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The chapter raises the question of indexicality's phenomenological sense by tracing the development of this problem in Husserl's phenomenology, starting with its emergence in LI. In contrast to the standard approach, which confines the problem of indexicality to its treatment in LI, I argue against Husserl's early solution, claiming that, from a specifically phenomenological perspective, the so-called "replaceability thesis" is unwarranted. I further show that Husserl himself has unequivocally rejected his early solution in his revisions of LI, although admittedly, he has never replaced his old conception with a new one. My central task here is that of reconstructing the main contours of Husserl's new approach to indexicality. Following Husserl's own suggestion that the discovery of the horizon puts phenomenology in the position to rethink the problem of the indexicals, I trace the development of horizon-intentionality in Husserl's writings and show how the dynamic structure of the horizon invites the question of the genesis of expressibility. In the final analysis, the presence of the indexicals in the scientific discourse proves to be a faint echo of the life-world from which scientific discourse springs.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4644-2_2

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