Revisiting Reinach and the Early Husserl For a Phenomenology of Communication

Abstract

In this article, I start with an analysis of Husserl’s description of the intentional structure of communicative intentions in the Logical Investigations, pointing to some obvious shortcomings of it. Then, I stress some important criticisms of Husserl’s approach, namely by Pfänder, and I endeavor to show that Husserl was very close to a full-fledged theory of communicative intentions in the years around 1910. I then turn to Reinach’s theory of social acts, without deciding whether Reinach’s approach was dependent or not on Husserl’s new views concerning the intentionality of communicative acts. Regarding Reinach’s theory of the Vernehmung, I criticize a widespread trend to construe (and translate) it as something like a perception (Wahrnehmung), showing that it expresses what I call the “vocative element” of the communicative acts. Then, I point to some complements that Reinach’s description is in need, and I finish with an outline of a phenomenologically oriented concept of communication, based on Husserl’s and Reinach’s insights.