From conventionalism to social authenticity : Heideggers anyone and contemporary social theory

277 Pages·2017·3.34 MB·English

by  Schmid

Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality 10
Hans Bernhard Schmid
Gerhard Thonhauser E ditors
From
Conventionalism
to Social
Authenticity
Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary
Social Theory
Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality
Volume 10
Editor-in-Chief
Raimo Tuomela (Prof. Emer., University of Helsinki, University of Munich)
Managing Editors
Hans Bernhard Schmid (Prof., University of Basel)
Jennifer Hudin (Lecturer, University of California, USA)
Advisory Board
Robert Audi, Notre Dame University (Philosophy)
Michael Bratman, Stanford University (Philosophy)
Cristiano Castelfranchi, University of Siena (Cognitive Science)
David Copp, University of California at Davis (Philosophy)
Ann Cudd, University of Kentucky (Philosophy)
John Davis, Marquette University and University of Amsterdam (Economics)
Wolfgang Detel, University of Frankfurt (Philosophy)
Andreas Herzig, University of Toulouse (Computer Science)
Ingvar Johansson, Umeå University (Philosophy)
Byron Kaldis, University of Athens (Philosophy)
Martin Kusch, University of Vienna (Philosophy)
Christopher Kutz, University of California at Berkeley (Law)
Eerik Lagerspetz, University of Turku (Philosophy)
Pierre Livet, Universite de Provence
Tony Lawson, University of Cambridge (Economics)
Kirk Ludwig, University of Florida (Philosophy)
Uskali Mäki, Academy of Finland (Philosophy)
Kay Mathiesen, University of Arizona (Information Science and Philosophy)
Larry May, Vanderbilt University (Philosophy and Law)
Georg Meggle, University of Leipzig (Philosophy)
Anthonie Meijers, University of Eindhoven (Philosophy)
Seumas Miller, Australian National University and Charles Sturt University
(Philosophy)
Elisabeth Pacherie, Jean Nicod Institute, Paris (Cognitive Science)
Henry Richardson, Georgetown University (Philosophy)
Michael Quante, University of Münster (Philosophy)
John Searle (Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley)
Michael Tomasello (Developmental Psychology, Max Planck Institute, Leipzig)
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10961
Hans Bernhard Schmid • Gerhard Thonhauser
Editors
From Conventionalism
to Social Authenticity
Heidegger’s Anyone and Contemporary
Social Theory
Editors
Hans Bernhard Schmid Gerhard Thonhauser
Department of Philosophy Department of Philosophy
University of Vienna University of Vienna
Vienna, Austria Vienna, Austria
ISSN 2542-9094 ISSN 2542-9108 (electronic)
Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality
ISBN 978-3-319-56864-5 ISBN 978-3-319-56865-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943329
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Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
Gerhard Thonhauser
Part I Interpreting the Anyone
2 Who is the Self of Everyday Existence? ................................................ 9
Mark A. Wrathall
3 Das Man and Everydayness: A New Interpretation ............................ 29
Charlotte Knowles
4 Heidegger’s Underdeveloped Conception
of the Undistinguishedness (Indifferenz)
of Everyday Human Existence ............................................................... 53
Jo-Jo Koo
5 Unobtrusive Governance: Heidegger and Foucault
on the Sources of Social Normativity .................................................... 79
Andreas Beinsteiner
Part II Contextualizing the Anyone
6 The Historicality of das Man: Foucault on Docility
and Optimality ........................................................................................ 101
Kevin Thompson
7 The Danger of Being Ridden by a Type: Everydayness
and Authenticity in Context – Reading Heidegger
with Hegel and Diderot ........................................................................... 115
Dieter Thomä
8 Authenticity and Plurality: From Heidegger’s “Anyone”
to Arendt’s “Common Sense” and Back Again .................................... 133
Ileana Borţun
v
vi Contents
9 Ambivalence of Power: Heidegger’s das Man and Arendt’s
Acting in Concert ..................................................................................... 157
Katrin Meyer
10 A Groundless Place to Build: The Ambivalence
of Production as a Chance of Action Between Martin
Heidegger and Hannah Arendt .............................................................. 179
Lucilla Guidi
Part III Towards Social Authenticity
11 How to Change das Man? ....................................................................... 201
Christian Schmidt
12 Social Authenticity: Towards a Heideggerian Analysis
of Social Change ...................................................................................... 219
Martin Weichold
13 Transforming the World: A Butlerian Reading
of Heidegger on Social Change? ............................................................ 241
Gerhard Thonhauser
14 Authentic Role Play: A Political Solution to an Existential
Paradox .................................................................................................... 261
Hans Bernhard Schmid
Index ................................................................................................................. 275
Chapter 1
Introduction
Gerhard Thonhauser
Abstract Heidegger’s account of the anyone (das Man) is ambiguous. Some inter-
preters applaud the anyone as the best description of human sociality, while others
think of it as an important critique of modern mass society. This chapter introduces the
main idea leading up to this volume: Heidegger’s anyone should neither be reduced to
its pejorative nor its constitutive dimension. Rather, the ambiguity of the anyone
reflects the tension between the constitutive function of norms, rules, and conventions
for human action on the one hand, and the critical aspects of conformism on the other.
