The ‘Spiritual’ World: The Personal, the Social, and the Communal

Abstract

Husserl’s Ideen II, subtitled “Phenomenological Investigations on Constitution” and one of Husserl’s most comprehensive works, encompasses wide-ranging analyses of what Husserl calls “material nature,” “animal nahlre,” and “the spiritual world.” In this paper, I shall reflect briefly on his understanding of the interplay among the notions of person, society, and community Both personal and professional factors contribute to this reflection. Each of us belongs to several different, but interrelated and overlapping, communities. family, circle of friends, departmental colleagues, faculty, college or university community, professional society, and political communities of various levels (city or county, state or province, country, world). The functionings and malfunctionings of some of these communities are themselves sufficient to motivate a reflection on the nature of a well-ordered community. In addition, however, the recent publication of the articles Husserl wrote for the Japanese journal Kaizo on the theme of renewal (XXVII: 3–124) and his early lectures on ethics and value-theory (XXVIII), along with some of the previously published materials on intersubjectivity (esp. “Gemeingeist I” and “Gemeingeist II,” XIV: 165–232)—as well as the fine commentaries on Husserl’s ethical writings by writers such as Karl Schuhmann, James Hart, and Philip Buckley (cf. bibliography)—provides new reason to reflect on Husserl’s ethical thought, which is too often dismissed as marginal to his work.