Intersubjectivity and community

Adriaan Peperzak

pp. 55-64

in: Kevin Thompson, Lester Embree (eds), Phenomenology of the political, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstract

Everybody lives in a network of face-to-face relationships, but none of these can be isolated from the broader social and cultural context of the several collectivities to which we belong. If we use the word "intersubjectivity" to indicate direct relationships between persons, and "collectivity" or "commonality" to evoke the anonymous and "objective" structures and processes which form the "world" and the context of human action, one of the fundamental questions that have to be asked in social philosophy can be formulated thus: how are intersubjectivity and collectivity (or community) related? Since it is not difficult to see that they can never be separated from one another, this question asks how the communal and the intersubjective components of human togetherness are interwoven and form a sort of synthesis. Although not free from tensions and fights, their web binds people together, not only by common features, actions, and habits, but also, and even more so, through interaction and emotional relationships. To live a human life is to experience oneself as belonging to different communities within which human individuals encounter and converse with one another.