Intersubjectivity as equality and reciprocity

Ключевые слова: интесубъективность, равенство, взаимность, личность, политический идеал.

The developing theme of intersubjectivity in the early 20th century was connected with the problem of ultimate self-justification for reason and had no direct relation to political philosophy. But no philosophy is without political consequences.

The problem of intersubjectivity has two aspects. First, it is a problem regarding the significance of experience, language and knowledge; as such, it was worked out through neopositivism. Second, it is a problem regarding experience of the Other, in term of how the Other is given to us through experience and how the understanding of the Other and consensus are possible. The problem has been especially developed in the context of Husserl's phenomenology, in which it has been studied through the discovery of implicit and explicit intentionalities and motivations, in which the transcendental I constitutes the Other. In other words, the questions are, how do I know of Others and what does it mean to be an alter ego: in other words, what is the essence of intersubjectivity?

We are interested in the second aspect, as it is related to political philosophy. Studying the experience of the Other leads Husserl to the formulation of a political ideal, close to the ideals of the Enlightenment and liberalism. It is the idea of a genuine rational community, as developed in the Kaizo articles, The Vienna Lecture and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Intersubjectivity has also been the topic of communicative theory and, despite the fundamental differences, transcendental phenomenology and communicative theory are largely similar in their political ideal. Both are rational and universalistic, both treat intersubjectivity through the equality and symmetry of the ego and the alter ego. Both promise to reveal, by the light of reason, a clear foundation for universally valid values and principles, as well as consider an ideal community, consisting of genuine rational persons, to be a regulative idea for real-life societies. This leads to social utopianism, which, on the one hand, provides us with a normative basis for social critique, while, on the other hand, can be dangerous in the context of collective social actions focused on radical reconstruction of society.

I focus only on the similarities between both theory movements, ignoring the equally important differences as they are irrelevant to our current task.

1. Intersubjectivity as "transcendental symmetry"

The main problem faced by Husserl in his theory of intersubjectivity is that the Other is constituted, in my experience, as a thing in the world among another things, while his physical body, Korper, turns out to be a living body, Leib, that indicates stranger consciousness (in Cartesian Meditations, the basic motive for analogical apperception of the alter ego is his body). Monadic absolute constitutive consciousness encounters such a thing that "appresents" the living acts of another consciousness, which is in itself the absolute constitutive consciousness and not mine, but stranger, at the same time. The Other represents the alter ego, which means it is similar to my transcendental consciousness constituting its own world that is inaccessible to me directly.

Analogically grasping the alter ego, I apperceptively grasp his actual world, which, in the words of Sartre, transcends my own world because my apperception appresents the alternative perspective of "another view". Stranger consciousness is, by its meaning, something that claims full independence from me - as freely constituting equal consciousness. With the Other, objectiveness enters my world because the world, given me through perception, becomes the world shared with Others, not only my personal. The presence of the Other decenters my world and makes it intersubjective, a common world, resulting in my ego losing its privileged status and turning from the absolute into "one of...". There seems to be a necessity to make the "metaphysical leap" to existence, confirming the actuality of transcendental: "... what the person announces is precisely his absolute existence. To constitute the person is then to mark in what subjective mode the recognition of otherness, of strangeness of other existence, is brought about" [12, p. 165].

On the other hand, Husserl is consistent regarding his transcendentalism and strictly adheres to Epoche. For Husserl, the Other is located, like myself, as a transcendental ego on the other side of experience - it does not also belong to the world, it is not part of it or a thing, so to speak; nor is it a soul hooked to the body. Other empirical egos, with all their manifestations, along with I myself as "I- the-man", are included as correlates of consciousness in the world, constituted by the transcendental ego. As phenomena, they are constituted by me; meanwhile, through its meaning, they indicate other transcendental egos, who themselves are not objects of perception and can only be perceived through their self-objectification in the form of psychophysical beings. The genuine sense of "Otherness" is that the Other is not an empirically animated body, but pure subjectivity, a transcendental alter ego.

