LEBENSWELT ALS PRAKTISCHER HORIZONT

The paper presents an assessment of the Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt on the basis of the late manuscripts on genetic analysis. The reflection on the concept of the life-world intends to evaluate the contribution of phenomenology to the philosophical debate beyond the contention between realism, naturalism, and subjectivism. The paper starts by evaluating the idea of the “universal correlation”, thereby stressing the egological figure of the “Ich-kann” (I-can) as the proper candidate to achieve the constitution of the life-world. The author claims that the constitutive activity of the I-can is based not only on intellectual and perceiving acts, but rather on a comprehensive praxis, which also bears ethical meaning. The sense-borrowing activity of the I-can is namely responsible for the inner articulation of the plural particular worlds (Sonderwelten) within the encompassing life-world. Such a relation between interest-centered worlds and the encompassing life-world is not merely empirical and cannot be explained in causal and factual terms. It rather points out a peculiar subjective responsibility intended as a specific access to the world that bears a significant moral meaning. Here appears a pre-predicative and pre-normative form of responsibility rooted in the temporal and intentional structure of experience, connected with the first forms of socialization and with the essential structure of the life-world as a world “for everybody”.