Abstract
I argue that Husserl’s manuscripts on intersubjectivity discover a decisive role for self-movement in the constitution of the shared world. I explore two complementary constitutive functions. The first enables empathetic apperception by closing the divergence in sense between the original ego, which does not find itself at a location, and the alter ego, which is found over there. By traversing distances with its organically articulated Leibkörper, the original ego establishes an analogy between self-movement and thing-movement that guides the recognition of another ego in space. The second accounts for the exchangeability of perspectives between differently located subjects. The restricted motility of the Leibkörper is discovered against the background of ideal but motivated possibilities of going to any distant perspective. These possibilities are rooted in the purely kinaesthetic potential of the Leib. To inhabit another perspective need not involve changing the world. This evidence underlies the Weltanschauung according to which what appears from the other’s perspective is a possible appearance for me. Taken together, these two constitutive functions show how self-movement discloses a definite but accidental location from which the ego shares the world.
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Notes
The complications are numerous. Most important for these reflections is determining in what sense the reduced sphere is “just” mine. The view I assume but cannot here defend is that the sphere of ownness is an abstraction within the transcendental ego, not from the many monadic subjects to one of them. The latter abstraction retains spatiotemporal nature as the ontic ground upon which subjects are countable. Husserl eventually argues that for this reason an ownness reduction conceived as a limit on monadic intersubjectivity remains psychological (Husserl, 1973c, pp. 526 − 73). Husserl generally refers to the reduced sphere and its contents as “original,” “primordial,” or “own.” These terms highlight different aspects of the subject matter but are interchangeable for present purposes.
In the phenomenology of intersubjectivity “expression” (Ausdruck) is broader than “communication” (Mitteilung). The latter includes the intention to be understood by others (Husserl, 1973c, p. 472), and thereby involves language (Husserl, 1973c, p. 474). The former is how the other is manifest at all (Husserl, 1973c, p. 655); the other’s Leib is thus already an expression (Husserl, 1973b, p. 491). Husserl accuses Lipps of not seeing that “das spezifisch Leibliche […] ist für die Einfühlung das Primäre” (Husserl, 1973a, p. 70).
Where I translate or gloss Husserl’s body terms, I use “I-body” or “egoic body” for Leib. This captures the “besondere Ichzugehörigkeit” that defines the Leib as such (Husserl, 1973a, p. 59); the hyphen in “I-body” registers the insight that “das Walten im Objekt und das Objekt selbst sind einig in der Einheit des Leibes” (Husserl, 1973b, p 482). For Leibkörper, I use “organic I-body” to indicate both the appearance of the Leib in nature and its articulation into organs. The ego “inhabits” space through the Leib and “occupies” it through the Leibkörper. I also use “somatic” and its cognates to describe the Leibkörper.
At least as regards the material in Husserliana XIII-XV, I cannot share Taipale’s view that “By studying Husserl’s manuscripts on intersubjectivity, it is not hard to convince oneself of the fact that in Husserl’s explicit account empathy is not the most fundamental and original form of intersubjectivity” and that “there is a sense in which intersubjectivity precedes the actual encounter with others” (Taipale, 2014, p. 144). Assuming a shared world, things are indeed there for anybody prior to an encounter with a particular someone, and in this context Taipale’s account of empathy as “concretization” is not only compatible with Husserl’s, but also illuminating (Taipale, 2014, pp. 148–150). However, Husserl’s overriding strategy for clarifying the constitutive underpinnings of the shared world is to enact a reflection that is solipsistic exactly because it abstracts from everything dependent upon empathy. The motivational sources for the sense “other I” are drawn from the primordial ego’s self-experience at the center of a reduced nature bereft of intersubjectivity, anonymous or otherwise. While there are experimental deviations from this tendency, it is so central to Husserl’s approach that to cite specific passages by way of illustration would only serve to understate its predominance. The most convincing evidence here is the absence of references to “anybody” or “anyone” in contexts where Husserl has abstracted from empathy and its consequences. Others are “potential” in these contexts only in the sense that Husserl is investigating the forms of consciousness that render empathy intelligible. The view that intersubjectivity is already operative in the constitution of the other as der erste Mensch is more accurately presented as in conflict with the broad scope of Husserl’s primordial reduction (Zahavi, 1997, p. 305, 315).
