Der Personbegriff und die personalistische Einstellung in den Ideen II

In this essay, we intend to reconsider Husserl’s conception of the one-sided and irreversible founding relationship between perceiving acts, valuing acts and willing-practical acts in the pre-war ethics, as well as his conception of the absolute priority of the theoretical reason. Here, the concept of pregivenness, the phenomenon of factual interweaving of theoretical acts with valuing and willing-practical acts in personal life, as well as the phenomenon of the factual interweaving of theoretical, axiological and practical determinations of objects in the personal surrounding world (Personenumwelt), play a crucial role. We intend to show that there are already certain insights in Ideas II concerning the concept of person and the personalistic attitude which are in fact irreconcilable with the static-phenomenological description of the founding relationship and, in particular, with the assumption of the absolute priority of perception and the theoretical. This therefore calls for a revision of the static conception of the founding relationship, in order that the genetic aspects of the stream of consciousness and the personal life in its mundane-practical engagements, in its interpersonal surrounding world can be elucidated in a more appropriate way.