Abstract
In the last years, one can observe an increasing interest in phenomenological contributions to social ontology and collective or we-intentionality studies. Some of the accounts about we-intentionality that were developed especially within early phenomenology are currently in the process of being rediscovered, reevaluated and reassessed in the light of more recent debates. In this strand of research, the name of Kurt Stavenhagen has largely been neglected. This is unfortunate given that substantial parts of his philosophical production are devoted to foundational issues in the social sciences.
The main aim of this paper is to contribute to this line of research by introducing Kurt Stavenhagen’s work on social phenomenology and, in particular, his account of how communities can arise based on shared preferences (Stavenhagen calls communities formed in this way “charismatic unifications”).
Stavenhagen’s ideas on social ontology are original and interesting at once. In fact, not only does he offer a description of we-experiences that in many ways is unprecedented within phenomenology, but also he provides an explanation for why individuals identify when they have coincident preferences. According to Stavenhagen, this explanation is to be sought in a difference between two forms of communities or unifications. According to him, “mediate” unifications (the kinds of we that arises from the individuals’ mutual awareness of their overlapping preferences) are grounded in unifications of an “immediate” kind (these are I-Thou relations that rely on reciprocal friendly sentiments) in the sense that the former are weaker – i.e., not yet fully actualized – forms of the latter.
A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the University of Keio (Tokyo, 23.06.2015), at the conference on Edith Stein and Phenomenology (UCD, Dublin, 14.05.2015) and at the Conference of The Nordic Society of Phenomenology (Stockholm, 04.2015) where I received much appreciated feedback. My gratitude also goes to Tim Burns, who has commented on a previous draft of this article.
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Notes
- 1.
Stavenhagen ’s personal contacts with phenomenologists were limited: he studied classic philology in Göttingen from SS 1904 to WS 1908/09, but only attended the lectures of Husserl in his last two semesters (I am thankful to Rodney Parker, who gave me access to Stavenhagen’s leaving certificate). Despite this fact, Stavenhagen is adamant in recognizing his affiliation to the phenomenological movement and identifies his main sources of inspiration in the members of the Munich and Göttingen circles (first and foremost in Reinach, cf. Stavenhagen 1925, Schuhmann and Smith 1987).
- 2.
After the war, Stavenhagen taught in Hamburg (in 1945) and later at his alma mater, the University of Göttingen (in the years 1946–1951). On the life and work of Stavenhagen, cf. Stavenhagen 1957: 308, Spiegelberg 1965, Rozenvalds 2000. Spiegelberg notes that Stavenhagen was a member of the German national minority in the Baltic countries, which could have prompted his interest in questions related to the philosophy of social sciences and here, specifically, about the essence of nationality. It should be emphasized that, although Stavenhagen had appointments in Königsberg and at the University in Poznań during WWII (two of the most important universities in the occupied territories), these appointments do not seem to indicate an allegiance to the Nazi Regime (cf. Tilitzki 2002: 789–808, I am thankful to Prof. Wolfgang Ertl for drawing my attention to Stavenhagen’s appointments during the war).
- 3.
Note that it would be a mistake to think of mind-independent values as the sole criterion of adequacy for stances; mind-dependent value, too, can play that role. Suppose you have a migraine and you assign mind-dependent values to different chemical substances (which hence acquire that value only in the light of your condition), but you enjoy morphine as the best antidote against a migraine. In this case, your preference is inadequate given that morphine is not the best antidote against a migraine – and this holds even if other substances against a migraine have mind-dependent values (cf. von Hildebrand 1916, Reinach 1989a: 298).
- 4.
A side note: sometimes, collectivism in the social sciences is criticized as an attempt to give philosophical substance to the individual’s psychological aspiration to be part of a force or power that exceeds the limits dictated by individuality. This critique may be true, but it all too often forgets the other side of the coin – collectivism, if true, reveals the dependence of the individual on other individuals. Put another way, sharing something with a partner implies being dependent on the partner.
- 5.
It is hard to say whether this caveat counteracts the claim that there is a relation of essence between mediate and immediate unifications. Reinach faced a similar problem (cf. 1989b), when he establishes that promises, by their very essence, generate commitments. One possible strategy to block the difficulty is by arguing that the relation holds between essences indeed, but not between their instances – accordingly, a group is a mediate unification only if, in principle, it can develop into immediate unification (similarly, an act is a social act only if, in principle, it can generate a commitment), but this does not imply that all mediate unifications actually develop into immediate unification (or that all promises actually generate a commitment).
- 6.
Stavenhagen does not discuss the relation between “charismatic domains” and values (though it is hard to overlook the link between the two notions; Stavenhagen sometimes even uses the term “Wertbereich” as interchangeable with “charismatic domain”). However, it should not go unmentioned that just a few years before Stavenhagen ’s essay, Dietrich von Hildebrand published his Metaphysics of Community (1930), where he ascribes to values a function very similar to the one Stavenhagen ascribes to “charismatic domains.” According to Hildebrand, when values are shared, they have a “virtus unitiva,” able to bind individuals into a community before or even regardless any sharing of experiences (cf. Salice 2016b).
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Salice, A. (2017). Kurt Stavenhagen on the Phenomenology of the We. In: Magrì, E., Moran, D. (eds) Empathy, Sociality, and Personhood. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 94. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71096-9_10
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