https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2023-03-01

2023/3, стр. 255 - 269

STYLE AND HABITUS: HUSSERL’S SHIFT FROM EMPATHY TO COMMUNICATION

Boris Pantev
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”

Abstract. This article explores the key role of “experiential style” (Erfahrungsstil) in Husserl’s account of social habituality. It demonstrates the developmental bridge this concept throws between the distinct intentionalities of empathy and communalization. The importance of Erfahrungsstil in Husserl has largely escaped scholarly attention. I claim, however, that in his later work, it becomes an inherent component to the relational dynamics of intermonadic temporalization, the process which underpins the generative constitution of sociality and opens a possibility for a transcendental phenomenological anthropology, a project Husserl only sketched out but never ventured on.

Keywords: Husserl; style; habituality; empathy; communication

Introduction

In this article I explore the key role the concept of “experiential style” (Erfahrungsstil) plays in Husserl’s account of social habituality by demonstrating the developmental bridge it throws between the distinct intentional modalities of empathy and communalization. The importance of what Husserl describes as style of intentional fulfillment has largely escaped scholarly attention due mainly to the subtlety of its genetic-phenomenological reconstruction. I claim, however, that in his later work, Erfahrungsstil becomes an inherent component to the relational dynamics of intermonadic temporalization, the process which underpins the generative constitution of sociality. Elucidating in this way an important aspect in Husserl’s developmental concept of communication, this argument lays bare the “intrinsic anity” obtaining between transcendental phenomenology and anthropology, a link to which Husserl only alluded in his 1931 Kantgesellschaft lecture (Husserl 1989, р. 181; Husserl 1997, р. 500)1, but never substantially worked out. My purpose thus is not to offer a comprehensive examination of Erfahrungsstil2 – an “operative” concept of a rather broad use in Husserl. I will instead analyze those of its features that are central to Husserl’s genetic phenomenology of intersubjectivity.

1. Systematic Context and Questions

Husserl's abundant and abiding reections on intersubjectivity incorporate numerous expositions often branching out into diverse strains of thought and competing hypotheses. The scholarship, nonetheless, commonly adopts certain systematic divisions in terms of the stages, the methodological and thematic range of his work. Among those, the distinction between static, genetic and generative analyses has proven fairly productive both because it maintains the rigorous boundaries between the different constitutional domains and because, methodically explored, these domains turn out to complement each other.3 While I gear my exposition toward Husserl's genetic and generative accounts of communication, for the purpose of this article, I adopt the more specific distinction between constituted and constituting intersubjectivity.4 This distinction, which in a certain way traverses the above one, would in my view provide a clearer guideline for the explanation of the key role the notion of style plays in Husserl's social phenomenology.

Husserl's differentiated approach with respect to the constituted and the constituting intersubjectivity can be grasped by distinguishing two planes: 1) the constitutive theory of the “experience of the alien” (Fremderfahrung, Husserl 1973c, р. 4) examines the modes of access to other subjects starting from the embodied direct face-to-face encounter.5 2) The theory of the intersubjective constitution of the “experience of the world” (Welterfahrung) analyzes this experience as involving “others not only as worldly objects, but constantly (in ontological co-validity) as co-subjects, as co-constituting, and both as intertwined.” (Husserl 2006, р. 394) This intertwinement reveals an a priori open horizon of unknown others as always functionally implied in the constitution of objects.

This article does not aspire to provide a systematic presentation of either of these dimensions. Both are well-known to the scholarship. Nor does it venture into a survey of the ample critical literature on them. I try instead to trace within both Fremderfahrung and Welterfahrung the developmental stages at which the transcendental notion of style proves instrumental for the genetic constitution of social connectedness, a constitution Husserl often attributes to communicative or social acts (kommunikative/soziale Akte). With a main reference to Husserl's monadological account of subjectivity, I argue that the style that unfolds in processes of intermonadic communication (Mitteilung, Kommunikation)6, conceived in terms of mutual temporalization, provides one of the key developmental links between the embodied and the open intersubjectivity. This facilitates my attempt to show that, considered from the perspective of what Husserl calls self-temporalization (i.e. subjectivity as a “living present,” a concrete temporal becoming in the passive synthesis of experiences), Erfahrungsstil has a validating function in Husserl's theory of intersubjectivity7. Such an argument, I suggest, might supply a productive model for addressing some controversial issues in contemporary social cognition research such as the relationship between second- and third-person perspectives, joint attention, etc.8

