Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

Date of Award

Spring 2026

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Interdisciplinary Studies

College

College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Andreea Aldea

Abstract

The work here is aimed at three primary goals. The first is largely exegetical and focuses on explicating Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of the intentional process which constitutes our empathic experience of other people. This is relevant because phenomenology’s capacity to examine intersubjectivity depends on the validity of the pairing association put forth by Husserl in section 51 of the Cartesian Meditations. I accomplish this by analyzing not only the sections in the Cartesian Meditations where Husserl makes his case, but also by engaging with his previous works, upon which his analysis of the pairing association depends. The second goal is to provide an accessible, yet rigorous account of some of phenomenology’s most important discoveries about how consciousness is structured such that we have the sorts of experiences that we do. The second goal leads into the third, which is to provide an accessible and concrete phenomenological analysis of freedom as a capacity that is, in principle, a possibility for all people. In the end, this leaves open a question about how we become the sorts of subjects that we are, prior to actualizing freedom.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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