Heidegger's ontology of others is solipsistic. Others are not contingent upon 'being-with'.
The way I understand Heidegger (I'm no scholar), he seems to be saying that 'being-with' is a sort of condition of the possibility of experience. As in, 'being-with' is fundamental to Dasein. It's a fundamental ontological condition of experience.
But what if say you were born on a desert island and never met or knew about other humans? How could 'being-with' others be a part of your experience?
Heidegger seems to be saying that 'being-with' is a necessary part of experience, but I cannot see how the desert island person would experience 'being-with'. And at the same time it seems absurd to say that the desert island person doesn't experience anything at all. So Heidegger seems in this case to be forced to say that the desert person DOES experience 'being-with' - even though this seems impossible. How can someone who has no knowledge or comprehension of others experience 'being-with'?
So 'being-with' seems contingent to me, rather than a necessary condition of experience. Contingent on say being socialized among other people, learning language, customs, etc.
Also, 'being-with' in Heidegger's ontology seems open to accusations of solipsism? Other people in Heidegger's ontology seems to me, as something which can be reduced to just an aspect of ones experience. As in, others can be reduced to NOTHING MORE than ones experience of 'being-with' others. That there is no actual others out there, rather there's just this ontological mode of experience one is in, which is 'being-with'. Or not, as the case may be - for the desert island person for example.
How does Heidegger's ontology cope with someone who does NOT experience 'being-with'? For that person, their 'Dasein' does not contain the aspect of experience of 'being-with', and so for them there literally are no other people in the world. But we want to avoid this situation where, Dasein which contains 'being-with' exists among others, whereas Dasein which does not, is alone in the world. Because other people are MORE than just an aspect of one's experience (Heidegger seems to be saying this is a necessary aspect, but I don't buy it - it appears contingent. What about autistic people? Or babies? Where is the 'being-with' for them?). There is only one world and it contains others.
I want other people's existence to be a fact of the world. Rather than just an aspect of my experience. It seems to me that other people exist regardless of whether I do, or do not experience 'being-with'. But for Heidegger, at least on my reading of him, he seems to be saying that there are no other people over and above what he says is a necessary condition of experience - 'being with'. It sounds like well if that experience of 'being-with' didn't exist in the universe, then other people would not exist at all. If you didn't experience 'being-with', then you would be alone in the world. Heidegger ontology does not seem to be able to say that the person who experiences himself alone in the world - IS OBJECTIVELY WRONG. His experience is not correct.
There are more to others than just a condition of my experience. People are over and above, and independent of my experience of 'being-with' others. If my experience did not contain 'being-with', other people would still exist, and this would be an objective fact. The existence of other people is not contingent upon an aspect of my own experience. I exist regardless of whether you experience a public world or not. Heidegger seems to be saying, experiencing a public shared world is a necessary condition of experience (and therefore solipsism is a fundamentally confused concept), and seems to leave the ontology of others there. But others are more than just an experience of publicity/shared world!
Heidegger seems solipsistic to me. He grounds the existence of others within ones experience, but other people are more than that, right? Sure, he may insist that ALL experience contains as a necessary condition to exist 'being-with', but we want more than that. I want to say that other people exist as an objective ontological fact, and whether people experience 'being-with' others, or not, is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the existence of others. Other people should not be grounded in a condition of experience - even a necessary one. Others are over and above that - they exist regardless of whatever you experience. Right?
The existence of other people is not contingent upon ones experience of a public, shared world. It's absurd (and wrong!) to deny this.
But what if say you were born on a desert island and never met or knew about other humans? How could 'being-with' others be a part of your experience?
Heidegger seems to be saying that 'being-with' is a necessary part of experience, but I cannot see how the desert island person would experience 'being-with'. And at the same time it seems absurd to say that the desert island person doesn't experience anything at all. So Heidegger seems in this case to be forced to say that the desert person DOES experience 'being-with' - even though this seems impossible. How can someone who has no knowledge or comprehension of others experience 'being-with'?
So 'being-with' seems contingent to me, rather than a necessary condition of experience. Contingent on say being socialized among other people, learning language, customs, etc.
Also, 'being-with' in Heidegger's ontology seems open to accusations of solipsism? Other people in Heidegger's ontology seems to me, as something which can be reduced to just an aspect of ones experience. As in, others can be reduced to NOTHING MORE than ones experience of 'being-with' others. That there is no actual others out there, rather there's just this ontological mode of experience one is in, which is 'being-with'. Or not, as the case may be - for the desert island person for example.
