ABSTRACT
Transcendental subjectivity' has all the appearance of a philosopher's construction. As a phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl is sensitive to this appearance. This chapter investigates the life-world from the point of view of transcendental subjectivity, Husserl asks, are we not engaged 'in an intellectualistic enterprise born of a mania peculiar to modern life, to theorise everything'. Husserl's notion is not a mythical construction; it can be used to report activities one engage in and experiences to subject. In speaking of transcendental subjectivity, Husserl calling attention to an extreme version of an attitude and method of inquiry with which everyone has some familiarity and at least tacit understanding. He wants to replace the anonymity of everyone attitude with an autonomy; he wishes to describe it and to make its value plain. Husserl seeks to describe and for which he seeks, in a somewhat Kantian spirit, for the conditions of possibility.