Accordingly, our "We" is also on the other side of experience and has transcendental status. In Husserl, intersubjectivity appears like a set of completely independent from one another's entities - that is, monads, which, as transcendental egos, consistently constitute the world. We together constitute the world and ourselves in it as "mankind": "... each transcendental «I» within intersubjectivity (as coconstituting the world in the way indicated) must necessarily be constituted in the world as human being «bears within himself a transcendental 'I'»- not as a real part or a stratum of his soul (which would be absurd) but rather insofar as he is the self-objectification, as exhibited through phenomenological self-reflection, of the corresponding transcendental «I»" [8, p. 186].

Thus, the meaning of the alter ego is ultimately formal - it is another transcendental "I", a pure constituting consciousness similar to my own. Accordingly, intersubjectivity refers to the absolute symmetry and the equality of the ego and the alter ego (We will not consider here the theme of "the primal ego" and the theme of the lifeworld as the correlate of intersubjectivity).

In my opinion, the idea of a new humanity, formulated by Husserl in The Vienna Lecture and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, one that is rational, cooperatively united and animated by a universal philosophical culture, is closely connected to his conception of intersubjectivity. According to Husserl, the sense of humanity is rationality as the faculty of intuitive self-reflection, which is the highest human faculty. "Philosophical reason represents a new stage of human nature and its reason", given that only constant reflexivity of reason, on its own terms, can give us truly universal knowledge, including knowledge of ideal norms and values [9, p. 290-291]. In this regard, Husserl formulates the ideal of universal rational human civilization guided by reason. On the one hand, he writes about cultural communities as particular historical formations with inherent cultural traditions, norms and practices. It involves a culture at the simplest, most mundane level. However, Husserl also writes of a "genuine culture" as a culture in higher sense. It is qualitatively different from a culture in a normal sense. A genuine culture is a culture whose norms are critically justified through rational critique; this culture Husserl refers to when he speaks of European culture or philosophical culture, while this notion of culture is rather ideal and regulative than descriptive [7, p. 159].

Since philosophy and science are the self-fulfillment of the reason, with the reason being normative, the task of true philosophy is to give regulatory guidance a higher human type, which was to develop in Europe. This means that not only a person, in an ethical sense, but also the whole surrounding human world, together with political and social life, ought to be reconstructed under the true principles, norms and values of reason; in other words, the discretion of universal philosophy. He writes in Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: "To be human at all is essentially to be a human being in a socially and generatively united civilization; and if man is a rational being (animal rationale), it is only insofar as his whole civilization is a rational civilization, that is, one with a latent orientation toward reason or one openly oriented toward the entelechy which has come to itself, become manifest to itself, and which now of necessity consciously directs human becoming" [8, p. 15].

The idea of rational human civilization, led by philosophers, correlates with Husserl's interpretation of person- hood. For Husserl, the person has both passive and active dimensions. The passive dimension includes the instinctive and affective spheres of subjectivity, which become sedimented into habits, while the worldliness of subjectivity provides a background horizon to the subject's actions [7]. "The specifically spiritual Ego, the subject of spiritual acts, the person, finds itself dependent on an obscure underlying basis of traits of character, original and latent dispositions, and thereby dependent on nature," Husserl writes. "All life of the spirit is permeated by the 'blind' operation of associations, drives, feelings" (Hua IV, p. 276/289). In this sense, empirical subjectivity is not fully a person. To be a genuine person means to be a fully rational person whose acts are free, self-responsible and to be judged by the norms of reason (Hua IV, p. 257/269). "Autonomy of reason, the freedom of the personal subject, consists in the fact that I do not yield passively'' to drives, inclinations or influences (Hua IV, p. 269/282) (cited by [4, p.39]). According to Husserl, human beings are essentially rational at a deep level; we have no nature that might put limits on our ability to live rationally, individually or communally [13].

Thus, Husserl's ideal of the authentic community implies the ideal of the fully authentic person. Both community and person have their immanent telos, which is the self-fulfillment of phenomenological reason (as Bernet notes, teleological concept plays a significant role in Husserl's philosophy: "Both animal and human (transcendental) life has a goal. The history of interpersonal relationships as well as the tradition of philosophical thought are to be understood in terms of a teleologically organized meaningful context" [2, p. 119]. In other words, it is the idea of the self-fulfillment of pure intersubjectivity in the historical development of mankind.

