INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Janice B. Baranda, RN,LPT

Senior High School Teacher III
Sablayan National High School
 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 (actors action) on the Washing machine
(actors 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?
 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 dont 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 persons 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 ones 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
others. 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).
Answer the following:
Translate the following into our mother tongue:
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
What do those lines from The Sound of Silence mean?
What kind of relationship is described by the words: How
does talking differ from speaking? Hearing from listening?
Illustrate with examples from everyday life experience.
Between hearing and listening, talking and speaking
which do you prefer? Why?
Can you describe the people described in The Sound of
Silence as so near yet so far? Why or why not?