Abstract
One of the most commented upon passages of Husserl's Crisis involves what he calls "The paradox of human subjectivity." This involves our "being a [transcendental] subject for the world and at the same time being [as human] an object in the world." In my essay, I analyze this paradox in terms of the "limit problems" of birth and death. Here, the paradox involves the fact that, as humans, we are mortal, but as transcendental subjects, we cannot assert this. Being both, I have to believe that I can and cannot die. The late manuscripts on birth, death, and sleep confront this question repeatedly. Doing so, they address the limits of the phenomenological method, whose salient feature is its attempt to examine our claims in the light of the evidence that we directly access. Can this method make intelligible the relation between a deathless transcendental subjectivity and its mortal, human counterpart?