Husserl's philosophy was repeatedly criticized by his disciples and followers for rationalism and contemplation. This is especially true for his epistemological interpretation of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Free and reasonable subjectivity is just an abstract from the concrete human being, while pure "Ich" is an unjustified abstraction from the "Dasein" that is living in the world (Heidegger). The original attitude to the world and to Others is not contemplative, but practical. As Ricouer notes, respect is a practical feeling that sets a limit for my faculty of acting [11, p. 147]. Hence, Husserl considers the Other through the lens of ontology and ethics - the medium of the social world in the perception of the alter ego does not matter to him. Philosophy often ignores what is axiomatic for sociologists - namely, that relationships with Others in the social space are not arbitrary, but preoutlined, and meeting with the Other is not staring at the Other in general, beyond any certainty. The relationship between people occurs not in the empty space of indeterminate possibilities, but in the space of expectations and roles, which are largely assigned through the position of being a partner in society. Not without reason, Alfred Schutz, while initially developing the project of social ontology as regional in the framework of transcendental phenomenology, ultimately refused to abstract the ego and the alter ego from the practical social context, moving from the pure symmetry of transcendental egos to the We-relationship as the basic form of intersubjectivity and describing it through the reciprocity of perspectives [12].

2. Equality of communicative partners

Despite the introduction of intersubjectivity into the transcendental sphere, Husserl's concept of reason remains essentially monological, as it is evidenced by the concept of the "primal ego". Unlike phenomenology, communicative theory comes from speech communication, not from isolated consciousness. Accordingly, the problem of perception of the Other does not arise, because communication is intersubjective within its structure.

On the one hand, communicative intersubjectivity presupposes the normative horizon of the common lifeworld as its condition. The participants in communicative interaction are also understood as a socialized person who has the ability to participate in argumentation (communicative competence). In other words, communication always takes place within a particular lifeworld, language and social institutions. On the other hand, the concept of an "ideal speech situation" involves the possibility, through participation within the universal discourse, to go beyond the particular lifeworld and take a critical stance in relation to its normative self-evidences. From the structure of the universal discourse, Habermas deduces universal ethical meta-norms, which are the transcendental conditions of intersubjectivity at the same time. A program of discourse ethics consists of deducing ethical conditions for intersubjective interaction from the presuppositions of argumentation. The metanorms represent the guideline for the evaluation of specific norms and practices in particular lifeworlds [6].

From the standpoint of speech pragmatics, the concept of an "ideal communicative community" reflects intersubjectivity as being undistorted by inequality and power. It is characterized by the symmetry of the attitudes of the ego and the alter ego as speaker and hearer with their mutual orientations towards validity claims, which are available for rational argumentation and critique. In the discussion, the Other is an equal partner in communication - intersubj'ec- tivity implies the symmetry of the positions of communicative partners and the recognition of the Other as a subject of discourse, capable of rational argumentation.

Thus, in communicative philosophy, the Other is the foremost subject of communicative action, "purified" from all social layers: for Habermas, a genuine communication is communication emancipated from the distortion of real social relations [14, p. 85]. Only in consensus-orientated communication does the Other properly become the alter ego - in this perspective, it is not included in the world as an object of causal influence, but turns out to be, along with the ego, "on the other side" of the objective world. "Speaker and hearer... adopt a performative attitude in which they encounter one another as members of the in- tersubjectively shared lifeworld of their linguistic community, that is, in second person. In reaching an understanding with one another about something in the world, the illocutionary aims they pursue reside, from their perspective, beyond the world to which they can refer in the objectivat- ing attitude of an observer and in which they can intervene purposively. To this extent, they also remain in a trans- mundane position for one another" [5, p. 219].

The attempt to eliminate the social dimension of intersubjectivity and reduce it to pure communicative interaction can be much more evident in Apel, as his philosophy involves no social theory whatsoever (in this sense, Apel is more consistent in his rationalism than Habermas, who refuses the ultimate justification of reason). As a result, a kind of social utopia of an ideal communicative community emerges in communicative philosophy. On the one hand, the ideal communicative community is a regulative idea in the Kantian sense, being a normative benchmark, which cannot be realized as a whole. On the other hand, the ideal communicative community is derived from the future, with the intention of "precognition of the future", in which real communities, because of moral progress, are teleologically aimed [1, S. 38] (the utopianism is most criticized by social theorists, while Apel and Habermas argue that utopianism, like teleology, plays an important role in the critical theory of society). It is noteworthy that ideal communication is not determined by anything except for itself. In fact, communicative philosophy reproduces a stance in relation to the self-sufficiency of transcendental reason: only reason is conceived as linguistically mediated communicative intersubjectivity, rather than on the model of individual consciousness.

