The other as alter ego: A genetic approach

Husserl Studies

Volumn 15, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 151-166

  Soffer, Gail ^a  

^a NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 54649084646     PISSN: 01679848     EISSN: 15728501     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006262513765     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (21)

1. Michael Theunissen, The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber, translated by Christopher Macann with an introduction by Fred R. Dallmayr (MIT: Cambridge and London, 1984), especially pp. 145 and 159.
2. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1969), p. 39.
3. Alfred Schutz, "The Problem of Transcendental Intersubjectivity in Husserl," in Collected Papers III: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy, edited by Use Schutz with an introduction by Aron Gurwitsch (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975), pp. 72, 76, 82.
4. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), pp. 352-353.
5. See, for example, Hua XV, Beilage XLV, pp. 604 ff.
6. James Hart, The Person and the Common Life: Studies in a Husserlian Social Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), pp. 190ff.
7. Theodor Lipps, Leitfaden der Psychologie, 2nd. ed. (Leipzig: Von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1906), p. 199;
8. Scheler, On the Nature of Sympathy, translated by Peter Heath (Hamden: Archon, 1970), pp. 238ff;
9. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, op. cit., p. 352.
10. In his introduction to Husserliana XIV, the second intersubjectivity volume, Kern asserts that Husserl finally successfully resolves this problem in the closing manuscripts of the volume, which concern the constitution of space. In these manuscripts, Husserl asks, given that primordially all distances are relative to my living body (i.e., the far-kinestheses required to make the object 'here'), how do I primordially constitute the distance between two objects which are both at a remove from me (i.e., not reachable by touch unless I 'move,' activate my far-kinestheses)? His answer is that I imaginatively put myself in (versetzt) the location of one of the objects, and appresent the appearance of the other object from that location. This implies that appresenting the appearance of objects from other locations is already part of the basic constitution of space within the primordial sphere. However, contrary to Kern, although this is an important element in the constitution of the other, this does not solve the problem of the similarity of the other's body to my own. Granted that I can already appresent what objects would look like from another location, how do I perceive that one object looks like my body, or that an object in fact possesses the view I anticipate I would have from that location? Further, Husserl continues to ponder these issues in the manuscripts in Hua XV, treating them as unresolved, not as resolved, as Kern claims.
11. In his reconstruction of this argument of Lipps (Hua XIII, p. 71), Husserl does not see it as a central objection, because it applies only to the face and because he does not think the problem of expression the main problem of intersubjectivity. The main problem is the problem of the unity of the psychic and the physical, which can occur even in the absence of linguistic or facial expressions.
12. See Hua XIV, Text No. 3 and Beilage VI. On p. 76 of Beilage VI, Husserl suggests that the basis for the resemblance between the own-body and the other-body could be the similarity between touching one's own hand and touching the hand of another. This passage is highly reminiscent of Merleau-Ponty's analysis of touching the touch in The Visible and the Invisible.
13. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, op. cit., p. 352.
14. See, for example, Andrew N. Meltzoff and M. Keith Moore, "Newborn Infants Imitate Adult Facial Gestures," Child Development, 1983, pp. 702-709. Meltzoff argues that "both visual and motor transformations of the body can be represented in a common form and thus directly compared. Infants could thereby relate proprioceptive motor information about their own unseen body movements to their representation of the visually perceived model and create the match required," (p. 708).
15. Hua XIV, p. 490. Husserl does not actually endorse this view, but only considers it hypothetically.
16. Hua XV, p. 606.
17. Husserl's idea that vocal imitation could be the basis for the first empathy reflects a general tendency to overlook or coarsely analyze the specific characteristics of the newborn period (e.g., up to 3 months).
18. Scheler, On the Nature of Sympathy, op. cit., pp. 66-67.
19. Hua XIII, pp. 360-399 (physical abnormality);
20. Hua XIV, pp. 112-137 (empathy with a jelly-fish);
21. Hua XV, pp. 175-185, 214-218, 236-242.