ABSTRACT
According to the Formalismus, Robinson Crusoe's evidence of the existence of a Thou in general and of his own membership of the community is not merely a contingent, observational, inductive 'experience'. But is certainly a priori in both an objective and a subjective sense and has a definite intuitive basis, namely a specific and well-defined consciousness of emptiness or absence. In the case of conative acts one might also refer to the consciousness of 'something lacking' or of 'non-fulfilment' which would invariably and necessarily be felt by Crusoe when engaged in intellectual or emotional acts which can only constitute an objective unity of meaning in conjunction with the possibility of a social response. This chapter expresses that the world of the Thou, or of the community, is just as much an independent sphere of essential being as are the spheres of the external world, the internal world, the bodily environment and the realm of the divine.
