Social Phenomenology

Husserl, Intersubjectivity, and Collective Intentionality

Social Phenomenology brings together insights from the tradition of phenomenology and recent discussions of collective intentionality. In doing so, it offers a unique account of how consciousness is formative of the social world. That is, how our thinking things to be so can, in some cases, actually make them so. For instance, that the money one uses day in and day out is worth something is not because of its physical characteristics, but because we accept that those physical traits, printed by the right institutions make it so. The book argues for a position between atomism and collectivism. That is, the book denies there is any such thing as collective consciousness, while also denying the atomic conception of subjects which views subjects as islands unto themselves, free of relation to others.