How does Heidegger's ontology cope with someone who does NOT experience 'being-with'? For that person, their 'Dasein' does not contain the aspect of experience of 'being-with', and so for them there literally are no other people in the world. But we want to avoid this situation where, Dasein which contains 'being-with' exists among others, whereas Dasein which does not, is alone in the world. Because other people are MORE than just an aspect of one's experience (Heidegger seems to be saying this is a necessary aspect, but I don't buy it - it appears contingent. What about autistic people? Or babies? Where is the 'being-with' for them?). There is only one world and it contains others.
I want other people's existence to be a fact of the world. Rather than just an aspect of my experience. It seems to me that other people exist regardless of whether I do, or do not experience 'being-with'. But for Heidegger, at least on my reading of him, he seems to be saying that there are no other people over and above what he says is a necessary condition of experience - 'being with'. It sounds like well if that experience of 'being-with' didn't exist in the universe, then other people would not exist at all. If you didn't experience 'being-with', then you would be alone in the world. Heidegger ontology does not seem to be able to say that the person who experiences himself alone in the world - IS OBJECTIVELY WRONG. His experience is not correct.
There are more to others than just a condition of my experience. People are over and above, and independent of my experience of 'being-with' others. If my experience did not contain 'being-with', other people would still exist, and this would be an objective fact. The existence of other people is not contingent upon an aspect of my own experience. I exist regardless of whether you experience a public world or not. Heidegger seems to be saying, experiencing a public shared world is a necessary condition of experience (and therefore solipsism is a fundamentally confused concept), and seems to leave the ontology of others there. But others are more than just an experience of publicity/shared world!
Heidegger seems solipsistic to me. He grounds the existence of others within ones experience, but other people are more than that, right? Sure, he may insist that ALL experience contains as a necessary condition to exist 'being-with', but we want more than that. I want to say that other people exist as an objective ontological fact, and whether people experience 'being-with' others, or not, is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to the existence of others. Other people should not be grounded in a condition of experience - even a necessary one. Others are over and above that - they exist regardless of whatever you experience. Right?
The existence of other people is not contingent upon ones experience of a public, shared world. It's absurd (and wrong!) to deny this.
Comments (45)
I don't think I understand your issue here. Of course others exist objectively whether they are part of my 'being-with' or not. The public, shared world in which we're brought up opens up an understanding of the being of beings for us. This ontological disclosure is not something that's given upon birth, but slowly develops through acculturation into the language and practices of our social-historical community. So in a way that may cause offense, for instance, I don't think Heidegger would consider babies to be Dasein. Or even those with, say, advanced Alzheimer's or significant brain damage. The world is largely, if not entirely, closed off to them, just as it appears to be for most (all?) 'world poor' non-human animals. Heidegger would agree that they are biologically human, but they are no longer 'daseining' to state it a bit differently, as an ongoing activity rather than an objective thing. The idiosyncratic terminology Heidegger is using here throws people off, since he's using 'world', and other seemingly familiar terms, in much different ways than is normally done (ontologically rather than ontically) .
I'm also curious as to how a human being could possibly be born alone on a desert island, without any attending to their needs from other human beings, and somehow manage to not only stay alive, but gain an understanding of itself and its world without language? I can imagine a hypothetical scenario - say a shipwreck in which a pregnant mother swims ashore a deserted island - in which the mother died after giving birth, but I can't fathom how that baby would survive and develop alone in that environment. Seems like an entirely unrealistic possibility and therefore not a significant challenge to the notion that to be Dasein (which, to repeat, is not synonymous with biological humanity) necesarily involves 'being-with' as part of its ontological constitution.
But Dasein can't 'step beyond' Daseins fundamental ontological condition (being-with) and claim objective facts about the world. The existence of others beyond Daseins experience of 'being-with', is not something which Dasein has access to. Others beyond Daseins experience of 'being-with', is something transcendent to Dasein. So how can you state the objective existence of others as an obvious fact?
Heidegger says 'being-with' is a fundamental part of human experience, so you can't just say ''independent of my 'being-with' experience of others, other people exist'', because you literally have no access to the world independent of your ontological constitution.
So for Heidegger there is no 'objective truth' about the existence of others. Or at least one which can be known (or even coherently conceptualized). Can Dasein even talk about the world beyond Dasein?
Besides that, I think Heidegger's main issue with your line of inquiry would be this: before we can even begin to prove that a world of others exists beyond our experience, let's set aside our theoretical assumptions for a bit and pay closer attention to that experience itself. It may very well be that I'm a figment of your imagination, but your solipsistic experience involves others like myself in an intimate and necessary way. This relationship opens up a horizon of intelligibility in which things make sense to you, in which you can ask a question like you're doing now. Those skeptical questions have a background and a history of which we're a part. How do we prove these questions - and the philosophers who formulated them - did not originate in our head? Well, for one thing we could show that even we are never 'in our head', but rather out in the world with others - even when they are not 'objectively' present with us!
