Leaping Ahead of Heidegger: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Being and Time

Mahon O’Brien, University of Sussex (Draft)

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Leaping Ahead of Heidegger: Subjectivity andIntersubjectivity in Being and Time

One of the recurring criticisms of Being and Time, Heidegger’svigorous protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, is thatthe work ultimately recapitulates a traditional account ofsubjectivity, replete with a solipsism and a rejection of thesocial world as irretrievably inauthentic. This type of chargetypically dovetails with an underlying conviction that Being andTime represents the zenith of Heidegger’shumanist/subjectivist/voluntarist period which he later ‘turned’away from and eschewed, moving progressively closer to the non-voluntarist quietism of the later work. These interpretationsare largely unconvincing and symptomatic of a rather intransigentcommitment to some version of a discontinuity thesis in terms ofthe progression of Heidegger’s thought.1 The idea thatHeidegger’s early work reduces to a rather crude type ofmetaphysical humanism or voluntarism or that Being and Timerepresents the subsequently renounced subjectivist period ofHeidegger’s thought is one that I find utterly implausible andtextually indefensible. I have argued elsewhere that the accountof Dasein in the existential analytic, the subsequent move toauthenticity with the concomitant discussions of the call ofconscience, resoluteness and being-towards-death clearlydemonstrate that Heidegger cannot legitimately be understood assponsoring traditional subjectivism or voluntarism.2 Rather thansimply reprising my arguments against these interpretations ofHeidegger’s magnum opus, however, this paper revisits one strandof criticism, in particular, which insists on the inadequacy ofHeidegger’s putatively token philosophical gestures toward theother by re-examining a particular section of Being and Time whichis devoted specifically to the question of Dasein’s worldlyidentity and its sociality.

Even some of Heidegger’s more generous critics have arguedthat his gloss on inter-subjectivity in Being and Time isdisappointingly truncated and that this is a symptom of

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Heidegger’s underlying incapacity, in the end, to successfullyaccommodate the ‘other’ as part of his account of authenticexistence.3 This failure on Heidegger’s part is seen as issuingin a self-based or lop-sidedly subjectivist account of the worldwe inhabit where others are demoted to a kind of secondary statusand, so it is argued, this is bound up with Heidegger’sconcomitant failure to offer an ethics which would require farmore room for ‘empathy’. What many of the same commentators failto acknowledge is that in sketching the outlines of‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time, Heidegger simply wishes toindicate how such an account might proceed on the basis of hisdiscussion of being-with before he proceeds with his quest for afundamental ontology. In other words, at that particular juncturein Being and Time, an elaboration of authentic intersubjectivitywould represent an unnecessary digression for Heidegger since heis not looking to outline the conditions for an ideal communityor an ethics of existence; there is an antecedent problem thatconcerns Heidegger and the account of authenticity is yet anotherstep along the way towards tackling that issue.4 That is not to saythat Heidegger precludes (or indeed that his account is inimicalto) the possibility of authentic intersubjectivity. Nothing couldbe further from the truth; indeed Heidegger openly identifieswhere his account would intersect with such a project and how itmight proceed. In order to see how Heidegger conceives of or atleast glosses this, we must unpack and flesh out precisely whathe means by being-with and the concomitant notions of leaping-infor and leaping-ahead of. What we begin to see when looking atthis skeletal, prospective account of intersubjectivity are afascinating and compelling series of possibilities for authenticintersubjectivity which fit within the larger theoretical andthematic scheme of Being and Time.

We will also see, however, the point at which the temptationto read Heidegger in ways which suggest that a problem stillhamstrings his account arises, a problem which he himself didmore to highlight and undermine implicitly and explicitly thananyone before or since. It is a temptation that many ofHeidegger’s most ardent critics routinely succumb to as theyinterpolate problems and notions into Being and Time whichHeidegger tirelessly fulminates against in all of his

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philosophical retrospectives. I want to suggest that we shouldresist the temptation to read such problems back into Heidegger’saccount on the strength of the vast amount of textual evidenceavailable in Being and Time and elsewhere which would support thevery antithesis of such readings. Some of the interpretivechoices in these situations, given the preponderance of thetextual evidence to the contrary, reflect, I believe, adisappointing series of interpretive prejudices which thesecritics are keen to foist on Being and Time in particular. Wherethere are two possible readings, one where a passage can be readas perfectly congruent with, in this case, Heidegger’s attemptsto articulate a notion of Dasein outside of the sphere oftraditional subjectivity or alternatively where one could readthe same statement as grossly flouting the avowed intentions ofHeidegger in Being and Time in a patently self-contradictorymanner, the choice of the latter interpretive strategy has littlein the end to recommend it.

