Together and apart: variations on the Husserl’s fifth cartesian meditation in the coronavirus pandemic

ENWe aim in this chapter to draw a parallel between the strict lockdowns announced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which involved many months with severe restrictions on movement and contacts with other people, and the phenomenon of loneliness as the metaphorical expression of solipsism. Edmund Husserl in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation explores the problem of transcendental subjectivity and the phenomenon of solipsism. The main focus of this chapter is Husserl’s phenomenological research on intersubjectivity: how the Other is given to me? This givenness is described phenomenologically through various terms used by Husserl, such as “reduction”, “empathy”, “pairing”, etc. At the end of the chapter the authors turn to the existential side of Husserl’s phenomenological project on the Other, and offer some advice for the existential-philosophical position during the pandemic. Keywords: Husserl, Solipsism, Loneliness, Pandemic, Inter-subjectivity, Phenomenological reduction.