Abstract
What could a political phenomenology look like? Recent attempts to address this question under the rubric “critical phenomenology” have centered primarily around important issues such as the lived experience of marginalization and oppression or the ways in which power asymmetries or structural biases are internalized, habitualized, and embodied. In this paper, I will take a different route and test the impact of Husserl’s account of the state against the background of key classical and contemporary political theories. I aim to show that Husserl indeed provides some conceptual requisites for an original phenomenological social ontology of the state. By furnishing analyses of the social formation that constitutes the stately body politic, Husserl helps us see the limitations of the standard, broadly Weberian, conception of the state underlying much of contemporary political theorizing. Moreover, Husserl provides an interesting alternative to both naturalistic and social contract theories of the state. However, against more optimistic readings, I argue that Husserl’s idealistic conception of the state, which is implicitly modelled on his notion of the “love community,” ultimately fails as a political theory, particularly when it comes to accounting for the struggle of recognition and the agonistic nature of politics.
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Notes
Husserl (1994, p. 244).
As Loidolt & Zahavi (forthcoming) argue, this often-cited quote cannot be taken at face value anyway, as it reflects the grave political circumstances (of 1935) that pressured Husserl to appear politically uncommitted rather than a systematic self-assessment.
Guenther (2013, p. xv).
Cf. Guenther (2021, p. 6).
Cf., however, Jardine (2020).
See Loidolt (2018).
See Bedorf & Herrmann (2020), who, due to a different understanding of what “political ontology” is, view Husserl’s contribution to political phenomenology more critically, and notably in contrast to Arendt’s. In any case, their taxonomy of types of political phenomenology is helpful in charting the terrain, even if they curiously omit any discussion of recent critical phenomenology.
Besides the scarce scholarly literature on Husserl’s theory of the state that engages with his social ontology, and notably Schuhmann (1988); Hart (1992) and Drummond (2000), which I will come back to, the only more general, phenomenologically grounded, recent account of the social ontology of state communities, to my knowledge, is Berenskoetter (2014), who uses, however, a Heideggerian-inspired narrative account of national identity.
On the states’ collective responsibility see Erskine (2001); Stilz (2011); on the related question of states’ sovereignty over and above group rights, see Wellman (1999). On their identity Bartelson (1998); Ringmar (1996); Wendt (2004); Wight (2004); for an integrative review, see Berenskoetter (2014), and for a historical study, Runciman (1997). On the boundary problem, see Espejo (2014), and on the constituent polity, Collins & Lawford-Smith (2021).
The most systematic attempt at such an integration is Hall (1999), although it is carried out from an international relation studies perspective.
Of these though, Husserl (2004) only engaged in detail with Hobbes, see Miettinen (forthcoming).
It is no coincidence that Husserl started to think about the state from 1910 onwards, around the same time he developed his later thoughts on sociality and his so-called “social ontology.”
On Husserl’s complex relation to reformist ideas and to (ordo)liberalism, see Miettinen (forthcoming). On his relation to nationalism, see a letter from 1936, where Husserl writes that Masaryk, his youth friend and eventually first president of the Czech Republic, “cured me of false, non-ethical nationalism” (Schuhmann 1977, pp. 4–5); see more on Husserl’s German/Prussian nationalism in Schuhmann (1988, pp. 23–26), which was less exceptional at the time than it might seem, especially for converted, but also non-converted, Jews in Central Europe; see Mendelsohn (1983). On his “crypto-Christian” anti-capitalist leanings, see, e.g., the letter to Arnold Metzger (Husserl 1953), the author of the unpublished book Phänomenologie der Revolution (Phenomenology of Revolution) (1919), and ideas in Husserl’s Kaizo-articles (see below Sect. 4). Finally, on the dispensability issue, see again Sect. 4.
Husserl (1973a, p. 107).
Husserl (1973a, p. 108).
E.g., Husserl (1973b, p. 405).
For a detailed, critical analysis specifically of cultural communities in Husserl, see Flynn (2012).
Detailed analyses of the relationship between a people, nations and states are curiously rare in political philosophy; here insights from Husserl and Stein’s theory of the state (1925) prove fruitful. For notable exceptions, see Canovan (2005) and Yack (2012).
To my knowledge, these are the only passages in Husserl’s oeuvre where he suggests such a notion of emotional sharing, which, to be sure, is highly unspecific. For discussion of more sophisticated phenomenological accounts of collective emotions, see Szanto (2015 and 2018). For related notions of common desires and acts of valuing (Gemeinschaftsschätzung), see, e.g., Husserl (1973b, p. 193).
Husserl (2008, p. 6; see also pp. 37, 41, 58).
Husserl (1973a, p. 110).
Note how both variations clearly differ from the above case of a quasi-stately identity, where one state-folk occupies a territory across state boundaries (e.g., Kurdistan), as well as from ideas about statehood in the early Zionist movement, the closest historical analogy that comes to mind from Husserl’s own time.
