Husserl on the State: A Critical Reappraisal
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Husserl on the State : A Critical Reappraisal. / Szanto, Thomas.
In: Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2023, p. 419–442.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Husserl on the State
T2 - A Critical Reappraisal
AU - Szanto, Thomas
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - What could a political phenomenology look like? Recent attempts to address this question under the rubric “critical phenomenology” have centered primarily around important issues such as the lived experience of marginalization and oppression or the ways in which power asymmetries or structural biases are internalized, habitualized, and embodied. In this paper, I will take a different route and test the impact of Husserl’s account of the state against the background of key classical and contemporary political theories. I aim to show that Husserl indeed provides some conceptual requisites for an original phenomenological social ontology of the state. By furnishing analyses of the social formation that constitutes the stately body politic, Husserl helps us see the limitations of the standard, broadly Weberian, conception of the state underlying much of contemporary political theorizing. Moreover, Husserl provides an interesting alternative to both naturalistic and social contract theories of the state. However, against more optimistic readings, I argue that Husserl’s idealistic conception of the state, which is implicitly modelled on his notion of the “love community”, ultimately fails as a political theory, particularly when it comes to accounting for the struggle of recognition and the agonistic nature of politics.
AB - What could a political phenomenology look like? Recent attempts to address this question under the rubric “critical phenomenology” have centered primarily around important issues such as the lived experience of marginalization and oppression or the ways in which power asymmetries or structural biases are internalized, habitualized, and embodied. In this paper, I will take a different route and test the impact of Husserl’s account of the state against the background of key classical and contemporary political theories. I aim to show that Husserl indeed provides some conceptual requisites for an original phenomenological social ontology of the state. By furnishing analyses of the social formation that constitutes the stately body politic, Husserl helps us see the limitations of the standard, broadly Weberian, conception of the state underlying much of contemporary political theorizing. Moreover, Husserl provides an interesting alternative to both naturalistic and social contract theories of the state. However, against more optimistic readings, I argue that Husserl’s idealistic conception of the state, which is implicitly modelled on his notion of the “love community”, ultimately fails as a political theory, particularly when it comes to accounting for the struggle of recognition and the agonistic nature of politics.
U2 - 10.1007/s11007-023-09603-5
DO - 10.1007/s11007-023-09603-5
M3 - Journal article
VL - 56
SP - 419
EP - 442
JO - Continental Philosophy Review
JF - Continental Philosophy Review
SN - 1387-2842
IS - 3
ER -
ID: 328247853