We should also note at this stage that in discussing thenotion of “intersubjectivity” in Being and Time we are, perhaps,doing a certain disservice to Heidegger since it is not really aterm that he uses with great frequency; rather Heidegger favoursterms like Mitsein and Mitdasein. My own use of the English termthen should not lead anyone to suppose that I am imputing toHeidegger a commitment to intersubjectivity understood as acorrelate of subjectivity traditionally construed. Heidegger’snotion of authentic ‘intersubjectivity’, if you will, isconceived very much at the expense of traditional subjectivityand relies instead on the account of ecstatic existence, that is,Dasein as thrown projector. For the purposes of this paper theterm “intersubjectivity” serves a double function: on the onehand it is used against critics who insist that Heidegger cannotoffer any account of positive intersubjectivity due to amisanthropic, solipsistic outlook; and beyond that, even thoughHeidegger avoids the use of such terms (i.e. “intersubjectivity”)owing to the metaphysical baggage they are encumbered with, Iwould rather avoid the excessive use of ‘Heideggerese’ where thatis at all possible and thus use the term ‘intersubjectivity’occasionally as a shorthand reference for the various neologismsHeidegger deploys.

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In §26 of Being and Time (“The Dasein-with of Others, andeveryday Being-with”) the question of intersubjectivity (in thesense of Dasein as Mitdasein) clearly emerges for the first time. Itis very much as a result of the power, insight and ramificationsof Heidegger’s own account in this pregnant section of Being andTime that one can begin to see a new series of possibilitiesemerging concerning the individual’s own understanding of them–selves and indeed others. Heidegger implicitly debunks and refutesa number of attempts to understand the notion of the ‘self’ asphenomenological non-starters, and, though his positivesuggestions are painfully brief, we can begin to see somedefinite phenomenological possibilities on the basis of what healready provides. What we further discover, however, is anunusual aside in the midst of this section which, if readsuperficially, seems to pay lip service to a solipsisticconception of Dasein – one that confounds the descriptionsHeidegger has given of Dasein as necessarily and irreducibly abeing-with and may be seen to strengthen some of the criticismsalluded to earlier that are levelled against Being and Time by more

1 See chapters two and three of my book on authenticity for a discussion of a number of these interpretations - Mahon O’ Brien. Heidegger and Authenticity: From Resoluteness to Releasement. Continuum, London & New York, 2011.2 See Mahon O’Brien. Heidegger and Authenticity. Chapter Two.3 See. Bret Davis. Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit. Northwestern University Press, 2006. Hans Georg Gadamer. A Century of Philosophy: A Conversation with Ricardo Dottori. Continuum, New York, 2003. Jürgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourseof Modernity. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987. (See Lecture VI in particular) Taylor Carman. Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse, and Authenticity in Being and Time. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003. (See Chapter Six for an extended discussion of this issue)4 As Heidegger himself explicitly notes in this section: “Everyday Being-with-one-another maintains itself between the two extremes of positive solicitude –that which leaps in and dominates, and that which leaps forth and liberates [vorspringend-befreienden]. It brings numerous mixed forms to maturity; to describe these and classify them would take us beyond the limits of this investigation.” Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, 1962. p, 159. I shall use the abbreviation BT for this translation of Being and Time for the rest of the paper.

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and less sympathetic critics. In these situations, readers arefaced with an interpretive choice: they can read Heidegger’saccount as though it did sporadically succumb to a form ofsubjectivism/solipsism which he had previously resisted with somevigour - a kind of momentary relapse of a recoveringsubjectivist, if you like; they choose to believe, in that case,that his account is guilty of grotesque duplicity on the questionof subjectivity. Or the reader can invoke something like aprinciple of charity and search for an interpretation which wouldlook to cohere with the underlying arguments.

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Section 26 also contains the first (and only) mention of‘leaping-in’ and ‘leaping-ahead’ in Being and Time. Heidegger isseeking an answer here to the question of the ‘who’ of everydayDasein. That is, Heidegger wants to know what kind of‘identities’ we have ordinarily, prior to any abstraction, whenwe are immersed and thrown into the world around us? His answerto this question relates to the compound structure that he hasbeen examining, namely, being-in-the-world. He has determined atthis stage that we live ordinarily in an equipmental, project-oriented world. He will now look to describe the ‘identity’ ofthis everyday, busy, project-preoccupied Dasein and suggeststhat, already within the network of significations of ourequipmentally oriented world, there is a clue to be discerned:

In our ‘description’ of that environment which is closest tous – the work-world of the craftsman, for example, - theoutcome was that along with the equipment to be found whenone is at work [in Arbeit], those Others for whom the ‘work’[“Werk”] is destined are ‘encountered too’. If this is ready-to-hand, then there lies in the kind of Being which belongsto it (that is, in its involvement) an essential assignmentor reference to possible wearers, for instance, for whom itshould be ‘cut to the figure’. (BT, 153)

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Heidegger goes on to elabourate that, as we navigate our wayaround our environment – which involves using and manipulatingthings, we find others suggested and ‘implicated’ everywhere:

The boat anchored at the shore is assigned in its Being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes voyages with it; buteven if it is a ‘boat which is strange to us’, it still isindicative of Others. The Others who are thus ‘encountered’in a ready-to-hand, environmental context of equipment, arenot somehow added on in thought to some Thing which isproximally just present-at-hand; such ‘Things’ areencountered from out of a world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others – a world which is always mine too inadvance. (BT, 154)

