ABSTRACT
Husserl's phenomenology of the lifeworld influenced post-war American sociology. While Alfred Schutz's phenomenological theory of action faces Weber's question of how social reality can emerge out of individual meanings and interactions, in the last two decades, analytical theories of action have discussed intensely the ontological nature of social groups and their specific collective intentionality. Up until recently, Husserl's social philosophy was seen to be confined to the realm of his ethics or else viewed as a peripheral adoption of positions from the tradition of German idealism. Therefore, his phenomenology has been interpreted as both Cartesian individualism and Hegelian collectivism. Husserls social philosophy was seen to be confined to the realm of his ethics or else viewed as a peripheral adoption of positions from the tradition of German idealism. Within the structure of we-intentionality, the others are given eccentrically because each centering excludes the centering of the others.
