Publication Details

Abstract

The paper aims to propose a phenomenological topological model of collective perspective. In this framework the paper analyses Husserl’s accounts of intersubjectivity emphasizing the difference between early and late conceptions of Einfühlung. The early conception (until 1916) derives the intersubjectivity from the localizing of haptic perceptions on my visually perceived body (i.e. from the Körper to Leib-körper transformation). The late, and more famous, conception conceives Einfühlung rather as a direct perception of the other’s expressions. The earlier account inaugurates a specifically transformative aesthesiological-kinetic layer, which is further considered to be a possible basis of intersubjectivity. The emphasis in the layer-based theory of intersubjectivity is not laid on the interactivity among two or more agents (as it is in interactivism in contemporary social cognition research), but rather on the subject’s involvement in layers of experience. Consequently, the collective perspective is not derived from the autonomy of interaction, but from a topology of transformative layers.