Heidegger’s embodied others: on critiques of the body and ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time

Abstract

In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson (2012) in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger's account of 'intersubjectivity' in Being and Time. They have criticized his account for a lack of attention to primary intersubjectivity, or immediate, face-to-face interactions; he favours, they argue, embodied interactions via objects. I argue that the same assumption underlies their argument as did earlier critiques of a lack of an account of the body in Heidegger (e.g. Sartre 1989; Krell 1992); namely that because the body is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time, embodiment, rather than stressing the immediacy of experience, is insufficiently acknowledged in his emphasis on 'being-inthe-world'. Through placing Gallagher and Jacobson's accounts of intersubjectivity and the body alongside Heidegger's accounts of Mitsein and Leib, this article shows Heidegger's radical position on the body as immersed in a holistic environment, and its reverberations on his account of intersubjectivity. I argue that Dasein's embodied engagement in the world is always one of immediacy and that the body of the other is perceived as 'tied into' its context, as well. In so doing, I offer an Heideggerian account of ecstatic involvement which moves away from the distinction between primary and secondary intersubjectivity toward an immediate engagement with objects and people always already 'tied into' a context; an account that, through the concept of Fürsorge, includes shifts of attention between objects and people that allow for the ethical distinctions Gallagher and Jacobson are looking for.

RETRACTED: The Role of Subject in Kuntowijoyo's Transformative Thought and It's Relevance to The Islamic Social Transformation

“…For Heidegger, being in the world is both being with other people as well as being with and handling objects. We are not only always already in the world with other things, we also already encounter other people in relation to these objects (Peters, 2019).…”

Untitled

“…Such a study is based on our earlier works on Heidegger (Okorokov, 2018(Okorokov, , 2020, as well as the article on the pure consciousness of early Heidegger (primarily, "Being and Time" (Okorokov, 2022). Similar issues in Heidegger's work were studied by both Ukrainian: A. Bogachov (Bogachov, 2021), I. Karivets (Karivets, 2020), R. Kobets (Kobets, 2020), E. Boliaki (Boliaki, 2012), L. Gordon, and A. Wohlman (Gordon & Wohlman, 2019), M. Peters (Peters, 2019), R. Huttunen, and L. Kakkori (Huttunen & Kakkori, 2021), M. Lambert (Lambert, 2020), G. Petropoulos (Petropoulos, 2020), R. Uljée, G. Tsagdis, and F.W. Zantvoort (Uljée et al, 2020), F. Westerlund (Westerlund, 2020), E. Husserl (Husserl, 1983), М. Scheler (Scheler, 1962), S. Freud (Freud, 2015), A. Badiou (Badiou, 2005), Sri Aurobindo (Sri Aurobindo, 1998), and others.…”

Reflections from the field (mountain, cityscape and park): walking for management development and links to being-in-the world, belonging and “Ba”

“…It is also through this process of moving through environments on foot that learning occurs by linking the body with the place (Watchow and Brown, 2011). These corporeal connections are captured within certain concepts that we now go on to review – being-in-the-world (Peters, 2019; Zundel, 2013), belonging (De Certeau, 1988; Ingold, 2016) and “Ba” (Nonaka et al , 2000).…”

“…To encapsulate this third space of reflection, we draw on three theoretical concepts: being-in-the-world (Peters, 2019; Zundel, 2013), belonging (De Certeau, 1988; Ingold, 2016) and “Ba” (Nonaka et al , 2000). We feel we contribute to both research and practice by providing an initial deep exploration of the use of walking and a better understanding of how learning elements such as liminality and uncertainty (see Hawkins and Edwards, 2015) contribute to management learning and development.…”