The majority of Husserl's reections on intersubjectivity describe the communicative relationship as an intersubjective constitution of a higher order. Communicative performances define a distinct category of intersubjectivity, namely, social community (soziale Gemeinschaft). They make up the original “social acts” in a process which Husserl calls “communalization” (Vergemeinschaftung). In this process are built the “objectively existent social communities of different levels” including what Husserl calls “personalities of a higher order” (Husserl 1973a, р. 160; Husserl 1970, р. 32; Husserl 1973c, р. 19), collective unities bearing the characteristics of individual subjectivities. Nonetheless, in order for all these layers of communicative constitution to be accomplished, a basic grasp of other subjects must already be secured. In other words, communication presupposes empathy (Einfühlung). How are the primary forms of communalization such as prelinguistic face-to-face interaction different from direct empathic experience? If empathy functions as an enabling condition for social acts, what are the specific constitutive elements that it provides to yield the phenomenon of interpersonal communication?

2. Reduction, Primal Institution, and the Problem with Empathy

Husserl's explication of social acts has a transcendental character in the same sense the analysis of empathy does. For this reason, it presupposes the same methodological steps.

Within the natural attitude we usually communicate without fundamental problems. Even when we stumble upon major misunderstandings, we still interpret ourselves as members of a community where we take for granted the intersubjective meaning horizons of the world with which the different strata of sociality are already established. For Husserl however, to found a theory of intersubjectivity on such a “self-giving experience” (selbstgebende Erfahrung) would amount to “a bad nativism [and ...] a sensualistic inability to understand the truly phenomenological method of immanent analysis of the intentional structures of empathy” (Husserl 1973b, р. 335).

Thus in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation Husserl delimits the transcendental ground of empathy as the sphere of ownness (Eigenheit). In order to gain a strictly phenomenological access to the “intentional structures of empathy,” we have to return to the realm of our experience where they are given in their pure transcendental validity. For Husserl, this is to be accomplished through two distinct reduction procedures. The first one is that of the general phenomenological epoch. This reduction introduces the phenomenological attitude by suspending our belief in the existence of objects; it opens to reection the sphere of conscious experience where the transcendence of objects and other subjects are given as its intentional correlates (cf. Husserl 1950, рр. 102 – 110; Husserl 1980, рр. 108 – 117). However, Husserl's actual purpose is to explicate “how I can constitute in myself another Ego” (Husserl 1973a, 154; Husserl 1970, р. 126, emphasis added). Naturally, therefore, the transcendental sense “another ego” cannot be found in the “straightforward consciousness” of the world, even though after the first reduction, others are already given as noematic correlates. This would amount to an explanatory circle where we presuppose exactly what we want to explain. In order to gain a primordial access to this sense therefore, we need to execute another, “peculiar” (eigentümlich) epoch. This epoch abstracts us precisely from the immediate “noematic-ontic mode of givenness” of others, that is, from a kind of na”ve intersubjective intentionality. What is more, since any experience of the world entails others as it is a world that is “there for everyone,” this reduction must also exclude all possible mediate intersubjective meanings, and this clearly involves objectivity as a constitutional product. (Husserl 1973a, р. 153; Husserl 1970, р. 124).

The resultant, primordially reduced, sphere thus exists as a concrete temporal unity. Husserl names this unity after Leibnitz's concept of monad. The monad is itself the self-temporalizing streaming life of the ego (Husserl 1973c, рр. 121, 355 – 356). This streaming life includes a manifold of sensory data, intentionalities and habitualities as well as the world constituted in them (“the primordial world”). As such it also posits the experiential sense of one's own body. It affords, in this way, two strata of transcendence: the primordial transcendence which is immanent to the sphere of embodied experiences and the transcendence of the objective world, indicating what properly lies beyond consciousness. But how do monads constitute in themselves the sense “another monad”? Is there a transcendence of a third kind characterizing the mode of experience of the other? And, if so, isn’t this third kind of transcendence the link between the other two?