Husserl (1973a, p. 110).
Husserl (1973a, p. 183).
Husserl (1973a, p. 183).
Husserl (1973a, p. 101).
Husserl (1973b, p. 405; 1973c, pp. 408–410; 2013, p. 475).
Husserl (1973b, p. 182).
Husserl (1973b, p. 182).
A comprehensive elaboration of Husserl’s account of higher order personalities would need to engage in detail with his account of interpersonal, and specifically second-personal engagements, including empathy, and so-called “social,” “communicative” or “I-Thou acts,” i.e., engagements that lie at the foundational basis of collective intentionality (e.g., Husserl 1952, § 52; 1973b, pp. 166 ff.; 1973c, pp. 471 ff.; see also Fn. 44 and 54 below). I cannot deliver this here and will restrict myself to those aspects of collective intentionality that are indispensable to grasp Husserl’s state theory. For more, see Szanto (2016 and forthcoming); see also Meindl & Zahavi (forthcoming) and Salice (forthcoming).
Integration also depends on whether individuals stand in the mentioned socio-communicative “relations of mutuality” (Wechselbeziehung) (Husserl 1952, p. 193 f.) based on I-Thou acts.
Husserl (1973b, p. 182, p. 220). Husserl asks here in passing “what creates tighter personal unity (…) among persons that do not know each other” in large communities like nation-states. A clear answer can be found in Anderson’s seminal book, Imagined Communities, and the ensuing dearth of literature on social imaginaries. This research shows us that not only is statehood irreducible to either natural genesis or volitional integration, but also that nations and nation-states are not just a result of natural genesis or volitional integration. Rather, they are, partly but essentially so, imagined communities. For a review and a new proposal, see Szanto & Montes Sánchez (2023).
Husserl (1973b, p. 201, p. 406; 1989, p. 22).
Husserl (1973b, p. 406). For more on a certain “egoification of the ‘we’” (Verichlichung des ‘wir’) or the “I-centeredness” (Ich-Zentrierung) of so-called “centered communities” with “a persisting habituality” (incl. notably states) see Husserl (1973b, p. 405f); see my analysis of Husserl’s account of the quasi-egoic and quasi-conscious and egoic structure of social integrates, in Szanto (2016), and Hart (1992, pp. 264 ff.). For a detailed critical reading of the egological dimension of Husserl’s notion of higher order persons, see Schmid (2000, pp. 17–27).
Husserl (1973c, pp. 478 f.; 1989, p. 22); Husserl (1973b, pp. 201 f.). This resonates with an influential historical conception of the personality of the state by Gierke as a “plurality-in-unity,” a conception that was meant to correct the Hobbesian conception of the Leviathan as non-plural, sovereign person that might potentially override the autonomy of individual citizens (see Runcimann 1997, p. 40 f.). See also an interesting letter of Voegelin (1943) to Schütz, in which Voegelin discusses Husserl’s “affinity” to Gierke’s conception of political communities in his voluminous Genossenschaftsrecht (1868–1913). Given Gierke’s prominence, it is likely that Husserl has read Gierke, although I’m not aware of any references.
Durkheim (1902, p. 63).
There is ample further textual evidence in Husserl for this, see, e.g., Husserl (1952, pp. 199, 243; 1973b, pp. 199, 406; 1973c, p. 335); For detailed analyses, both regarding the non-collectivist notion of collective consciousness and the non-aggregative notion of intentional integration of individuals, see ), see Szanto (2016) and for the similar issues regarding phenomenological social ontology in general in Szanto & Moran (2016) and Szanto (forthcoming).
E.g., Husserl (1973b, p. 199).
As mentioned above, notice again that certain second-personal engagements necessarily precede such volitional integration, namely reciprocal empathy or mutual awareness of each other as well as explicit or implicit, broadly communicative, address (Mitteilung) and the uptake or acknowledgment of it (Kenntnisnahme) between some members of the given community.
See similar formulations in Husserl (1973b, pp. 193 ff.).
Husserl (1973b, p. 170).
Searle (1990).
In roughly distilled terms, we find here the central elements of the three seminal voices from the contemporary literature, usually presented as competing models of collective intentionality (see Schweikard & Schmid 2013), notably Bratman’s (2014) so-called “content”-, Searle’s (1990) “mode-”, and Gilbert’s (2013) “subject”-account of collective intentionality. For more on this, and on how Husserl’s account compares to other contemporary social ontologists such as Rovane (1998), Pettit (2003) and Tuomela (2013), see Szanto (2016) and Szanto (forthcoming).
The idea of is more fully fleshed out in Walther’s (1923) notion of habitual unification, for a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s personalities of higher order in terms of shared persistent attitudes (bleibende Stellungnahmen), or what we might call “plural habitualities,” see Caminada (2019, Chap. 10).