For the most explicit discussions, see: Husserl, 1973a, p. 57, 229, 256, 332; Husserl, 1973b, 14, 547; Husserl, 1973c, p. 15, 294, 562. According to Kern, the relevant manuscripts span a period from roughly 1912 to 1933. Husserl reconsiders what follows from the possibility of a leiblose Welt but never rejects it as a possibility.
This appeal to similarity survives Luo’s critique of basing empathy upon mere “physiomorphic similarity” (Luo, 2017, p. 49). Primordial somatic self-constitution discloses the apparent body as the site of egoic walten. As soon as the other’s body prompts empathetic pairing, it is the site of alter-egoic walten. Luo’s more general worry about “privileging visual experience” (2017, p. 46) does seem pertinent to the account of going developed here, which takes global perspectival shifts to be crucial to world constitution in ownness, and therefore to the constitution of the other as a co-constituter of the world. Husserl seldom tries to describe going while prescinding from visual experience. Such a description must be possible if going has the functions under consideration. There are hints in Husserl’s depiction of the leiblose Welt in terms of touching (Husserl, 1973a, p. 229) and in his description of somatic going as tactile reaching (Husserl, 1973b, pp. 537-8). To be clear, the issue is not any preference for visual other-appearances in the account of Paarung. Shum (2014) rightly emphasizes that Husserl’s discussions of these appearances are neutral, at least in principle, with respect to sense modality (150). The issue is rather the preference for vision in the analysis of how the gap is narrowed within ownness between the Erscheinungsweise of the I-body and that of external things.
At least once in the intersubjectivity volumes, Husserl attributes “gehen” (in scare quotes) to hand movements within the near sphere, specifically those that stay in touch with moving things. But he soon redescribes these as “bloss betastende ohne Mitgehen” (Husserl, 1973b, p. 542) and “blosse Bewegung der Hände” (Husserl, 1973b, p. 543). While going proper may be prefigured in the “going” of limbs and extremities, Husserl most often treats such movements as occurring either under the condition of fernkinästhetischer Ruhe or else under gehen. This reflects his interest in charting a course from the primordial to the shared world. In this connection, the importance of going is that it unleashes all external objects to perspectival alterations while positioning the Leib among them. Only occasionally does Husserl entertain genetic reconstructions of a subjectivity not yet capable of going (Husserl, 1973b, p. 554; Husserl, 1973c, 604-8). However, once somatic going and staying are in play, especially attentive hand movements (like those that reach for something I can’t see) do seem to involve awareness of “going with my hand.” I thank an anonymous referee for prompting this reflection.
There is also Paarung with subjectivities that are in the shared world, but do not share it with us, or do so minimally. Merely perceptual world-sharing (abstracting from extra-somatic cultural objectivity) is already strained with certain animals whose going and staying behaviors are so differently scaled and styled that the alter-egoic “there-here” and the egoic “here” barely integrate into an overlapping system of orientations. The limit case is the plant, the behaviors of which seem to furnish no evidence that it stays or goes. Even plants that are not rooted in the ground seem to lack the functional unification of Nahkinästhese in a Fernkinästhese. Gaitsch and Vörös (2016) provide valuable methodological suggestions for approaching the “elementary subjectivity” of plants, including the use of technologies that might inform our appreciation of their intelligent behavior and ultimately our intercorporeal experience with them (220). Questions about which living things share our world, and to what extent, are empirical and therefore open.