The self-temporalization of the monad is a primal passive-synthetic process. In it, the ego becomes affected by primary sensory impulses, what Husserl calls primal hyle (Urhyle). Affective intentionalities are thus modifications of the sensory inputs exercising affective force on the ego. By intending its past hyletic experiences as past together with the present ones the ego appresents itself and thus sustains its unity and continuity. The senses of this kinaesthetic appresentation accompany all my movements and perceptions. They provide the implicit self-awareness that constitutes the “living present” (lebendige Gegenwart) or one's experience of one's living body. They also form individual proprioceptive habitualities, or what today we would also call “embodied expertise.”9 These are often latent and “unconscious” and the self-awareness that characterizes all experiences at that level provides the ultimate ground of monadic self-consistency.

To Husserl, therefore, the monadic self-appresentation of one's own bodily unity has the character of an original experience. Original experiences, be they of oneself or of objects, according to him, are events of “primal institution” (Urstiftung). In primal institution a certain (noematic) sense becomes initiated. Henceforth, every time we have an experience of a similar kind the same sense becomes affectively awakened (cf. Husserl 1966, р. 172; Husserl 2001, р. 221). Now, in empathy, it is precisely such process that takes place:

You are associatively awakened by the appearance of the alien living-bodything [Leibding]. That initially indicates my own originally given living body [Leib] and my co-connected psychic sphere, in my corresponding self-having and self-doing insofar as it is related to the appearance-regularity of my living body and is parallelized with it. (Husserl 1973b, р. 164)

Whenever in the primordial sphere a physical body (Körper) of another subject presents itself, a kinaesthetic process of transfer of the sense “living body” (“animate organism,” Leib) occurs, from the experience of my own body to the perceived other body. Put in psychological terms, we have a cross-modal transmission from proprioceptive to exteroceptive sensory perception. The transmission conveys the awareness of the “primally instituted” unity of my own body over to the transcendental object-unity that appears to be similar to it within my ownness. This transmission is a passive-associative accomplishment that is articulated in the inner temporal stream. It refers to our bodily capacity for automatic, fast, and unconscious responses10 in social encounters. The associative transmission is stimulated by the index of similarity (hnlichkeit) between the primal experience of my own and the perception of the other's living body. The outcome of this process is what Husserl describes as pairing (Paarung): the appresentation of the other as co-present (mitgegenw‰rtig).

Various problems with this notoriously “Cartesian” account have been pointed out by numerous critics.11 The central one has been that Husserl unduly anchors the understanding of the other within the primordial sphere. My body, however, cannot be a “motivational basis” (Husserl 1973a, р. 140; Husserl 1970, р. 111) for the experience of another's body. I experience my body in a fundamentally different way than those of others. More specifically, the association between the hyletic data of my living present and those of the other's body is unwarranted because a relation of similarity cannot obtain between the intentional modes of self-awareness and the awareness of perceived objects. Is there, for Husserl, a way out of this truly warranted objection?

3. Intersubjective Experiential Style

Commentators typically fail to notice that Husserl himself—although not always consistently—addressed the issue of the other's unique mode of givenness (Husserl 1973a, р. 143; Husserl 1970, р. 1 Already in the Fifth Mediation he asks: “what makes this living body another's, rather than a second living body of my own?” (Husserl 1973a, р. 143; Husserl 1970, р. 113) His answer is given in a strictly temporal-genetic context. The difference is drawn on the basis of the special “style of verification” (Bew‰hrungsstil) carried out by the experience of the other. From the perspective of its style this experience is seen as developing through the emergence of a series of “new appresentations that proceed in a synthetically harmonious fashion” (Husserl 1973a, р. 144; Husserl 1970, р. 114). The other manifests herself as someone else through the distinct character of the dynamic concordance generated throughout her behaviour. This is the other's temporally unfolding unique style of alteration (nderungsstil, Ver‰nderungsstil, cf. Husserl 1973c, рр. 87, 321). Hence, it is precisely the style that constitutes the “unitary transcending experience” (Husserl 1973a, р. 144; Husserl 1970, р. 114) of another monad. Key to note here is that the apperception of the other is accomplished in dynamic terms and not on the basis of mere perception. This is a point of crucial importance since in numerous manuscripts succeeding the Fifth Meditation Husserl construes the intersubjective relationship as genetically motivated in developmental terms. The meaning of “behaviour” (Gebaren) in those discussions is clearly not to be taken in a behaviourist sense. The understanding of other people is not found simply on observations of their physical bodies (Körper) and their movements. Their behaviour rather opens a dynamic intentional horizon. The core of Husserl's insight is that this intentional horizon can never be presented in intuition. The other's subject's transcendence is necessarily unfulfillable. But what is given in intuition is this very unfulfillability. The accomplishment of such givenness is what precisely determines the style of experience of another living body. It secures the transcendence of the other by providing “accessibility of what is not originally accessible” (Husserl 1973a, р. 144; Husserl 1970, р. 114). The notion of style thus seems to acquire a central function in Husserl's account of intersubjectivity. This function is twofold: 1) it enables the “unity of similarity” that carries out the associative pairing on the level of dynamic accomplishments which is based on expression and behaviour (Husserl's later work corroborates this); 2) it validates the difference between self-experience and experience of the other by providing a verification of the latter’s unverifiability. For the purpose of the present exposition, the second moment requires further explication.

