ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the so-called face-to-face encounter, often considered the paradigm case of intersubjectivity, and examines the role of embodiment in the form of intersubjectivity. It suggests that this form of intersubjectivity, while important, is not the only form, and that we-intentionality, or plural subjectivity, presents with a different, and perhaps equally important, form of intersubjective relation. The phenomenological approach offers other advantages as well. Social entities, we-subjects, like individual subjects, are marked by finitude. Discussions of collective subjectivity have always been haunted by what Hans Bernhard Schmid calls “the specter of the group mind”. The metaphor of the body politic can be traced back even further, minus the idea of consent, to Plato’s Republic. The Polis can be considered a human individual “writ large” and is composed of three parts, corresponding to the head, the heart, and the nether regions.
