The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Part 44. The book is alphabetized by the whole headings of entries, as distinct from the first word of a heading. Hence, for example, abandonment comes before a priori and a posteriori. It is wise to look elsewhere if something seems to be missing. At the end of the book there is also a useful appendix on Logical Symbols as well as the appendices A Chronological Table of Philosophy and Maps of Philosophy. | 410 Husserl Edmund basis of our dubitable if for the most part correct beliefs about the empirical world. But Husserl disagreed with Descartes in one crucial respect. Descartes moved swiftly from the proposition that I think to the conclusion that I am a thinking thing . The belief that I am a thinking thing is itself Husserl claims to be bracketed. I who am conscious of objects am neither a thinking substance nor an embodied person nor even the stream of my experiences for I am conscious of and in that sense distinct from my experiences I am the pure or transcendental ego what Kant called the I think which must be able to accompany all my representations . The transcendental ego or transcendental subjectivity cannot itself be bracketed any more than Cartesian doubt can extend to the existence of the doubter. Thus only transcendental subjectivity is nonrelative . . . while the real world indeed exists but in respect of essence is relative to transcendental subjectivity in such a way that it can have its meaning as existing reality only as the intentional meaning-product oftranscendental subjectivity . Husserl here infers an idealist conclusion namely that objects are constituted by consciousness and could not exist without it from the the true premiss that nothing can be conceived without being an object of consciousness. The error depends on either or both of two confusions 1 between an intentional and a real object in conceiving an object I make it an object of my consciousness but I do not thereby make it a real object . a tree 2 between making something my intentional object by conceiving it and conceiving it as my intentional object I cannot think of a possible lifeless universe without making it the object of my thought but I do not thereby think ofit as an object ofmy thought and thus suppose myself to be one of its inhabitants. It is a mistake to suppose that Husserl s idealism can only be avoided if we reject the methodological use of epoché. In his .