Obviously, the notion of style is key to Husserl's argument in the Fifth Meditation. This rather “operative” (i.e. not made explicitly thematic)13 concept also marks a number of other, earlier and later, analyses. Broadly, it refers to the abiding character of a certain experience as it unfolds in time. Throughout a developing experience every intentional act can be confirmed or conicted in various ways and degrees by subsequent, fulfilling (positive or negative), intentional acts. This happens in continuous synthetic processes that unfold across a manifold of intuitions retaining or altering the identity of the intended object. The dynamics, course, concordance, or discordance of intentional fulfillment (Erfüllung) define the object's style of experience.14 This meaning of Erfahrungsstil is closely related to the notion of primal institution. Primal institution, as outlined above, concerns the original experience of an object. When I encounter an object of a certain type for the first time, its noematic sense becomes instituted. Once this sense is acquired, it has a validity that points to other possible experiences of objects with the same sense (of the same type). Each such new experience when it actually occurs would refer back to the primal institution of its sense (the original experience of an object of this type). Thus the style of a given experience is determined by the kind and degree of vivacity and fullness of such reference back to the primal institution. Importantly, this reference is not a conscious representation. It is a passive-synthetic process of associative awakening.15 What is also remarkable is that Erfahrungsstil designates not simply and not only a reference back to an experientially established sense-horizon; it also indicates the singular manners and consistencies of alteration and variation with respect to the Urstiftung.

Now, in the intentional appresentation of the other as someone else, the synthetic moment of association has an exceptional structure. This structure determines the distinct style of fulfillment in intersubjective experiences. To be sure, the associative awakening motivated by the presence of the other's body still refers back not to the primal institution in an original experience of another's body but to my own kinaesthesis. My living body provides itself the primal institution that engenders the sense “living body.” The latter becomes valid for possible embodied experiences of others. What is passively awoken in each of those is the sense of my own kinaesthetic unity. In this precise sense, I associate the other body I experience with my own body on the basis of their similarity in style (moment [1] above). We can call this notion of experiential style kinaesthetic style emphasizing that the continuous fulfillments in both experiences involve a reference to the primal institution of the subject's proprioceptive and motor organization.

Along with the similarity, however, there is an irreducible difference between the two experiences. This difference is also a difference in style and the difference as style. Yet it announces itself not in the primally instituted sense (which in both cases derives from my somatic experience) but in the precise mode of reference back to it and the precise mode of altering itself from it. Properly speaking, we can designate such a difference in its liminal sense as the experiential style of nonappearance. Intertwined with the sense of my own lived body, such style produces precisely a sense of a foreign subjectively animated body (animated like mine, yet not mine). In other words, different kinds of associative awakening occur when I experience myself and when I experience the other. In the Fifth Meditation Husserl provides only a static description of this difference while the genetic explanation is only hinted at through the concept of style.16 Possible genetic lines of elaboration of the latter however may be discerned in his earlier lectures on passive synthesis and his later notes on intersubjectivity.

Husserl is consistent that the appresentation of the other subjectivity is a “mediate intentionality.” This means that such an appresentation consists in a necessarily non-originary making-present (representation, Vergegenw‰rtigung) of the other's subjectivity. Importantly however, this “non-originary making-present can do it only in combination with an originary presentation (Gegenw‰rtigung)” (Husserl 1973, р. 139; Husserl 1970, р. 109, emphasis added). What we have here is a specific kind of intertwining (Verechtung) of mediate and immediate syntheses. It is the same kind of intertwining that we find in Husserl's discussion of the relationship between immediate and mediate associative awakening in the Lectures on Passive Synthesis:

If an a that is given to consciousness reminds us of a b, then the associative awakening is either immediate or mediate, and immediate and mediate associations are always intertwined (verochten) with one another, even if it is only the mediate one that is able to obtrude for itself upon us. For example, in a conversation we are having, a thought is expressed that reminds us of a friend.

