Phenomenology and Mind

In the last few decades, the nature of collective and social experiences has become a central concern of many phenomenologists. As has been shown, classical phenomenologists (such as Husserl, Walther, Scheler, Stein, Reinach, and many others) have left a rich theoretical legacy on topics such as social cognition, collective intentionality, and the different kinds of we-experiences (see Szanto & Moran, 2016; Salice & Schmid, 2016; De Vecchi, 2014, 2022; Zahavi, 2025). Building upon this, the political dimension of the phenomenological discourse (see Herrmann et al., 2024) has been rediscovered, thus opening up new paths for future research in the field.

What has remained somewhat in the background of these discussions, however, is the set of questions about what Husserl called ‘the constitution of the spiritual world’—a world meant as both personal and social at the same time.  To speak of social constitution is to ask how the social world comes to have its particular sense and validity for us. Furthermore, it means asking how it is built up through a variety of human experiences and interactions (e.g., empathy, social acts, forms of shared experiences), sedimenting into enduring and even stable practices and social arrangements. The notion of constitution is particularly relevant as it is a methodological concept that underwent several reinterpretations—think of Schutz’s (1967) ‘Aufbau’ or the later development as ‘construction’ by Berger & Luckmann (1967)—as well as important critiques—as in the case of Merleau-Ponty’s (2003) replacement of this notion with that of ‘institution.’ Moreover, social constitution and construction have been major issues in social ontology outside phenomenology as well (see Searle, 1995; Haslanger, 2012).

Now, while the problem of social constitution has certainly been crossed in recent literature, it has never been directly addressed as a theme on its own—with a few exceptions (see Steinbock, 1995; Wehrle, 2013). In particular, what appears to be lacking in the literature is a thorough examination of how the affective, temporal, and bodily dimensions of experience contribute to the constitution of the social and are, in turn, shaped by this very process (Zahavi 2025 has begun to move in this direction).

This special issue aims to address this broad theme from a specific perspective: the role that emotions and affective experiences play in such constitutive processes, and how experiential and affective dynamics shape collective identities, collective memories, and historical traditions, as well as norms and institutions.  In this way, the volume will serve the purpose to ‘think otherwise’—in Ricœur’s words—about the most fundamental experiential structures involved in the social constitution of our world, thus bringing into view how the body, time, and affectivity dynamically interact in shaping the collective dimensions of experience and lifeworld, and, in turn, how the communal sphere acts back upon them.