Paul Ricœur’s Search for a Just Community. The Phenomenological Presupposition of a Life “with and for others”

The aim of this article is to examine how Ricœur’s critique of Husserl’s and Levinas’s notions of intersubjectivity informs his own alternative conceptualization of the intra- and interpersonal as a complex intertwining of moral selfhood and a just community. My first assumption is that law, as a prescriptive intervention in the social structure of our communal life, presupposes a phenomenology of our “being with others”. My second assumption is that Ricœur’s entire philosophical anthropology, and specifically his ideas on ethics, legality and justice, can be read as a prolonged response to Husserl’s solipsistic deadlock in the famous Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Taken together these two assumptions connect Ricœur’s early analysis of phenomenology with his complex reconceptualization of moral selfhood in Oneself as Another, culminating in the ethical maxim of “a good life with and for others in just institutions.”

O Outro e a Relação. O contributo das fenomenologias da intersubjectividade

Historically, phenomenology started to face the phenomenon of intersubjectivity as an objection to its own transcendental aspiration to constitute apodicticity. In fact, since Husserl’s very influential Fifth Cartesian Meditation, the risk of solipsism threatened the possibilities of a genuine phenomenology of the other. This problem ‘s discussion was continued by all of the most significant phenomenologists, such as Max Scheler, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Marc Richir, Ricœur, Lévinas, and others, all having made explicit reference to that starting reflection by Husserl in The Cartesian Meditations. In this paper, I will approach the problem of intersubjectivity, not by attending to the already mentioned traditional phenomenological motive, but, instead, by trying to bring to light the variety of ways of how relationships to others are faced phenornenologically, and its implications for a debate about the psychotherapeutic relationship. Under the assumption that there is no psychotherapy without a psychotherapist/client relationship, it is particularly relevant the contribution of phenornenologies of intersubjectivity to the effort of answering the question «What do our relational experiences with others mean?»

The Constitution of the Alter Ego in Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology

This paper explores Husserl's phenomenological description of the constitution of the alter ego within the sphere of transcendental subjectivity. It is important at the start to point out that the Other plays a crucial role in securing the intersubjective nature of the experienced world. Although Husserl goes on in the "Fifth Cartesian Meditation" to consider the constitution of an objective world common to all subjects and the establishment of a community of monads, my primary focus in this paper will be the examination of the initial steps whereby the sense, "other ego," is constituted by the transcendental ego. My main task, then, will be to examine the reduction to the sphere of ownness, the appresentative transfer of sense from ego to alter ego, and the criterion of harmonious behavior. My primary criticisms will center around certain difficulties inherent in the attempt to uncover a primordial sphere of ownness and problems that arise from a shift in concern from the life-world (everyday) attitude to the attitude following the performance of the epoché. Part I of the paper will consist of a general discussion of Husserl's phenomenological project, Part II will be a detailed study of the alter ego, and Part III a general statement of problems and objections.