1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Ronny Miron The Duality of the I in the Thinking of Hedwig Conrad-Martius Abstract 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 to- wards 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. Keywords: Dualism, Realism, Phenomenology, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, I (Ich), Self 1. Introduction One of the widespread criticisms of the phenomenological realism con- temporary with Edmund Husserl relates to the lack of discussion of the issue of the ego or the I. In this respect, the criticism of Brecht, which complained about the “philosophical wretchedness” of “the Munich or the realistic direction of phenomenology that did not work out the transcendental problem,” is typical. 1 This sweeping criticism seems to be based on the presumption that the prece- dence granted to considerations relating to reality, as opposed, for example, to those that concern epistemological matters, leaves no room for the discussion of the I, in particular aspects relating to consciousness. A more radical idealistic stance might even argue that the I could be elucidated only within a philosoph- ical thinking that provides it in advance with primacy over any other aspect and first and foremost over the real external reality. The discussion of the idea of the I in the realist phenomenology of Hedwig Conrad-Martius (HCM) (1888–1966) radically refutes the above described 1 Franz Josef Brecht: Bewußtsein und Existenz: Wesen und Weg der Phänomenologie (Habilitationsschrift). Bremen 1948, 42 n. 2. Phänomenologische Forschungen 2019 ·  Felix Meiner Verlag 2019 · ISSN 0342-8117