It seems that for Heidegger, the existence of others is neither an objective or subjective fact. Heidegger tries to sidestep this realist notion by an analysis of others which places them not in an external or internal world, but rather grounds them in this notion of 'being-with', a necessary part of Dasein's ontological condition.
This leads him wide open to accusations of solipsism. We want the existence of others to be an objective fact, not just a condition of experience.
Sure, Dasein experiences itself among others in a shared world. But through grounding others within the structure of Daseins experience, Heidegger cannot speak of others existing beyond or outside of Dasein.
The question of whether others actually exist independent of whatever Dasein experiences is side stepped by Heidegger. For Heidegger it is unintelligibe to speak of others 'outside' of Dasein, and so one cannot coherently make claims about the objective existence of others - which leads to solipsism. Heidegger's ontology cannot even make sense of claims about other minds existing independently of ones experience.
Quoting Erik
Heidegger cannot intelligibly claim this. He's trying to avoid the realism of other minds existing objectively (or not), and so in my opinion lapses into a solipsism. One in which he can claim to be among others in a shared world. And yet cannot talk about others having any independent or separate existence beyond Daseins *experience* of a shared world - because he's grounded others within the structure of Dasein. It is unintelligible to speak of others separate from what Dasein experiences.
Heidegger can intelligibly speak of others, but the ontological status of the others he talks about is less real than the way in which others exist for say a non-solipsist realist. For the realist others exist as a brute ontological fact of reality, independent of any claims about their existence, or any experience of their existence. For Heidegger, others have been shifted from the realists ontological fact of reality, into an existential structure of a beings experience.
Which strikes me as solipsistic. I want others to exist in the realist sense.
Realism and Idealism are both predicated upon a tacit acceptance of an inner/outer split. This starting point leads to myriad 'problems', the likes of which we're seeing here, and this modern philosophical orientation is precisely what Heidegger will try to undermine through the existential analytic.
Seems a false dichotomy. Why can't something be both an objective fact and a condition of experience? Like the world we live in. Or a fully functioning brain. Others exist both objectively and 'subjectively', ontically and ontologically. But again, it may be better to jettison the language of modern philosophy which, Heidegger will try to show, conceals more about us and the way we exist than it reveals. The existence of individual human beings is an ontic fact, while the existence of others 'ontologically' as being-with is entirely compatible with this. Grasping that so-called 'ontological difference' is essential for anyone who wants to make sense of Heidegger. Completely non-negotiable, in fact, if engaging him is something you're genuinely interested in.
There is no 'inside' for Heidegger, so how could there be an outside? I used that term because it's more accurate, I believe, than the view that our experience takes place inside our head, but it's still misleading when measured against Dasein as articulated through Heidegger's fundamental ontology. It's like you're caught trying to place Heidegger within a paradigm whose foundations he feels are dubious.
This conceptual paradigm of subjects, objects, inner, outer, sense-data, etc. etc. will be replaced with a new one involving things like being-in-the-world, being-with, present-at-hand, ready-to-hand and the like. Heidegger is difficult to comprehend, in part, because he tries to forge a new language that will ultimately lead to a reinterpretation of what it means to be the opening or emptiness in which Being comes to presence through beings. It's an extremely radical position, and even he acknowledged later in life that he was still caught up in the language of metaphysics while writing Being and Time.
But back to the matter, solipsism flows from the modern outlook, with its Cartesian starting point and subsequent fixation on epistemological issues. Of course skepticism is a natural outgrowth from the guiding assumptions at work here. Those assumptions are precisely what Heidegger will call into question, with a corresponding attention being placed on how we interpret ourselves and our world 'initially and for the most part', characterized largely by practical, engaged activity in a public and shared world.
I'm sure you're making an interesting point here, but I just can't quite grasp the issue or problem. I do think you've created an unnecessary either/or scenario regarding objective fact vs. condition of existence of Dasein.
I'll keep following along if others want to try to engage you on the issue. Where are you, John?
Given that Heidegger doesn't deny the ontic existence of unknown people, he wouldn't qualify as a solipsist.
Maybe he's Mowgli?
Two points: Heidegger probably thinks "being-with" as a linguistically, culturally and historically mediated disposition. So, if someone could somehow have been on a desert island alone from birth until maturity, then they would have no language or culture or history and hence would have no disposition of being-with. Whether or not you then understood them as experiencing anything, would depend on whether you understand animals as experiencing anything.
I could be wrong, but you seem to be suggesting that being-with is impossible without other humans, If a fully enculturated dasein who had already developed the disposition of being-with was stranded on a desert island would you say they could not be-with on account of the fact there that were no other daseins present?
