Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation: Mitsein (Being-With), Ethics and Responsibility
Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation: Mitsein (being-with), Ethics and Responsibility
Sarah Sorial
A thesis submitted to the School of Philosophy in the University of New South Wales in the fulfilment of the award of Doctor of Philosophy.
2005 Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor, Rosalyn Diprose for her encouragement, support and generosity in the writing of this thesis. I would especially like to thank her for her unwavering confidence and interest in the project and in my ability to put it all together. Thanks also to the School of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales for the resources and the space to complete this thesis.
To my friends - Wojciech Nadachowski, Ann Murphy, Dave Cranmer, Toni Hurley, Mai Paola, Isis Ibrahim, Daniel Nourry, Greg Leaney, Mary Symons and Chelsea Friend – thankyou for your friendship, humour and inspiration. I would especially like to thank Ann Murphy for proof reading the manuscript, Anthony Sorial for his computer expertise and Lydia Sorial for always being the calm voice of reason. I would also like to express my thanks to my family - Venice, Sobhi, Lydia and Anthony - for their unceasing patience, unconditional generosity and love. It is to them that I dedicate this work.
Some of the material in chapters four and five has been published in the following journals: “Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Dasein’s Embodiment: An Ethics of Touch and Spacing” appeared in Philosophy Today, Vol. 48 no. 2, Summer 2004 and “Heidegger and the Ontology of Freedom” in International Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming, June 2006).
iii Abstract
The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being- with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein I will also argue that this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for one’s Being/existence that nevertheless implicates others. By tracing the trajectory of
Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being, I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to Dasein as an individual contains an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the
Kantian Categorical Imperative for example. Nor ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, as in Levinasian ethics, but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. The ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing oneself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of
Being. I will show how, given that Dasein is always Mitsein, others are situated in such an ethics.
Central to the thesis is an examination of the relation between indivduation and Mitsein.
While Heidegger is always careful to distinguish his form of individuation from other accounts of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant or Edmund Husserl’s, Heidegger’s conception of solipsism and its relation to his account
vi of Mitsein remains somewhat obscure. As a consequence, there are several problems that this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of much debate. At the centre of this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of individuation and the notion that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has led to a number of interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein, or that it constitutes yet another instance of Cartesian subjectivity and that as a consequence, it is inherently unethical.
This thesis contributes to this debate by submitting that the concept of individuation, while primary or central to Heidegger’s ontology, is not in tension with his account of
Mitsein. I use Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular to argue for this claim.
I suggest that it is precisely this concept of individuation that can inform an ethics and theory of political action on account of the emphasis on individual responsibility. The second part of my argument, also made with the aid of Nancy, is that this can inform an ethics and a theory of political action, not at level of making moral judgements, or yielding standards of right and wrong, but at the level of individual and by implication, collective responsibility for one’s own existence. Given that there is no real separation between the ontic and ontological levels in Heidegger’s work, a taking responsibility at the level of one’s own Being will invariably play itself out ontically in factical life in terms of moral responsibility and judgement.
I explore the concrete political implications of this through an examination of
Heidegger’s account of freedom. I argue that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the
vi ontology of self-presence and his alternative conception of it provides us with a way of thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set of rights, but as a mode of being-in-the- world and as the basis for collective political action. I use the work of Hannah Arendt to develop a theory of political action, freedom and judgment from this revisionary conception of freedom.
vi Contents
Acknowledgments iii
Abstract vi
Introduction 1
1. Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation 12
2. Individuation, Mitsein and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Logic of the Singular 70
3. Ontology and the Question of the Ethico-Political 122
4. Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Dasein’s Embodiment: An ethics of touch and spacing 177
5. Freedom and Collective Responsibility: Heidegger, Arendt and Political Action 220
Conclusion 266
List of References 272
ii ii Introduction
The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another
form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being-
with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein, I will argue that
this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for one’s
Being/existence. By tracing the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time
to the later text, Time and Being,1 I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to Dasein as an individual contains an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the Kantian Categorical Imperative for example.
Nor ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, as in
Levinasian ethics; but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. The ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing oneself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of Being; a call that has already claimed Dasein in some way. To be, I will argue, is to be responsible for the conduct of oneself.
1 The primary focus in this thesis is on Being and Time, however, I also refer to other texts such as Time and Being, “The Letter on Humanism,” Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology to substantiate this reading. While I concede that Heidegger’s work undergoes various shifts in emphasis, most notably, the shift from a preoccupation with Dasein to that of Being, I am reading him as having a single preoccupation, in line with his idea, expressed in the Nietzsche lectures that each thinker pursues a single trajectory. This preoccupation, on my reading, is the question of Being, as accessed through Dasein.
1 Heidegger and individuation
Heidegger’s notion of individuation, also referred to as his existential solipsism, is a
recurring one in his work. While he is always careful to distinguish it from other accounts
of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant or
Edmund Husserl’s, Heidegger’s formulation and its relation to his account of Mitsein
remains somewhat obscure.2 For example, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics
he writes:
In becoming finite … there occurs an individuation of man with respect to his Dasein. Individuation – this does not mean that man clings to his frail little ego that puffs itself up against something or other which it takes to be the world. This individuation is rather that solitariness in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What is this solitude, where each human being will be as though unique?3
In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he reiterates that his formulation of
individuation is not another form of solipsism because it is concomitantly being-with-
others:
Existence as together and with one another is founded on the genuine individuation of the individual, determined by enpresenting in the sense of the
2 While individuation is a recurring theme in Heidegger’s work, the concept is replaced with an authoritarian claim in 1933 that one decisive individual should decide on behalf of the German people as a whole. In an appeal to German students on 3 November 1933, Heidegger invests Hitler with supreme moral authority, claiming that one should not guide one’s life by moral maxims, because “the Fuhrer himself and alone is present and future Germany and its law.” In “Aufruf an die Deutschen Studenten” of 3 November 1933, Freiburger Studentenzeitung, vol. 8, no. 1, 1933, p.1. Reprinted in Herman Philipse, “Heidegger and Ethics” Inquiry, 42, p.439. I will address this tension between individuation and the fate of the Volk under a dictator in chapter five 3 Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude trans. William McNeill and Nicolas Walker. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, p.6. Hereafter cited as FCM.
2 instant. Individuation does not mean clinging obstinately to one’s own private wishes but being free for the factical possibilities of current existence.4
In Being and Time, the concept of individuation initially emerges in the discussion of
“mineness” and is fleshed out in terms of the mood of anxiety, authenticity and being-
toward-death. In experiencing the mood of anxiety, Heidegger writes:
Anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities … anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individuation.5
The experience of authenticity is described as one where Dasein isolates itself from the world of the ‘they,’ the only public or social world described in Being and Time. The experience of being-toward-death discloses to Dasein the extent to which it is solitary, non-relational, and that ultimately, each Dasein dies alone, irrespective of how many people are by its side.
Despite these assertions and qualifications that individuation is not intended as a reproduction of individuation in the Cartesian, Husserlian or Kantian sense of the term, there are several problems that this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of much debate. At the centre of this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of individuation and the notion that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has led to a number of interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is
4 Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, p.288. Hereafter cited as BBP. 5 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell, 1962, p. 187-8; 232. Hereafter cited as BT.
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