oneself as speaking, and even as speaking to one-
self, as, e.g., when someone says to himself: “You
have gone wrong, you can’t go on like that.” But in
the genuine sense of communication, there is no
speech in such cases, nor does one tell oneself any-
thing: one merely conceives of oneself as speaking
and communicating. In a monologue words can
perform no function of indicating the existence of
mental acts, since such indication would be there
quite purposeless. For the acts in question are
themselves experienced by us at that very moment.
(Logical 1. 8 [ 190 – 91 ])Husserl’s argument seems convincing, if difficult. I can
perform acts of indication in silent, inward soliloquy. But I can-
not actually indicate anything, since there is no other person
who has adopted a discerning relation to me, trying to figure
out what I mean. The performance is therefore a pretended ac-
tion (though in certain cases a useful form of self-therapy: “You
can’t go on like that”). I can discover something about myself
in solitary reflection, but the discovery remains independent
of any later mental playacting. If I decide to dramatize my
thought, say in order to drum up my courage or reinforce my
desires, the communication remains merely imagined, and
therefore secondary to the original thought (Strategies 115 ).
Husserl’s point is comparable to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
argument against our tendency to picture our mental lives as a
drama of articulated, quasi-verbal thoughts. Wittgenstein, like
Husserl, makes the case that we cannot possibly experience
our lives and our thinking in the way we suppose we do. For
example, we do not follow a rule by saying to ourselves, “I’ve
got to take the next step now,” any more than we walk by de-
From Algeria to the École Normale 51