The Duality of the I in the Thinking of Hedwig Conrad-Martius

This article presents the dualist perception of the ‘I’ of the woman phenomenologist, Hedwig Conrad-Martius (1880–1966) as a radical attempt to respond critically to Husserl’s turn towards transcendentalism. Conrad-Martius’s peculiar view of the I (ichhaftes Sein) appears as a remarkable refutation of one of the widespread criticisms of the phenomenological realism contemporary with Edmund Husserl regarding the lack of discussion of the issue of the ego or the I. My main argument is that the dualism not only signifies the structure of the I in HCM’s philosophy but also provides the essential framework for its phenomenological deciphering, in which it transpires as a genuine philosophical problem that as such is unresolved.