Call for Papers

HUSSERL AND SCHUTZ ON INTERSUBJECTIVITY

 

Guest Editor: Carlos Morujão  

CALL-FOR-PAPERS

 

Husserl considered the establishment of a transcendental community of subjects necessary for the possibility of obtaining transcendental knowledge of oneself and the world. Notwithstanding, Husserl's philosophy has been regarded as solipsistic for a significant period. However, analysis of Husserl's theory of perception, even prior to the publication of the Cartesian Investigations, suggests otherwise. According to this view, experience of the world is understood as public rather than private. Perceived objects are not exclusive to a single perceiving subject, although they are given in subjective experience. For this reason, at least from the 1920s onwards, Husserl refers to the egological foundation of his philosophy as leading toward an intersubjective transcendental phenomenology, or even (as one can read in Hua IX: 539), towards a sociological phenomenology.

The issue of "transcendental intersubjectivity", beginning from a transcendental ego, and its role in the constitution of an intersubjectively valid world, is discussed in Husserl's 5th Cartesian Meditation as well as in numerous unpublished manuscripts. This topic was further explored by later phenomenologists, including Eugen Fink and Ludwig Landgrebe. Others, overlooking Husserl's focus on the constitutive role of intersubjectivity rather than its empirical forms, charged him with neglecting the ethical aspects of the I-Thou relationship; this critique was most notably advanced by Emanuel Lévinas. However, it was in the 1950s that Alfred Schutz offered one of the most critical perspectives on the project of establishing an intersubjective transcendental community of egos. Schutz argued, namely:

1.     Husserl's transcendental Ego cannot be put in the plural.

2.     Husserl did not provide conclusive proof that the existence of other Egos is a problem of the transcendental sphere.

3.     Intersubjectivity is just an empirical-mundane problem.

4.     Transcendental subjectivity must be replaced by mundane intersubjectivity.

Additionally, Schutz made several observations about Husserl's method in the 5th Cartesian Meditation. He argued that Husserl's concept of reduction to the "sphere of the proper" assumes a distinction between the proper and the alien, which could only have been established prior to the reduction. Schutz also noted that the experience of pairing, which presents the alien body as similar to one's own, lacks precision, as it does not consider differences such as those between male and female, or between humans and animals.

Nº 40 of Phainomenon aims to retrieve this issue, offering not only an analysis of the Husserl-Schutz debate, but also exploring new perspectives, namely (but not restricted to): 1) the ways the experience of an alien self can be addressed from a phenomenological point-of-view; 2) intersubjectivity and lifeworld; 3) the role of the lived body in the experience of "pairing"; 4) "higher-level" intersubjective communities: family, corporations, trade-unions, state institutions; 5) "mundane phenomenology" and sociology; 6) Schutz: continuation and criticisms (Lester Embree, Thomas Luckman, Jürgen Habermas, and others).

 

The deadline for submitting proposals is July 31, 2026.

The author guidelines can be consulted and articles submitted at the following link: https://phainomenon-journal.pt/index.php/phainomenon/about/submissions