On the semantic duplicity of the first person pronoun "I"
pp. 83-96
in: Anthony Steinbock (ed), Phenomenology in Japan, Berlin, Springer, 1998Abstract
We are accustomed to using the first person pronoun "I" automatically, as it were, or almost unconsciously in daily life, convinced that we sufficiently know the meaning of it. But when we reflect upon it more attentively, it suddenly becomes clear that the pronoun "I" does not have as simple a meaning as we would think, but rather a doubled meaning that we hardly ever anticipated. The following is a rough phenomenological sketch of these meanings and of the ontological structure of the ego that reflects upon them.