Encountering the Lived-World of the Other:

A Way of Understanding the Other

Sem. Ricky Joe M. Noble
September 5, 2009

In this paper, we shall see how the Self understands authentically the
Other through the encounter of the lived-world of the Other and by the
openness of the Other towards the Other (Self). This paper is divided into
three topics, namely: Lebeswelt and Totality, Lived-world of Human Relations
(Of the Self, Of the Other), and Human Encounter. In order to go to the main
theme with facility, it is fitting to start with a discussion or a review of the
main terms and ideas of the two philosophers used here, that of the
Lebeswelt and Totality.

The Lebenswelt and Totality

Lebenswelt is the idea of Edmund Husserl that has become widely

known. It was used by other philosophers before Husserl; one of them is
Georg Simmel, a prolific German philosopher and sociologist, who was one of
the principal founders of sociology in Germany (DAGFINN FØLLESDAL,
REP/CD-ROM). After the Second World War it became a favorite word of
many social scientists, who used it in many diverse senses. This term was
used firstly in print in his latest work, the Crisis of European Science. The
Crisis consists of philosophy’s departure from its true goal, which is to
provide the best possible answers to human concerns, to deal rigorously with
our quest for the highest values, and in short, to develop the unique, broad-
range capacities of human reason (SSB420). As many social scientists who
made use of this term diversely, many interpreters too of Husserl have
diverse views on it. Husserl touches upon the life-world repeatedly in his
earlier work and he gradually deepens and modifies his views on it, as he did
with everything else in his phenomenology. This life-world of Husserl is
intimately connected with other main themes in phenomenology.
What precisely is the life-world according to Husserl and what is its
function, its role to play in phenomenology? The life-world arises from the
distinction between the natural attitude and the transcendental or
phenomenological attitude, which Husserl introduced in 1905 (DAGFINN
FØLLESDAL, REP/CD-ROM). In the ‘Fundamental Problems in Phenomenology’
(1910-11), Husserl begins with an extended discussion of ‘the natural
attitude and the "natural world concept"’. Here he says:

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 It could also be shown that philosophical interests of the
highest dignity require a complete and comprehensive
description of the so-called natural world concept, that of the
natural attitude, on the other hand also that an accurate and
profound description of this kind is not easily carried out, but on
the contrary would require exceptionally difficult reflections.
(1950: 13, 124-5)

According to Føllesdal, in this lecture, Husserl borrows the phrase

‘natural world concept’ of Richard Avenarius, a German philosopher who is
known to be a proponent of ‘empiriocriticism’1 and the principle of economy
of thinking. Following Avenarius, Husserl describes this world as follows:

All opinions, justified or unjustified, popular, superstitious,

scientific, all relate to the already pregiven world.… All theory
relates to this immediate givenness and can have a legitimate
sense only when it forms thoughts which do not offend against
the general sense of the immediately given. No theorizing may
offend against this sense. (1950: 13, 196)

In a manuscript from 1917, wrote Føllesdal, Husserl introduced the

term “life-world” as equivalent to the phrase from Avenarius’ “natural
world”. He said that ‘the life-world is the natural world - in the attitude of the
natural pursuit of life are we living functioning subjects involved in the circle
of other functioning subjects’ (1950: 4, 375; the manuscript dates from 1917,
but was copied during the first half of the 1920s, and it is possible that the
word ‘life-world’ appeared then)2. Gradually during the 1920s and especially
in the 1930s the life-world becomes a central theme in Husserl’s writings,
until his discussion culminates in the Crisis in 1936. One aim of this work was

1 Empiriocriticism is a modern version of empiricism which attempts to restore the concept

of the natural world and ‘pure experience’ through the elimination of ‘introjection’,
understood as an insertion of redundant or distorted ideas and images into the objects of
our knowledge. Avenarius traced back the origin of introjection to the cultural stages
dominated by magic and mythology, yet his criticism applied also to traditional philosophy
and science. His position is usually classified as a version of positivism, closely resembling
the empiricist doctrine of Ernst Mach. Although his influence on some members of the
Vienna Circle, especially Moritz Schlick, was considerable, the impact of his contribution has
been hampered by his idiosyncratic use of language, especially in his masterpiece Kritik der
reinen Erfahrung (The Critique of Pure Experience) (1888-90).

