Introduction

Abstract

As an introduction to the present collection of twenty-one essays, five aspects of this first chapter must be emphasized. First, it begins with a brief description of phenomenology as a philosophical movement, which was initiated by Edmund Husserl in Germany in the very beginning of the twentieth century and has now become a worldwide phenomenon. This volume represents for the first time “political phenomenology” as a sub-discipline of phenomenology proper. Second, political phenomenology made its entry to the theory of politics as an alternative paradigm to both political behavioralism and the influential “essentialist” political philosophy of Leo Strauss. As Embree’s contribution in this volume shows, Alfred Schutz constructs reality in a social process, and follows Husserl’s critique of “scientism” and momentous discovery of the life-world (Lebenswelt). Third, in the beginning was embodied sociality. The body is the expressive medium as well as the root of the social world. Fourth is the notion of transversality as the confluence of differences across cultural and disciplinary borders in the age of globalizing pluralism. Fifth, this introductory chapter briefly describes the nature of each of the other 20 chapters in the volume.