The thought belongs to the unity of the present conversation: the conversation reminds us immediately of a previous conversation with the friend in which the same thought was expressed. The association between a and b, thought and friend, is a mediate one. What is immediately connected is a with a' and a' with b, i.e., the immediate awakening goes from something that is identical, uniform, or especially similar to something that is similar to it: that is, the bridging member, we say, connects the present consciousness with the previous one. (Husserl 1966, 284; Husserl 2001, 419-419, emphasis added)

In the case of embodied intersubjectivity, obviously, a is the direct perception of the other. However, while it is clear by inference that a' must be the kinaesthetic self-awareness of the experiencing subject, and b the appresentation (apperception) of the other, what remains puzzling is how exactly a' plays its mediating role and how b is accomplished through it. The answer we find in some of Husserl's final remarks on intersubjectivity. It would suce here to indicate the functioning of two constitutive components: a) what Husserl terms zero-kinaesthesis and b) what he describes as the approach of reconstruction.

When another person's behavioural styles associatively awaken my sense of my own behaviour what is it that becomes motivated? Clearly, I do not get confused to presume that it is I who behaves right now over there in this or that way. Nor do I automatically repeat or simulate the actions or recreate the circumstances of the other. Properly speaking, my kinaesthetic system is not motivated for any intentional or active processes. Rather, the inuence is applied to its latent preintentional level which, nonetheless, according to Husserl, “is not nothing.” This kinaesthetic level is characterized by “nil vivacity” in the gradation of intentionality and consciousness, and for this reason is what in the proper phenomenological sense should be called “unconscious.” Now, Husserl doesn't use the expression “zero-kinaesthesis” (Nullkin‰sthesie) very often.17 But it seems to be most relevant to grasping the mode of reference to the primally instituted body of the experiencing subject within the intersubjective relationship. The zero-kinaesthesis is precisely the mediating a' in the appresentation of the alter ego. The following example that Husserl gives in the 1935 manuscript “Das Kind” clearly illustrates this:

The child expresses noises involuntarily in involuntary kinaestheses, it produces repeatedly the same [noises] voluntarily, learns to repeat all its (generally used in community) noises willingly and produces them voluntarily. To these noises belong enabling kinaestheses. But the mother in turn expresses similar noises, initially, imitations of those of the child. The child hears them, has them, but without their associated kinaestheses, which [would be] associatively awakened, but are not; instead zero-kinaestheses arise from this [the mother's] production. (Husserl 1973c, р. 606, emphasis added)

Zero-kinaesthesis thus lies beneath all constitutional activities and accomplishments of the ego. It designates the living body's ultimate passivity. However, Husserl is insistent that zero-kinaesthesis is “in no way nothing.” It could be conceived as nothing “only with respect to affective force and therefore with respect to those accomplishments that presuppose precisely a positively valued affectivity (above the zero-point)” (Husserl 1966, р. 167; Husserl 2001, р. 216). It is delimited in this way by a “zero-awakening” (Husserl 1966, р. 155; Husserl 2001, р. 202) as the unities that initiate it come from outside the subject and for this reason the subject is conscious of them. Put somewhat in the language of Husserl’s later monadological investigations, I cannot access the other in its originality, but this inaccessibility is itself evidently verified in and by my primordiality. In this case, the latter is what is precisely understood as the “unconscious” (Husserl 1966, р. 154; Husserl 2001, р. 201).

Given that empathic experience stimulates unconscious affective processes, how do we proceed from this point to a conscious appresentation of another subject (from a' to b)? This step undoubtedly bears upon what Husserl identifies as generative constitution. In the Fifth Meditation he indicates the deficiency of an account of such constitution and foresees the “tremendous labour of explication pertaining to the lower spheres” (Husserl 1973, р. 169; Husserl 1970, р. 142). He only broaches the issue by presenting the apperception as а result of an intention in the mode of “as if” simultaneous with perceptual experience. The association in this case is based on the “style-form” analogy between the experiences of “here” and a kinaesthetically possible but not actual “there” (§54).