Heidegger, in order to avoid solipsism, must invoke special pleading in regards to the ontological status of other people. So, things in the world only exist in relation to an experiencing self. Other people are things in the world, therefore one must embrace solipsism (the meaning of the existence of others for us is always with reference to *my* experience of others). But he doesn't embrace solipsism.
Therefore Heidegger must make an ontological distinction between two types of experience - one of objects and of people. How is this special pleading justified?
Is there an *ontological* difference between say the experience of a couch, and the experience of a human? If not, then a human is just a thing in the world and therefore only exists in regard to an experiencing self.
Imagine all that reality consists of is your experience, nothing else. There is nothing beyond what you are experiencing. But because of the structure of your experience - living as a body in a public world - you experience yourself as among others.
But they don't exist!
If kettles only exist with respect to an experiencing self, then what is the ontological status of other selves? Again to put this in more rigorous terms: analyzed,
Yes, that's the distinction between Dasein and the ontic.
And it's obviously not "special pleading", as Heidegger writes thousands of pages dividing the essential differences between the two.
You only included half the picture. Without the existence of others there can be no self; so if the existence of others is neither subjective nor objective so it is also with the self. So solipsism would simply be an incoherent position for Heidegger.
If I remember correctly, this is one of the points that Levinas, one of Heidegger's contemporaries, differs from Heidegger. For Levinas, Ethics is first philosophy, as when we are approached by the Other, we are subjected to a demand - "do not kill me", "recognize me", "I am not you", etc. We are given this responsibility towards the Other that we have to fulfill in order to justify ourSELVES.
Heidegger avoids placing any value on Being. This is precisely the fundamental point I find questionable in his ontology. The fact that there is a care structure, anxiety, the sense of the Other, etc. is because there is an implicit value generation going on.
"Withdrawal from the they" is the movement towards an authentic existence. "The they" represents the generalized conventional social formulations of 'what one does' in situations. For Heidegger authenticity consists not in generality, but in singularity; you live your life authentically when you see it in its absolute particularity and respond to creatively it in terms of each unique moment.
This is because the (conventional, which is to say, arbitrary) placing of value on being is unnecessary, and actually a kind of devaluation, for Heidegger; being is always already suffused with value, which may only be seen in the absence of our own impositions.
Dear dukkha,
Exist is an ontological term that has the very specific meaning in Being and Time of taking a stand on your being. Kettles don't take a stand on their being and so don't exist in Heidegger's terminology. You seem to be using exist with the meaning it excludes in B&T, namely the ex-tantness of something objectively present.
I think he thinks the problem of other minds is purely uninteresting. This is because the question of whether there actually are others out there in the objective world apart from my inner subjective experience of them is a problem only if you presuppose the derived/founded cartesian subject-object position as your ontological starting point. Once you take this derived starting point what you exclude are all the foundational and shared existential phenomena that Heidegger is articulating. One of the main points Heidegger is making is that we are primarily and usually not isolated minds as such; dasein is neither mind nor consciousness nor subject. Nor is dasein somehow inner and the world outer. In the basic average everyday level of phenomena that Heidegger is articulating, the "self" is not really distinct from the other. The everyday self is other, and dasein is the world existingly. This is not solipsism, far from it. It might be solipsism if Heidegger was making a metaphysical or epistemological claim, but he is not. He is making a phenomenological claim about intelligibility.
I think Heidegger's response would be that such a human being would not be a Dasein at all, as being Dasein and being a biological human being are not for Heidegger the same exact thing.
Being-with, Heidegger argues, is only a necessary feature of the experience of any entity that could be called a Dasein. Much of Dasein's understanding of the world is determined by its experience of other Dasein.
It's existence without other Dasein would be so radically different - would such a being even have language? - that it would probably be more akin to what it is like to be a biological animal than to be a Dasein.
I look forward to your response to this.
I sympathize with your way of construing the problem of Being-with in Heidegger's Early Philosophy. As many commentators in this forum believe, it would seem that your (mis)understanding of Being-with takes its departure from the subject-object split of an inner realm of private subjective experiences cut off from a noumenal world of "how things really are." This urge to (mis)construe Dasein as a self-enclosed subject over and against a world of objectively subsisting objects can be strong, despite all of Heidegger's attempts to overcome that very construal.
Let me work within what I take to be your understanding of Being-with to bring it down from within.