2 Citation is taken from Føllesdal.

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to provide a new and better access to phenomenology, through the notion of
the life-world. Husserl urges us to bracket all presuppositions and essentially
go back to a prescientific viewpoint, which he believes reflects the original
form of human experience (SSB 424). This is the realm of our daily world –
the life-world. The life-world is for Husserl our natural world, the world we
live in and are absorbed by in our everyday activities. It is consist of all those
experiences in which we are typically involved, including perception,
response, interpretation, and the organization of the many facets of
everyday affairs. (SSB 424) A main aim of phenomenology is to make us
reflect on this world and make us see how it is made up by us. Through the
phenomenological reduction phenomenology will take us out of our natural
attitude where we are absorbed by the world around us, into the
phenomenological, transcendental attitude, where we focus on the noemata
of our acts - on our structuring of reality.
Husserl by pregivenness in the quotation above means that in one’s
consciousness he finds himself in the same manner at all times and without
ever being able to alter the fact, in relation to the world which remains one
and the same, though changing with respect to the composition of its
contents. One is confronted with s spatiotemporal reality to which one
belongs just like other human beings who are exactly to be found in it and
who are related to my very self. Husserl says that the life-world…is always
there, existing in advance for us, the ‘ground’ of all praxis, whether
theoretical or extra theoretical. The world is pregiven to us… (Crisis, 1936,
1954: 6, 145).
For Husserl, we understand the phenomena of the world only as they
present themselves to our conscious selves. In Being and Time, Heidegger
takes a similar point. For Heidegger this world is a totality, a whole. He gives
varied description to this world and the type of awareness that escorts such
a world – this he calls understanding. This concept of a totality or a whole
(world) is central to the thought of Heidegger. In Being and Time, one can
find a lengthy expansion of the various elements of this world, of this totality
as a basic structure of human existence. Though Heidegger did not made
use precisely of this term world, but one can see in his works that he meant
the same. His sense of human existence is always that of a whole, a totality,
a context that embraces multiple elements. In Being and Time, he says that
the basic make-up of human existence (Dasein) is primordially a whole (236).
Heidegger’s description of the totality and that of human existence gives us
a sense of plurality or multiplicity of contexts that make up human existence,
though in this description he made use of a singular form “totality”.

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 For Heidegger, the being of Dasein is essentially a being-in-the-world.
Thus, the existence of Dasein is essentially a matter of living a totality –with
consideration to its various forms. In Being and Time, he wrote that to live in
a human way is “to do something, to use something, to give something up
and let it get lost, to undertake, to accomplish, to find out, to ask about, to
observe, to speak about, to determine…” (53). Though presented in
complexity, he pointed out that this world is a practical type of world. As
discussed before in this class, Heidegger often made use of the carpenter
and its instrument as an example to explain that this world is a place where
we discover tools or instruments, things that are understood in its practical
purpose. The carpenter lives his “world”, his totality, of carpentry and he has
the understanding of his hammer in terms of the total context of carpentry,
the whole. Thus, various tools and instruments find their meaning in an
overall world of importance. Heidegger has many more discussions on the
numerous contexts of this totality as it is being structured. These are the
following: a. The sense of Dasein as essentially a totality surfaces on ‘care’.
Dasein is being-in-the-world because it cares or is concerned about the
things in the world, b. The worldly character in human sociality. Mitsein is
responsible for a basic togetherness in human life. We share a common
world which gives us a communal context for our lives. Each one is a Mit-
Dasein, having the character of being fellow sharers in the world. c. The
World of Historicity. This means that a life stretched from one’s past through
a present condition and forward toward a future goal comprises an overall
totality. This whole gives meaning to one’s individual actions and within
which one lives. With this concept of the world of historicity we are led to a
concept of death where everything in our human existence like activities and
involvements are moving towards the ‘ending’. This is the reason for the
limitedness of human life. Death does not just add meaning to one’s
existence but making each one of us aware of a basic individuality. When we
face death, we are alone. We do not face death together with our friends. We
may die together by the same accident at the same time, but basically we
face death individually. He faces it by himself. d. State of mind (BT 172-178).
Our being in the world is always conditioned by it that reveals the things in
that world in a particular light. Heidegger calls it an ‘existentiale’. This is a
basic element of the context of human life. e. The totality of the unique self.
The context of uniqueness is a total world where Dasein lives in his own
unique way, of course being caught up in a potentiality for being. This world
is revealed by the mood or the state-of-the-mind of anxiety. In one’s selfhood
one is to find the idea of conscience. This conscience appeals to the Dasein
for a particular potentiality. This comes from within the Dasein. Thus, the
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Dasein is calling for the Dasein (self). This world of selfhood is much more
meaningful with the reality of the self’s responsiveness to the call of himself.
These elements show the worldliness of human existence. The various
elements of the Dasein have a worldly character, as discussed and described
in Heidegger’s Being and Time.

