The Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity

Abstract

Contemporary continental philosophy has moved away from phenomenology, especially Husserlian phenomenology with its transcendental subject. Currents in contemporary theory that have been called “post-structural” and “postmodern” share the rejection of the Husserlian theory of subjectivity. “Post-structuralism” and “postmodernism” are also post-phenomenological. Levinas, Derrida, Lyotard and Kristeva, for example, criticize Husserl’s conception of the subject. Of course, Husserl’s immediate successors, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty also rejected his conception of the transcendental subject. Returning to different versions of Hegel’s dialectical conception of subjectivity, some contemporary theorists challenge the Husserlian notion of a unified transcendental subject by insisting that the subject is not only fragmented or decentered and embodied, but also that it is the result, even the effect, of relationships to something or someone other than itself.