Thus, in the theory of communicative intersubjectivity, we find the same rationalism and idealizations as found in Husserl's project regarding universal rational human civilization. The communicative concept of intersubjectivity, indeed, is based on three idealizations: the abstraction of "rational subjectivity" from a practical human being; the abstraction of ideal communication from the social context; and, the abstraction of rational knowledge and rational argumentation from the variety of life practices. In summarizing, we can say that it concerns the abstraction of reason from practical life. There is a strong similarity between the ideal communication community and Husserl's ideal genuine rational community, whose norms are critically justified through rational critique. Both concepts, inter alia, presuppose the ideal of a rational intersubjective community, consisting of rational persons of a higher order and constructed in accordance with the universal norm of reason, thereby bridging the gap between normativity and facticity.

3. Reciprocity instead of equality

In my view, the pathos of transcendental phenomenology and communicative theory reflects an inner tension between the formal equality of the ego and the alter ego as co-subjects of experience, cognition and speech, as well as the actual inequality of the positions they occupy in the social space. The asymmetry pervades the whole world of everyday life, from physiological characteristics to relations of power and domination. People, in principle, are not equal in terms of their physiological and individual characteristics, age, experience, social status and abilities. Besides, gender, age, cultural distinctions and differences in the experience and maturity of communicative partners are irremovable. Being formally equal, the ego and the alter ego are essentially not equal.

Hence, this is not only and not so much about psychological, physiological or cultural differences. The point is that power is a fundamental property and the structuring principle of social relations, which inevitably leads to inequality. As Bourdieu notes, the look of the Other is not a universal, abstract force of objectification. The look has symbolic power, whose effectiveness depends on the interrelation between social positions of who is looking and who is being looked at, and, on the mutual recognition of the schemes of perception, through the light of which they perceive and evaluate. Experience of one's own body is the result of applying similar schemes of perception to the body, which are formed through the interiorizing of social structure. The application of these schemes is reinforced by Others' reactions generated by the same schemes.

Thus, there is a gap between the formal symmetry of the ego and the alter ego and the real asymmetry of perception and relation to the Other in the context of social fields. If Sartre emphasizes the Other's objectivizing loo- kand the gap between being-for-itself and being-for-others, then Bourdieu stresses the social component of the Other's look, placing the Other in the context of the inevitable inequality and relations of power. The matter is that power is often regarded by philosophers as something external and alien to intersubjective relationships. For example, Habermas holds that power is the property of social systems, while genuine intersubjectivity involves communication that is based on free consent and completely free from domination [6, S. 362-363].

At the same time, Foucault and Bourdieu consider power to be the structuring principle - it structures space, time, the economy, history and society. In this respect, as the positions in social space are always mediated by relations of power, they are not equal. Tomas Rentsch, while developing transcendental-anthropological foundations of morality, shows that the situation of human life involves some inherent unavoidable asymmetries. Domination and sexuality structure the fundamental situation of human presence in the world. Domination, authority, coercion and subordination are all phenomena that are not caused by some historically relative social order; they are essentially inherent in the relationships between people and are, therefore, unavoidable. In this sense, they are basic inter- existentials as constituents of fundamental human situations [10, S. 180-182]. The formal symmetry of the ego and the alter ego, as subjects of experience or speech, would not be able to remove the actual asymmetry of the shared world [10, S. 175]. Thus, the equality of the pure I-Thou relationship is an unrealizable ideal, an abstraction from the real relationship, which is always mediated by social context and anthropologically substantiated asymmetry.