Husserl (2013, p. 475).
Husserl (1973b, p. 405).
See more on the role of state-functionaries in Husserl in Hart (1992, p. 390).
Husserl (1989, p. 52).
E.g., Husserl (1952, § 51; 1973b, p. 196).
Husserl (1973b, p. 260).
This is paradigmatically manifest in exercising philosophy/phenomenology, see, e.g., Husserl (1989, pp. 58–59).
Husserl (1973a, p. 105, 110).
Husserl (1973b, p. 175).
See more in Buckley (1996).
Husserl (1989, p. 53).
Miettinen (2020, p. 165).
Miettinen emphasizes the originality of Husserl’s political idealism, moving beyond Kantian cosmopolitanism, the classical tradition of ahistorical forms of utopianism à la Moore, and indeed all traditional political idealisms that once and for all normatively delineate a specific form of governance; Miettinen sees rather parallels to Marx’s ideas about the “‘utopian’ element of communism” (2020, pp. 166–168).
Husserl (1989, pp. 52–53; see also 1973b, p. 204 and 2013, pp. 475–476).
Husserl (1989, pp. 58–59).
Hart 1992 (p. 387).
Mouffe (2013).
Schmitt (1932, p. 50[53]).
Schmitt 1932, pp. 47–48[49–50]).
Schmitt (1932, p. 50[53]).
Husserl (1973a, p. 109).
See Schuhmann (1988, pp. 112–114).
Husserl (1989, p. 58).
Schuhmann (1998, p. 198).
Miettinen (2020, pp. 163–167). However, Miettinen (forthcoming) too acknowledges that Husserl’s preoccupations with rationality and his “quasi-theological vocabulary of harmony and concordance that constitutes the true goal of divine ‘supra-humanity’ (Übermenschentum)” left “very little space for addressing the genuine disagreements and conflicting interests that are at the heart of politics.”
For another interpretation, which strikes a middle ground between these two extremes, see Hart (1992, esp. 403–404). Another interesting avenue is Drummond’s (2000) reappraisal of Husserl as an alternative conception of a non-anarchistic, stately “political community,” above and beyond liberalism and communitarism. Like Miettinen, Drummond is also far more sympathetic to Husserl’s ethico-rationalistic model of the state, or what Drummond describes as the political dimension of a “moral community.” It would also be worthwhile to compare this Husserlian argument to the most prominent contemporary alternative, Nozick’s (1974) minimal state conception. Husserl and Nozick share the aim of sketching a “framework” for political utopias (Nozick 1974, Chap. 10) and suggest a “meta-utopian” argument for the dispensability of the state rather than normatively arguing for anarchism or some other utopia. Of course, one would need to account for the very different assumptions underpinning the two projects, and in particular Nozick’s starting point with a pre-political Lockian state of nature and his libertarian individualism, which is clearly opposed to Husserl’s ethical and political anti-individualism.
Based on these considerations regarding the historical necessity of the state for universality and ideal humanity, Hart (2010, p. 386) even suggests that for Husserl “the state and history are co-emergent, and prior to the state there is [only] a kind of pre-history.”
Husserl (1973a, pp. 109–110; 1973b, pp. 181–182).
Husserl (1973b, p. 213). Notice that love communities are not communities of equal order, nor do they obviously fit either of the other categories.
Husserl (1973a, p. 100; see also p. 109).
See Husserl (1973a, p. 104; 1973b, pp. 169–170).
Husserl (1973c, p. 412).
Husserl (1973c, p. 48).
Kelsen first developed his theory of the state in Kelsen (1911), and reconceptualized it in Kelsen (1945); see also Loidolt (2010, pp. 68, 73, 141 ff.). It’s not clear whether Husserl had firsthand knowledge of Kelsen, let alone his theory of the state, but he was certainly familiar with some of his basic ideas through collaboration with Kelsen’s Viennese students, esp. Schreier, Kaufmann and Otaka; see Schuhmann (1988, pp. 36–38).
Husserl (1973a, p. 107).
See Honneth (1992); cf., however, Jardine (2020) for a Husserlian reassessment of Honneth’s concept of (interpersonal) recognition. In connection with this, it would be worth revisiting Arendt’s criticism of the “un-political and non-public character” of brotherhood communities based on the Christian principle of charity, see Arendt (1958[1998], pp. 53–54).
This is something that Stein’s (1925) phenomenological social ontology of the state offers in great detail.
Arendt (1958[1998], pp. 28–29).
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted for the helpful comments on an earlier draft by Sophie Loidolt and three anonymous reviewers. Work on this paper was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation research project “Who are We? Self-identity, Social Cognition, and Collective Intentionality” (CF18-1107).
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Szanto, T. Husserl on the state: a critical reappraisal. Cont Philos Rev 56, 419–442 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-023-09603-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-023-09603-5