This paper deals with phenomenological distinctions concerning empathy with real persons and empathy with fictional characters. We will introduce both contemporary accounts of our perception of others and Edith Stein’s account of empathy. These theories will turn out to be fruitful in defending our main thesis, i.e. that the differences between empathy with real people and empathy with fictional characters are not structural but just qualitative. We will argue that in both cases empathy is a direct act of perceiving others (...) and their lived experience. However, stemming from Stein’s work, we will underline that empathy with real persons is in principio more vivid and intense than empathy with fictional characters. In order to identify similarities and differences between empathy de vivo and empathy in fiction, we will focus on the following issues: the quality of perception; the motivational context and the “life-world context”; the ontological status of persons vs. characters. (shrink)

I argue that Reinach’s social acts are a new type of acts with respect to Husserl’s acts of meaning. I focus on the eidetic structure of both acts of meaning and social acts and identify the wholes-parts connections that constitute them. I point out that acts of meaning and social acts have a similar but not identical wholes-parts structure. Social acts are a new kind of wholes, irreducible to the wholes-acts of meaning that are “mental linguistic acts,” which may occur (...) only internally in the mind of their agent without addressing another person, and that also belong, according to Husserl, to the category of “objectifying acts”. Indeed, social acts are constituted by further and new parts, with respect to those of acts of meaning: the making-known of the act to an addressee, the turning toward an addressee and their interpellation, the tendency to be perceived by the addressee, the internal experience that grounds the social act, the normative efficacy of the social act. These parts make the sociality of the social acts and characterize their intentionality as essentially social. At the same time, I show that Reinach’s eidetics of social acts provides a qualitative ontological account that distinguishes different degrees of existence and raises the question of the “good life” of social acts. I argue for these issues by referring to Husserl’s theory of parts and wholes and account of acts of meaning (1901), to Reinach’s account of social acts (1913), and to Scheler’s idea of the reciprocity of social acts (1913–1926). (shrink)

The present work deals with the quality issue in social ontology: the fact that social entities not only can exist or not exist, but can also be more or less achieved and be subject to degrees of existence, and the fact that social entities can be bearers of varieties of ways of existence, that is, there are several ways in which a social entity of a certain type can be realized. In accordance with phenomenological eidetics, I show that modifications of (...) essential connections involve lacks or variations of essential parts of entities, which, respectively, imply degrees of existence and varieties of ways of existence which “enhance” the existence of social entities, and I argue that the modification issue hits the core of the quality of existence issue. Lastly, I focus on the essential connection of tendency as another case in which eidetics provides meaningful insights into the existential quality issue in social ontology. (shrink)

In her Investigation Concerning the State, Edith Stein takes up some of the main ideas of the social ontology presented by Adolf Reinach, and develops a social ontology of the state, of the law and of social acts. I argue that Stein’s social ontology is an eidetics of the state, the law and social acts. Stein identifies the essential relations that constitute the state, the law and social acts, i.e. pinpoints the parts upon which the state, the law and social (...) acts existentially depend as wholes. In doing so, Stein applies Husserl’s account of wholes and parts to the social domain. I also suggest that Stein outlines a regional ontology of sociality that embodies Husserl’s idea of regional ontology. I focus on the intertwining of the wholes-parts relations, which characterize Stein’s regional ontology of sociality, and argue that there are not only necessary but also possible parts within the wholes. This makes Stein’s regional ontology of the sociality a dynamic ontology. (shrink)

In my paper I introduce the phenomenological concept of “eidetics” and its application to law. I show that, according to this approach grounded in the works of Reinach (1913/1989) and Stein (1925), the problem of the existence and validity of the law can be fruitfully analysed in terms of parts-wholes which constitute law-making acts as wholes, both as performed and fulfilled acts. I argue that the parts of law-making acts can be subject to varying degrees of constraint – necessary, possible (...) or contingent parts – and that it is the possible part of law-making acts that makes the difference between the existence of law-making acts and their validity: between their mere existence as performed acts, and their full existence as fulfilled and valid acts. I show this in focusing on Stein’s suggestion of filling the inter-personal gap between legislator and citizens in legal provisions by introducing “integrative acts”, which facilitate the uptake and, consequently, the enforcement of legal provisions by citizens. I suggest that Stein’s work on the integrative acts of legal provisions is grounded in the eidetic claim that essential parts of a whole also include possible – and not only necessary – parts, and that these are essential relations of tendency: legal provisions tend essentially to be fulfilled and their existence acquires a full sense only when they are enforced. Finally, I deal with eidetics and the issue of degrees and quality of existence in social ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I interview Francesca De Vecchi (Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Vita-Salute San Raffaele University) about her qualitative ontology and its social and normative implications. If at the foundation of our lifeworld there are significantly qualitative experiences, phenomenology can investigate the most important contemporary issues, such as gender disparity, socio-virtuality depersonalizations and political urgencies.

