Structure of the empathy: self oddity and instinctive intentionality

Abstract

The concept of “empathy” arises from the study of the constitution of an intermonadic community. Empathy takes the experience to be either not-originarily-now or not-mine. In both cases, I am extending my consciousness beyond the moment of being minenow to a type of re-presentation (Vergegenwärtigung). The notion of empathy is related to that of “temporality”, insofar as Husserl claims that the empathy puts the other in a co-present. If each individual constitutes his/her own now, for his/her own consciousness, and if this level is distinctly separated from the level of intersubjective existence, then we cannot easily explain how the present is experienced as fundamentally the same for all subjects. In dealing with this difficulty, I will take up Husserl’s considerations of temporalizing consciousness in the living present. The analysis will be completed with the drive-intentionality, which is very important in the constitution of the transcendental intermonadic community in a passive level.