Displacement and identity in Husserl's phenomenology

Robert Sokolowski

pp. 173-184

in: Samuel IJsseling (ed), Husserl-Ausgabe und Husserl-Forschung, Deventer, Kluwer, 1990

Abstract

One of the most valuable philosophical discussions that Husserl offers us in his writings is his treatment of identity. His analysis of identity can be considered a modern revival of the issue Plato raised in the Sophist when he talked about sameness and otherness as two of the major forms, the megista genê, of being.¹ Like Plato, Husserl also discusses identity or sameness not all by itself, but as implicated with difference or otherness, and one of the most striking forms of otherness that he describes is that of the displacement, the Versetzung, of the self.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Plato