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69 4 A Priori Intersubjectivity Until now, I have been investigating consciousness in relation to itself, and I have argued that self-awareness is fundamentally bodily selfawareness : subjectivity is embodied even before it becomes aware of having a body. What has been said up to now enables an investigation of the constitution of intersubjectivity and intersubjective self-constitution. In order to clarify the complex role that embodiment plays in the constitution of intersubjectivity, it is necessary to distinguish and investigate different types of intersubjectivity and explicate their internal relations. I will here argue that others are originally implied already in the horizonal structure of perception in the sense that the perceptual environment is, by principle reasons, always already constituted as being there for anyone. By interpreting the “anyone” as “anybody,” I accordingly present the initial form of intersubjectivity in terms of embodied intersubjectivity . I will argue that Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity involves such “a priori intersubjectivity” which is not founded on but rather presupposed in all our concrete experience of others.1 This analysis further enables an examination of the constitution of what Husserl calls “social intersubjectivity .” I will illustrate the centrality of embodiment in reciprocal intersubjective relations, clarify how a shared environment is constituted in and through empathy and social encounters, and explain how transcendental subjectivity constitutes itself as an individual person among others. Further, through social relations—that is to say, through reciprocal relations between contemporaries—subjectivity constitutes itself as a member of an intersubjective tradition, as a finite member in a historical continuum of life that goes on independently of the individual. In this “generative intersubjectivity” the world is constituted as the historical world. The three forms of intersubjectivity that I will explicate in the following are, accordingly: a priori intersubjectivity, social intersubjectivity , and generative intersubjectivity. By elaborating the constitution of each of these, I will argue that generative intersubjectivity necessarily has a genetic constitution: tradition is something that subjectivity enters into in the course of its development. I will also argue that intersubjective self-constitution cannot replace subjective-primordial self-constitution, and nor can generative intersubjectivity replace a priori intersubjectivity. 70 A P R I O R I I N T E R S U B J E C T I V I T Y This enables me to take a new point of view, later on, to what Husserl calls the “paradox of subjectivity.” I will begin by arguing that every perception structurally implies references to possible co-perceivers. This fundamental kind of intersubjectivity does not presuppose concrete experience of others. It will be argued, on the contrary, that concrete experience of others—in Husserlian terms: empathy—is established from the basis of an initial, a priori intersubjectivity. The Horizonal Other as “Anybody” Subjectivity is fundamentally open to the alien: it does not first have to find a way out of itself in order to be touched by what is other to it, but instead it is open to alterity from the start. The realization of this openness is the starting point for a phenomenological study of intersubjectivity . While discussing self-awareness in part 1, I explicated how subjectivity originally experiences itself in perceiving the environment. Here I will argue that intersubjectivity is revealed in a somewhat similar manner: namely, we are originally related to others already in perceiving the environment . Therefore, in order to disclose the a priori intersubjectivity, we need to deepen some of the insights regarding the constitution of the environment in perceptual experience. As already argued, a sensory appearance that does not co-awaken the intentions of the other sense-spheres—for instance, a seen thing appearing as something that cannot be touched—is experienced as an illusion. Here we find a structural similarity between the intersensory and the intersubjective. Namely, to experience something as being experiencible for oneself exclusively is to experience it as an imaginary or illusory object, and not as a real, actually perceived thing. Moreover, if someone were to originally experience the environment as existing only for her, the possible existence of other perceivers for the same environment would be ruled out in advance. The elucidation of intersubjectivity will necessarily fall short if one sets off with a notion of an isolated subject.2 In what sense, then, does intersubjectivity initially emerge? How does the environment originally appear? I will answer these phenomenological questions by explicating two essential structures of thingconstitution : temporality and anonymity. The constitution of unitary things cannot presuppose—simultaneous or antecedent—experience of...

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