Despite these nuclear indications, it is only in his later elaborations that Husserl takes up a generative approach to the intersubjective analogical apperception.18 In those, he often suggests that the regressive questioning back (Rückfragen) of genetic phenomenology can be extended beneath the sphere of phenomenal constitution to a sphere that can only be (re)constructed. The latter inquiry would carry back to layers “prior” to the living present by following its modifications as pure possibilities of what cannot be presented in it. The minds of others would thus be grasped on the basis of what is experienceable precisely as non-experienceable. This liminal experience relates to generativity in its strict sense. From within the limits of the lived-through temporality it approaches whatever lies beyond itself in an articulation similar to the one through which we experience birth and death. The following passages dating from the early 1930’s illustrate the course of Husserl’s advancing into this problematic field.

Every conceivable transcendental ego is conceivable for me, it is to be constructed from my actuality and my capacity [Vermöglichkeit]. (Husserl 1973c, 383 n.)

But now the pauses in my own being, i.e. in what is experienceable in its selfhood, are properly constituted and constituting. Is the worldly whole, the entirety of possible experience––everything? The unconscious, the sedimented underground of consciousness, the dreamless sleep, the birth-Gestalt of subjectivity, that is to say, the problematic being of birth, death, and of the “after death.” […]

This whole sphere of being is one of reconstruction––namely of the patent going back to the latent, of inquiring into its modification. But there is reconstruction of such things as consciousness, which is in a way experience of an experiencing subjectivity that is not actively experienced, and which enables an actual communication and designation of being, and which is fundamental.

This is the case with the psychic life of the primal child. (Husserl 1973c, р. 608)

With this, the style of the experience of the other described in Husserl’s later investigations becomes, clearer, at least in its genetic structure, that is as a generative style. The sphere of the other's subjectivity is accessible in its inaccessibility as a temporally extended behaviour that motivates me in my passive kinaestheses which, for their part, motivate a phenomenological construction. As Husserl reiterates in the lectures on passive synthesis, these three elements are intertwined and operate simultaneously.

Conclusion

Arguably, the genetic structure of intersubjective style also distinguishes mere empathy from “communicative community” (Mitteilungsgemeinschaft). This structure makes it clear how communication is irreducible to empathy (reciprocal or unilateral). The style-experience in the communicative situation is uniquely determined by an extraordinary type of concordance in alteration: this is the alteration in the other’s behaviour that proceeds from her simultaneous experience of me and the alteration in mine motivated by hers. By virtue of such a mutual involvement, Husserl identifies the style of the second-person experience as an in-one-another (Ineinander) and contrasts it with the next-to-one-another (Nebeneinander) of empathy (cf. Husserl 1973c, рр. 461 – 479).19 This dynamic mutual engagement has its own heterogeneous structure, a developmental correlation that Husserl terms I-Thou-overlaying (Ich-Du-Deckung).

What is of the utmost significance here is that the mutual determination between I and you entails a process of ‘enworlding’ (Verweltlichung). By virtue of the fact that I experience the other’s grasp of me as both an object and a person in the world, my transcendental ownness opens within itself a transition from the primordial world to the lifeworld. In such a movement, the subjects engaged in the communicative exchange, while still conceived in their primordial spheres, are at the same time constituted as objects in the world and persons among other persons in a socially constituted surrounding world. Furthermore, the communicators appear in a modality wherein they are fully identifiable as these particular persons with their particular race, gender, individual styles, histories, etc. This however already suggests the systematic possibility of an “anthropological attitude” (Husserl 1973c, рр. 481 – 482) embedded within the transcendental one, a possibility which Husserl pondered on but never thoroughly pursued.

NOTES

1. In the cases an English translation of Husserl’s works is available, references are given to both the German and the English editions. In those cases, citations follow the English translations.

2. Husserl often speaks generally of “experiential style” (Erfahrungsstil) and “style of the experience of the world” or world-style (Welterfahrungsstil, Weltstil ). But he also uses Stil der Erfahrungswelt, Stil der menschlichen Umwelt, Erfahrungsstiles der Welt, Allgemeinstil, Geltungsstil, Wesensstil, Lebensstil, Einheitsstil, Gegebenheitsstil, Zukunftsstil, Stil der Vergangenheit, Gegenwartsstil, Horizontstil, Stil der Konstitution, Ver‰nderungsstil. We can easily say that “style” is one of the most important operative concepts in Husserl’s genetic account of constitution.

