Abstract

This thesis explores the meaning of intersubjectivity by examining Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Husserl's original conception. The problem comes from Husserl's exposition of the phenomenological experience. However, since it is subject to a phenomenological reduction, as his transcendental turn indicated, there is a paradox to express intersubjectivity in the sense that the transcendental ego is constructed. If the world is radically constituted by the subject, how is it possible to bring forth the other from the self insofar as both come out of "ownness"? If, conversely, the constituted is originally pregiven to the constituting subject, how is it possible to reach the self from the other insofar as it does not belong to 'selfness'? Once the transcendental ego is regarded as the ultimate foundation for both the personalistic attitude and the naturalistic attitude, transcendental phenomenology is in a parallelism with phenomenological psychology. ;Although Husserl proposes implicitly a historical reduction to the 'life-world' to solve this paradox, it is only explicated through the reconstruction of Merleau-Ponty's interpretation, where the circularity in thickness of self with self replaces the encroachment of one with the other. This is based on Husserl's transcendental project, but reversed its direction to an ontological rehabilitation. That is to say, instead of being a limited concept--which is natural to the human perspective, and yet man does not succeed in transcending it--, intersubjectivity becomes the horizon which invites and repels at the same time to translate man into the world. Because, it is always a reference point--while it is so near us and yet all the while recede from us--which presents itself to us only by what recedes as we advance. Intersubjectivity thus turns into an independent issue, for its meaning is fully expressed as being-in-the-world beyond the limitation of its transcendental formulation