SUBJECTIVITY, INTERSUBJECTIVITY, AND SOLIPSISM PROBLEM IN THE PHENOMENOLOGIES OF HUSSERL AND MERLEAU-PONTY

Abstract

Human-beings are both  unique and  historical, social, cultural beings in the world. They can only exist by establishing meaningful relationships with others in a common socio-cultural life-world where they come together with the existence of others.

The encounter between self and others requires both the establishment of a socio-cultural world or the world as its already given to human existence, and the interrelations of I and other-I within this established life-world. The question of how to establish the socio-cultural world brings with itself the problem of intersubjectivity, which centers on how to establish the relationship between the self and the other.

For Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), two important representatives of the phenomenological movement, the concept of subjectivity lies at the hearth of the problem of intersubjectivity. In establishing intersubjectivity, subjectivity, intersubjectivity and the world are concepts that are intertwined and cannot be considered independently of each other.

The aim of this study is to discuss the problem of solipsism, which centers on the question whether I am alone in this world or are there subjects other than me and the problem of intersubjectivity, which centers around the questions of how can I reveal the meanings of existence of others, how can I experience other subjects, on the basis of the concept of subjectivity, within the framework of Edmund Husserl’s and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, to set forth the relationship between me, the other, and the cultural and social world.