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6. Historicity and Generativity
- Northwestern University Press
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99 6 Historicity and Generativity Until now I have been discussing two types of intersubjectivity: a priori intersubjectivity, originally implied by the horizon-structure of perceptual consciousness, and social intersubjectivity, a reciprocal empathic experience of others—and I have argued that both, in different senses, presuppose embodiment. Moreover, I argued that through our reciprocal interaction with others, a priori intersubjectivity is sedimented. Namely, through sociality, the intersubjective world gradually becomes familiar, and the meaning of the co-constituting “anybody” gains special features. The world originally appears as being there for anybody, but the sense of “anybody” is sedimented in time. In respect to the social environment, I argued, the co-constituting others are not anybody whatsoever, but anybody in the respective social community: co-members. That is to say, in social worldconstitution , “anybody” is a restricted notion. Yet, due to the essential openness1 of intersubjectivity, the environment at the same time still appears as being perceivable to anybody. In this sense, the social world is constituted against the horizon of the perceptual world—and this world of bodily experience is always present in our experiences of the familiar world of socially shared meanings. Husserl’s concept of familiarity (Vertrautheit) has a special sense that refers to intersubjective habituality, to an intersubjectively normal2 manner of experiencing the environment.3 The correlate of intersubjective familiarity is what Husserl calls a “homeworld” (Heimwelt): thus understood , the homeworld is our intersubjectively habituated environment, our “common, already familiar world” (eine gemeinsame schon vertraute Welt).4 Husserl argues that the lifeworld of an alien culture cannot be made comprehensible otherwise than by making it one’s homeworld; the homeworld is accessible only to those who live in it, to those whose homeworld it is.5 In other words, a homeworld cannot be familiar “from the outside.” An alien lifeworld is not valid for us as a homeworld. Nevertheless , alien homeworlds are given to us and, in this sense, are accessible in their inaccessibility:6 like someone else’s apartment appears to us as someone else’s home, an alien lifeworld appears to us as an alienworld (Fremdwelt ), as an alien homeworld. In this sense, we can share an environment perceptually, empathically, and even socially without sharing an inter- 100 H I S T O R I C I T Y A N D G E N E R A T I V I T Y subjectively familiar world. In encountering persons from an alien culture , we may, for instance, recognize their religious rituals as religious rituals, and even communicate with them, without sharing an experience of the cultural meaning of the ritual.7 Regardless of the empathic and reciprocal relation, we might be “worlds apart” in the sense that we do not share the presently appearing environment in its intersubjectivehistorical saturation. With the concepts of homeworld and alienworld, we are introduced to a third type of intersubjectivity: in addition to a priori intersubjectivity and social intersubjectivity, we now distinguish what Husserl calls generative intersubjectivity (die generative Intersubjektivität).8 As already stated above, social intersubjectivity is not abolished by the temporary absence of a particular member: in order to pertain to the same social unit, two subjects do not have to experience each other all the time, but the possibility of an actual reciprocal encounter is nevertheless presupposed. However, with past persons and persons to come we cannot establish reciprocal relations, and hence these others are not members of our social intersubjectivity , and yet they can be members of our tradition, of our historical community—and, precisely as co-members, they are not just anybody either. Hence intersubjectivity is not exhausted by “a priori intersubjectivity ” and “social intersubjectivity.” What is now needed is an explication of this generative intersubjectivity . In the following, I will illuminate how the embodied subjectivity constitutes itself as a member of historical traditions, and elaborate the constitutive consequences of this self-constitution. This examination will pave the way for raising the important question concerning the relation between the primordial and the intersubjective self-constitution of the embodied subjectivity. Genetic Constitution of Historical Self-Awareness Historical communities preexist the individual subject who enters into them. Here one must be careful not to slide into the naive natural attitude by declaring that a subject is simply born into a community. To be sure, others are “mundanely primary”9 and in the objective sense we “belonged” to a community already as fetuses—and, in this sense, being born means “being born into” (Hineingeborenwerden), and to...