ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief historical introduction to the concept of the common mind in German philosophy of history and society. It focuses on its epistemological relevance and expound on Edmund Husserl’s implicit dialogue with Dilthey in Ideas II. In systematic terms, Husserl deals with the phenomena of collective intentionality, personal and group minds. Husserl’s aim was to withstand a naturalistic and historical drift of the natural sciences and humanities into a tacitly skeptical attitude. The task of providing foundations for the humanities has to be located in the previous university struggle for a relation between the natural sciences, humanities and experimental psychology. For Husserl, the investigation of the common mind belongs to a broader context that includes the clarification of natural-scientific facts. Husserl thus presents the clarification of the common mind not only as a regional-ontological problem but much more as a systematic one.