Heidegger reminds us that earlier in his analysis, whendescribing our everyday environment, only equipment (ready-to-hand) and Nature (present-at-hand) were mentioned. He nowconcedes that this involved a deliberate (and indeed artificial)omission on his part, for the purposes of expediency on the onehand, but also because, in terms of the Others who areencountered in our everyday being-in-the-world, these ‘others’ donot have the character of being ready-to-hand or present-at-hand5: “the kind of Being which belongs to the Dasein of Others,5 We can see clearly enough how Heidegger revisits and revises this view in later work concerning the essence of technology. In “The Question Concerning Technology” Heidegger argues that one of the great dangers of modern technological society is precisely that we do tend to look on others and ourselves very much as ready-to-hand types of resources: “Yet when destining reigns in the mode of Enframing it is the supreme danger. This danger attests itself to us in two ways. As soon as what is unconcealed no longer concerns man even as object, but does so, rather, exclusively as standing-reserve, and man in the midst of objectlessness is nothing but the orderer of the standing-reserve, then he comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve.Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.” (Martin Heidegger. The Question Concerning Technology and other essays. Translated by William Lovitt. Harper & Row, New York, 1977. pp 26 – 27)

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as we encounter it within-the-world, differs from readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand.” (BT, 154) Heidegger now goes a stepfurther and indicates something about the nature of the Otherwhich is clearly related to the notion of leaping-ahead:

Thus Dasein’s world frees entities which not only are quitedistinct from equipment and Things, but which also – inaccordance with their kind of Being as Dasein themselves – are‘in’ the world in which they are at the same time encounteredwithin-the-world, and are ‘in’ it by way of Being-in-the-world. These entities are neither present-at-hand nor ready-to-hand; on the contrary, they are like the very Dasein whichfrees them, in that they are there too, and there with it. So if oneshould want to identify the world in general with entitieswithin-the-world, one would have to say that Dasein too is‘world’. (BT, 154)

So, Heidegger characterizes our interaction with Others as aliberating activity, we ‘free’ these entities which are ‘like’ usinsofar as they are ‘in’-the-world very much as we are when weencounter them. Heidegger observes, however, that when we firstbegin to consider our interaction with Others, we seem to beautomatically oriented by our own Dasein and yet he looks toobviate any concerns that he is thereby sponsoring some kind ofsolipsism:

even in this characterization does one not start by markingout and isolating the ‘I’ so that one must then seek some wayof getting over to the Others from the isolated subject? Toavoid this misunderstanding we must notice in what sense weare talking about ‘the Others’. By ‘Others’ we do not meaneveryone else but me – those over against whom the “I” standsout. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, onedoes not distinguish oneself – those among whom one is too.This Being-there-too [Auch-da-sein] with them does not have theontological character of a Being-present-at-hand-along-‘with’them within a world. This ‘with’ is something of thecharacter of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of Being ascircumspectively concernful Being-in-the-world. ‘With’ and

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‘too’ are to be understood existentially, not categorially. Byreason of this with-like [mithaften] Being-in-the-world, theworld is always the one that I share with Others. The worldof Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with Others.Their Being-in-themselves within-the-world is Dasein-with[Mitdasein]. (BT, 154 – 155)

Heidegger continues, arguing that we never in fact come acrossothers as occurrent objects simply present at hand nor do weidentify the other(s) as the distinct pole to oneself. Rather,Others

are encountered from out of the world, in which concernfullycircumspective Dasein essentially dwells. Theoreticallyconcocted ‘explanations’ of the Being-present-at-hand ofOthers urge themselves upon us all too easily; but overagainst such explanations we must hold fast to the phenomenalfacts of the case which we have pointed out, namely, thatOthers are encountered environmentally. This elemental worldlykind of encountering, which belongs to Dasein and is closestto it, goes so far that even one’s own Dasein becomessomething that it can itself proximally ‘come across’ onlywhen it looks away from ‘Experiences’ and the ‘centre of itsactions’, or does not as yet ‘see’ them at all. Dasein finds‘itself’ proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids –in those things environmentally ready-to-hand with which itis proximally concerned. (BT, 155)

Heidegger would appear to be saying then that our experience ofourselves, most immediately, at least in terms of our everydayexperience, takes place within our involved, project-orientedactivities as part of the ‘group’, that is, we ‘find ourselves’in the midst of some activity which relates us to others who weare ‘with’. Our most immediate sense of ourselves then, is as amember of some kind of human network or environment in thatsense. We do not, in the first place, experience ourselves asremote individuals – as the ‘centre’ of our actions, like the

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proverbial ‘ghost in the machine’. Rather, we are, ‘always andfor the most part’, what we do:

Dasein understands itself proximally and for the most part interms of its world; and the Dasein-with of Others is oftenencountered in terms of what is ready-to-hand within-the-world. But even if Others become themes for study, as itwere, in their own Dasein, they are not encountered asperson-Things present-at-hand: we meet them ‘at work’, thatis, primarily in their Being-in-the-world. Even if we see theOther ‘just standing around’, he is never apprehended as ahuman-Thing present-at-hand, but his ‘standing-around’ is anexistential mode of Being – an unconcerned, uncircumspectivetarrying alongside everything and nothing [Verweilen beiAllem and Keinem]. The Other is encountered in his Dasein-with in the world. (BT, 156)

To be for us, that is, as Dasein, means to be-with, it is afundamental component of our composite structure. And, others arelike us insofar as to be for them involves being-with as well. Wedo not experience these others then as distinct objects, ratherwe belong to them and they belong to us, we belong together as anetwork of ‘being-withs’ preoccupied with various projects andtasks which relate us to others in various ways.

