Meditations on Intersubjectivity and Historicity in Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology

Abstract

In the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the problem of intersubjectivity is an issue which is most often related to his Cartesian Meditations 1 written in 1929. The issue is reflected as a problem of transcendental intersubjectivity with a decisive function and significance to the whole project of this philosophy—demonstrating and explaining how it is possible to meet with an objective, common nature and reality, even though this whole philosophy has been grounded in a certainty which is profoundly subjective. It is not uncommon to compare Husserl’s project (in the Cartesian Meditations, but also before) with the Cartesian way of thinking—with certain restrictions Husserl even does so himself2—aiming at a certainty which is apodictic and constituted by (and “in”) the “pure” cognizing ego. Therefore, it is also considered to be quite unhistorical, not subject to those kinds of changes and relativity that history (with our lives in this world) displays to us. (As related to this Cartesian project, you might even compare the problem of intersubjectivity in Husserl with the function(s) that the concept of “God” has in Descartes’ philosophy.)