Phainomenon: revista de fenomenologia

Husserl considered the establishment of a transcendental community of subjects necessary for
the possibility of obtaining transcendental knowledge of oneself and the world. Notwithstanding,
Husserl’s philosophy has been regarded as solipsistic for a significant period. However, analysis
of Husserl’s theory of perception even prior to the publication of the Cartesian Investigations
suggests otherwise. According to this view, experience of the world is understood as public
rather than private. Perceived objects are not exclusive to a single perceiving subject, although
they are given in subjective experience. For this reason, at least from the 1920’s onwards,
Husserl refers to the egological foundation of his philosophy as leading toward an
intersubjective transcendental phenomenology, or even (as one can read in Hua IX: 539),
towards a sociological phenomenology.
The issue of “transcendental intersubjectivity”, beginning from a transcendental ego, and its role
in the constitution of an intersubjectively valid world, is discussed in Husserl’s 5th Cartesian
Meditation as well as in numerous unpublished manuscripts. This topic was further explored by
later phenomenologists, including Eugen Fink and Ludwig Landgrebe. Others, overlooking
Husserl's focus on the constitutive role of intersubjectivity rather than its empirical forms,
charged him with neglecting the ethical aspects of the I-Thou relationship; this critique was most
notably advanced by Emanuel Lévinas. However, it was in the 1950’s that Alfred Schutz offered
one of the most critical perspectives on the project of establishing an intersubjective
transcendental community of egos. Schutz argued namely:
1. Husserl’s transcendental Ego cannot be put in the plural.
2. Husserl did not provide a conclusive proof that the existence of other Egos is a problem
of the transcendental sphere.
3. Intersubjectivity is just an empirical-mundane problem.
4. Transcendental subjectivity must be replaced by mundane intersubjectivity.
Additionally, Schutz made several observations about Husserl’s method in the 5th Cartesian
Meditation. He argued that Husserl’s concept of reduction to the “sphere of the proper” assumes
a distinction between the proper and the alien, which could only have been established prior to
the reduction. Schutz also noted that the experience of pairing, which presents the alien body as
similar to one's own, lacks precision, as it does not consider differences such as those between
male and female, or between humans and animals.

No 40 of Phainomenon aims to retrieve this issue, offering not only an analysis of the Husserl-
Schutz debate, but also exploring new perspectives, namely (but not restricted to): 1) the ways

the experience of an alien self can be addressed from a phenomenological point-of-view; 2)
intersubjectivity and lifeworld; 3) the role of the lived body in the experience of “pairing”; 4)
“higher-level” intersubjective communities: family, corporations, trade-unions, state institutions;
5) “mundane phenomenology” and sociology; 6) Schutz: continuation and criticisms (Lester
Embree, Thomas Luckman, Jürgen Habermas, and others).
The deadline for submitting proposals is July 31, 2026.
The author guidelines can be consulted and articles submitted at the following link:
https://phainomenon-journal.pt/index.php/phainomenon/about/submissions