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It is precisely having established this much in terms of thesocial constitution of Dasein that Heidegger could be interpretedas suddenly throwing the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons. Eventhough he is currently only examining the world of Dasein’scommonplace existence, so provocative and compelling has been hisaccount of the inveterately social nature of that existence thatthe following paragraph still seems to stop us dead in ourtracks:

The expression ‘Dasein’, however, shows plainly that ‘in thefirst instance’ this entity is unrelated to Others, and thatof course it can still be ‘with’ Others afterwards. (BT, 156)

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Yet one must not fail to notice that we use the term “Dasein-with” to designate that Being for which the others who are[die seienden Anderen] are freed within-the-world. ThisDasein-with of the Others is disclosed within-the-world for aDasein, and so too for those who are Daseins with us [dieMitdaseienden], only because Dasein in itself is essentiallyBeing-with. (BT, 156)

Heidegger is about to propose (albeit in somewhat abridgedfashion) an extraordinarily rich conception of intersubjectivity,not on the basis of the sclerotic scaffold connecting subjectwith object and the ensuing notion of self and other, ratherHeidegger will suggest that being-with is a basic component ofDasein’s existential constitution. We will look at thefascinating manner in which Heidegger develops this momentarily,but, for now, I simply want to draw attention to this disclaimerwhich prefigures Heidegger’s richly suggestive remarks concerningintersubjectivity and which follows a compelling account of thesocial constitution of Dasein: “The expression ‘Dasein’, however,shows plainly that ‘in the first instance’ this entity isunrelated to Others, and that of course it can still be ‘with’ Othersafterwards.”6 This is an example of what we were alluding toearlier; it is one of those occasions within the text where weare faced with some serious interpretive choices. For example, wecould read this as a foreshadowing of what Heidegger will look tosay in his move to the authentic self or at least theindividuating moment which helps to illuminate the kind ofselfhood required for authentic existence. But, if we are to readit as such, it is a move that would seriously undermineHeidegger’s account of ‘mineness’ and would resurrect a spectreof the subjectivism and solipsism which he had done so much todiscredit. Moreover, it is as a result of the strength of theinsights Heidegger himself provides concerning the socialconstitution of existing Dasein that such a criticism suggestsitself at all. With such a move, if it does represent a move thatHeidegger wishes to make, he would have smuggled an extra stepinto his account that could have serious repercussions. The useof the word “afterwards” in terms of how Dasein can be with

6 Emphasis added.

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others after initially being unrelated to them would be terriblyproblematic under this interpretation. We must ask ourselves thenwhether we should read Heidegger as positing a primordial level ofexistence for Dasein which precedes or is antecedent to itsexistence with or involvement with Others. This seems to be aliteral reading but it is patently incongruous with what he saysimmediately afterwards. In other words, if that is what Heideggermeans, then the strength of his own characterization of theinveterately social nature of selfhood which emerges immediatelyafterwards would seem to outstrip the tenability of this anteriorclaim. Granted, Heidegger insists that the social is somethingwhich pertains to being-in-the-world; one could argue then thatbeing-in-the-world is only relevant to Dasein as Dasein-with/mit-Dasein. But surely we are not to suppose that Dasein can be at anystage such that it is-not-in-the-world?

In reading this passage, if we further consider how theaccount of the authentic Augenblick will later be unpacked, we cansee how this may be an instance where commentators took Heideggerto mean something along the lines of what we have just suggested,namely, that Dasein can be thought of as independent to Others onsome a priori register although not temporally or existentially-conceptually prior to its existence with Others in a co-intendedworld. And, if that is in fact what Heidegger meant, then therewould appear to be a problem with his account of the barest andmost foundational version of existential Dasein since being-withis existentially (existentially-ontologically) ‘prior’ to theDasein that experiences the authentic Augenblick.7 One can imaginehow the question might emerge when reading this sentence then as7 Neither is the matter resolved simply by consulting the German text, the line in German reads: “Aber der Ausdruck ‘Dasein’ zeigt doch deutlich, dass dieses Seiende ‘Zunächst’ ist in der Unbezogenheit auf Andere, dass es nachtraeglich zwar auch noch ‘mit’ anderen sein kann.” (Martin Heidegger. GA, Band 2. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main,1977. p 120) Joan Stambaugh translates the same sentence as follows: “But, after all, the expression ‘Dasein’ clearly shows that this being is ‘initially’ unrelated to others, that it can, of course, also be ‘with’ otherssubsequently.” Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1996. p. 113. Thus, though there are minor differences between the translations, there is no disagreement or divergence concerning the parts of Heidegger’s claim which we have focused on.

