Sense of Belonging and Disillusionment: A Phenomenological Reading of Community Dynamics

In the cultural framework in which we are currently moving, in Europe and beyond, we experience an ever more generalized sense of uncertainty and disillusionment towards common living. The extremely individualistic culture of ‘do-it-yourself’ and ‘everything-is-possible’ has certainly contributed to this by investing the individual with decision-making powers linked mostly to the emotion of the moment, in private as well as public life, indeed, cancelling the boundaries between public and private. The role of emotions in private daily choices as well as in community and national interest choices has therefore become central, going, however, to the detriment of responsible action and a culture of the common good. The emergence of some radicalizing tendencies such as populisms draws attention precisely to the leverage plans that today move the common ‘feeling’ between a sense of belonging to an entity superior to the individual and constituting the community that each human being needs to live and flourish, and disillusionment with it, especially on a social level. Starting from these reflections, we develop a phenomenological analysis of the community and people’s dynamics within it. In this regard, the reflections of some phenomenologists including Stein, Walther and Scheler can offer us a framework, within which we can try to understand the progress of the aforementioned phenomena and their apparent success. At the same time, we can recover the value of the relationship between people and the contribution of the individual in support of community forms of coexistence based on a sense of mutual responsibility.