📙 Subjectivity and Selfhood

If we begin with Husserl, one of the issues explicitly emphasized in his phenomenological analysis of the body is its peculiar two-sidedness. My body is given to me as an interiority, a volitional structure, and as a dimension of sensing, but it is also given as a visually and tactually appearing exteriority.

Since intersubjectivity is, in fact, possible, there must exist a bridge between my self-acquaintance and my acquaintance with others; my experience of my own subjectivity must contain an anticipation of the other, must contain the seeds of alterity (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 400-401, 405, 511).

According to Merleau-Ponty, I can experience others because I am never so close to myself that the other is completely and radically foreign and inaccessible. I am always already a stranger to myself and, therefore, open to others.