The anyone is the condition of possibility of all human action, but it does not provide
its ultimate source of meaning or intelligibility. This evokes the question whether
there are standards for our actions beyond the common sense of the anyone. I take this
to be the question that Heidegger’s notion of Eigentlichkeit, translated as authenticity
or ownedness, wants to address. After distinguishing two controversial dimensions for
interpreting authenticity – romantic versus formal and individualistic-atomistic versus
pluralistic-social – I will introduce the social dimension of authenticity as the focal
point of this volume. In particular, I will identify as the main question whether authen-
ticity can serve as a source of social critique and a motor for social change.
Keywords Anyone • Das Man • Eigentlichkeit • Ownedness • Authenticity
1.1 Thematic Scope of the Book
Heidegger’s notion of the anyone (das Man) has given rise to a number of contro-
versies over its correct interpretation. Most famously perhaps, the two American
Heidegger scholar’s Frederick Olafson and Hubert Dreyfus had an controversial
exchange over that matter that lasted almost a decade.1 On the one hand, Olafson
1 It began with Olafson’s discussion of the anyone in his book Heidegger and the Philosophy of
Mind (Olafson 1987, 144–50). Dreyfus criticized Olafson’s interpretation in his own introduction
to Being and Time (Dreyfus 1991, 141–62). The debate culminated in 1994 and 1995 in a back-
G. Thonhauser (*)
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1
H.B. Schmid, G. Thonhauser (eds.), From Conventionalism to Social
Authenticity, Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality 10,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2_1
2 G. Thonhauser
understood Heidegger’s view on das Man as cultural criticism of modern mass
society in line with Kierkegaard. According to this view, das Man should be under-
stood as a merely ontic phenomenon. It is an existentiell corruption of Dasein’s
ontological structure of being-with. Moreover, das Man can be overcome in the rare
moments in which Dasein achieves authentic self-ownership. On the other hand,
Dreyfus interpreted das Man as a description of the basic ontological structure of
Dasein. Following this interpretation, das Man needs to be seen as the source of all
intelligibility. As a consequence, there is no point in overcoming the anyone as there
can be no source of intelligibility beyond the intelligibility provided by das Man.2
The main idea leading up to this volume is that it is no coincidence – or inconsis-
tency – that Heidegger describes das Man in terms of an existential analysis of
Dasein as well as a existentiell critique of modern society. The description of das
Man is ambiguous, and so is the underlying social phenomenon it describes. Dreyfus’s
ontological reading and Olafson’s cultural reading each emphasize one of two crucial
socio-theoretical ideas that are combined in Heidegger’s das Man. The ontological
reading highlights the importance of norms, rules, and conventions for the facilita-
tion and coordination of human behavior. To be socialized in the framework of estab-
lished modes of intelligibility and regulated modes of comportment is the prerequisite
for becoming an agent in one’s own right. Furthermore, many everyday practices are
done by simply following the standard procedure; and necessarily so: without the
automatization of these practices we would not be able to gather our attention around
the matters that are important to us and need attentive care. The cultural reading, on
the other hand, captures another important ontological finding: Understanding and
acting cannot be reduced to the application of standardized procedures acquired
through socialization, because they are in a decisive way first-personal. One mis-
construes the mineness (Jemeinigkeit) of human comportment if one explains it
solely in terms of established structures of intelligibility. Furthermore, social propri-
ety is not the only criterion for the appropriateness of our judgements and actions.
