Husserl’s Inter-subjectivity

Inter-subjectivity is a phenomenon that is quite natural in the world and Husserl addresses the problems of sameness and otherness and especially in the transcendental world. How can I (sameness) know the other? How do I get out of the sphere of ownness   (perhaps solipsism) and experience otherness? Husserl suggests the other is co-presented without being present. The primordial sphere, in which ownness is known takes place, (pre-cognitively or pre-predicatively) and knows the other is known by means of empathy. It was immediately obvious to me that when I establish a notion of sameness, it is a result of knowing that there is something other than myself. I know the other because of it being a part of my sameness. This is a heroic truth for modern and post-modernity as minority and under-presented groups struggle for sameness within the human population; and racially distinct groups, in their otherness, claiming sameness. Christian theologians  indulge in the concept of the primordial sphere and the creation story. A rib was taken from Adam and from it, Eve was created. Multiplicity represented in unity. St. Paul emphasizes that we are all the sons of God and further explicates,  “there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, but all the same in Christ Jesus”, (among all this otherness). As he explains that this takes place through the Spirit of God and is spiritual, we are no closer to understanding the exactness of the knowledge or its performance. In recognizing myself as lieb, I also recognize others as lieb. Husserl believes that transcendental inter-subjectivity is capable of explaining and clarifying the core concepts of phenomenology. The categorial form of the objective world exists for me and not for me only, but for every one else.

Still for me, there remains the problem of language in phenomenology, being a descriptive enterprise. In the natural world, we tend to understand and agree with the language that is be used in a particular description. That the phenomenal attitude is abstractly different, the language needs to different from that used in the natural world. With what language, symbols or how do we describe or articulate the varied presences of the objects that are immanent to us in the transcendental world. Inter-subjectivity certainly is necessary, but how does one know if he is experiencing in any particular moment the same thing that the other is experiencing in the immanence and transcendence of the object.