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BOOK REVIEWS 75

Michael Theunissen. The Other: Studies in the Social Ontologyo Husserf HeideggerSurtre and Buber. Translated by Christopher Macann. Cambridge, Mass.: The MITPress, 1984. 40.00 cloth) Reviewed by David Blinder)

In his introductory remarks, Michael Theunissen tells us that a philosophical textshould be judged by the distance between the authors intention and its realization. Ifwe apply this precept to Theunissens book, the results are mixed. The Other is a majorcontribution to scholarship in the field that Theunissen refers to as soci l ontology. Thebook is an examination of how four of the most influential twentieth-century Continentalphilosophers account for the relation between the Self and Others. But Theunissenscritical gaze extends beyond the what I will call microscopic level of textual analysis,and there his intention outruns its realization.

In his telescopic view, Theunissen divides the works he examines into two oppos-ing philosophical schools. On the one side is the tradition of transcendentalism onemight call it th subjectivism^ ) that reaches back through Edmund Husserl to ReneDescartes. On the other side is the revisionist movement Theunissen dubs dialogicalism,to mark its connection to the work of Martin Buber. Theunissen is a partisan of therevisionists, who claim that the separation of Self from Others is understandable onlyon the basis of a more primordial, ontological relation known as the sphere of thebetween.

But Theunissens partisanship has considerably weakened since the original publica-tion of the German text in 1965. Originally, he claimed that dialogicalism brings about

the destruction of the transcendental model of intentionality p. 291Q that he thinksunderlies the thought of Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. His judg-ment in the postscript to the now translated, revised edition of 1977 is that dialogicalismdoes not so much undermine transcendentalism as overcome it, in the Hegelian sense.That is, dialogicalism purportedly represents a higher stage in the ontological historyof mankind p. 369).

The overriding problem with The Other is that Theunissens astute microscopicanalyses fail to substantiate his telescopic claims. In the comments that follow, willtry to make clear why he fails.

First of all, by elaborating accounts of the ontological status of the Other with

reference only to phenomenological texts, Theunissen makes the debate over transcenden-talism appear to be a family squabble among Continental philosophers. But it is not.The problem of other minds has been resolved and dissolved by a host of Analyticalphilosophers since Ludwig Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle, whose works are not onlyoutside the purview of this investigation but also escape the transcendental-dialogicaldichotomy. Only Theunissens parochialism makes it possible for him to claim that thestandpoints that we have selected constitute the extreme limits comprising all the otherpossibilities of thematizing the Other that have actually been developed to date p. 3).

For those already initiated into phenomenological philosophy, a further problemarises as to the alignment of Heidegger with the transcendentalist camp. This difficultyrequires some stage-setting. I take Theunissen to hold that the Husserlian-transcendentalposition involves at least three related claims: the thesis of intentionality, the thesis ofsubjective constitution, and the thesis of mediation of the I-Other relation. FollowingFranz Brentano, Husserl takes the mental to be essentially characterized by intentionality,that is, the minds directedness toward or representation of) objects. Consciousness

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16 BOOK REVIEWS

is essentially the correlation between intentional acts and intentional objects. The analysisof subjective experience becomes the required point of departure for philosophy whenHusserl introduces the phenomenological epoche or reduction. By bracketing all beliefsabout the existence of the objects of consciousness, Husserl argues that phenomenologydiscloses a realm of absolute evidence upon which a rigorous philosophical sciencecan be built. After epoche every meaning we ordinarily attribute to objects and eventsin the world must be traced back to the meaning-giving acts of an originally worldlesstranscendental subject. Transcendental phenomenology is accordingly pure egology,hence committed to the subjective constitution of every possible object of consciousness.

But what about other persons? How do I constitute the meaning other subjectwhen I can never experience anothers experiences? In spite of the elaborate conceptualmachinery Husserl develops in the fifth of his Cartesian Med itations Theunissen holds

that Husserl has no adequate answer to this question. Theunissens point is that onceone adopts the standpoint of egology, the existence of the Other must be mediated bymy experiences of him as intentional object originally, as another body). For Husserl,the Other is never originally another subject or Serf because I never experience myselfas his object p. 116). In Theunissens view, by understanding the Other as an alterego, that is, as experiencing what I would experience if I were in his place, Husserlfails to overcome transcendental solipsism p. 162).

My difficulty is not with this portrayal of the Husserlian schema, but withTheunissens attempt to fit Heideggers Being and Time into it. Theunissen concedesthat Heidegger gives the Other genuine ontological status by including Being-with

among the essential structures of Dasein. Yet Theunissen insists on identifying Daseinsprojection of meaning with Husserls notion of subjective constitution. But Heideg-ger tells us, Dasein is what it does: Its projects cannot be reduced to a stream ofintentional acts. This is because projection in Being and Time is equiprimordial withDaseins thrownness into the world. All of Daseins projects must be understood withreference to roles, goals, and behavioral norms that are always already constitutedby the social community Dasein finds itself in. With good reason Heidegger asserts thatsubject and object do not coincide with Dasein and world.

Moreover, when Heidegger claims that Others are encountered within the world,this is not, as Theunissen takes it to be, another version of the thesis of mediation.Theunissen recognizes that Heidegger rejects Husserls visual-perceptual paradigm forreflective understanding and adopts in its place the notion that self-understanding isa function of our practical interaction in the work-world. What Theunissenunderestimates is the fundamental role Heidegger assigns to discourse in the forma-tion of the meaningful structures of the work-world. Discourse is not the verbalizationof the inner life of consciousness, but the original articulation of possible ways Daseincan interpret its existence.

In short, Heideggers steadfast refusal to equate selfhood with consciousness, hisnotion that Being-with-Others is an essential structure of human existence, and his

recognition of the mediating role of discourse in Daseins self-interpretation, put Beingand Time decidedly outside the transcendental-egological tradition.Finally, there is a problem about how dialogicalism overcomes the transcendental

stage of self-understanding. In the postscript, Theunissen comes to see that dialogicalismsalleged destruction of the transcendental model of intentionality amounts only to thedenial of Husserls babic theses. Where Husserl argues for the essential mediation of

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