The Lived-World of Human Relations

The contexts of human relations are totalities that form a significant

whole, the dimension of the self. One is distinguished from another through
its relational context. One is a son, a daughter, a wife, a husband, a brother,
or a sister. Each relation is a totality, a whole, a world which one lives as one
functions being the self. Through the contexts of human relations - being a
son or a husband – one confronts life and responds to its challenges. One
functions in this context. Human relationship is obviously a totality formed by
differing concerns, multiple meanings and values. This kind of totality
surpasses any kind of private and personal feeling, desire, and wants. These
elements gathered together are given meaning when in the context of
human relation, the totality. Totality is formed from multiplicity – from
multiple concerns, values and desires. Multiplicity of human relationships, as
one is caught up in it, shows a great complexity in the dimension of the self.
Since relational one is caught up in a multiple relational worlds.
Distinctive meanings arise from relationships which are given to the
totality of one’s life. In marriage, for example, the overall meaning of one’s
life and its elements are changed, that is, they are given a new meaning.
Distinctiveness would show that the Self (husband) and the Other (wife) have
each own world but are bracketed when they are joined in marriage. Let’s
see more for this distinction.

>> On the Self

Here, we are trying to unravel the lived-worlds of human existence and

the understanding connected to these lived-worlds. One aspect or area
where such a ‘world’ dimension in human existence arises is in one’s
selfhood. To be self, that is, to exist as a self is to live a number of worlds.
And to understand one’s selfhood, he/she should go beyond the elements
that one knows of his/her life and later come to an overall self-appreciation,
a sensing of one’s life regarding what Heidegger calls ‘totalities’ or worlds.
Usually, one’s thinking is obstructed from entering into the “going
beyond” by a propensity to be absorbed by the individual aspects of one’s

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life. This absorption in part of his experience keeps him from seeing his
whole self. For example, there is a propensity to think one’s self in terms of
particular emotions and feelings. His feelings may dominate his awareness to
the extent that he may think that a particular feeling is his ‘self’. One may
interchange feeling from his very self. But, the truth is, one’s self is more
than what he feels or what he is aware of. One’s selfhood has a certain
enduring permanence. Thus, it could not be that feeling be the self since
feeling is constantly changing in the course of the day. Feelings too are
phony and ultimately not that important compared to the real self. Another
reason would be that since feelings present in one’s life come out
spontaneously, there is no real decision making behind feeling/s and that
they are not chosen. In and through one’s free decisions one moves into full
selfhood. Thus, letting one’s life be dominated by unchosen feelings is to let
selfhood be non-existent. The same is true with wants and needs of people.
Like feelings, wants and needs are very far from one’s true selfhood, though
they may be prominent in one’s life. This could not lead to self-appreciation
but to the appreciation of things that one had once wanted and accrued.
This failure to appreciate the self does not just come from what we
desire and want as well as from our feelings but it can also arise from how
one thinks. One tendency of this is to think the self in view of categories that
are achieved by some form of objective thinking. Here, the self is analyzed
the same way that one thinks of a mountain, a tree or a cat. But the self is
not an object placed before us that can be studied and measured. The self
cannot be objectively examined. The self is a subject and not an object. The
self is not the one being thought of but it is the one that thinks of something.
All these things should not be put into consideration because by not setting
these aside is to deprive ourselves of understanding of our “selves”. Thus,
we need to open ourselves up to what is subjective in human experience.
Understanding the self demands a bracketing of our knowledge of our
feelings, and our awareness of what we desire and want, as well as, the way
we think categorically. We should open up to the totalities which structure
our selfhood. Going beyond these elements is a kind of epoché. By doing
this we set aside something that we are aware of that we may be aware and
sensitive of the other things more important of the moment. We live in a
world and our selfhood is to be found in the world that we live and
understand. The world of the self should be understood as something which
is already there in our experience. Thus, the lived-world of the self.

