Topos 11 (2) (
2005)
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Abstract
The Husserlian concept of intersubjectivity has been criticized for the
fact that it belongs exclusively to a philosophy of representation and to a
solipsistic consciousness. In this conceptual framework, the other (ego)
appears to be constituted by a singular ego through the synthesis of the
series of its appearances (perceptive or imaginative representations) and
by extrapolation (transposition) of its own “sphere of originality”. For this
theory of constitution seemed to be essentially related to the concept of
objective representation that post-Husserlian phenomenologists have
criticized and eventually replaced with another, in which affectivity is
supposed to open the way to otherness, as we can see in Heidegger, Levinas,
Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry or Jacques Derrida.
Our hypothesis is that the difficulty does not regard the theory of
constitution, but the fact that the other and the community that he forms
with me and with many others are thought only in terms of representation.
Even those who discharged the “abstract” objective representation
of Husserl’s function and replaced it with “affectivity” were not finally able to
overpass the representational framework, because the other has always been
for me (and vice-versa, I have been for him) only a “picture” (no matter
whether representative or “affective”), something which simply “stands”
before my eyes. But this is certainly a reductive way of understanding the
relation between the I and the other. If we focus our attention on the phenomenon
of community and not on some interpretations or simplifications of it,
we realize that it is not sufficient that objective representation or affectivity or
any other faculty constitute or disclose the other for the I (even if that is a
necessary starting point). As a multilayered concept, “intersubjectivity”, in
Husserl’s sense, is a system of transitions from mere appearance to transcendence,
from passivity to activity, from cognitive and affective representation
to volition and action. As soon as we see the relation between the I and the
other as active, as an influence or intrusion of one consciousness in another, as
an intention to “move” the other, to determine him to assume or to begin an
action (a real one, effected in real life), the concept of intersubjectivity changes
drastically, even though the “representation” of the other before the I and of the
I in the eyes of the other remains a necessary interface. Accordingly, constitutive
phenomenology has to take into consideration volition, action and
communication not simply as extensions of the constitution of the thing.
A reform of the theory of constitution, or rather its enlargement, to encompass
this new type of “objectivity” (praxis) which would thus offer an adequate
conceptual framework is strongly recommended.