Gustav Shpet’s Path Towards Intersubjectivity

Husserl Studies 30 (1):47-64 (2014)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

With his “discovery” of the phenomenological reduction, Husserl confronted the problem of intersubjectivity: How is the Other constituted? Gustav Shpet, a Russian student of Husserl’s in Göttingen, unlike many others accepted the reduction on some level but, unlike Husserl, did not dwell on the problem. In this essay, we look first at the Russian treatment of intersubjectivity in the immediately preceding years and see that the concern was over the possibility of proving our natural conviction in the Other. We then turn to Husserl’s position circa 1912 with its embryonic conception of empathy as its vehicle into the sphere of the Other’s “ownness.” Finally, we turn to Shpet, who cautiously suggests that Husserl’s division of intuition into two sorts, experiencing and ideal, is insufficient. Affirming Husserl’s claim that each species of being has a correlative cognitive method, Shpet asserts that social being should also have its own method. Shpet recognizes that Husserl does not ascribe originary givenness to what empathy provides, but might Husserl have been wrong about this? Could it be that empathy, properly understood as a third form of intuition, “comprehension,” provides social being originarily and therefore functions in the constitution of the Other analogously to the way experiencing intuition functions in the constitution of physical things? However, comprehension is employed on what the Other presents, namely signs, be they in the form of bodily movements, speech or even writing. In this way, Shpet transforms Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology into a hermeneutic phenomenology

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,343

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

G. Shpet: a Way from Phenomenology to Hermeneutics.G. Ottaviano - 2013 - HORIZON. Studies in Phenomenology 2 (1):62-75.
Gustav Shpet’s Path Through Phenomenology to Philosophy of Language.Thomas Nemeth - 2021 - In Marina F. Bykova, Michael N. Forster & Lina Steiner, The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Springer Verlag. pp. 339-357.
Husserl on Other Minds.Philip J. Walsh - 2021 - In Hanne Jacobs, The Husserlian Mind. New Yor, NY: Routledge. pp. 257-268.
The Historicism of Lev Shestov and Gustav Shpet.Tatiana G. Shchedrina & Boris I. Pruzhinin - 2017 - Russian Studies in Philosophy 55 (5):336-349.
Gustav Shpet and the Semiotics of 'Living Discourse'.Philip T. Grier - 2009 - International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 22 (1):61-68.
Gustav Shpet and phenomenology in an orthodox key.Steven Cassedy - 1997 - Studies in East European Thought 49 (2):81-108.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-09-04

Downloads
51 (#447,550)

6 months
6 (#572,300)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Thomas Nemeth
KU Leuven (PhD)

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations