ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether, and in what way, we can say that political experience constitutes a specific class of intentional acts and what this can tell us about man’s being a “political animal.” It focuses substantially on certain Husserl commentators who the author finds to be the most measured and careful interpreters of his thought. Their work is especially helpful since, over the course of his voluminous writings, Husserl approached phenomenology from numerous different paths, with his philosophy undergoing significant development. Furthermore, some of Husserl’s most important doctrines and conclusions are highly contested, leading to a wide variety of interpretations and debate among Husserl scholars. Because the “bracketing” of the world in the epoche is neither its denial nor its reinterpretation, but rather a putting-out-of-play of “the naïve pre judice that simply presupposes the world,” a phenomenological analysis enables us the take a perspective in which the “sense” of the world of natural life becomes understandable.