3. Besides the fact that this division is more or less consistently carried out by Husserl himself (especially the one between static and genetic approaches), probably the most thorough presentation of Husserl's phenomenology of intersubjectivity in the context of this systematization can be found in Anthony Steinbock's Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl (1995).

4. Among the scholars who make use of this distinction the name of Dan Zahavi stands out. His Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivit‰t (1996) is explicitly focused on the problem of the constituting “open intersubjectivity.” In his later work Zahavi specifically addresses the “lacuna” in this book by analysing in detail the concept of empathy and face-to-face social interaction in Husserl. Cf. e.g. Zahavi (2012; 2014a; 2014b).

5. Husserl often refers to it sceptically as “the so-called ‘empathy’” (Husserl 1973a, р. 173) hinting at his discontent with Lipps' use of the term.

6. “[T]he plurality of monads in actual and possible communication” (Husserl 1973b, р. 265), in an “intermonadic relationship” (Husserl 1973b, р. 367).

7. There are only two other discussions that consider Husserl’s concept of style in the context of his phenomenology of intersubjectivity: Meacham (2013) and Wehrle (2013). Neither of those, however, accounts for the function of Erfahrungsstil particularly in the communicative relationship.

8. Cf. e.g. Young (1990), Eilan (2014; р. 2020), Zahavi (2019; р. 2023)

9. The internal bodily awareness and coordination of the system of movements and perceptions would not exist if they were composed as a series of punctual occurrences. There is a developmental continuity that connects with past and sedimented experiences, which shape expertise related to future events. Habitualities are often “awaken” by new experiences and thus function as automatized skills, like the basic ability to walk or to ride a bicycle. For a more detailed, though not entirely concurring account of the concept of embodied 'expertise' see Dreyfus (2007). For a very insightful contemporary analysis of this developmental kinaesthetic dynamics see Gallagher (2005).

10. Cf. Evans (2008).

11. Among those critics who, by following Husserl, developed the phenomenological project in their own directions we can mention MerleauPonty, Schütz, Gurwitsch, and Levinas. A strong critique comes also from the dialogical standpoint, best represented by Theunissen and Waldenfels (1984 & 1971). The “immanent” critics who try to save Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity from its solipsistic consequences include Held, Aguirre, and Yamaguchi (1966; 1970; 1982)

12. He is as explicit as to introduce the contradictory pair “primordinal Eigenes” – “Nichteigenes,” “primordinally own” – “non-own” (Husserl 1973c, р. 15)

13. Cf. Fink (1981).

14. For an illuminating presentation of the concept of fulfilment in Husserl see Dorion Cairns’s The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl (2013, рр. 87 – 95).

15. “The child who already sees physical things understands, let us say, for the first time the final sense of scissors; and from now on it sees scissors at the first glance as scissors but naturally not in an explicit reproducing, comparing, and inferring. Yet the manner in which apperceptions arise and consequently in themselves, by their sense and sense-horizon, point back to their genesis varies greatly.” (Husserl 1973a, р. 141; Husserl 1970, р. 111)

16. As pointed out above, unlike my own (self-)awareness of/within my living present, with respect to the other I, I have a “verifiable accessibility of what is not originally accessible” (Husserl 1973a, р. 144; Husserl 1970, р. 114).

17. To my knowledge, besides Appendix 45 in Husserliana 15, he uses it in the unpublished D Manuscripts of 1931 (D 12 I, transcribed by Fink). Most regularly, to refer to this level of passive synthesis he uses the term zero-point (Nullpunkt); cf. e.g. Husserl (2008, р. 220).

18. There has been an extensive debate running back as early as to Lipps and Scheler (and still ongoing in its contemporary versions) regarding the role of analogy in empathic apperception. Dan Zahavi gives it its due attention in his discussions of the relevance of Husserl's theory to current social cognition research. He however attempts to undermine the role of analogy in Husserl's account of empathy since he sees in it an obstacle to the argument for direct social perception. The implication of my treatment (whose elaboration falls out of the scope of the present piece) is that analogy has a distinct and necessary function in Husserl's account of intersubjectivity. This function however can be adequately grasped only in generative contexts and does not hinder the case of direct social perception. See Zahavi (2012).

19. For a detailed discussion of Husserl’s theory of communication as a generative dimension distinct from empathy see Pantev (2020).

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 Dr. Boris Pantev, Assist. Prof.

ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1788-9913
Department of Philosophy
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”
Email: b.pantev@phls.uni-sofia.bg