Beilage XXVIII: Problems: Taking Over (Tradition) and Primal Institution. Thoughts Do Not Collide with One Another in Intersubjectivity, but Purposes Might Do So.

"What someone says and what proceeds from him, from his personal I to mine, moves his thoughts, feelings, will; that is his thought, his meaning, his wish and will, but it is now in me as my acquisition, as what infuses into me, as thoughts that I adapt myself to; I participate in them, I understand in accordance with them, I follow the expressions, the symbolic indications, and if they are empty, unclear, or half clear thoughts, they they will become clear, unequivocal thoughts of mine through my own actualizing act - but they belong to the Other, they are taken over from him, they are owed to him. If he himself turns to me, then his personal teaching is addressed to me, and through my act of taking over his intention is fulfilled. Normally, the Other addresses himself to me. But it might be the case, however, that he has spoken to another person, and I have overheard him. Or he might have written something with an indeterminate addressee in mind, as a writer addresses an indeterminate public. This indeterminate generality includes me, and in me I experience the fulfillment of the writers expressions.

"The author, or the other person who is communicating in immediate-reciprocal fashion, works `into me,' into my I, which has its own living horizon of consciousness, its original ontic sphere and its ontic habituality, its way of being as passive and active I. But the Other has those of his own. His thoughts are `in' him his thoughts and now at the same time have entered into me and are my thoughts... We are communalized. We could independently of one another have the same thoughts but nevertheless not be communalized," not unified through the consciousness of commonality. "I am, and everyone is in the horizon of the We, and this horizon is equally the horizon for many communities...

"What I originally (in a primally instituting way) produce out of myself is mine. But I am a `child of the time,' I exist in a widest We-Community, which has its tradition... And [generative subjects] `act' on me; I am what I am as heritage. What is now that which is actually originally my own, insofar as I am actually primally instituting? Now, I am such against the background of `tradition,' everything my own is founded, partly through this ancestral tradition, partly through the tradition of my contemporaries. I speak however now only of thoughts."

Thoughts enter into me, and I take them over through intersubjective understanding. But what about experiences? e have immediately common experiences in the community of empathy. However, we also have acquisitions of experiences through their intersubjective understanding, experiences which we ourselves do not have originally. We take them over by means of spoken communication.

I have often spoken of foreign will and wish entering into me. How does that happen? My will enters in a certain way into the physical world. I act, and the natural process has the form of my act, the noematic form on the basis of my will, and in each phase, and therein has the end-form of the character of the willed end, the projected goal, the goal which guides me as `goal-idea.' If I act on another, then he and his act are for me like objects and processes of physical type of the practical sphere, and I trans-act with him, I give him and his act a purpose-form. His act can be my objective action. Master and servant. Here the action is accomplished on the ground of personal communication. That need not be the case everywhere. I can determine the Other indirectly, by so to speak laying motives in his way. If the servant has purposes which the master takes over when he acts, so the action has the noematic purpose-form, but the purpose is a taken over purpose, the action is that of the servant as servant.

A purpose is my purpose, or it is at the same time mine and that of the Other, or it is mine because I have taken it over from the Other, in order to serve. Purposes however are not ideal objects of the same type as thoughts, as validities of experience. I have a persisting volitional meaning, a persisting purpose... Thus I also have my persisting value-meanings, my valid values, persisting wishes and so forth. They are ideal, we could take them over from one another.

Thoughts Do Not Collide with One Another in Intersubjectivity, but Purposes Might Do So

The will is at first my will, my purpose. But then there is a collision of purposes. Ontic meanings do not collide in this way. In communication the Other attains the meaning, and my acquisition and his do not conflict with one another. But pursuit of the same purpose may conflict, as when I and another person wish to pick the same fruit. The purposes of the acts concerned may stand in real contradiction.