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147 8 Transcendental Consequences In the previous chapter, I studied the genetic constitution of intersubjective objectivity. I elaborated how an encounter between individual subjectivities (primordialities) gives rise to intersubjective normality, and how an encounter between intersubjective normalities (homeworlds) gives rise, in a structurally similar manner, to the constitution of the intercultural world of nature. I argued that in intersubjective encounters, the status of primordial normality is transformed in the sense that our own lived-body is now constituted as one primordial norm, as one original body (Urleib)1 among others. In this chapter I develop the transcendental consequences of this analysis by clarifying the sense in which primordial normality is sustained in intersubjective world-constitution. By elaborating this in detail, I will disclose, within subjectivity, a structure that I call a “normative tension.” Empathy and the Limits of Intersubjective Constitution What enables our reciprocal confrontation with alien cultures is ultimately the fact that we are all related to the same sensuous realm: even if we do not share a historical lifeworld, we nevertheless constitute ourselves as being related to the one and the same horizon of bodily experience , to the sensuous environment in its invariant, general structure.2 This presupposes that our perceptual abilities coincide—and here the embodied self serves as the primordial norm. Even if the other is not familiar with the cultural meaning of the ice cream that we hold in our hand, for instance, we nevertheless assume her to perceive it as something in front of her, as something she could approach and grasp, and as something that would feel cold in her hands. That is to say, the other is constituted as having a similar system of spatiotemporal orientation, similar possibilities of kinesthetic self-movement, and a similar system of sensibility—similar, even if not identical. Now, insofar as our expectation is fulfilled, insofar as the other in fact proves to have the capacities we 148 T R A N S C E N D E N T A L C O N S E Q U E N C E S originally attribute to her, what is experientially shared is not a formal, theoretical object, but the thing as it is sensuously given. The experientially shared thing can be neither constituted nor defined without reference to possible perceivers, and, consequently, the natural thing itself is necessarily constituted in relation toa particular kind of appearance-system. This influences even eidetic-phenomenological descriptions. To be sure, we can conjure and imagine remarkably different perceptions, but what we mean by “perceiving” is bound to our own—primordial and intersubjectively familiar—embodiment. In this sense, as Husserl puts it, the “possibilities of imagination as variations of essence do not float freely in the air, but are constitutively related to me in my facticity, [to me] with my living present that I factically live through.”3 To employ Husserl’s example, if I am imagining a centaur, I am bound to imagine it as in a certain orientation and in a particular relation to my sense organs: whatever I imagine, “upon closer scrutiny, I myself am thereby co-imagined in a peculiar manner.”4 In this sense “my normal being [is] the bearer (the Archimedean footing) not only of worlds that are actual for me, but also of those that are conceivable for me.”5 The idea of the normative structure of primordial constitution, accordingly, has remarkable consequences. Namely, as this issue is investigated further, it will turn out that our factical embodiment has a central normative role in the constitution of objective reality. In order to clarify the normative role of the embodied subjectivity in the constitution of objective nature, we must return to Husserl’s theory of empathy. In perceiving the other, we empathically experience the environment from her point of view.6 That is, before any deliberation, we empathically grasp the sensible situation7 of the other. Of course, as Husserl adds, this does not mean that I would thereby feel myself “over there”; in the literal sense, there occurs no “feeling-into” (Einfühlung ) or “transference” (Übertragung) and hence empathy must be distinguished from simulation.8 Moreover, besides simulation, Husserl also distinguishes empathy from imagination. He tentatively characterizes empathy as “thinking-one’s-way-into-the-other” (Sich-in-den-Anderenhineindenken ) and as “imagining-one’s-way-into-the-other” (Hineinphantasieren ), but specifies that, unlike imagination, empathy is “positional, and does not proceed in the ‘as if’ of pure fantasy”; others are given as being actually...

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