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to whether Heidegger is reintroducing, albeit as only one part ofa multi-dimensional identity, a cabinet for isolated ‘I-hood’ aspart of our consciousness as Dasein? But that possibility shouldstrike us as utterly implausible given Heidegger’s own stridentcriticisms of ego-based subjectivity and his concomitantinsistence on the social constitution of Dasein. We should musterall of our interpretative efforts to resist that interpretationsince it so clearly flies in the face of everything Heidegger hasargued and will continue to argue even beyond Being and Time. AsRobert John Sheffler Manning writes:

even the Dasein who flees from the crowd and individuatesdoes not do so as a separate individual away from all otherpersons. This is because Being-with others is for Heidegger‘equiprimordial with Being-in-the-world. We are in our verybeing Being-with others, and the World I am always alreadyimmersed in ‘is always the one that I share with Others. TheWorld of Dasein is a with-world. Being-in is Being-with.’ Weare Being-with others always already, and we cease being thisonly when our Being-toward-death becomes Being-at-an-end, orin other words, only when we die.8

So what can Heidegger possibly mean with this extraordinaryavowal concerning Dasein’s initial un-relatedness (Unbezogenheit)?Without giving the game away, as it were, and not to predeterminehow one might respond to this passage, I would submit that it is,most likely, a lack of clarity on Heidegger’s part, at worst, afailure to see how such a statement might be misinterpreted. Notleast since Heidegger concludes the passage we quoted with theremark: “Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with.” He may evenbe suggesting that the term ‘Dasein’, in another context, ortypically, or in ordinary usage, has a meaning or sense in whichit can be unrelated, singular in that sense, but that for thepurposes of his account, Dasein means, essentially, a being that

8 Robert John Sheffler Manning. “The Cries of Others and Heidegger’s Ear: Remarks on the Agricultre Remark”. In Martin Heidegger and the Holocaust. Edited by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg. Humanities Press International, Atlantic Highlands (New Jersey), 1996. p. 23.

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is in no other way but that it is being-in-the-world and thatmeans that it is essentially a being-with. Either way, Heideggerdoesn’t really expand on or clarify this statement in §26 butrather proceeds with an account of the indubitably socialconstitution of our typical, thrown, quotidian identity:

This Dasein-with of the Others is disclosed within-the-worldfor a Dasein, and so too for those who are Daseins with us[die Mitdaseienden], only because Dasein in itself isessentially Being-with. The phenomenological assertion that‘Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with’ has anexistential-ontological meaning. It does not seek toestablish ontically that factically I am not present-at-handalone, and that Others of my kind occur. If this were what ismeant by the proposition that Dasein’s Being-in-the-world isessentially constituted by Being-with, then Being-with wouldnot be an existential attribute which Dasein, of its ownaccord, has coming to it from its own kind of Being. It wouldrather be something which turns up in every case by reason ofthe occurrence of Others. Being-with is an existentialcharacteristic of Dasein even when factically no Other ispresent-at-hand or perceived. Even Dasein’s Being-alone isBeing-with in the world. The Other can be missing only in and fora Being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of Being-with;its very possibility is the proof of this. On the other hand,factical Being-alone is not obviated by the occurrence of asecond example of a human being ‘beside’ me, or by ten suchexamples. Even if these and more are present-at-hand, Daseincan still be alone. So Being-with and the facticity of Beingwith one another are not based on the occurrence together ofseveral ‘subjects’. Yet Being-alone ‘among’ many does notmean that with regard to their Being they are merely present-at-hand there alongside us. Even in our Being ‘among them’they are there with us; their Dasein-with is encountered in amode in which they are indifferent and alien. Being missingand ‘Being away’ [Das Fehlen und ‘Fortsein’] are modes ofDasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world.Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one’s ownDasein; Dasein-with characterizes the Dasein of Others to the

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extent that it is freed by its world for a Being-with. Onlyso far as one’s own Dasein has the essential structure ofBeing-with, is it Dasein-with as encounterable for Others.(BT, 156 – 157)

Hence, staying with the notion of Dasein itself for a moment andpersisting with the strategy of those keen to read a rampantsubjectivism or solipsism into Heidegger’s account of positivebeing-with, we have to ask ourselves when exactly, in anexistential register, Dasein is ever such that it is not being-with, that is, when is it ‘unrelated’? Heidegger would seem tohold, in the passage above, that Dasein is never such that it isnot already a being-with and yet we still have this curious claimimmediately before this passage to the effect that Dasein, in thefirst instance, is ‘unrelated’ to others and yet can be withOthers afterwards. As we mentioned earlier, one may be tempted toargue that Heidegger is alluding to the authentic Augenblick whereone is momentarily ‘alone’; but one is alone as a creature thatis a being-with insofar as that experience of being-alone ispossible only as a creature that is existentially a being-with.But that means that that experience of aloneness is a deficientmode of our ineluctable ‘being-withness’, which means of coursethat even in our being-alone, as a deficient mode of being with,Dasein is in fact related to Others.

