Conference | Paper

In this paper, I reconstruct Edmund Husserl’s account of communicative social acts and their role within the personalistic attitude. Such reconstruction is based on Husserl’s original manuscripts for Ideas II. After illustrating Husserl’s notion of personalistic attitude, I discuss the distinctive features of communicative social acts in contrast with empathy (Einfühlung). Against that background, I address communicative acts at an individual and a collective level. I go on to outline the role of communicative social acts and mutual agreement in different types of communalization. Finally, I address some important implications of Husserl’s analysis of social acts for the concepts of objectivity and normality, suggesting that it offers a fruitful account for debates on the relation between communication and objectivity.