Although all human comportment requires a background of socially established
practices, we need to take into account that the matter at hand might present criteria
beyond the measure of social acceptability, criteria that might challenge established
cultural settings (Schmid 2009, 155–72; Thonhauser and Schmid forthcoming).
As the contributions to this volume show, it is possible to interpret Heidegger in a
way that combines these ideas into a coherent account of human comportment: das
Man is the condition of possibility for the intelligibility of all human action, but it does
not provide the only, ultimate, or most adequate criterion for their evaluation. If this is
the case, it evokes the question whether there are standards for our actions beyond the
and-forth between Olafson on the one side and Dreyfus and his disciple Taylor Carman on the
other (Olafson 1994a; Carman 1994; Olafson 1994b; Dreyfus 1995; Olafson 1998). For on over-
view of the debate see (Keller and Weberman 1998). For a recent suggestion to overcome this
tension in a unified interpretation see (Christensen 2012).
2 Other important interpretations of Being and Time that form the background for the present vol-
ume are (Blattner 2006; Carman 2003; Crowell 2013; Haugeland 1982, 1992; Mulhall 2001,
2013).
1 Introduction 3
common sense of the anyone. This appears to be the question that Heidegger’s notion
of Eigentlichkeit, translated as authenticity or ownedness, wants to address.
However, the concept Eigentlichkeit is at least as ambiguous as the notion das
Man. Moreover, whereas das Man has been at the center of several debates (this
applies to Division One of Being and Time more general), Eigentlichkeit (and
Division Two more general) has received comparatively little attention in the litera-
ture (cf. McManus 2015). To get a better grasp of what could be at stake here, I
suggest to structure the debate on Eigentlichkeit along two axes. The first concerns
the tension of romantic and formal readings of Eigentlichkeit. Following Charles
Taylor (1992), authenticity could be understood as self-realization in the sense of
self-creation (cf. Guignon 2004). Although Taylor emphasizes that this self-
fashioning needs to be conducted against an established set of rules, norms, and
conventions, it nevertheless evokes the realization of some inner truth of the self that
needs to be maintained against societal forces. There is clear textual evidence, how-
ever, suggesting that Heidegger opposes such a romantic reading. Heidegger states
that Eigentlichkeit is “chosen terminologically in a strict sense.” (BT 5)3 In everyday
language, the German term eigentlich means genuine, proper, or real. It is also used
in this sense in Being and Time, e.g. when Heidegger speaks of “genuine entities”
(eigentliche Seiende) (BT 26), “real being” (eigentliche Sein) (BT 30), “real mean-
ing” (eigentliche Bedeutung) (BT 32) or the “proper meaning of being” (eigentliche
Sinn von Sein) (BT 37). Following this  hint from everyday language use,
Eigentlichkeit can be understood in a formal or methodological sense as “the ‘phe-
nomenal ground’ of an existential ontology of the self.” (Käufer 2015, 104) Existential
analysis reveals the self as what it really (eigentlich) is. However, this does not con-
cern its unique identity, as the romantic reading has it, but its mode of being as
Dasein. Furthermore, the adjective “eigen” means own – as in one’s own copy of the
book and not the copy of the library. Some commentators have therefore suggested
translating Eigentlichkeit as “ownedness”. An existence that is eigentlich is one that
is owned; an owned self needs to own up to the character of one’s existence as
Dasein (Carman 2003, 276) and has the task of owning oneself in the sense of taking
responsibility for one’s own existence (McManus 2015, 5).
The second distinction concerns the tension of individualistic-atomistic and
pluralistic- social interpretations of Eigentlichkeit. There is textual evidence in favor
of both readings. Heidegger speaks of a radical individualizing of Dasein, e.g.
regarding the basic attunement of anxiety (BT 188–191) or in the context of his
analysis of being-toward-death (BT 263). This appears to indicate that a certain
individualization or isolation is a necessary precondition for becoming authentic.
On the other hand, Heidegger states that authenticity “does not detach Dasein from
its world”, it rather “brings the self right into its concerned being amidst things at
hand, and pushes it towards the soliciting being-with the others.” (BT 298) Against
the trend of reading Heidegger’s authenticity as advocating some form of individualism
or atomism of the self, this volume seeks to explore the possible social dimension
of authenticity (cf. Stroh 2015).
3 All quotations from Being and Time are based on the translation by Stambaugh (Heidegger 1996)
but are modified by me.