Husserlian Mereology and Intimate Community Membership

This article provides an interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s concept of personal community based on his formal mereology. Husserl’s unique ontology of community is demonstrated, which opens up and informs a Husserlian account of the intentionality belonging to community membership. My focus here is exclusively on the intentionality of “intimate” community membership, appealing to Husserl’s technical notion of intimacy as found in his theory of parts and wholes. I argue that Husserl’s notorious account of some communities understood as “personalities of a higher order” is indicative of mereological intimacy.