INTERSUBJECTIV

ITY
JANICE B. BARANDA, RN, LPT
SABLAYAN NATIONAL COMPREHENSIVE HIGH SCHOOL
What is the concept where social interactions
among individuals validate events occurring
in society?
A.Intersubjectivity
B.Intrasubjectivity
C.Subjectivity
D.Communarization
 Activity
• Break the class into groups of 4 to 5.
• Assign the one of the following action situations to each group. Each group
will come up with an action situation that they will portray through
pantomime. The action situation will be discreetly written on a paper, and
then submitted to the teacher. Only a group and the teacher should know
what the group plans to enact.
• Action situation should be composed of an actor + object acted on. The
action situation should be phrased as follows:
• Washing laundry (actor’s action) on the Washing machine (actor’s object).
• One member will take the role of the actor; another member will play the
role of the object (act like a washing machine.
 Analysis
• Let the class hear from the sharing of those who were
assigned to play the role of an object. If you were one of
them, how did you feel while playing the role?
• Imagine that this happens in real life – that some persons are
turned into objects as tools used by others. Do you think they
would feel the same way as your classmates did? Why? Why
not?
• Can you give real life examples when persons are turned into
objects?
•Intersubjectivity, in philosophy,
psychology, sociology, and
anthropology, is the psychological
relation between people. It is usually
used in contrast to solipsistic individual
experience, emphasizing our inherently
social being.
 Some people treat others as mere objects because
they only look at others as bodies like machines.
Factory owners do not care if their workers don’t get
enough sleep or food as long as they meet the quota to
be produced for the day. Maids are shouted at, snubbed,
laughed at, or made to live in subhuman conditions
because their “amo” only see them as machines that can
wash, cook. Prostitutes are not respected because they
only viewed as bodies that give pleasure to their clients.
 The human person is not an object. She only appears to be one
because of her body. Her body is what makes her a thing like other
things.
But you cannot just treat a person as a thing without hurting the
person’s feelings. This is because the human person also has an
inner reality encapsulated in the concept of an embodied spirit.
This is the reason why we do not refer to human beings as objects,
but as subjects. For this reason, human persons are expected to
treat others as fellow subjects and not as objects in service of other
subjects. This relationship among subjects is what philosophers
call inter-subjectivity.
• Intersubjectivity is a relationship that is
supported by genuine communication founded
on mutual respect for each other as subjects,
and on co-presence – the openness of one’s
presence to the presence of the other.
• To be, to exist in a human way, it to be with. Intersubjectivity
is thus a state in which I recognize my being as a being-with-
others. My life is not human if it is centered on itself. Life
becomes human, that is, it is humanized, as soon as I de-
center myself from myself, when the center of my life is on
the welfare of another. “Human Living” is “living of
something other than itself” (Marcel: 171). Human Living is
when I find meaning in the other. This is precisely what Jesus
Christ, said “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever
loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39).
APPLICATION
• Study the lyrics of the “The Sound of Silence”. Does the song explain
intersubjectivity? How?
 "The Sound Of Silence"

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools” said I, “You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence”
ANSWER THE FOLLOWING: