ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to propose a strong resonance and congruence between Husserl’s idea of the intersubjectively constituted life-world and Aristotle’s claim that the political community is “prior” to the individual. Aristotelian methodology shows the need for political philosophy to draw from an empirical survey of constitutions. The goal of a phenomenologically oriented political philosophy, then, will not primarily be to trace out the various kinds of regimes or constitutions, or to establish a theory of law or right and so forth. Rather, it will be to ask how it is both possible and unavoidable that any human being’s orientation in the world will be informed by such considerations. The realist rejection of political intelligibility is intimately related, philosophically speaking, to the failure to identify the aspect of political order most requiring analysis today: the constitution of a common world. For it is not just “agreement” that is fragile and threatened by endemic conflict.
