This article traces the development of how the early Heidegger tried to integrate the structures of social life into phenomenological ontology. Firstly, I argue that Heidegger's analysis of the three elements of the lifeworld-the withworld (Mitwelt), the environing world (Umwelt), and the selfworld (Selbstwelt)-is ambiguous, because it shifts between defining sociality as a domain of entities and a mode of appearance. This is untenable because the social as a mode of appearance constantly overflows the definition as a domain by implicating social structures in phenomenological explications of entities that, formally, belong to other domains. Secondly, I argue that Heidegger realized this and subsequently changed his terminology from Mitwelt to Mitsein in order to avoid confusing the mode of appearance with the innerworldly entities. The systematic consequence of this line of argument is that the object of social ontology must be the world as such rather than a particular domain.
Drawing on recent phenomenological discussions of collective intentionality and existential phenomenological accounts of agency, this article proposes a novel interpretation of shared action. First, I argue that we should understand action on the basis of how an environment pre-reflectively solicits agents to behave based on (a) the affordances or goals inflected by their abilities and dispositions and (b) their self-referential commitment to a project that is furthered by these affordances. Second, I show that this definition of action is sufficiently flexible to account for not only individual action (in which both (a) and (b) refer only to an individual) but also several distinct subtypes of shared action. My thesis is that behaviour counts as shared action if and only if it is caused by a solicitation in which either (a) the goals, or (b) the commitments, or both (a) goals and (b) commitments are joint, i.e., depend on several individuals. We thereby get three distinct subtypes of shared actions: (i) jointly coordinated individually committed action, (ii) individually coordinated jointly committed action, and (iii) jointly coordinated jointly committed action.
This article provides a detailed analysis of the function of the notion Volk in MartinHeidegger's philosophy. At first glance, this term is an appeal to the revolutionary masses of the National Socialist revolution in a way that demarcates a distinction between the rootedness of the German People (capital "P") and the rootlessness of the modern rabble (or people). But this distinction is not a sufficient explanation of Heidegger's position, becauseHeidegger simultaneously seems to hold that even the Germans are characterized by a lack of identity. What is required is a further appropriation of the proper. My suggestion is that this logic of the Volk is not only useful for understanding Heidegger's thought during the war, but also an indication of what happened after he lost faith in the National Socialist movement and thus had to make the lack of the People the basis of his thought. addressed this problem in a series of different lecture courses. In Logik als die Frage nach dem Wesen der Sprache held in the summer semester, Heidegger rejected the traditional understandings of the People (as body, soul or spirit) and opted for a fourth understanding of the people that would bring it into line with his analysis of resoluteness [Entschlossenheit] in Sein und Zeit: 1 In the moment that we grasp the We as something relying on resoluteness [entscheidungshaftes], the decision [Entscheidung] concerning our being-ourselves also takes place. It is already a decision concerning who we are ourselves, that is, das Volk. (GA 38: 59) 2 Here the moment [Augenblick] of decisiveness seems to be the defining feature of the People The People must take upon itself its historicality and decide (for) its own Being, its being-itself. Thus, the People is not defined according to facts, but based on its decisive facticity, or, as James Phillips puts it, "[t]he people decides and thereby throws itself into determination, and yet it is only by deciding, by casting itself into the openness of decision that it can wrest itself from the determinate and confront itself as an exception to the ontology of the present-at-hand." 3 Whereas this appears to be a quasi-militaristic decisionism capable of asserting the national identity and uniqueness of the Germans, Heidegger is a bit more cautious in the winter semester in the course Hölderlins Hymnen 'Germanien' und 'Der Rhein', where the decision to become a People is problematized by a form of existential uncertainty:We do not know our proper historical time.In order to decide ourselves as a People, we must know our historical time or moment, and in order to do so, we must "participate in poetry," so that we can achieve "the necessary conditions" for experiencing "who we are" (GA 39: 58f). As expressed in the lectures on Hölderlin, the task of poetry is, exactly, to facilitate such an experience of the People that can ground its decisiveness. In this way, the poet is the "founder of Being [Stifter des Seyns]" who through his "Saying [Sage]" can bring the "Dasein of a People" to a stand (GA 39: ...
Many critics and commentators hold that Heidegger had next to nothing to say about human sociality. In this book, Nicolai Knudsen rectifies this popular misconception. Drawing on his influential philosophy of mind, his philosophy of action and his conception of being-with, Knudsen argues that the central idea of Heidegger's social ontology is that we can only understand others, do things with others, and form lasting groups with others if we pre-reflectively correlate their behaviour with our own projects and the world that lies between us. Knudsen then uses this framework to formulate Heideggerian contributions to current debates on social cognition, collective intentionality, and social normativity. He also reinterprets Heidegger's famous concept of authenticity in the light of his social ontological commitments, and shows how Heidegger's affiliation with National Socialism betrays his own best insights into the fundamental structure of social life.
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