Selfhood and uniqueness of the person (in front of the identical Husserlian “I”)

Abstract

I am a changing reality, not an identical one, but I am the same person as before, and as after; there is, therefore, an essential selfhood of the “I”, which is not «identity» in the sense in which this word is applied to things, and still less the identity of ideal objects. Unlike the identical “I”, I am affected by circumstantiality. For idealism —from Descartes to Husserl— man’s being is consciousness, subjectivity, in which the “I” is shut in, to such an extent that the great problem is to get access to the others: to solve this problem, Husserl talks about the «monadological intersubjectivity», following a prior «monadological solipsism»; and I (identical to the others: objects which are present to me) would be interchangeable, without uniqueness. But the person —as Ortega and Julián Marías teach— lives open to other people, referred to them, and therefore transcending oneself. Selfhood (projected towards the future) consists precisely in that uniqueness and exceeding one’s own.