Alternatively, one might argue that in looking at Dasein asit is always and for the most part in its everydayness (i.e.richly realized as a thoroughly social creature), Heidegger isnot thereby committed, of necessity, to the idea that that shouldbe the prototype for authentic existence. That is, that Heideggerhas still, theoretically, left open the possibility to himselfthat Dasein may not have to be so constituted. After all, at theend of §26, and as he begins to delve further into the questionof the who of everyday Dasein, Heidegger is anxious to show thatthere is an insalubrious level of inauthentic immersion in thisworldly context among others which has involved the suppressionand indeed eradication of the last vestiges of ‘selfhood’,understood authentically. But that is not to say that any kind of

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social existence is thereby corrupt or that there is anythingwrong, necessarily, with living through portions of our daysinauthentically; Heidegger’s major qualms would be rather withthe almost inescapable tendency towards a life that isrelinquished entirely to inauthenticity. After all, in this verysection, Heidegger will gloss an account of what it might mean tolive an authentically inter-subjective or social life.Furthermore, Heidegger seems convinced that there can be noconception of Dasein such that Dasein is not in a world and aspart of that compound (i.e. being-in-the-world) it is inexorablya being-with. ‘Being-withness’ is a structural component ofDasein. Authentic Dasein does not and cannot lose its ‘being-withness’, even if it is less sensible of the gravitational pullof its relatedness on some occasions than others. As we know fromhis later discussions of authenticity, the call of conscience andbeing-towards-death, Heidegger is absolutely not sponsoring aslide into solipsism. The hyphens which string being-in-the-worldtogether may slacken, but they are never severed and we are neverultimately exiled from the world of everydayness.

Authentic Intersubjectivity

Heidegger next turns to the specific manner in which weinteract with those others that one finds oneself amongst. And,we find that he again proposes a highly inclusive account ofhuman existence which is more congruent with the account ofDasein as a being-with which preceded the seemingly troublesomeremark we discussed immediately above

If Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world, then, like our circumspective dealings with theready-to-hand within-the-world (which, by way ofanticipation, we have called ‘concern’), it must beInterpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care, for as ‘care’the Being of Dasein in general is to be defined. . . Concernis a character-of-Being which Being-with cannot have as itsown, even though Being-with, like concern, is a Being towardsentities encountered within-the-world. But those entitiestowards which Dasein as Being-with comports itself do not

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have the kind of Being which belongs to equipment ready-to-hand; they are themselves Dasein. These entities are notobjects of concern, but rather of solicitude. (BT, 157)

Solicitude then is the fundamentally concerned/caring dispositionwhich we exhibit when interacting with other people. We do notsee others as use-objects in the world of our concern. Rather,our being-in-the-world is a concernful one whereby we areconcerned with any number of projects and goals as part of autilitarian network. And that network is populated with othersthat are like us and from whom, for the most part, we do notdistinguish ourselves. However, Heidegger does not characterizeour interaction with these others specifically as ‘concern’(sorge), which he wants to reserve for our attitude towardobjects and things, but rather as a special type of concern whichhe calls fürsorge which Macquarrie and Robinson translate as“solicitude”. Our typical comportment towards other Daseins inour world is such that we can be described as having a concern-for the other, as opposed to the concern with objects and thingswhich is more of a preoccupation.

Leaping-in Versus Leaping-Ahead

Having introduced the notion of solicitude with respect tothe manner in which we interact with and experience other people,Heidegger now considers the various ways that that concern-for orsolicitude can manifest itself, namely, as a leaping-in for orleaping-ahead of. What does it mean to leap-in for another personexistentially? In a way, it is to deny the other their ownmostpossibility – their freedom towards their ultimate horizon offinitude and thus a curtailment of their freedom. It is a way ofdealing with another person that reflects a closing off of theirauthentic horizon, with its temporal hue, and disclosing them insuch a way as to conceal their innate potential. The examples andanalogies typically used to unpack this unusual notion are, in asense, derivatives of this more general idea. One might think ofa teacher trying to help a student struggling with a problem; the

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teacher can help the student to solve the problem for themselvesby nurturing and encouraging their innate critical capacities orthey can simply take over the problem from the child, suppressand ignore the child’s critical potential and give them thesolution or answer to the problem.9 One might further think ofthe famous example of teaching and learning from Plato’s Meno.In his definitive commentary Jakob Klein argues that it is theslave’s beauty of soul that allows him to ‘learn’ from Socrates;the boy can apprehend and appreciate the necessity of theinferential moves that Socrates makes while Socrates looks tohelp the boy begin to grasp certain geometric propositions.Socrates looks to nurture the boy’s fledgling critical potentialsuch that he can begin to ‘recognize’ the truth of thesepropositions for himself; thus Socrates does not leap-in for anddominate but rather leaps-ahead of and liberates. At least thatseems to be the idea and this is certainly how Klein reads thispart of Plato’s dialogue, very much at the expense of the muchmaligned character of Meno himself. In Heidegger’s more generalsense of authenticity and inauthenticity, to leap-in for would beto either usurp someone else’s horizons and keep them lockedwithin an existence characterized as continuous presence as itwere or else to leap-ahead of and to see another person assimilarly claimed and thus bounded by an horizon of finitude intheir own right, thus freeing the other for their own being-toward-death and recognizing in the other the same latenttemporality which is constitutive of my own capacity to existinterpretively. If the notion of intersubjectivity, that is,authentic intersubjectivity, were something which Heidegger wasgoing to expressly develop in Being and Time, there is enough in§26 to suggest that it is something that would be cashed out interms of leaping-ahead of another in an authentic relationshipbased on a reciprocal recognition of two people’s mutualfinitude.

