Sarah Pawlett Jackson

This commentary focuses on the second section of Dan Zahavi’s lead article for this Special Issue, which examines the relationship between ‘I-you’ and ‘we’ forms of intersubjectivity. Zahavi argues here and elsewhere that the first-person plural is dependent on the second-person perspective. In this commentary I will explore and analyse this claim, arguing that there are at least two possible ways that it might be interpreted. I will offer an overview of these two possible interpretations and offer my own evaluation of the best understanding of the foundational relationship between the ‘we’ and the ‘you’.

This book presents the case that there are forms of human interaction which should be understood as properly second-person plural. It engages with the work of Sartre, Levinas and contemporary phenomenology to show that this claim is not just about grammatical forms of address, but about the phenomenology and structure of our intersubjective experience. While there has been plenty of recent work exploring the phenomenology of the second-person singular and the first-person plural, we have not so far seen a systematic account of the second-person plural: the I-yous or we-you. This book outlines the phenomenology of the specific structures of interlocking intersubjective reciprocity which need to be in place between multiple subjects for an interaction to be properly second-person plural. The author considers and defends her account from various possible objections-both a conceptual worry, and a range of empirical worries. These objections are shown to be misguided, and the thread that runs through them-a problematically disembodied conception of the human subject-is exposed. She proceeds to offer a positive account of the second-person plural, supported by an understanding of subjectivity as necessarily embodied and embedded in the world. This account opens an exciting path for further analyses of complex multi-person intersubjectivities in small group contexts. The Phenomenology of the Second-Person Plural will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in phenomenology, social ontology, and the philosophy of intersubjectivity.

In this paper I analyze Alessandro Salice and Joona Taipale’s account of ‘group-directed empathy.’ I am highly sympathetic to Salice and Taipale’s account and intend this paper to be an endorsement of their project. However, I will argue that a more fine-grained account of group-directed empathy can be offered, and I seek to contribute to this discussion by outlining at least one way in which different types of group-directed empathy may be identified. I argue that while Salice and Taipale are right to claim that an account of group-directed empathy requires a corresponding account of ‘collective bodiliness,’ there is an important form of collective bodiliness that their account does not fully incorporate, namely embodied interaction between others. I argue that a closer look at the perceivability of interactions between others offers a richer and more complete account of how we can empathetically perceive shared emotions between groups of people.

In recent years, work in cognitive science on human subjectivity as 4E has found a significant precedent in, connection with and enrichment from phenomenological understandings of the human person. Correspondingly, both disciplines have shed light on the nature of intersubjectivity in a complementary way. In this paper I highlight an underexplored aspect of phenomenological and 4E understandings of intersubjectivity, namely that these approaches make space for the possibility of properly intersubjective interactions with more than one other person at once. This insight is important, I argue, because the philosophy of intersubjectivity has tended to focus on the self-other dyad as the primary unit of intersubjectivity from which all other forms of intersubjectivity can be extrapolated. Against this, I will argue that multi-person intersubjectivity is possible because of, and not in spite of, the nature and structure of individual subjectivity itself. We find our intersubjective capacity has the possibility of simultaneous engagement with multiple others built in ‘all the way through’, in virtue of being 4E. Despite the emphasis on subjectivity as embodied and worlded in the phenomenological tradition, we find that this ‘dyadic paradigm’ has been prevalent in some of the work of the classic phenomenologists. In this paper I look at the accounts of intersubjectivity offered by Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas. I outline how – in different ways, with different emphases and to different extents – both Sartre and Levinas embody something of this dyadic paradigm. This, in turn, I argue, highlights an incongruity in each of their accounts on the issue of the other’s existence in the world as 4E. This tension is most stark in Sartre’s case. I will argue that his account of the-other-as-subject explicitly fails to appreciate the other’s subjectivity as 4E. His definitionally dyadic account of ‘the look’ is indicative of this. In Levinas’ case, the issue is more subtle, as he explicitly acknowledges ‘the face’ of the other in materially worlded and embodied terms. Nevertheless, I will argue, Levinas’ account of intersubjectivity, including his account of ‘the Third’, also indicates a version of a dyadic paradigm which runs counter to the logic of a fully 4E appreciation of intersubjectivity. I will argue that minimally there is tension or ambiguity in Levinas’ account on this issue.

In this paper I offer a comparative evaluation of two types of “fundamental hope”, drawn from the writing of Rebecca Solnit and Rowan Williams respectively. Arguments can be found in both, I argue, for the foundations of a dispositional existential hope. Examining and comparing the differences between these accounts, I focus on the consequences implied for hope’s freedom and stability. I focus specifically on how these two accounts differ in their claims about the relationship between hope and necessity. I argue that both Solnit and Williams base their claims for warranted fundamental hope on a sense of how reality is structured, taking this structure to provide grounds for a basic existential orientation that absolute despair is never the final word. For Solnit this structure is one of unpredictability; for Williams it is one of excess. While this investigation finds both accounts of fundamental hope to be plausible and insightful, I argue that Williams’s account is ultimately more satisfying on the grounds that it offers a realistic way of thinking about a hope necessitated by what it is responsive to, and more substantial in responding to what is necessary.