Intersubjectivity as a problem of context and the milieu-world

pp. 45-56

in: Steven Vaitkus, How is society possible?, Berlin, Springer, 1991

Abstract

Although there are some hints of Gurwitsch's concern with the relationship between intersubjectivity and contexts (Zusammenhängen) in the closing remarks of the "Phenomenology of Thematics and of the Pure Ego"¹ and other previous works,² it is in Human Encounters in the Social World that it first comes to the fore as a central theme.³ There it is maintained that intersubjectivity, as an issue and problem in itself, has resulted from the development of the reflective context of a phenomenology of consciousness which originates in the philosophy of Descartes and which is continued today by Husserlian philosophy. "That there is any problem at all concerning knowledge about human beings as fellow human beings... is implied by a certain phenomenological formulation of consciousness".⁴ Previously, as in the everyday contexts in which we carry out our routine activities of today, intersubjectivity was a lived conviction, unproblematic, obvious and always there without being expressed. With the development of a phenomenology of consciousness, the constitution of a reflective context arises in which this conviction is thrown into question insofar as a contrast arises between the knowledge involved in this reflective context and the "knowledge' involved in everyday contexts concerning this lived conviction.