Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

El tema del “pluralismo”, frecuentemente abordado desde la sola perspectiva de los retos éticos, políticos y culturales que la era de la globalización plantea a las comunidades humanas en todo el orbe, nos enfrenta a profundos dilemas racionales sobre los que ha reflexionado la humanidad desde la aurora de la filosofía griega. El texto se refiere a dos de ellos: a la relación, por un lado, entre unidad y multiplicidad; y, por el otro, entre “semejanza” y “otredad”, a saber, entre (...) “identidad” y “diferencia”. Sin su reconocimiento, colapsaría la posibilidad misma del pensamiento teórico, de las reglas prácticas y de la valoración ética y estética. El texto reconsidera esta antigua tensión a un nivel menos abstracto, proponiendo plantear algunos problemas en torno a la “diferencia” y la “otredad” desde la perspectiva de la teoría husserliana de la intersubjetividad cultural y social, a saber, de los problemas superiores de la comunidad intermonádica. --- “Difference and Otherness from Husserl’s Phenomenology”. The issue of “pluralism”, often approached exclusively from the perspective of ethical, political, and cultural challenges that the era of globalization lays at the door of human communities all over the world, faces us in fact with deep rational dilemmas upon which humanity has reflected since the dawn of Greek philosophy. The A. refers to two of them: the relationship, on the one side, between unity and multiplicity; and, on the other, between “sameness” and “otherness”, namely, between “identity” and “difference”. Without their recognition, the possibility itself of theoretical thought, practical rules, and ethical or esthetical valuation would collapse. This paper reconsiders this ancient tension on a less abstract level, proposing to lay down some problems on “difference” and “otherness” from the perspective of Husserl’s theory of cultural and social intersubjectivity, namely, of the higher problems of intermonadic community. (shrink)

Introduction : facets of the alien -- The human as a liminal being -- Between pathos and response -- Response to the alien -- Corporeal experience between selfhood and otherness -- Thresholds of attention -- Between cultures.

The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

Most groups have social distance norms that differentiate “us” from “them.” Contrary to a widespread assumption in the sociological literature, however, these normative distinctions, even when they are collectively recognized, do not always overlap with the affective orientations of group members in a uniform manner. Relations between normatively close members of a group are not always warm and friendly, and normatively distant groups can sometimes be an object of reverence and love. In this study, a typology of five different ways (...) in which normatively distant groups can be perceived is presented: as competitors, allies, symbols of otherness, saviors, and ambivalent figures. Each type tends to emerge under certain circumstances and triggers different affective orientations. This typology is not a substitute for a general theory, but it aims to provide preliminary insights for investigating why affective orientations toward normatively distant groups take different forms and, more generally, to motivate further inquiry into the relationships between different dimensions of social distance. (shrink)

I would like to show how with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, we have to do with three different ways of understanding the experience of the other. For Sartre it is a visual experience, the experience of being looked at by the other, so that the experience of the other is understood as a confrontation; for Merleau-Ponty, the experience of the other necessarily implies coexistence and what he calls intercorporeality, so that for him the other is never to be found in (...) front, but instead beside me, in reciprocity with me; for Levinas, the experience of the other is the experience of a non-reciprocity, of an assymetrical relation, because the experience of the other is for him an ethical and not an ontological experience, and because this experience of the face of the other is the experience of a speaking and not in the first place corporeal presence. There are consequently three different ways of finding an access to the other : the look for Sartre, intercorporeality for Merleau-Ponty and the face for Levinas. (shrink)

Friendship, as a unique form of social relationship, establishes a particular union among individual human beings which allows them to overcome diverse boundaries between individual subjects. Age, gender or cultural differences do not necessarily constitute an obstacle for establishing friendship and as a social phenomenon, it might even include the potential to exist independently of space and time. This analysis in the interface of social science and phenomenology focuses on the principles of construction and constitution of this specific form of (...) human encounter. In a “parallel action,” the perspective of social science focuses on concrete socio-historical constructions of friendship in different time periods. These findings are confronted with the description of principles of the subjective constitution of the phenomenon of “friendship” from a phenomenological perspective. The point of reference for the study is the real type of the symbolically established and excessively idealized form of friendship intended for eternity which was especially popular in eighteenth century Germany. Analogous to the method of phenomenological reduction, three different levels of protosociological reduction are developed for the exploration of the unique social phenomenon of friendship. (shrink)

The stock of knowledge at hand is one of the most important concepts of Schutzian social theory. However, it would seem that attempts to consider the structures of the Life-World have not included social stratification in relation to the stock of knowledge at hand. By analyzing certain data from Argentina’s 2001.

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: 1. Why is the study of valuation topical? 2. What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? 3. What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided (...) by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identi!es a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention. (shrink)