胡塞爾在1901年明確拒斥"純粹自我"概念,而在1913年卻又重談之。現象學界對此一直存在著爭議。實際上,胡塞爾明確區分了意識流的"統一性"原則和"同一性"原則。按照前一個原則,無論是在1901年還是在1913年以后,胡塞爾都將拒絕該概念。因為藉由內時間意識現象學,胡塞爾已經表明,意識流的"統一性"是由意識流的內時間意識結構本身,即由縱意向性來保證的。然而,隨著其對交互主體性現象學以及注意意識現象學的研究之展開,胡塞爾重新對"純粹自我"予以關注并對其進行了現象學的描述,但這時的"純粹自我"所要表達的恰恰是"意識的同一化原則",即一種"與格的我"。在此意義上,胡塞爾在1901年所拒斥的"純粹自我"與1913年所迎回的"純粹自我"并非同一個。

Why Husserl definitely refuted pure ego in 1901 but reconsidered it in 1913 was a disputed question in the early phenomenological movement.De facto,Husserl clearly distinguished the principle of unity from that of the identity of the stream of consciousness.He refuted the pure ego as the principle of unity both in 1901 and after 1913.By virtue of his phenomenological studies of the consciousness of internal time,Husserl had already demonstrated that the unity of the stream of consciousness was guaranteed by its structure of internal time consciousness or its longitudinal intentionality.However,along with the unfolding of his studies with respect to the phenomenology of intersubjectivity and of attentional consciousness,Husserl turned anew to pure ego and performed phenomenological descriptions therewith:this pure ego was nothing but the"principle of identification of consciousness."This means that the pure ego refuted by Husserl in 1901 is not the one he reconsidered in 1913.