>> On the Other Self

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 Solidarity is harmony of interests and responsibilities among
individuals in a group, especially as manifested in unanimous support and
collective action for something. An example of a lived-world in our human
experience is when we experience this solidarity with another person, for in
such instance that we enter into the lived-world of the other and live it.
Living this solidarity would lead us to affirm that it, indeed, has several
grades. This is to say that, in human experience, the living of solidarity
varies among persons. There are instances by which an Other has a full
identification with others’ lives as well as its opposite – standing distant from
the Other. We have the Suffering Servant, in our Christian Tradition, who
identifies himself with the sinful people and carries their burdens. In the
Oriental Tradition, particularly in Buddhism, we found an ideal Karuna
(compassion) where a monk called Bodhisattva or Buddha enters into the life
of another creature, by understanding and sharing it. These two examples of
extreme solidarity disclose to us a special form of human existence. The Self
identifies himself with the lives of others to the point of forgetting the Self.
But the other side of the coin, however, is an instance where a person lives a
life of individualism. He is not touched by the lives of others. In this instance,
we can say that there is neither an understanding nor a living of solidarity.
We have given the two extreme cases in living solidarity in human
experience but between the two is our ordinary human experience of a
somehow limited kind of solidarity. In this case, an individual experiences a
sharing of one’s life with relatives and friends but remains in that small circle
of relations. In such a case, the lives of persons in that circle would have a
shallow identification with the group. This identification is not usually fully
affirmed and lived.
We have to differentiate what are being said here with that of a human
relation by which lived relationships as we may say “a default” in the cases
of our relatedness to our parents, culture and the whole human race for in
this case we find a rather permanent character and the understanding in
connection with them serves as a permanent benefaction in human life.
What is being discussed here is the contrast of such default. The
understanding and living of solidarity comes out from real or actual
encounters that each has with the people. In this case, the experience is an
event, that is, something that comes into our lives at a particular moment of
our life wherein we are called to live the life of the other and to understand it
as a totality.

>> On Human Encounter

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 Human encounters take several forms and in these differing forms
there are forms of knowing the other. The experiences in human encounters
vary too – some encounters involve a moving into a lived-world while others
do not. Thus, it follows that in some human encounters, the appreciation or
affirmation of a totality is present while in others do not. We are presented
here with a confusing diversity. This work will be dealing with this diversity
by pointing out through description the different ways by which we
encounter, know, understand and live the life of the other.

Here are the following forms of Human Encounter:

>> Objective

One of the types of human dealing is what Martin Buber calls the “I-It”
relationship, wherein the “I”, as a subject, relate to another human being as
an object. Here the “I” views the Other, react to that human being in various
ways and evaluate that Other. This type of human relation shows a
distinguishing fact of distance – a distance that lies between the “I” and the
“Other”. The “I” lives as someone who is far and separate from the other and
relate to that Other in that mode of separateness. In this encounter, we see
no mutual activity which would unite in some way the I and the Other. In this
encounter there is no living of a new totality or wholeness. The I’s life is
impounded within the narrow perimeters of the “I” with its concerns. The
awareness of the Other found in such an encounter is not the awareness of
an all-embracing totality but only consists of one’s own subjective feelings,
judgments and ideas. The I views and knows the Other in terms of his
private feelings and ideas which classify the Other as bad or good, ugly or
beautiful, old or young. Uniqueness has no way for this person in this kind of
encounter. The “I” is never aware of the Other as a full person but a thing.

