Past Event: PEP: Noam Cohen (Yale)

Location: 451 College St. B04 seminar room

Title: "Who are ‘We’? Selfhood and Sociality in Heidegger’s Thought in the Thirties"

Abstract:

In this paper, I explore the relationship between selfhood and sociality in Heidegger’s thought during the 1930s. By “sociality,” I mean the structural social conditions of human existence that remain invariant, independent of any specific ethical or political commitments. To be human is inherently to be social: selfhood is constituted through its entanglement in a nexus of relations with others. My aim is to address this foundational aspect of sociality as presupposed in Heidegger’s often notoriously political reflections on authentic communal existence during this period. Thus, my focus is not limited to notions of a concrete, authentic community but extends to the general and irreducible condition of being social in general. The main thesis of the paper is that in the thirties Heidegger develops a conception of selfhood as a dynamic of call and response that transcends the dualism of individual and collective.

I begin by revisiting Heidegger’s remarks on “authentic historizing” (eigentliches Geschehen) in Being and Time, particularly the tension between individuality and collectivity as manifested in his concepts of fate (Schicksal) and destiny (Geschick). This tension introduces a fundamental problem for Heidegger’s social ontology: determining the priority – or lack thereof – between the individual and the collective. Building on this foundation, I analyze Heidegger’s treatment of the question “who are we?” and the conception of selfhood it presupposes, using examples drawn from texts and lectures of the 1930s. I argue that Heidegger resists assigning primacy to either individuality or collectivity, instead presenting selfhood as an interplay of history itself. To underpin Heidegger’s development beyond Being and Time, I continue to examine his reflections on the notion of the people (das Volk), which suggests a provisional answer to the ‘we’-question. This analysis further reveals a dynamic understanding of selfhood as an ongoing historical process, but one whose unity remains fundamentally enigmatic. Finally, I turn to Contributions to Philosophy to illuminate Heidegger’s portrayal of selfhood as a “space of disclosure,” characterized by a perpetual interplay of demand and response of meaning. Using metaphors such as “call,” “sound,” and “site,” Heidegger describes selfhood as both a primordial urgency to take a stance and a phenomenon whose mysteriousness is essential to its very being.