Boris Pantev

This article explores the key role of “experiential style” (Erfahrungsstil) in Husserl’s account of social habituality. It demonstrates the developmental bridge this concept throws between the distinct intentionalities of empathy and communalization. The importance of Erfahrungsstil in Husserl has largely escaped scholarly attention. I claim, however, that in his later work, it becomes an inherent component to the relational dynamics of intermonadic temporalization, the process which underpins the generative constitution of sociality and opens a possibility for a transcendental phenomenological anthropology, a project Husserl only sketched out but never ventured on.

This article outlines the emergence of Husserl’s theory of ‘communication proper’ ( Mitteilung or Kommunikation) in the context of his genetic analyses of intersubjectivity. It defines the meaning and function of Mitteilung in contradistinction with the notion of empathy and thus demonstrates its distinct generative constitution. I propose that Mitteilung has the capacity to cancel the ‘operative’ opposition between social acts and instinctive intersubjectivity and thus to frame a non-determinist theory of sociality. This capacity is largely ignored by the dominant interpretation, according to which the concept of communication in Husserl is derivative of the more fundamental category of empathy. A major consequence to this argument is that it determines why eminent readers of Husserl such as Derrida have missed an important opportunity when they failed to notice the distinct role of Mitteilung. This alternative view is expanded onto communication media in general by taking Kittler’s project as a vantage point.