Abstract

In manuscripts from the 1920s Husserl elaborates on what in the Cartesian Meditations he calls “personalities of a higher order.” We might expect the founder of phenomenology to be suspicious of this idea, considering it a mere façon de parler. In fact, Husserl strongly endorses this notion, borrowing the term Gemeingeist from the German Idealists, and defending it against attempts by empirical psychologists to reduce everything to individuals. He attributes to certain forms of community not only personality but also subjectivity, consciousness, unity of consciousness, convictions, memory, and even “so etwas wie Leiblichkeit” - something like corporality. It is this last notion that I want to explore in this paper: what would such communal corporality be like? “We-intentionality” is much discussed these days among phenomenologists. Can we attribute corporality to it, and if so, how? I will consider possible answers to this question, not limiting myself to what Husserl says.