>> Manipulative

In our life, human as we are, the possibility or even the reality of

encounters with other persons in a manipulative way is undeniable. To
manipulate the Other is to control or influence somebody or something in an
ingenious or devious way. Thus, in this encounter the “I” as the subject
needs help in order to satisfy his needs or a help in achieving his goals. This
happens not just to the powerful but even those who are powerless. Those
who are in power would usually use and manipulate their subordinates for
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their benefit. The same is true with the powerless, since they need someone
to cling to, they use people and manipulate them by fraud and other means
that they may be able to get what they want. There is nothing wrong with
asking for help in times of need. It is natural and normal for us to ask other’s
strength, power and even resources when we are in need. This is due to our
lack. We are imperfect that’s why we try to fill the lack but there are times
that asking for help seems just to be a mere appearance. We appeal to
people by appearing restless but they don’t know that it is only one’s
technique or mechanic in order to get something from the other. This kind of
encounter is indeed manipulative.
Manipulative encounters form a large part of human’s social existence.
In a society, there are people whose function is that of service. They attend
to our needs. They are the lawyers, doctors, engineers, among others. These
people offer us services which we need and whenever there is a call for a
need we respond to this call and make use of this offering. This human
interaction is very much in line with the thought of Buber’s “I-It relationship”.
Here the “I” knows the other objectively. He views the other in terms of
objective categories. In this relationship, distance is again the distinguishing
factor. People are seen not as persons but by their use. They are objects for
our satisfaction. Manipulative people understand others privately and
subjectively. Others are not viewed as unique, precious and have individual
life too because they are seen as tools and instruments to be used. It is
obvious that in this encounter there is no mutual interaction and there is no
sense of others as a possibility of becoming partners in life.

>> Functional

One type of human encounter arises from the interaction of two

individuals having or sharing the same project. They are caught in a common
activity though may differ in function or role. In family life, there can be such
interaction. The husband and wife work together in the family building – they
share in common activity but playing a role differently from each other. The
same is true with Universities or Schools. Professors, administrators, and
other staff members work together for a common project, to create a school
and to maintain it, but each member plays a different function. In this role
playing that one is known, such a teacher or a janitor. Here we see differing
modes of encounter. In a school one could observe that a teacher relates
differently to the janitor compared to his way of relating to the Administrator
or the Rector of the University.

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 The school and family are totalities, they are worlds. These people
comprising the totality of the contexts of schools and family are elements
inhabiting the lived-world. These people live in common since they are put
together by a structure called family and school. Being put together in a
communal form of living to have a single project is to bracket individuals’
lived-worlds, for in this encounter, these people are brought beyond private
and individualistic existence. It is by this reason that we can give the word
understanding to the basic human knowledge that is present in such a
situation since it implies a knowing of a certain totality. Being a member of a
totality such a school is to live in a world. And our understanding of ourselves
and of other members of this totality is through its totality. For a couple,
what is known is basically the family that they need to sustain and for the
staff of the school is the understanding of an active school. This is indeed a
functional way of relating and interacting with others.
Based on this function-role-playing comes a functional kind of knowing
and understanding the other. In a family, the couple considers themselves
through their function in the family, that is, as husband or wife, the father or
the mother in the family. Husbands may think of their wives as caretakers of
babies and the one capable for the household chores. Wives may think of
their husbands as breadwinners, as the one capable of providing the family
for their needs. An individual is not viewed as a person but as a husband or a
wife, a teacher, or a janitor. Unlike the manipulative and objective
encounters, distance has been transcended in the type of knowing in this
relation since the basis of this is a thinking of two individuals in mutual
interaction, that is, each is actively involved with one another. The distinctive
character of this interaction or encounter is that of the mutual involvement
and common activity. It is what defines the relationship and the knowing of
each other under this kind of totality. Though this kind of interaction is quite
far from that of the objective and manipulative encounters, still it falls short
of the knowing of the other within a totality of a personal relationship. In
functional encounter, individuals do not deal with each other as persons but
by its different roles and functions. They see the other as a function and not
an individual who has a personal life.