Criticizing the dualism of the ideal and the real, as well as normativity and facticity, Rentsch appeals to the fact that forms of morality are rooted in the fundamental human situation, in the way of human presence in the world. In everyday life, relationships with Others not only move in accordance with the existing practical forms of common life that already exist in the lifeworld, but also focus on preunderstanding of normative implications, inherent in them. In the interpersonal relationship, the person learns to understand the nature of love, friendship, sympathy, justice, trust, violence, neglect and betrayal from experience of concrete practical forms of community. These are "fundamental moral evidences that are not and cannot be the subject of some 'universal consent'" [10, S. 23]. They are woven into the practical forms of life, which are present in the lifeworld, and cannot be separated from the forms, like "norms", from pure "facticity".

Intersubjectivity in the form of shared life with Others also is anthropological a priori: the structural condition of human presence in the world. The fundamental human situation is initially an intersubjective (interpersonal, inter- existential) situation. Meanwhile, subject-centric monological modes of reflection on practice are secondary, based on pre-granted coexistence [10, S. 125]. Therefore, when we consider intersubjectivity abstractly, apart from a practical life context, the gap between the formal symmetry of the ego and the alter ego, as co-subjects of experience and speech, and the unavoidable asymmetry of social relationships opens up. However, within practical contexts, the gap is closed by reciprocity, which does not require the reduction of social asymmetries, that is, homogenization of I and the Other. This allows us to include in the analysis the specific life forms relating to relationships based on reciprocity and care, but not involving equality, for instance, parenthood, love or sexuality.

Attempting to bridge the gap is expressed within different kinds of social utopianism, in which a variety of images and projects concerning the implementation of pure intersubjectivity (i. e., equity and symmetry) in actual social relations develops. Christian ethics, through which this tension between pure intersubjectivity and the fundamental asymmetry of the social world is clearly revealed, had played the special role that in the formation of Western utopian thought. I and the Other - any Other - are existentially equal, not because they are actually equal, identical and indistinguishable, but because the Other is a pure alter ego, such that has no social position, wealth, beauty or anything else matters in this case. In a word, everything that defines the asymmetry of social space is ignored - the Other is primarily a "pure Other" as "the image of God".

The vision of an ideal society plays a key role in the cultural and political program of modernity. Not by chance does social order become the main theme of modern political philosophy and political movements. According to Eisenstadt, modern utopian visions entailed the transformation of Christian eschatology into the secular vision of the unfolding of human destiny. Inherent in the project of modernity is the aspiration to bridge the gap between the City of Man and City of God, while the orientation of the reconstruction of society and the political order towards the vision's ideal social order was a strong motive behind the great revolutions. Despite all the differences amongst these revolutions, they all share some basic characteristics. Within all of them, there developed an attempt to reconstruct the polity - to topple the old and create new political institutions on the basis of a new vision, in which themes of equality, justice, freedom and participation of the community in the political center were promulgated. These themes were combined with an overall utopian vision of the reconstruction of society and political order, along with belief in progress and the demands for full access to the central political arenas and participation in them. In addition, society was considered as the object of transformation, or active construction through future-oriented political action in accordance with this vision. Revolutionary cosmologies proclaimed the primacy of the political in the process of reconstructing society in line with such visions. They also entailed very strong uni- versalistic and missionary orientations. Although each revolution set up a new regime in a particular country, always bearing the ineradicable stamp of the countries in which they developed, the revolutionary visions were nevertheless presented and promulgated as universal - applicable in principle to all of humanity [3, p. 40-52].

This is enough to recognize that the philosophical doctrines, which are discussed above, correlate with the cultural and political program of modernity by reproducing and reinterpreting its basic assumptions. Being universalistic, they comprise some Gnostic and Manichaean implications. However, in today's complex, global and plural world, such a position is not as unambiguous as it may seem at first glance. As M. Flynn notes, "Human rationality itself is dependent upon nonrational forces, and large-scale group action is dependent on a prior community of influence and tradition. Forgetting this can be dangerous. Though Husserl identifies cynicism and skepticism as the primary dangers facing humanity, idealism, especially about communal life, also has proven fatal to ethical living. After all, idealists, because they are more optimistic about what could be, are often the most cynical and destructive toward what is, concretely, noW' [4, p. 42]. We cannot entirely reject the utopian dimension of social theory as it provides us with normative orientations for social critique. However, the real problem is not so much about normativity, but the possibility, as well as the concrete ways and means, to implement it within particular societies.

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