The Human Person and His Intersubjectivity

Module 9: The Human Person
and His Intersubjectivity

Man as Being-in-the-World
In module 5, we learned that the human being is the dasein, which
means “Being-there’’ martin Heidegger further claims that being-in is “the
formal existential expression of the being of dasein, which has being-in-the-
world as its essential state.”

The concept of facility implies that an entity within-the-world has a being-in-the-world in such a way
that it can understand itself as bound up in its “destiny” with the being of those entities which it encounters
within its own world.
-Martin Heidegger, being and time

Heidegger argues that a human person is not a spiritual thing misplaced into a
space. Human reality’s “being-in-the-world is a definite way of “being-in”-
undertaking something, interrogating something, producing, considering…all these
ways have concern.
Your reality as a human person suggest that your existence is manifested by
your doing and by your “destiny” to understand that you are the other Dasein. You
have to recognized and accept that “being-in” is a form of doing. It may be
recognition of the metaphysical concept that you are a spirit, but the reality is you are
in the world with others

Man as Being-for-others
• Jean Paul Sartre, in his book, Being and Nothingness, explains that it is through the “other-
as-a-look” that the “I” experiences the self or is revealed. Here, what is meant by the “Other”
is the other conscious for-itself who, like the I or the Being, is a lack and appropriates one’s
possibilities. As stated in module 5, the act of freedom is to transcend these many
possibilities, but one recognizes the issue of a bad faith where he or she refuses to choose or
is therefore objectified by the “look of the other”. This distinction between the I and the
Other present a conflict. Thus, any meaningful encounter with the Other is always a conflict.

The I and the other objectifies each other by the act of the “look”
because by doing so, the Other is alienated to transcend his or her
possibilities. Sartre claims that when you lokk at a person, this act od
objectification allows you to capture that person’s freedom to be what
he/she wants to be. That is, you are limiting a person’s possibilities by a
look. This is evident when you stereotype or label a persons based on his/her
appearance or certain actions. Sartre argues, that a human person has many
possibilities, but when you label a person through a look, you take away that
freedom to choose to become.

•This concept of the lack intersubjectivity (the human person’s
ablilty to empathize) due to conflict ( I against the Other) might
be agrued through the concept of “We”. Sartre recognized that
the concept of conflict may be an incomplete characterization;
hence, he analyzed humanity’s use of the term “We.”

In the “We” nobody is the object. The We includes a plurality of subjecives, which
recognized one another as subjectivities. Nevertheless this recognition is not the object
of an explicit thesis; what is explicity positied is a common action or the object of a
common perception. “We” resist, We advance to the attack, We condemn the guilty, We
look at this or that spectacle. Thus the recognition of the subjectivities is analogous to
that spectacle. Thus the recognition of the nonthetic consciounceness. More precisely, it
must be effected laterally by a nonthetic consciousness whose thetic object is this or that
spectacle in the world.
-Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

• How is the notion of We-subjects experienced? Consider this
scenario: You are in the school cafeteria. You are observing the other
customers and you are being observed as well (hence, the presence
of conflict is evident) when suddenly, two cars collide outside the
cafeteria. Immediately, everyone becomes the spectetors- the “I” is
no longer objectified; the patrons became “We” in looking at and
participating at the event. Sartre claimed that thereis definitely an
experience of “we”; however:

… The “We” is experienced by a particular consciousness; it is not necessary that all that patrons
at the café should be conscious of being We in order for me to experience myself as being engaged in a We
with them. This implies that there are aberrant consciousnesses of the We- which ,as such, are nevertheless
perfectly normal consciousnesses. If this is the case, then in order for a consciousness. If this the case, then
in order for a consciousness to get the consciousness of being engaged in a We, it is necessary that the other
consciousnesses which enter onto community with it should be first given in some way; that is, either in the
capacity of a transcendence- transcending or as a transcendence-transcended. The We is a certain particular
experience which is produced in special cases on the foundation of being-for-others in general. The being-
for-others precedes and founds the being-with-others

Through the “We” there is a certain particular experience where a being-for-others reveal its
foundation, but it only happens in special cases. The collective consciousness or treating others as subject
does not happened all the time. There will still be impositions because it is not always the case that a
consciousness becomes a spectator and allows for the projection of possibilities to happend,.

According to Sartre, the concepts of “Us” and “They” as two
different forms of the experience of the “We”. One is “Being in the act
of looking” and the other “being looked at in common” (in the situation
given, the latter could refer to the people involved in the collision) as
foundation of being-with-others.

The situation involves the I confronting the Other. Either the I looks
at the Other or the Others looks at the I. Clearly, the look once again creates
the transcending-transcended– the possibilities for each of the I and the
Other area dead. Supposed the Other is looking at the I, then a Third came
in and looks at the I. The feels that the Other and Third forms a
“community” of “They-subject”; the notion of the objectification of the I
never changes.

The I is still alienated and objectified by the look not only of the Other
but now of the Third. According to Sartre this situation of apprehending will
become complicated only when the Third looks at the Other looking at the I.
Where now, the I apprehends the Third through the Other-as-looked at. Why
is this situation complicated?

There is constitude here a metastable state which will soon decomposed depending upon whether I ally
myself to the Third so as to look at the Other who is then transformed into our object—and here I experience
the We-as-subject or whether I look at the Third and thus transcend this third transcendence which
transcends the Other. In the latter case the third becomes an object in my universe , his possibilities are dead
–possibilities, he can not deliver me from the Other. Yet he looks at the Other who is looking at me. There
follows a situation which we shall call indeterminate and inconclusive since I am an object for the Other who
is an object for the Third who is an object for me. Freedom alone by supporting itself on one or the other of
these relations can give a structure to this situation.