>> Personal

Personal encounter implies a sharing of beings. One enters into the

lived-world of the other. In this encounter, the “I” lives the life of the other as
a unique and historical individual – a person with unique involvements and
concerns. It is an experience of basic human solidarity as the “I” enters into
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the context of the Other’s life. This implies a bracketing of the individual’s
private world as he moves into the new world and since it is personal he
understands it from within. The distance distinctive to objective and
manipulative encounters is transcended in this personal encounter. Without
distance individuals are now capable of understanding others whose life
courses are fairly different from theirs. We usually see this kind of encounter
in family, friendship, where these people in these totalities are in mutual
commitment in a friendship, loyalty and love. But this kind of encounter or
relation can also be open to other individuals even without befriending them.
An individual can be aware of the historicity of other individuals, their
involvements and relatedness even without making friends to others. An
example of this is when we are able to understand a historical or a mythical
person whom we have never personally met.
This encounter is similar to that of empathy wherein an individual puts
himself into the shoe of the other. It is the ability of an individual to identify
with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties. What happens
in this encounter is a personal involvement. There is no distance mediating
the two individuals. It is a sharing of one’s being, a sharing of one’s life and a
sharing of a totality.

Conclusion:

The experience of solidarity can be less or great, completely present or

completely absent but whatever the state is, the possibility of entering into
the lived-world of the other is always there in human life. An individual can
always go beyond the different encounters he experiences in his daily life,
that is, to go beyond considering the other as a tool, an object or a function.
The type of understanding found in a personal encounter, the encountering
of the lived-world of the other, is vague, enigmatic and limited. Each
person’s world is rich that it cannot be exhausted in the course of a lifetime.
This is not like studying a specimen for a discussion. Limitedness in our
understanding of the lived-world of the other or of the very person does not
mean that we cannot have a real and true sense of the life of the other. It
could be true actually that this sense of the other is more superior to our
understanding of our very own selves. There seems to be a magic happening
at a particular moment in our lives wherein we simply understand the life of
others when the time comes that our eyes are wide open to this fact of the
other. We understand the other selves beyond mere physical appearance.
This could be the reason why for sometimes we see beautiful wives having
ugly husbands. Physical appearance is transcended here. Wives’ eyes are
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opened up in the real self of the other. They have tasted the lived-world of
the other, that’s why they decided to fully lived in it by committing to their
husbands through the sacrament of matrimony. The wife has understood the
husband in a personal way for she comes into the awareness of the elements
which are present in the background of her husband’s life.
In this encounter of the lived-world of the other, the “I” experiences an
invitation to respond and answer to the call of preciousness found in the life
of the other. The “I” is invited to recognize that preciousness and respect
that life of the other. One can be a friend or an enemy, still every individual
is precious and there is something special in each person. Now the invitation
is to give in to the opportunity to live rich human lives beyond our own and
to take part in a beautiful drama of other’s life. We should be sensitive and
open, willing for a personal encounter, a personal manifestation on the part
of the other, that others too may enter into our own lived-worlds. In such a
way we can understand the Other in a real way.

Sources:

Craig, Edward, Gen.Ed. Routledge Encylopedia of Philosophy (CD-ROM).

V.1. London: Routledge. 1998.
Fieser, J. and Stumpf, S.E. Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of
Philosophy. Philippines: McGraw-Hill (Asia), 2008.
Fuchs, Wolfgang Walter. Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of
Presence. Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Edited by David Farrell Krell. San
Francisco: Harper, 1993.
___________________. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State
University of New York, 1996.
Polt, Richard. Heidegger: An Introduction. New York: Cornell University
Press, 1999.
Velarde-Mayol, Victor. On Husserl: Wadsworth Philosophers Series.
USA: Wadsworth, 2000.

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