I will shed light on the phenomenon of collective intentionality, which, in the philosophical, cognitive sciences and neurosciences debate, is often confused with similar yet diverse phenomena, i.e. with intersubjective intentionality, also called social cognition, and with social intentionality. In order to elucidate the phenomenon of collective intentionality, I shall present a taxonomy of collective, intersubjective and social intentionality, and consider a thesis about shared intentionality. The taxonomy intends to show that although collective, intersubjective and social intentionality are very close (...) phenomena, nonetheless they are different types of intentionality, and that, like individual intentionality, collective and intersubjective intentionality involve different kinds of intentionality – practical, affective and cognitive – which have to be distinguished. The sharing thesis, I will argue for, maintains that collective intentionality is a shared intentionality in a very strong sense of the term “sharing”, a sense that implies some essential conditions, which are not required in the cases of intersubjective and social intentionality. Finally I shall point out that intersubjective intentionality is the basis and the necessary condition for collective and social intentionality. (shrink)

I address the issue of the unity of social ontology despite the extreme variety of social entities: groups, money, promises, governments, laws, etc. Then, I focus on Gilbert’s account of social ontology as an ontology specifically dealing with groups as plural subjects, and face with Gilbert’s concept of shared values as values of plural subjects created by joint commitment. I argue that Gilbert’s account of shared values is a cognitivist and extrinsic one: it neglects the specific role of values for (...) the constitution of plural subjects and considers values neither as a necessary nor as a sufficient condition for social unity. I suggest that, unlike Gilbert and the main trend in the contemporary social ontological debate, phenomenology provides an axiology that can allow to account adequately for values and to understand values’ crucial role for social unity. I discuss Scheler’s dividing vs. sharing values thesis and mention Schapp’s collective values thesis. Finally I address the question of the collective feeling value. (shrink)

In my paper, I will address two issues on the characterisation of social objects as subject-dependent objects: (i) Does phenomenological realism imply Platonism in social ontology? (ii) Which type of intentionality is the protagonist of social objects’ existential dependence on subjects? Both questions deal with Ferraris’ reception of Reinach’s phenomenological realism, on the one hand, and with the role played by the intentionality of social acts in the constitution of social objects, on the other (Reinach 1913, Ferraris 2009). According to (...) Ferraris, Reinach’s phenomenological realism becomes a sort of “social Platonism”, and the intentionality of social acts is an individual intentionality. On the contrary, I will maintain that phenomenological realism does not imply social Platonism in social ontology, and that social intentionality is not an individual and solitary intentionality: it is, rather, a heterotropic intentionality which necessarily refers to and depends on other subjects. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate ways to comply with justice in a liberal democracy. In order to do that, we sketch Rawls’s account of moral-consensus stability and discuss the alternative idea of stability reached through a modus vivendi. We defend modus vivendi as a way to achieve stability backed by a variety of reasons and even by ‘non-reasons’. By ‘non-reasons’ we mean alternative sources of motivation for compliance as a precondition of a stable coexistence. We focus on such sources, which (...) differ from reasons and beliefs, that are practices, shared values, and value experiences, in light of both a theoretical-political and a qualitative social-ontological perspective. We argue that individuals who experience the same values become collectives and even stable ones: the sharing of values creates social unity and makes collectives solid and resistant to individualistically centrifugal tendencies. (shrink)

I focus on empathy from an eidetic perspective, that provided by Edith Stein in her work On the Problem of Empathy and which I call eidetics of empathy. I suggest that the eidetics of empathy allows us to inquire efficaciously into the structure of empathy, and therefore into the relation between empathy on the one hand, and embodied personal identity and intersubjectivity on the other. I argue that the eidetics of empathy sheds light on the complexity, heterogeneity and also fragility (...) of the acts of empathy that we perform in our everyday life with respect to others, and provides us with the conceptual tools to address crucial questions such as: What is the specific and distinctive structure of empathy? What are the conditions of possibility of the performance of acts of empathy? Are there different fulfilment degrees of empathy? What role do living bodies play in the performance of acts of empathy? How is it possible to prevent and correct mistakes of empathy? I deal with these issues in making three points on the eidetics of empathy. My first point is that the eidetics of empathy allows us to understand empathy as one type of acts of perceiving others and their experiences directly and as a whole that is subject to variations of its parts – the limits of possible co-variations of its parts correspond to the essential structure of empathy. Secondly, I focus on the eidetic issue of the possible co-variations of parts of the empathy-type: the content and the degree of fulfilment and accomplishment of empathy acts, the layer of the person they address, the varieties of living beings with whom we can empathize. Thirdly, I argue that the eidetics of empathy exemplifies very well the ontologically qualitative issue of degrees of existence of any entity in relation to its eidetic paradigm, and it is a prime example of how phenomenological eidetics can be a qualitative ontology dealing with qualitative issues that are crucial in our everyday life. (shrink)

I put forward four these concerning phenomenologically clarifying criteria to characterise social entities. The first thesis maintains that social entities have a sui generis ontological status: unlike natural and ideal entities, social entities depend existentially on individuals’ intentionality and are specifically normative entities. The second thesis claims that social entities existentially depend on heterotropic intentionality – i.e. on intentionality that involves at least two individuals –, and not on solitary intentionality. The third thesis identifies at least three different types of (...) heterotropic intentionality: collective, social and intersubjective intentionality. The fourth thesis states that all three types of heterotropic intentionality are effective: they create social entities, even if each of them creates social entities of different kinds. (shrink)

In this introductory chapter, we recall some of the crucial aspects of Gilbert’s notion of joint commitment. Special attention is devoted to the importance of this notion both for human life in its social aspects (notably, the formation of group beliefs and the constituions of just joint commitments) and for social ontology (in particular, for the understanding of norm and institutions and of the intentionality of groups). Then, we briefly summarize the contents of the contributions collected in the issue.

I will argue for three principal claims that found the structure of the present issue of “Phenomenology and Mind” and represent three Leitmotive of the papers in it collected. A first claim on social world and everyday life world: (i) by making the social world, we make our everyday life world; A second and third claims on two essential features characterising social entities: (ii) social entities existentially depend on the intentionality of individuals, and precisely on heterotropic intentionality of individuals (collective (...) intentionality, social intentionality and inter-subjective intentionality, or social cognition); (iii) social entities are essentially normative entities, i.e. social entities are bearers of a deontology. (shrink)