I read these passages on Erscheinungen, Abschattungen and sinnliche Daten (Husserl, 1973b, pp. 250-5, 285-8) as an attempt to explain and delimit the possibility of their objectification, not to establish their inherent objectivity. Profiles become objective through apprehensions that construe them as views identically available from a given Stelle. This is already thinkable for the ego alone through a shift in interest whereby the thing no longer functions as the target of the perceptual intention but as the guide for obtaining the profile. Assuming empathy, the same system of appearances functions so that an identical profile is “itself there” in the shared world, available to any normal perceiver at that Stelle. This reading is relevant to Declerck’s accusation that Zahavi confuses profiles and sides in making his case for the intersubjective nature of horizontal intentionality (Declerck, 2018, pp. 324-5; 2019, pp. 197–201). There is at least some level of analysis at which it makes sense to speak of objective profiles that are available to anyone who fulfills the right experiential conditions. Treating spatial profiles objectively is compatible with the position that an indefinite public is already involved at the lowest level of thing constitution. On its own, this compatibility says nothing in favor of the position.
The passages I cite in Sect. 4.1 and 4.2 confirm Declerck’s assessment that Husserl oscillates between formulating the possibility at issue as futural, and thereby actualizable from the present perspective, and as synchronous, and thereby actualizable only as a counterfactual replacement for the present perspective (Declerck, 2018, p. 331). The different formulations simply seem to track whether Husserl is thinking of objects and object moments presumed to persist. However, his usage also implies that the replacement formulation expresses the certainty that perceptions of hidden objects or object moments are possibly mine regardless of whether I can now go to the remote perspective. A typical example: “Ich hätte hingehen können, sie zu sehen, und sind es gegenwärtige in einer gegenwärtigen Bestimmtheit gedachte Dinge, so kann ich hingehen und kann sie, wenn ich dort angelangt bin, sehen” (Husserl, 1973b, p. 251). I agree with Declerck that my now having been over there is a possibility “in principle” (Declerck, 2018, p. 333; 2019, p. 205). But there are two sources of this in-principle possibility. The first, which Declerck emphasizes, follows from what it is to occupy a spatial position, and belongs to my Körperlichkeit. The second, I will suggest, follows from what it is to inhabit a Stand, and belongs to my Leiblichkeit. One could have occupied any position. But equally, one could have gone there.
The line of thought Husserl repudiates is roughly: Despite its incomplete constitution, the Leibkörper is meant precisely as Körper. Any Körper is open to a harmonious course of perspectival appearances. Within the sphere of ownness, the Leib counts as a Körper because I can imaginatively displace myself to a perspective from which I enjoy a doxic Vergegenwärtigung of my own Leib at a position in space (Husserl, 1973a, p. 330; Husserl, 1973b, p. 237; Husserl, 1973c, p. 249). See also Kern’s comment on this issue (Kern, 1973b, pp. xxxiv-xxxv).
If ideal possibilities of movement have a motivational basis in ghostly going, then Declerck’s account of low-level object transcendence in terms of “deep counterfactuality” (Declerck, 2018, p. 336) could address Diaz’ methodological concern that the account remain focused on possibilities motivated in the primordial sphere, and especially on “what is or can be in reach for an actual subject” (Diaz, 2022, p. 12). Reachability extends to every ideally possible position that one could have occupied as a being in space. Diaz’ concern resonates with Husserl’s criticism of his own attempt to understand the spatial positioning of the original Leibkörper by explicating what lies in the sense Raumkörper. Reading Text Nr. 8 alongside Beilage 38, it would seem to be just this feature of his approach that Husserl, according to Kern’s notes, deems “zu konstruktiv!” (Husserl, 1973a, p. 254; Kern, 1973a, p. xlvii). Husserl is eventually tempted to understand even the temporal dimension of Weltanschauung in terms of a capacity to go (Husserl, 1973c, p. 239).
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Knies, K. The Role of Self-Movement in the Constitution of the Shared World. Husserl Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-024-09341-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-024-09341-3