I think you are implicitly arguing for something like this: It would seem that, from at least one interpretive angle, the fact that Dasein is not a Cartesian subject - a worldless ego with mental representations in it that may or not correspond to 'the outside' - does not exclude the possibility that entities within-the-world are not the 'real' things-in-themselves, because those entities are, rather, still entities merely experienced by Dasein. On this interpretation, the things-as-experienced-by-me (ready-to-hand entities, the Others, etc), while not being mere categorical representations, are, at the end of the day, 'given' to me and to me alone, even if such things are always-already infused with meaning and significance on the basis of 'my' being-in-the-world (the a priori, referential structure of significance to which Dasein is thrown into and projects towards in terms of possibilities). Moreover, even if my experience never escapes the horizon of Temporality, there are still things as they are in-themselves beyond the horizon that structures and makes possible that which is disclosed within the range of my Being-in-the-world, including other people. However, surely we want to say that there are people who just flat out exist independent of my experience, independent of the way the world is disclosed to me within the historical horizon that delimits my way of understanding and navigating life. So, because Heidegger tells us that Temporality is the a priori condition for the possibility of entities within-my-world being what they are to me, including other people, it follows that, for Heidegger, there are no people-in-themselves. Thus, for Heidegger, there are other people only insofar as they are experienced by me within the range that which structures the social, interpersonal aspect of what it means to me qua Dasein, namely Being-with. Hence, solipsism. But this is absurd. There are people 'out there' beyond the horizon of Dasein's experience.
Here's the problem: The entities disclosed within-the-horizon that structures "experience" are the very things-themselves. You are literally 'getting at' reality through the horizon to which Dasein is immersed-in and structurally is. The entities encountered within-the-world are "snatched out of their hiddenness" or "freed" through Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always-already 'outside', that is, alongside-entities-within-the-world and in solicitous engagement with Others. The persons you encounter are not illusions-given-to-you-through-your-an-inner-constructive-activity. Rather, they in-themselves-real persons that are-encountered-or-disclosed-by-you-only-on-the-basis-of-a-co-openness-to-a-world which allows for any such encounter. The world is public. Daseins are out-there in the same worlds (though there are a multitudes of overlapping worlds that disclose different regions of Being) that allow you to encounter another person as another person from within a specifically situated, worldly context. Being-with helps constitute this co-openness. And it always-operative, even when no one is around. Because Being-with, along with moods, spatiality, etc, makes possible loneliness, language, and a host of other comportments or ways of engaging Dasein's lived contexts, your desert island example, according to Heidegger, requires Being-with in the first place to make any sense at all.
One interpretation that I think follows this line of thinking is outlined in Dreyfus's Being-in-the-world (Chapter 15).
The above interpretation, I think, is one way to make sense of Being-with without falling into solipsism and idealism. Though it is radical, and somewhat strange.
I think you'll find Dukkha has moved on. Thoughtful post, though. You will enjoy this movie trailer, Dreyfus is in it.
I doubt he uses that phrase. Being with others is part of human existence. Observation tells us that everyone is in contact with someone else at least once in their lifes... No need to come up with people who were breeded by a lost retort in the jungle and then raised by apes later on: The book is not based upon speculation. It takes Dasein as it is and must do so as the whole analysis of Dasein was meant to serve as basis for further investigations into Being itself. Things are how they are, and not how they could be.
I respectfully disagree. The desert island is an example of a possible context in which Dasein could find itself, and as such, one that Dasein could be "thrown" into. Desert-stranded Dasein (or Tarzan for example), like any Dasein, is a being who copes and dwells in a contextually situated milieu of meaning. The island-world that surrounds him (to which he is constitutive of) is intelligible and matters to him ("Dasein's Being is an issue for it"; "Care is the Being of Dasein."): the island is home, bad weather is a danger, a shooting star is a sign of events to come, the tree tops are for the birds to hangout and sing, the sun is a god to worship, the horizon is a reminder to have hope that there might be others out there like me, etc. So it does not seem to be a stretch to say that Heidegger's existential-ontological analysis of human existence ought to account for such an example, I think.
The question then becomes 'What role, if any, does Being-with play in making possible Dasein's immersion-in a stranded-island or Tarzanian context in which there are no people but me?' Heidegger says
So, Being-with, as an existentiale - a constitutive structure of the way Dasein is related to and immersed-in the world - is necessary to Dasein, even if no one else is ever around.
I think this is spot on. I made a very similar point during a debate in a previous incarnation. The argument extends to all who infer the existence of others from their experience.
Frankly, I think Dasein simply is not possible under that condition.
Heiko,
In regards to precisely what condition do you think Dasein simply is not possible? Do you mean to say that you do not think that Being-with is a necessary component of Dasein's Being, that Being-with is a contingent, rather than necessary, way in which Dasein relates and understands? Do you mean to say that Being-with cannot possibly be constitutive of Dasein if there is never anyone else around? Do you mean to say that Being-with cannot possibly delimit and make possible the ways in which Dasein is alone? Something else?
