Interpreting Heidegger on das Man (1995)

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mode Of Being

In their debate over Dreyfus’s interpretation of Heidegger’s account of das Man in Being and Time, Frederick Olafson and Taylor Carman agree that Heidegger’s various characterizations of das Man are inconsistent. Olafson champions an existentialist/ontic account of das Man as a distorted mode of being-with. Carman defends a Wittgensteinian/ontological account of das Man as Heidegger’s name for the social norms that make possible everyday intelligibility. For Olafson, then, das Man is a privative mode of Dasein, while for Carman it makes up an important aspect of Dasein’s positive constitution. Neither interpreter takes seriously the other’s account, though both acknowledge that both readings are possible. How should one choose between these two interpretations? Dreyfus suggests that we choose the interpretation that identifies the phenomenon that the work is examining, gives the most internally consistent account of that phenomenon, and shows the compatibility of this account with the rest of the work.

Ways of Being and Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Better Than

This chapter develops a version of ontological pluralism that respects two common intuitions about time: that the present moment is metaphysically distinguished but not in such a way that the past is unreal. The version of ontological pluralism developed—presentist existential pluralism (PEP)—embraces two modes of being, the mode of being that present objects enjoy and the mode of being that past objects enjoy. The author argues that this view fares at least as well, and probably better, than other views in which the present is metaphysically distinguished. The chapter also introduces another form of ontological superiority called “levels of being.”

Can Humanism be the Social Norm?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon D. Welch
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Reasoning ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social

Assaults on truth and divisions about the nature of wise governance are not momentary political challenges, unique to particular moments in history. Rather, they demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in human reasoning and core dangers in ways of construing both individual freedom and cohesive communities. It will remain an ongoing challenge to learn to deal rationally with what is an intrinsic irrationality in human cognition and with what is an intrinsic tendency toward domination and violence in human collectivities. In times of intense social divisions, it is vital to consider the ways in which humanism might function as the social norm by, paradoxically, functioning in a way different from other social norms. Humanism is not the declaration that a certain set of values or norms are universally valid. At its best and most creative, humanism is not limited to a particular set of norms, but is, rather, the commitment to a certain process in which norms are continuously created, critically evaluated, implemented, sustained or revised. Humanism is a process of connection, perception, implementation, and critique, and it applies this process as much to itself as to other traditions.

scholarly journals When time becomes personal. Aging and personal identity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Sternad
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Physical Process ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Phenomenological Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Self ◽  
Social Level

AbstractAging is an integral part of human existence. The problem of aging addresses the most fundamental coordinates of our lives but also the ones of the phenomenological method: time, embodiment, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and even the social norms that grow into the very notion of aging as such. In my article, I delineate a phenomenological analysis of aging and show how such an analysis connects with the debate concerning personal identity: I claim that aging is not merely a physical process, but is far more significantly also a spiritual one as the process of aging consists in our awareness of and conscious relation to our aging. This spiritual process takes place on an individual and on a social level, whereas the latter is the more primordial layer of this experience. This complicates the question of personal identity since it will raise the question in two ways, namely who I am for myself and who I am for the others, and in a further step how the latter experience shapes the former. However, we can state that aging is neither only physical nor only spiritual. It concerns my bodily processes as it concerns the complex reflexive structure that relates my former self with my present and even future self.

scholarly journals Composing Individuals: Ethnographic Reflections on Success and Prestige in the British New Music Network

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
HETTIE MALCOMSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
New Music ◽  
Disciplinary Power ◽  
Art Worlds ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scant Attention

AbstractIn contrast to established musicians, lesser-known composers have received scant attention in art music scholarship. This article, based on an ethnographic study, considers how a group of British composers construed ideas of success and prestige, which I analyse in terms of anthropological writings on exchange, Bourdieusian symbolic economies, and Foucauldian notions of disciplinary power. Prestige was ascribed to composers who created ‘interesting’ music, a category that eclipsed novelty as an aim. Individuality, enacted within a context of individualism, was key to assessing whether music was interesting. This individuality had to be tempered, structured, and embedded in the social norms of this and related ‘art worlds’. The article examines the social processes involved in creating this individuality, musical personality, and music considered interesting.

Confrontation and Responsiveness

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Eric Nelson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Rule Based ◽  
Practical Activity ◽  
System A ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethical Failures ◽  
Identity And Difference

Heidegger’s critique of ethics has been interpreted as an abolition of the ethical that nihilistically precludes the possibility of ethics. Yet Heidegger questioned ethics as systematizing discourses about hierarchies of values, prescriptions, norms, and axioms cut off from their worldly and factical contexts. I argue that this questioning of rule-based ethics does not necessarily entail a denial of the ethical, since it has its own ethical preoccupations in the sense of reflection on practical activity (praxis) and the formal indication of how Dasein factically exists. This reading is supported by Heidegger’s later depiction of the ethical as the ethos of an originary dwelling. Further, Heidegger’s practice of thinking indicates and enacts the ethical as confrontation and responsive encounter: (1) even if he did not formulate an ethical system, a universal prescriptive principle, or a moral code; and (2) despite his own undeniable ethical failures. This promising yet underdeveloped ethical dimension is visible both in the style, method, and event of his philosophizing and in his attention to the issue of individuation in the context of the Dasein’s conformity to the power of everydayness and the social. Individuation, a primary issue of Being and Time and other works of the 1920’s, occurs through the attuned comportment and understanding that Dasein each time is, yet as individuation it takes place in being-with others. The identity and difference of human existence is formed in social comportment and understanding—in addressing and being addressed, in the interdependent and interpretive setting apart of encountering and being encountered, in the responsive confrontation, differentiation, and separation of Auseinandersetzung.

scholarly journals Readings Behind the Early Christian Queer Experiences

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-124
Author(s):  
Larisa Orlov Vilimonović
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Gender Fluidity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Gender Categories ◽  
Body Modifications

This paper deals with the ideas of queer experiences in the Early Christian movement, seen through early Christian epistemologies of gender and patristic thought focused on sex differences. The lives and passions of transgender nuns are used in discussing various aspects of gender fluidity in early Christianity. Theoretically, the paper rests on the idea of the performativity of gender, that is, on the ways gender was constructed and how body modifications enabled renegotiation of gender categories. It also focuses on the social context of queer experiences in the late antique period with regard to Roman social norms.

scholarly journals The Nomadic War Machine in Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz and On the Road

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Machine ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Post War ◽  
Alter Ego ◽  
Duluoz Legend ◽  
Iconic Figure

This study inquiries into Jack Kerouac’s Vanity of Duluoz (1968) and On the Road (1957) from the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s nomadic war machine. It shifts from a rigorous scrutiny of Vanity of Duluoz for its general account of the Duluoz legend, Kerouac’s alter ego, to the study of On the Road for its more specific narrative of a certain period in Kerouac’s life. Being an iconic figure of rebellion and non-conformity in capitalist America during the postwar era, Kerouac’s literary works have a certain social and political magnitude that falls within the discourse of deconstructing orthodoxy and dogma. The study elucidates how Kerouac’s characters subvert the social norms and the state’s institutions in order to break free from pre-structured beliefs. The thesis of the article is to corroborate that such non-conformity and insubordination, exemplified in Kerouac’s autobiographical works, align with the nomadic characteristic of Deleuze and Guattari’s war machine. By extension, it aims at presenting Kerouac as the Deleuzeguattarian nomad who creates nomadic characters that deterritorialize post-war America from within.

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