Affectedness is being in a mood or being in an effective state. In mood Dasein is
disclosed to itself in the thatness of its there. That I am, and have my being to be, is something
that I find, rather than choose. The “there” of dasein is something to which Dasein is
delievered over. I am responsible for what I make of myself, how I exist, which possibilities of
being realize, but I am not responsible for having this responsibility of existing. Mood, my
affective state, discloses the “that I am and have to be” In a way that a purely cognitive state
could never do
--Gorner, Heidegger’s Being and Time

Dasein is disclosed to itself as itself of
being there,,, in the world. This disclosedness is
when humanity engages with the world, that aside
from knowing the entities in the world, Dasein is
revealed as itself in the act of knowing. Here, you
will be reminded of how dasein is said to be
“thrown” as discussed in module 5.

Only an essential mooded being can be
affected by entities. Such affection cannot be
reduced to objects having a casual impact on the
organs of senses. Only an essential mooded
being can have a world and be “in” the world.
Being-in0the-world, or transcendence, is a
condition of the possibility of intentionality.

As explained in the previous
accounts, the possibility of intersubjectivity
in Heidegger’s Being in time involved the
essence of Dasein as being-in-the-world.
Dasein in its mode of being disclosed is
affectiveness or being being-in-the-mood
to be affected by other entities (ontical),
including the other Daseins(ontological).
The possibility if encounter is due to this
being-in-the-world, the possibility of
intentionality or a consciousness being
directed toward an object of intention

The other basic mode of disclosedness is Verstehen (understanding). In the hermeneutic tradition the
term Verstehen is used to refer to a special mode of knowledge or cognition which is contrasted with
Erklaren (explanation). It is the kind of knowledge we have of other human beings, their mental life and the
outward expression of this mental life—in texts, works of art , institution and so on.

Understanding as a mode of disclosedness in not an ability but a way in
which Dasein is. As repeartedly expresseddd, being-in engaging or being
disclosed or revealed. Dasein knows himself as Dasein as he is disclosed.
Since it is not a simple ability, Dasein, in its understanding, understands his
own existing.

Such understanding is its ability to be. Dasein is what it can be, it is its
possibility. As applied to Dasein, possibility, as ability-to-be, is perculiar to
Dasein. It is not a dispositional property of the king we attribute to others
entities. Verstehen in the senses of ability-to-be, knowing how to be, is a
mode of disclosedness which is “equi-primodial” with state-of-mind or
affectiveness. Dasein’s ability-to-be, knowing how to be, is ability-to-be-in-
the-world, knowing how to be-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world
encompasses being towards entities within-the-world, being towards- or
with-others and being towards oneself.

Understanding as knowing how to be is knowing how to bein all these basic
modes. Understanding discloses Dasein’s possibilities of being, and because
comporment to entities other than itself is an essential feature of Dasein’s being,
understanding also discloses the possibilities of entities other Dasein. Not only is the
world, qua world, disclosed as possible significance, but when that which is within-
the-world is itself freed, this entity is freed or its own possibilities. That which is
ready-to-hand is discovered as such in its serviceability, its usability and its
dertrimentality

Now you have a different perspective on the intersubjectivity of the humas
person. Heidegger’s concept of Dasein as a care exposes by Dasein as and having
mood and understanding, disclosing Dasein itself to itself and the possibilities of
encounter with other Dasein as essentially its being-in-the-world. Due to the mode of
affectedness, a Dasein can recognize others without judgment but an acceptance of
how other human beings as Dasein are also constituted as Dasein itself. On the other
hand, understamding contains within itself the possibility of development, in the
sense of the appropriation of what is underastood in understanding.

Man as a Historical Being
A human person’s intersubjectivity may also be describe from a
jistorical perspective—Dasein is a product of history. As Gorner points out,
“Human being are historical beings in the sense that each of us has a history.
We belong to communities which themselves have a history”

As discussed in module 5, Dasein is temporal. To
understand its being-in-the-world or thrownness is to take
into account Dasein”s past and the projection of its
possibilities in the future.

Heidegger claims that “underlying all these facts” is the ontological truth that the being of dasein is
constituted by historicity (Geschichtlichkeit). Historicity is not something different from temporality but is
the concrete from which the existential past (having-been-ness) can be seen to take when we consider the
ontological truth that the being of dasein is being with (Mitsein). Historicity concerns Dasein’s past in the
sense of what it has been .Dasein is its past, its has-been (Gewesen). Its past in the existential sense is not a
property which it somehow continues to possess and which every now and then exerts its influence.

Historicity in this ontogical sense (that is, as an essential feature of the being of Dasein) is not
the same as occurring in history understood as a sequence of events. but, as we shall see, nor is it the same as
history in the sense of the intellectual discipline of that name. historicity in the ontological sense is the
condition of the possiblilty of both of these things.

Heidegger recognizes that the human person is
involved, much like the I of Sartre. Thus historicity means
that Dasein has a past and his involvement with others
Daseins implies that they also have past, a shared past.
When Dasein projects his possibilities into the future, part
of it the past that has been inherited.

Dasein as such is determined by tradition, but it can also “explicity pursue” tradition. “The discovery of
tradition and the disclosure of what it “transmit” and how thisis transmitted can be undertaken as a task in its
own right.” In other words, Dasein can become historical in the sense of engaging in the discipline of history

For what this account exemplifies, Dasein as a product of history will be
able to disclose itself to itself on the grounds of its temporary together with
the temporality of other Dasein. It will able to engage itself of its past that
will push it forward to its possibilities in the future. It is stated, going
backward and forward because temporality is part of the nature of Dasein.

The Human Person and His Intersubjectivity

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