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UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Authenticity And UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Authenticity and Agency: Heidegger’s Constitutivism A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Patrick Olivier Jack Londen September 2018 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Mark Wrathall, Chairperson Dr. Michael Nelson Dr. Andrews Reath Copyright by Patrick Olivier Jack Londen 2018 The Dissertation of Patrick Olivier Jack Londen is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements My acknowledgements start at the beginning. I would like to thank the two most influential philosophers in my life, my parents, Kit and Jack. This dissertation is dedicated to them. Very special thanks, too, to my partner, Dicky Bahto, for the companionship that brought me through the years writing the dissertation, and for reminding me that examples in philosophy need not be boring to be clear. I would like to acknowledge the generous support of the University of California, Riverside, whose Dissertation Year Program fellowship supported a quarter devoted to research for this dissertation. Thanks finally to my committee: to Andrews Reath, for fruitful conversations and feedback on my dissertation chapters; to Michael Nelson, for advice and encouragement along the way; and especially to Mark Wrathall, who taught me that reading the history of philosophy is itself an exercise in seeing the world and our place in it. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Authenticity and Agency: Heidegger’s Constitutivism by Patrick Olivier Jack Londen Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Philosophy University of California, Riverside, September 2018 Dr. Mark Wrathall, Chairperson Most people think it is a good thing to be authentic—that is, to be oneself, to be true to oneself, or to express oneself in action. Yet the fact that we regard being authentic as an achievement means that we tend to fail to be ourselves in acting. This raises two related questions for philosophers: Why think that we should be authentic in what we do? And, if we think we should, why are we so often led astray from this ideal? This dissertation looks to the account of human agency contained in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time to reconstruct his argument for why we should be authentic. This reconstruction takes its bearings from Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotelian and Kantian models of action and agency, as well as from views in the philosophy of action known today as “constitutivism,” which hold that we can explain the authority of certain normative demands on us by appeal to the nature of action or agency. Heidegger’s version of constitutivism is unique is its attempt to show that, in virtue of acting at all, one is already committed not only to a standard of success in acting, but also to conditions that undermine success in acting. The first half of this work lays out Heidegger’s account of v action and his distinctive conception of practical deliberation, which leads to a reconstruction of his account of our essential tendency to act inauthentically. The second half places his discussion of authenticity in relation to his philosophical methodology and his ontology, in order to find the resources to reconstruct his argument for why authenticity is an ideal of agency to which we are committed in virtue of acting at all. Ultimately, this reconstruction of Heidegger’s arguments in Being and Time offers a compelling, unified account of human agency that explains both why we should be authentic and why we so often fail to live up to this ideal. vi Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Heidegger’s Ontology of Everyday Action........................................................5 Chapter 2: Heidegger on Deliberation...............................................................................35 Chapter 3: Why Be Inauthentic?........................................................................................68 Chapter 4: On the Methodological Role of Authenticity in Being and Time Part One: Unity and Authenticity....................................................................98 Chapter 5: On the Methodological Role of Authenticity in Being and Time Part Two: Authenticity as an Ideal.................................................................131 Chapter 6: Why Be Authentic?........................................................................................165 Works Cited.....................................................................................................................181 vii Introduction Most people think it is a good thing to be authentic. When referring to human agents, being authentic usually means being oneself, being true to oneself, or expressing oneself in action. Authenticity is held up as an ideal when we think it is up to each of us to develop a sense of self and to live in a way that reflects this self-understanding. Yet the fact that one can be authentic means that there are some ways of acting that express who one is, and others that don’t. Authenticity is an achievement, and there are ways to fail to be oneself. This raises two related questions for philosophers: Why think that we should be authentic in what we do? And, if we think we should, why are we so often led astray from this ideal? Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time is often regarded as one of the richest philosophical accounts of authenticity to date. Many readers of Heidegger agree that this work puts authenticity at the heart of a sophisticated and novel approach to understanding human agency. What is less clear is the normative role authenticity plays in that account. Heidegger indicates that authenticity is an ideal for us, but he does not seem to provide an explicit argument for why we should think it is. At the same time, he refers to a “tendency” to act inauthentically that is “essential” to us,1 but does not seem to offer a satisfactory account of its origin. 1 E.g. SZ 127. All references to Sein und Zeit in this dissertation provide the German pagination. Macquarrie & Robinson provide the primary translation resource, but I frequently provide my own translation without noting discrepancies with the Macquarrie 1 Nonetheless, Heidegger’s magnum opus has the resources for a powerful account of what it means to act in a world, and what this picture of agency says about being a good agent. This dissertation reconstructs Heidegger’s argument for why we should be authentic, while showing at the same time why being authentic is such a challenge for us. The argument, when properly understood, shows that we are committed to authenticity as an ideal, as well as to conditions that undermine our ability to live up to this ideal, in virtue of the same features constitutive of our agency. In other words, we should be authentic because of the kind of agents we are, but for the most part we are inauthentic for the very same reasons. This dissertation thus offers an interpretation of Heidegger’s account of action and its normative commitments. A secondary but significant goal of this dissertation is to show how his account of action, and its normative commitments, fit into Heidegger’s larger ontological project, since this latter project is the stated goal of Being and Time. This reconstruction of Heidegger’s account of human agency takes its bearings from his appropriation of Aristotelian and Kantian models of action and agency, as well as from more recent trends in the philosophy of action. The reconstruction I provide in this dissertation is of a sort of argument that philosophers today might call “constitutivist.” Constitutivism is the family of views that hold that we can explain the authority of certain normative demands on us by appeal to the nature of action or agency. The argument succeeds if it can show that, in virtue of acting at all, one is already committed to a & Robinson translation. Most citations to Sein und Zeit are given in-text with the abbreviation SZ followed by the German pagination. For other works by Heidegger, I provide the Gesamptausgabe volume number and page in that volume. 2 standard of success in acting. By now, the literature on behalf of constitutivist approaches to agency is growing rapidly, as are the critiques. Although I intend to compare Heidegger’s account of action with some analogous accounts in the contemporary literature, especially those of the Kantian variety, the goal is to articulate Heidegger’s version of the strategy. The work of evaluating his version of constitutivism in light of other recent versions will have to come after a thorough reconstruction of his own argument. What is unique in Heidegger’s case is his attempt to show that, in virtue of acting at all, one is already committed not only to a standard of success in acting, but also to conditions that undermine success in acting. His approach also differs from contemporary accounts in his resistance to putting rationality at the heart of human agency. His phenomenological and existential account focuses instead on non-reflective “everyday” modes of human engagement in the world, which allows today’s reader to consider the normative character of agency independently of the usual emphasis on reflective thought. The dissertation is divided into six chapters. Two of these deal more systematically with Heidegger’s arguments for why we should be authentic, and the sense in which we should be inauthentic. Each of these
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