How to return to subjectivity: Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan on the limits of reflection

Abstract

This article discusses the recent call within contemporary phenomenology to return to subjectivity in response to certain limitations of naturalistic explanations of the mind. The meaning and feasibility of this call is elaborated by connecting it to a classical issue within the phenomenological tradition concerning the possibility of investigating the first-person perspective through reflection. We will discuss how this methodological question is respectively treated and reconfigured in the works of Natorp, Husserl, and Lacan. Finally, we will lay out some possible consequences of such a cross-reading for the conception of subjectivity and the concomitant effort to account for this dimension of first-person experience in response and in addition to its omission within the standard third-person perspective of psychological research. KeywordsHusserl, Lacan, Natorp, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, reflection, subjectivityIn recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of the issue of subjectivity in different research domains ranging from cognitive (neuro)science and analytic philosophy of mind to psychopathology and the so-called consciousness studies. One of the central impetuses for this return to subjectivity is related to a growing awareness on the part of philosophers and scientists alike, working within these various related research domains, of a certain

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