Originally published in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 27/7, 1996, 228-245. Please quote from the published version. Dan Zahavi University of Copenhagen HUSSERL'S INTERSUBJECTIVE TRANSFORMATION OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY If one interprets transcendental subjectivity as an isolated ego and in the spirit of the Kantian tradition ignores the whole task of establishing a transcendental community of subjects, then every chance of reaching a transcendental self- and world-knowledge is lost. Krisis (Ergänzung), 120. A dominant trait in the philosophy of our century has been the critique of the philosophy of subjectivity. Among transcendental philosophers this critique has been taken into consideration most conspicuously by K.-O. Apel, who explicitly calls for an intersubjective transformation of transcendental philosophy. Not the single, isolated, self-aware ego, but language community, that is intersubjectivity, has to be regarded as the reality-constituting principle. It is possible to find a similar interest in and treatment of intersubjectivity in Husserl. From the winter 1910/11 and until his death, he worked thoroughly with different aspects of the problem of intersubjectivity, and left behind an almost inestimable amount of analyses, that from a purely quantitative point of view by far exceeds the treatment given this topic by any of the later phenomenologists. 1 In the following, I will try to provide a systematic outline of Husserl’s investigations, and at the same time argue that Husserl, whose position has often been regarded as solipsistic, was actually occupied with the elaboration of a transcendental theory of intersubjectivity. 2 I. The easiest way to introduce Husserl’s analysis of intersubjectivity is through his concept of the lifeworld, since Husserl claims that it is intersubjective through and through. This is not merely to be understood as an accentuation of the fact that I, in my being in the world, am constantly confronted with intersubjective meaning, understood as meaning-formations (such as social institutions, cultural products etc.), which have their origin in community and tradition, and which therefore refer me to my fellowmen and ancestors. Husserl also advocates the more fundamental view, that already my perceptual experience is an experience of intersubjectively accessible being, that is being which does not exist for me only, but for everybody. 3 I experience objects, events and actions as public, not as private, 4 and consequently Husserl claims that an ontological analysis, insofar as it unveils the being-sense (Seinssinn) of the world as intersubjectively valid, leads to a disclosure of the transcendental relevance of foreign subjectivity and thus to an examination of transcendental intersubjectivity; 5 and as he ultimately formulates it: Transcendental intersubjectivity is the absolute ground of being (Seinsboden) from which the meaning and validity of everything objectively existing originate. 6 Thus, Husserl characterizes the intersubjective-transcendental sociality as the source of all real truth and being, 7 and occasionally he even describes his own project as a sociological transcendental philosophy, 8 and writes, that the development of phenomenology necessarily implies the step from an egological to a transcendental-sociological phenomenology. 9 In other words, a radical implementation of the transcendental reduction leads with necessity to a disclosure of transcendental intersubjectivity. 10 Given this background, it is fairly easy to establish why Husserl occupied himself so intensively with the issue of intersubjectivity. He was convinced that it contained the key to a philosophical comprehension of reality, and since Husserl considered this problem, or more exactly, an account of the constitution of objective reality and transcendence, as one of the most important concerns of transcendental phenomenology, 11 it should be obvious what kind of systematic importance his analyses of intersubjectivity possess, and how much is actually at stake. If transcendental phenomenology for some principal reasons were prevented from accounting for intersubjectivity (eventually due to its alleged methodical solipsism or subjective idealism) the consequence would not merely be its inability to carry out an ambitious and detailed investigation, but its failure as a fundamental philosophical project. Husserl’s phenomenological investigation of intersubjectivity is an analysis of the transcendental, that is, constitutive function of intersubjectivity, and the aim of his reflections is exactly the formulation of a theory of transcendental intersubjectivity and not a detailed examination of the concrete sociality or the specific I-Thou relation. Thus, Husserl’s interest is directed towards transcendental intersubjectivity, and not