitively in a phenomenological
reflection. For how can this principle be upheld the moment it is acknowledged that reflection
is always too late to grasp functioning subjectivity? I think this criticism is to some extent
legitimate, but I also think that Husserl himself eventually realized the limitations of the
principle, particularly when he started investigating the dimension of passivity. As I have
already mentioned, Husserl readily concedes that the intentional activity of the subject is
founded upon and conditioned by an obscure and blind passivity, by drives and associations,
and he even admits that there are constitutive processes of an anonymous and involuntary
nature taking place in the underground or depth-dimension of subjectivity that cannot be seized
by direct reflection. 26 Reflection is not the primary mode of consciousness, and it cannot
uncover the deepest layers of subjectivity. Thus, the supremacy of reflection (and the validity
of the principle of principles) is exactly called into question. But although it must be
acknowledged that there are depth-dimensions in the constitutive process which do not lie open
to the view of reflection, this does not necessarily imply that they remain forever completely
ineffable, beyond phenomenological investigation. They can be disclosed, not through a direct
thematization, but through an indirect operation of dismantling and deconstruction (Husserl’s
own term is of course Abbau).27

4. Anonymity

So far I have tried to argue that a closer examination of the nature of first-personal
givenness and anonymity can allow for a reconciliation. Why bother? Because I think both
needs to be accounted for, and to favour one at the expense of the other will leave us with an
inadequate theory. Now, it goes without saying that such a reconciliation is only possible as
long as one does in fact understand self-givenness and anonymity in roughly the same way as
I have just done. It hardly needs to be pointed out that it is also possible to understand the
notions in a way that will leave any attempt at reconciliation futile. Let me end my paper by
briefly criticizing one such attempt.
In contrast to my interpretation which claims that for an experience to be anonymous
is for the experience in question to lack any explicit and thematic self-awareness, it is also
possible to argue for something I would call the radical anonymity thesis according to which
anonymity implies a lack of self-awareness, differentiation, and individuation altogether.
Occasionally, Merleau-Ponty flirts with this radical thesis. In the beginning of the paper, I
briefly referred to his claim concerning the way in which our personal life is founded upon a
prepersonal and anonymous existence. Merleau-Ponty also writes that it is not truly I who
perceive; rather perception ‘happens’ and something ‘is perceived.’ In fact, at this stage there
is no problem of an alter ego, since it is neither I nor the other who perceives, but as Merleau-
Ponty writes, “une visibilité anonyme” that inhabits us both (Merleau-Ponty 1964, 187). A
similar line of thought is expressed in his reflections on developmental psychology. Merleau-

26
Hua IX, 514, IV, 276-277.
27
To what extent such a procedure of (de)construction is to be considered as a natural
extension of the phenomenological method, or rather as something that is inimical to its very
nature, is a question worthy of its own extensive treatment. My own tentative suggestion is that
phenomenology should recognizing a certain methodological pluralism.

9
Ponty writes that we at the beginning of life will find neither self-experience nor empathy but
simply “une collectivité anonyme, une vie à plusieurs sans différenciation”(Merleau-Ponty
1960a, 33). Thus the anonymous life is apparently a life with neither individuation nor
numerical distinction (Merleau-Ponty 1960b, 220).
I think there are good reasons to reject this radical thesis. 28 Let me provide some
arguments:
If I and the reader are looking at the same chair, these two perceptions of the chair might
very well be anonymous in the sense of lacking any explicit self-thematization. In fact, on the
pre-reflective level there is probably no explicit awareness of the experience being mine. But
the two perceptions are definitely not anonymous in the sense of being undifferentiated and
indistinguishable, regardless of whether this is taken to imply strict numerical identity or
merely qualitative identity. On the contrary, the moment we take the first-person perspective
seriously, it is obvious that there is a vital difference between the two perceptions. Only one of
them is given in a first-personal mode of presentation for me. To deny this, i.e., to argue for
radical anonymity in the sense of undifferentiatedness, seems utterly absurd.
As we have just seen, it has occasionally been customary to argue in defence of the
radical anonymity thesis with reference to the problem of intersubjectivity. It has been claimed
that the only way to avoid a threatening solipsism is by conceiving of the difference between
self and other as a founded and derived difference, a difference arising out of a common and
shared undifferentiated anonymous life. However, I think this solution is much too radical.
Properly speaking it does not solve the problem of intersubjectivity, but dissolves it. To speak
of a fundamental anonymity prior to any distinction between self and other obscures that which
has to be clarified, namely intersubjectivity understood as the relation between subjectivities.
On the level of radical anonymity there is neither individuation or selfhood, but nor is there
any differentiation, alterity, or transcendence, and there is consequently room for neither
subjectivity nor intersubjectivity. To put it differently, the radical anonymity thesis threatens
not only our concept of a self-given subject. It also threatens our concept of the transcendent
and irreducible other. I consequently think that it is more than doubtful whether this radical
anonymity thesis can help us understand the possibility of intersubjectivity. On the contrary, it
seems to present us with one of those cases where the medicine turns out to be part of the
sickness it was supposed to cure, and in the end just as deadly.
One occasionally come across attempts to argue in defence of the radical anonymity
thesis with reference to empirical findings. The strong anonymity thesis goes well together
with the view that the infant initially lives in a kind of adualism where there is no distinction
between self, world, and other. Thus ‘adualism,’ ‘primary narcissism’ or ‘symbiosis’ are terms
used to describe the first period of the infant’s life, a life where there are not yet supposed to
be any boundary between experience and reality, not yet any differentiation between self and
non-self.29 Thus, it has been claimed that the infant is originally incapable of distinguishing

28
Let me just add that I actually don’t think Merleau-Ponty ever really embraced it.
Thus he himself seems to have had certain misgivings as well; reservations that for instance
come to the light in his criticism of Scheler (Merleau-Ponty 1988, 41-44. See also Merleau-
Ponty 1945, 408-409). In the end, Merleau-Ponty would claim that individuality and anonymity
do not have to be two possible conceptions of the subject between which we have to choose,
they can be two moments that both belong to the structure of the concrete subject (Merleau-
Ponty 1945, 514). And that is exactly right.
29
Piaget and Inhelder 1969, 22.

10
itself from the caregiver, not only in the obvious sense that it is unable to conceptualize the
difference between self and other, but in the sense that the infant exists in a “state of un-
differentiation, of fusion with mother, in which the ‘I’ is not yet differentiated from the ‘not-I’
and in which inside and outside are only gradually coming to be sensed as different.”(Mahler,
Pine & Bergman 1975, 44). What is interesting is that this traditional hypothesis which takes
the infant’s experience to be initially impersonal and anonymous has been rejected
unequivocally by dominant positions in contemporary developmental psychology. On the basis
of numerous experimental data it is now assumed that the infant already from birth begins to
experience itself, and that it never passes through a period of total self/other nondifferentiation.
As both Stern, Neisser and Butterworth have argued, there is no symbiotic-like phase, and there
exists no systematic and pervasive confusion between the child’s experience of self and other,
nor between the child’s experience of the other and of the world.30
To avoid misunderstandings, let me repeat once more that I am obviously not denying
the existence of anonymous experiences. I am just criticizing a certain concept of anonymity.
For an experience to be anonymous is for the experience in question to lack any explicit self-
awareness; it is not for it to lack individuation or first-personal givenness altogether. To suggest
the latter is to be confronted with the question of how something like first-personal givenness
could ever arise out of this undifferentiated dimension of anonymity. Here I believe the
radical anonymity thesis is faced with all the difficulties confronting the reflection theory of
self-awareness—difficulties which I very much doubt can be solved.31

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