How did Edmund Husserl describe the transcendental ego?

For Edmund Husserl, the transcendental ego represents the pure consciousness that remains after one performs the phenomenological reduction—a process of "bracketing" or suspending belief in the existence of the natural world.123

Husserl described the transcendental ego in the following ways:

• Ground of Meaning: It serves as the fundamental ground for the foundation and constitution of all meaning. It is the source through which objects are "constituted" for consciousness.412
• Pure Consciousness: Unlike the "empirical self"—the individual with a name, history, and physical presence in the world—the transcendental ego is purged of all physical or bodily characteristics.3
• Transcendental Idealism: Because this ego is not an object within the world but rather the subject that registers truths about the world, Husserl characterized his own philosophical position as transcendental idealism.3
• Self-Constitution: It is the form of consciousness that creates time-awareness through acts of retention and protention, effectively constituting itself.1

By returning to this ego, Husserl believed one could achieve a transparent understanding of how knowledge and meaning are constructed.1