Einfühlung, Body, and Knowledge: Phenomenology of the Intersubjective Cognition

Witold Płotka

The article is an attempt to phenomenologically describe the act of social cognition. By “social (or intersubjective) cognition” the author means a special act of consciousness that constitutes knowledge about other subjects as other subjects. It is argued that the description of the act has to answer the question of how social cognition is possible, and as a result, to defi ne the character of the object constituted in the epistemic relation of social cognitive act. The author shows how Husserl’s analysis of the lived body grounds his phenomenology of social cognition, and he claims that one has to understand the act precisely as spontaneous, but essentially indirect act of co-presentation.

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Keywords: phenomenology · intersubjectivity · knowledge · body · empathy · Scheler · Stein · Husserl