Even Dasein’s most non-relational experience of its ownfinitude, which has a singularly individuating effect, cannotultimately suppress its inter-connectedness. No matter how far

9 See Julian Young. Heidegger, Philosophy, Nazism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998. pp 103 – 104.

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the world of our everyday concern seems to recede from us as wereel in the midst of that realization of our finitude, we arestill ultimately beings that are, only insofar as we are-in-the-world. And, to be-in-the-world, means to be a Dasein that is onlyinsofar as it is a being-with. The only difference being that thelight of our temporality is now refracted through those samestructures of an everyday identity which we never really escape.We can now experience that world we inhabit more authenticallyand that means interpreting others more authentically as well.But none of this is the achievement of a ‘subject’ in thetraditional sense; rather it is a possibility that is availableto Dasein when it experiences itself as a thrown projector.

Heidegger could not be more emphatic about the worldlycharacter of existent Dasein and though he appears anxious inlater sections to prioritize the most non-worldly,incommunicable, and non-relational of Dasein’s experiences asfundamentally constitutive of our interpretation of that worlditself, Heidegger has yet insisted, almost as a refrain, that tobe for Dasein means to be-in-a-world. So if we are to return fora moment to the discommoding line we discovered in the middle ofHeidegger’s discussion of our ‘being-withness’ we find ourselvesasking why he would artificially separate or suggest the possibletheoretical separation of subject/self and world/others in amanner that seems so worryingly consonant with the very strainsof subjectivism which he himself has already excoriated in Beingand Time? (one can perhaps anticipate the shape of the rhetoricalquestion that my analysis is pushing towards, namely, why readHeidegger as though he were doing as much?) Of course, criticssuch as Habermas are adamant that Heidegger unwittingly relapses,following the existential analytic, in precisely this way.10 But thatis certainly not what Heidegger’s move to authenticity, forexample, amounts to. Heidegger is interested not in an ethics ofexistence or an account of the ideal political conditions for acommunity. Rather Heidegger looks at the clues available from oureveryday, ‘common’ existence and looks to follow these‘breadcrumbs’ on a trail which will eventually lead to what is

10 See Jürgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Translated by Frederick Lawrence. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995. p 150.

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fundamentally constitutive. As we know, it is temporality thataffects, colours and determines our interpretative existence inthe world for Heidegger. And Heidegger believes that the mostphilosophically fecund of those temporal moments is one whichoccurs or is available to the most non-worldly, isolated aspectof Dasein’s experience imaginable. The static meditation on thisaspect of Dasein’s multi-faceted, dynamic identity is itself anabstraction of sorts, but Heidegger consciously sees it as suchand implicitly acknowledges as much throughout. At the same time,he wants to fasten on this particular non-relational experiencesince this will afford him a link to the project of fundamentalontology which is the real concern of his early masterpiece.Thus, Heidegger does not really subscribe to the belief thatDasein can ever be such that it is not a being-in-the-world.However, he wants to prioritize the ‘mineness’, the mostincommunicable, solitary and non-relational aspect of Dasein’sexperience, which involves the sense of the world of one’sconcern and solicitude receding dramatically in a moment ofexistential singularity, as somehow the key to understanding thetemporal character of the world of our collectivelyreinforced/reciprocal concern. This sudden recession ofeverything ‘worldly’ is not a cancelling of the hyphens that holdtogether our being-in-the-world and neither does Heidegger wantto suggest that we can live in a remote realm of such unworldlyabstraction; rather, fastening on elements of that experience,Heidegger believes he has identified a key formative experiencewhich influences the very fabric of our world in an environmentof projects and tasks which we share with others and which isaffectively constitutive of the multi-faceted and absorbed worldwe live in. Moreover, this experience which befalls Dasein as abeing-with could prove fruitful for the possibility of authenticintersubjectivity – not through seeing the other as someonemerely relevant to my equipmental, project-oriented world or insome kind of desultory, phlegmatic fashion but rather seeing theother as a thrown-projector in their own right. And yet, if we‘supplement’ Heidegger’s account of authenticity with statementsto the effect that Dasein is at first such that it is unrelatedto Others, then his account, unwittingly, sounds as though it ispaying lip service (in a way that has stymied interpreters of

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Being and Time) to the idea of a solitary, a priori subject which isnot an accurate depiction of even the Dasein that listens to thecall of conscience.11 We see this clearly enough in §60 of Beingand Time where Heidegger insists

Resoluteness, as authentic Being-one’s-Self, does not detach Daseinfrom its world, nor does it isolate it so that it becomes afree-floating ‘I’. And how should it, when resoluteness asauthentic disclosedness, is authentically nothing else thanBeing-in-the-world? Resoluteness brings the Self into its currentconcernful Being-alongside what is ready-to-hand, and pushesit into solicitous Being with Others. (BT, 344 – 345)

