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The Husserlian social theory presented in this volume has parallels in the Western religious doctrines of monotheism, messianism, christology, and trinitarianism. In the first two sections we shall briefly contrast the functions of these doctrines in the establishment of the ideal community with the proposed Husserlian theory. In each case, with the exception of the Trinity, one or more of these religious doctrines, i.e., the one God, the Messiah, and the Christ, serves as the necessary supplement for the ultimate ethical requirement and as a necessary condition for the universal mutuality of wills and the community of intentions, goals and goods. Everyone can exist intentionally in everyone else and each's agency can be part of everyone else's if and only if there is a universal Other or Someone who stands in the same relation to each as ideal, beloved, and agent. Each is loved more profoundly in the ideal Other because each's true self is realized through its unity with this ideal beloved; each's agency is unified in this ideal Other, the abiding attention by whom, and the abiding intention of whom, purifies, joins and sustains the manifolds of interactions of the universal community. The logical development of the ideal of a universal community, wherein each is for each and all and all are for each is toward a centering ideal, symbol or actuality wherein each is truly re-presented. This unique intentional ideal or "symbolic presence" re-presents the actually absent others and deepens the commitment to those who are present. In so far as this community is a particular community tied to universal historical humanity and is the vehicle of the realization, in some sense, of ultimate value, the universal ideal Other tends to be envisaged as the ultimate teleological and originating divine principle of the community.¹

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-7991-9_6

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