this issue
previous article in this issuenext article in this issue

Document Details :

Title: Abnormality and Perceptual Communication
Subtitle: Husserl on Exchanging Glances with Animals
Author(s): FERENCZ-FLATZ, Christian
Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie
Volume: 80    Issue: 1   Date: 2018   
Pages: 73-92
DOI: 10.2143/TVF.80.1.3284814

Abstract :
The paper aims to reinterpret Husserl’s thoughts on normal and abnormal intersubjective experience, and especially his account of the human-animal relationship, considered as an abnormal variation of human sociality, in view of his reflections on communication, a topic that generally tends to be eschewed in Husserl’s later theory of intersubjectivity. Thus, it sets out from a brief overview of some aspects of Husserl’s theory of intersubjective normality and abnormality in the fifth Cartesian Meditation and the consequences he derives from them for his account of the human-animal relationship. Then, it draws from Husserl’s earlier reflections on communication, most notably from the original manuscripts of the second book of his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, several implications for his theory of normality. Finally, it attempts to defend the claim that communication as such can prove essential both for understanding Husserl’s thesis regarding the ‘abnormality’ of the human-animal relationship, as well as for determining the extent to which we may be said to share a world with higher and lower animals.

Download article