For Heidegger, to infer the existence others from one's own experience is misinterpret what it is to be a human-being. Dasein is fundamentally not a 'mental sphere of subjectivity cut off from the outside' who has to ask, know, or "infer" about that which is 'out-there', a point your claim misses. As Dasein, my way of Being and understanding the world that I am immersed-in is fundamentally not a kind of knowing in which I reach out or transcend an inner sphere of mental states to which I “return with one’s booty to the cabinet of consciousness.” For Heidegger, Dasein is always-already 'outside' with Others and alongside things.
So, rather than the desert-island being an example that proves that Being-with is a contingent aspect of Dasein's Being, Being-with is necessary for the desert-island example in the first place. Not solipsism, but a radical strand of realism that blends hermeneutics and phenomenology (though this point is far from being universally agreed upon within the scholarship).
Could you expand on this point a bit? To me, it seems that the desert-island example is an example where both there are ontically no other factically present persons and Being-with is an existential-ontological condition of that desert-island Dasein's Being. That seems to be compatible with what you are saying. No?
I do not think this is possible.
Turn the question around to what?
Quoting Heiko
What sentence, and what is it about?
Quoting Heiko
In Being-towards-death, Dasein is brought back from its lostness in 'the-they' and faces up to its mortality in anxiety. This makes authenticity possible. Even when inauthentic, Dasein is still anxious about the posisibility of its-not-being, but that anxiety is "dimmed down". I'm not sure what you mean when you say that Dasein "goes backward in time though."
Quoting Heiko
Not sure what you mean here.
§26 After the passage about Humboldt (I'm sorry I don't have an English Edition at hand).
Must be something like "But the expression Dasein indicates clearly .... because Dasein is essentially Being-with". What? How? This does not concern Dasein itself. Just the conditions of it's possibility. How could this be a concern in phenomenology, right? I don't think so.
Quoting Dan123
Of course.
I think I found the quote you are talking about. In §26, Heidegger says
So, Being-with does concern Dasein itself. Being-with is not the condition for the possibility of Dasein. To name 'Dasein' is to invoke the conditions of the possibility of the encounters Dasein has with others and things within the shared milieu of meaning to which it is embedded. Being-with does not come before Dasein. Being-with is constitutive of Dasein qua Being-in-the-world. Being-with is a 'part' of Dasein: it is an existentiale. So, Being-with makes possible specific enounters within-the-world, but it does not makes Dasein as such possible. Being-with is (part of) Dasein.
For Heidegger, Being-with is a concern for phenomenology because Being-with is a constitutive structure of how 'the phenomena' is disclosed to Dasein within-the-public-world to which Dasein constitutively belongs.
To get the misinterpretation out of the way, the human standpoint which engenders solipsism - the language game + form of life if you're looking at him from a pragmatic or Wittgensteinian view - just isn't the one that Heidegger's describing with Dasein. The conceptual landscape of solipsism opposes a thinking subject and its sensations from all objects and its properties; they are separated by an uncrossable epistemic boundary. This just isn't the every-day standpoint of a human - which Heidegger denotes Dasein -, in which we knowingly do stuff with things driven by motivations and goals. Framing things the thinking subject + sensed object way occludes most of the questions Heidegger wants to ask.
Heidegger's critique of Descartes operates similarly to this, he indicates that the thinking subject, the objects it encounters in appearance, and their relationship are posited as present-at-hand in the structure that makes solipsism makes sense. Present-at-hand can essentially be read as 'just a thing', which is a bit different from how we relate to things in general - which is always exercising competences in some meaningful context.
Looking specifically at 'being-with', you can translate it harmlessly as sociality - the capacity for social phenomena; making relationships with others, finding others actions' intelligible or meaningful, that kind of thing.
[quote=Heidegger, (Being and Time 26: 154–5)]By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over against whom the ‘I’ stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too… By reason of this with-like Being-in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others.[/quote]
You can find that quote and more exegesis on SEP here. Far from being solipsistic, for you Wittgensteinians reading it like @Banno, being-with operates like a 'private language argument' on the level of intelligibility rather than sense. Sense is public, but so are the intelligible structures we encounter.
So yeah, that's the first boring misinterpretation. The slightly more interesting second one I see here is:
Quoting Heiko
Which is making an argument like: Heidegger's account of Dasein is solipsistic because it encounters other Dasein in the world, which are equivalent (in an unspecified sense) to Dasein.