Admittedly, Heidegger’s account would genuinely be complicated byany attempt to preserve the ‘unrelatedness’ of Dasein, that is,the idea that in the ‘first instance’ Dasein is such that it isunrelated to others. Not least since he insists that

The phenomenological assertion that ‘Dasein is essentiallyBeing-with’ has an existential-ontological meaning. It doesnot seek to establish ontically that factically I am notpresent-at-hand alone, and that Others of my kind occur. Ifthis were what is meant by the proposition that Dasein’sBeing-in-the-world is essentially constituted by Being-with,then Being-with would not be an existential attribute whichDasein, of its own accord, has coming to it from its own kindof Being. It would rather be something which turns up inevery case by reason of the occurrence of Others. Being-withis an existential characteristic of Dasein even whenfactically no Other is present-at-hand or perceived. EvenDasein’s Being-alone is Being-with in the world. The Othercan be missing only in and for a Being-with. Being alone is adeficient mode of Being-with; its very possibility is theproof of this. (BT, 156)

11 The Dasein that hears the call of conscience must nevertheless be a being-with, given that that is part of its existential-ontological constitution, even if that link with others isn’t felt quite so acutely at precisely that moment.

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However, if that is in fact the case, we are left to puzzle howDasein could ever be in any instance such that it is ‘unrelated’to others? In other words, if Dasein is such that it can onlyever be as a being-with, if that is how it is constitutively, howcould it ever be in a situation where it would initially beunrelated to others but could be with others ‘afterwards’? Andagain, we feel the force of my rhetorical question, why readHeidegger, even in the passage I cited which contains thisrecalcitrant line, in that way?

Precisely the kind of abstraction which, in part, motivatedHeidegger’s criticism of earlier philosophers was the notion of‘bracketing’ the world. For Heidegger, we cannot simply disengagefrom the everyday world as radically as others suggested. Hence,we have to bear this in mind when reading Heidegger’s own accountof authenticity; it is very much with these concessions alreadymade and implied. Having said as much, this can lead to aconsiderable level of confusion since Heidegger wants to focusexclusively at times on the notion of an ‘individualized’ Daseinwhich understandably lends itself, for many, to an identificationwith the radical subjectivism of other accounts that he professedto resist in his own work. And yet, given that there is no suchthing as a Dasein without a world for Heidegger, there can be noconception of an authentic Dasein without a world. And if Dasein(even while intensely self-absorbed during the authenticAugenblick) is always such that it is-in-the-world, then byHeidegger’s own account, that means that Dasein must always (evenauthentic Dasein) be a Dasein-with. Indeed, when we consider inparticular the stridency with which Heidegger rejects the chargesof subjectivism and humanism when defending Being and Time in laterwork, it seems clear that he cannot have wanted to simply endorsetraditional subjectivity as part of his account of Dasein,authentic or otherwise. The accounts of being-towards-death andthe call of conscience, our thrown situatedness, if you will, arevery much conceived against the errancy and misguidedness of arobustly conceived, ego-based subjectivity; the underlyingdynamic of the thrown projector, which recurs throughoutHeidegger’s work, resists all subjectivity of the subject,according to Heidegger at least. We might say then thatHeidegger’s description of various states of Dasein is, at worst,

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misleading rather than contradictory given his express intent toavoid any trace of solipsism. The shortcomings of Heidegger’slanguage lead rather tendentious, unsympathetic critics tocharacterize Heidegger’s authentic Dasein as a desolate,“solipsistically posited Dasein” which “occupies the place oftranscendental subjectivity”, a Dasein, moreover, to which “isascribed the authorship for the projecting of the world”.12

Heidegger’s description of Dasein as being-with coupled with thefact that Dasein’s projection is only ever possible on the basisof the way it has been thrown (which in terms of authenticity isa type of resolution to submit) clearly makes thischaracterization untenable. Heidegger, at worst, may bestruggling to come to terms with the problem of reconciling thenon-relationality of our experience of finitude with ourinveterate withness even though it is the very non-relationalityof that experience which allows us to appreciate ourirrepressible ‘being-withness’ more authentically since the otherperson is disclosed to us as a finite transcendence in their ownright. Trying to accommodate the authentic Augenblick whilemaintaining the hyphens that tie being-in-the-world togetherdemands a tension which is difficult to pitch; the strings caneasily be snapped and the structural integrity of our worldlycomposition compromised by wayward descriptions. But this bringsus back to the rhetorical question which has been simmering awaybeneath this paper from the beginning: since Heidegger is soclearly trying to articulate something beyond the bounds oftraditional subjectivity, in this instance in terms of Dasein’s‘inter-subjective’ existence, why succumb to the temptation toread him as though he were doing the opposite? And even when hiswording seems vague or ambiguous or leaves us somewhat bewilderedat times, I recommend that we look to reconcile the odd sporadicremark with the preponderance of the remaining textual evidencerather than the reverse. The latter interpretive strategy, whichhas been alarmingly prevalent among critics of Being and Time,smacks of an agenda which has more to do with foistinginterpretations on the text than allowing the text to speak foritself!

12 Jurgen Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. p. 150.

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Leaping Ahead of Heidegger: Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Being and Time

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