Abstract

Alfred Schutz identified two different approaches to the problem of intersubjectivity. The first is the transcendental, which maintains the primacy of subjectivity, and identifies the problem of the other as a transcendental problem. For example, in Husserl’s phenomenological idealism, all meaning is relative to a transcendental constituting subject. Hence the “problem of intersubjectivity” is to show how the other comes to be constituted, comes to be meant as a sense. The difficulty with such an approach is that if the other is a meaning relative to and analogous to the constituting subject, the transcendence and irreducibility of the other to consciousness seem to be undermined. Transcendental idealism never reaches the “other” because the other is precisely what I do not constitute, but can only encounter. The recognition of the inadequacy of the transcendental approach leads to a second, namely, the other is encountered on the basis and background of the natural attitude and/or life-world. When the transcendental approach is abandoned, the “problem of the other” turns into a series of descriptions of either encounters or social situations. Ontology is replaced by critical theory of society. In either case, an ontology of intersubjectivity seems to be excluded.