It's a bit more interesting, because it highlights a methodological subtlety in Heidegger. When Heidegger's describing Dasein, he's aiming at describing the conceptual structure of our every-day experience - what processes underpin and constitute it. So it is a little confusing to think things like for the general person the life they live is theirs as being equivalent to the live Dasein lives is mine. On one level, this is restating the banality that when something happens to someone, it happens to them. On another, this 'stuff that happens happens to me' is a general feature of human experience, all the stuff that's ever happened as far as my life-world is concerned has involved me - that's just what it means for me to be personally involved in things. We're personally involved whenever we're involved. That second we're is in the ontological register that Dasein inhabits - as a generalised subjectivity, it must be present in us all just as much as each is personally involved.
You augment this conception with 'being-with', which Dasein is always, and you end up with something similar to the private-language argument operating in Heidegger's thought again. Even though everything we experience is a personal involvement, it's fundamentally social since intelligibility and sense are structures of the world we inhabit.
Yes, it can be confusing, but saying being-with is solipsistic is just like saying sociality is solipsistic.
Now for the more interesting way to charge Heidegger with solipsism, you have to change solipsism's meaning a bit to 'shows insufficient regard or emphasises poorly the role other people play with regard to human subjectivity'. More precisely, the allegation is that the formal conditions of Dasein, like thrownness, fallenness, projection, dispositions, comportments etc despite being ontologically primary and thus present in each person, Dasein's ontical constitution vis-a-vis social organisation and the Other (or more general ontical constraints like the body) is given insufficient emphasis. Problems here look like: the formal character of facticity does little to facilitate the understanding of how the workday effects people, the formal character of thrownness does not suffice to facilitate the analysis of moods like depression or joy. The analysis of Being and Time agglomerates the specifics of these things to their general constitution - and this is an inherent feature of the method Heidegger uses. Recursive exposition of transcendental/conceptual structure.
With a little less jargon, Heidegger's placed himself methodologically as describing an everyman, which he terms Dasein. Dasein is the name of the conceptual structure of human subjectivity. So while he's operating from a place that will give insights into one regime of commonalities of people - ontological structures and substructures - perhaps a case can be made that this circumscription of ontology necessarily elides the true alterity of ontical conditions and the role they play in subjectivity. Things like chronic diseases, long term relationships, heartbreak, political involvement, community etc. The shared intelligibility indicated in being-with doesn't ring as relevant in a world where people think and feel so differently, where their minds appear to work with different motivations, with different propensities of moods and so on, but why is this a methodological problem rather than work Heidegger provided the prolegomena for (and many followed in his wake)?
The crux of the matter as I see it is that maybe the conceptual structure of these ontical conditions can only be grasped intellectually and upon reflection, thus as present at hand, but the ontical conditions' effects can be read comparatively into human subjectivity as an ontological feature - like Levinas does with the other and Merleau-Ponty does with the body.
Interesting post. Let me see if I understand you.
So, there are (at least) three potential ways to accuse Heidegger of being a solipsist. The first two are misinterpretations, but the third interpretation may be well founded. One by one, they are...
1) to interpret Dasein as a present-at-hand entity/Cartesian subject. Take Being-with to be an internal capacity for 'grasping the social relationships/actions/meanings/etc within my subjective experience'. All the people and things I encounter within my experience are made possible by my internal capacities. My experience is private, and my experience is all there is or all there that can be known to be, ergo solipsism.
2) to reduce The Others I encounter within-the-world to myself. I always-already project meaning such that everything I encounter is of sense or intelligible to me in terms of my concerns/projected possibilities/motivations or goals - "We're personally involved whenever we're involved". That is to say, I am the kind of Being who always and only understands through personal involvement [As essentially Becoming, I am thrown into a world that I grasp in turns of projected possibilities-for-myself. This opens up a world of sense that discloses to me that which I encounter.] Being-with is part of the formal structure of the possible social ways that I am involved or embedded in-the-world-that-is-personal-and-only-personal (where "personal" does not equate to 'private', but to "in terms of my concerns/goals/myself/etc". This is close to 1), without the Cartesianism, I think.
3) to view Being-with as an aspect of Dasein's existence structure that leaves much to be desired in the explaining-subjectivity/sense-through-others-department (can't believe I just wrote that). Heidegger's existential-ontological analysis of what it is to be a human-being does not A) satisfactorily ground nor account for a vast array of different ontical contexts that Dasein can find itself in or B) give us any interesting or advancing insight into the more specific structure of many ontical contexts so as to tell us something important about them. "Ontological structures and substructures" such as spatiality and Being-with don't tell us much of anything interesting or relevant about many ontical contexts.
Am I understanding you?
