A phenomenological approach to Ibn Khaldun's concept of group feeling

Ibn Khaldun's groundbreaking sociological investigations led to the development of the concept of group feeling ( asabiyyah), responsible for describing not only the basis of all social cohesion, but also to explain the cyclical rise and fall of communities in a philosophical theory of history. We will analyze Malešević's naturalistic anthropological interpretation of the nature of group feeling and complement it with a phenomenological interpretation of the subjective experience of asabiyyah. We will rely on Stein's insights into the problem of empathy and Schütz's phenomenological investigations into the structure of social relationships. We expose Ibn Khaldun's concept of asabiyyah, followed by Malešević's analysis of the concept. Afterwards, we analyze how Malešević uses group feeling to explain the formation of group solidarity in nationcentric States. After showing how phenomenology can answer the open-ended questions posed by Malešević in his article, we lean on Stein’s and Schütz's investigations in order to describe asabiyyah phenomenologically.