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of reason, as far as the single human being is concerned, but also with regard to thedifferent super-individual entities. This principle is not only applied to inter-subjectivestructures -- which, like the family or the people, presupposes the tie of natural, i.e.,biological generation -- but also to entities which are usually ranked among the most“unnatural,” artificial products of human culture. In affirming, for instance, that even abook has something like a “double-sided bodily-spiritual objectivity” (zweiseitigekörperlich-geistige Gegenständlichkeit), 35 Husserl insists on the fundamental differencebetween artefacts and objects pertaining to the realm of inanimate nature. This does notmean, of course, that he upholds a kind of animism with regard to products of culture. Ifthe book is said to have a “soul” or a “spirit,” this amounts to saying that its property ofbeing a cultural object cannot be perceived in the same way as its physical qualities butonly “apperceived” analogously with our empathetic apperception of the psychical sphereof another subject. 36 This analogy between the “animated body” (Leibkörper) of a humanindividual and the “body of sense” (Sinneskörper) 37 of a cultural product is neitherarbitrary nor merely poetic. A cultural object can be credited with a “soul” insofar as itappresents an alter ego, i.e., another human being whose sphere of consciousnessnecessarily implies a spatiotemporally individuated, bodily existence which, in its ownturn, tends to express itself and to find its continuation in artefacts, i.e., in objects whosemere perception already carries in itself a sort of universalizing finality that exceeds andsupplants the final structure inherent in all intuitive acts in their phenomenal singularity.Unlike natural things, the different kinds of artefacts bear witness to the division oftasks, within humankind, and thus indicate the necessity for collaboration from all humanbeings with a view to their self-conservation. Nevertheless, the “organic,” “bodily”character of cultural objects cannot be reduced to their functional contribution tomankind’s biological persistence in an infinitely repeated “now.” In virtue of theirparticular intrinsic intentionality, cultural objects inaugurate a form of phenomenologicaltemporality that is no longer subject to the dominance of the present. Just as the absentcraftsman or artist in his particular historical world horizon endows the object in questionwith the dimension of the past and hence of tradition, the universal concept underlying thespecific finality of the artefact implies the possibility of its being used successively by avirtually infinite number of different persons -- a feature that projects the essence of thecultural object out of the present of its natural, physical givenness toward the future of itsteleological horizon.Though his interpretation of artefacts and art works according to the “body/soul”-schema seems rather unusual, Husserl’s approach to inter-subjective structures like family,people, state, etc., in terms of “second-order organisms” is at first sight a commonplaceof traditional political philosophy. Nevertheless, Husserl draws a distinction betweenorganisms of a higher order, whose teleology is confined to mere self-conservation, andinter-subjective structures, which are endowed not only with a certain unity of consciousness,but also with the will to affirm themselves -- in the pursuit of a goal which is notalready an intrinsic part of their own essential determinations. Only structures of this kindmerit, apart from the name “organisms,” also that of “persons” or “personalities” of ahigher order. 38 Among these inter-subjective entities, the “state” constitutes a limiting35Edmund Husserl, Phänomenologische Psychologie, Hua IX (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), 111.36Ibid., 110-111.37Ibid., 112.38See Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischenPhilosophie, Zweites Buch, Hua IV (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1952), 319; 351; idem, Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Zweiter Teil, 206; 220; 406; idem, Zur Phänomenologie derIntersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlaß. Dritter Teil, 154, footnote 1, and Husserl, Aufsätze und228