One thing I would say to
Quoting fdrake
is that your concern seems to apply more so to Dasein's lostness in the-they or Dasein's leaping-in than to Being-with as such. Being-with is Dasein's always-already a priori immersed engagement with Others in solicitous concern - the social understanding that co-constitutes Dasein's embeddedness - which makes possible my way of encountering or interpreting things, myself, people, etc as this or that. The fact that Dasein is for the most part inauthentic/fallen doesn't seem like it could tell us much about any of those ontical contexts other than "Dasein listens to what 'they' say", and so we are left wanting more. Though Being-with seems like it gives us enough of a general structure of Dasein's engagement to tell us something relevant/interesting about most ontical contexts. Not sure though.
Also, that, if I am understanding you correctly, is a problem I have with the Later Heidegger when he seems to explain all of the world's problem on the fact that we have forgotten Being. That definitely seems unsatisfying.
Might you have/know of a specific example that might more clearly explain why there is reason to believe that Being-with doesn't cut it? Really interesting.
I'm sure there are more than 3 ways to do it, but those 3 jumped out at me. The first two were things I've seen before on the internet, the last one is me wrestling with some discomfort I've grown to have with Heidegger's thought since I stopped seriously studying him.
Quoting Dan123
Yeah, I think that's pretty close to what I intended with the first subargument. If you start an analysis of human being from the perspective of a knowing subject and known objects you end up missing a lot. So what I tried to do here is frame solipsism as arising from (what Heidegger thinks) is a Cartesian outlook on human being; as a subject with its 'internal' properties - seemings/sensations - and objects with their 'external' properties -density, luminescence, colour etc-. Then I applied an abbreviated form of Heidegger's critique of Descartes to the idea. Which I think pulls out the rug from under the feet of people who would claim Heidegger is solipsistic in this way.
SEP has a very good exegesis of Heidegger's critique of Descartes here, but it might be more useful as a consolidation for someone who is already comfortable with the vocabulary. Its key quote is:
[quote=Heidegger, (Being and Time 34: 207)]What we ‘first’ hear is never noises or complexes of sounds, but the creaking waggon, the motor-cycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling… It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to ‘hear’ a ‘pure noise’. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside ‘sensations’; nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide a springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a ‘world’. Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood.
[/quote]
The references I was making to the private language argument are really for @Banno, who is a big fan of Wittgenstein but thinks that Heidegger's phenomenology is solipsistic. I didn't develop the reference much, it was more of a signpost to mark that Heidegger's account of being-with is very consistent with the semantic externalism that comes from Wittgenstein's private language argument. And such externalism is a pretty good answer to solipsism - which minimally claims that 'it's all in the head'.
Quoting Dan123
I think that's a good summary of the distinction between private and personal. That what's personal is still lit up upon a shared background is part of being-with. Whatever we do is always social, and the structures of the world are shared. Again, this has a symmetry with Wittgenstein's conceptions of rule following and externalist consequences of the private language argument:
[quote=SEP, Article on Wittgenstein]Directly following the rule-following sections in PI, and therefore easily thought to be the upshot of the discussion, are those sections called by interpreters “the private-language argument”. Whether it be a veritable argument or not (and Wittgenstein never labeled it as such), these sections point out that for an utterance to be meaningful it must be possible in principle to subject it to public standards and criteria of correctness. For this reason, a private-language, in which “words … are to refer to what only the speaker can know—to his immediate private sensations …” (PI 243), is not a genuine, meaningful, rule-governed language. The signs in language can only function when there is a possibility of judging the correctness of their use, “so the use of [a] word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands” (PI 261).[/quote]
which is from here. Being-with has a normative dimension which operates upon the background of shared meanings (linguistic or expressive patterns) and a shared structure of the world. This is why I tried to frame being-with as sociality outside of the Heidegger jargon. I thought that framing it as sociality would achieve three things:
(1) Everything about meaning occurs socially and comes with a normative component.
(2) Sociality occurs at the same time as we do stuff, even in the absence of others; it's a capacity we're always exercising.
(3) If we didn't have the potential to be social in this way, we wouldn't have any social phenomena to begin with.
(1) and (2) link it to the previously referenced semantic externalism, (3) goes a little deeper into the account and references the distinction between sense and intelligibility; we make sense of the world in the same sort of ways because we inhabit the same world and understand that world in the same sorts of ways.
So onto the final subargument, (3).
Quoting Dan123
I think of my third subargument as a kind of 'master criticism' of Heidegger that all my other discomforts with his metaphysics fall under. I think it is true that Heidegger passes over the richness of things which are 'merely ontic', but the main thrust of my criticism is that this is a necessary feature of his methodology rather than an incidental one, and that this stops him from seeing how some 'merely ontic' phenomena actually take part in the ontology of human being.
The story I'm trying to tell here is that there are some really glaring omissions from his phenomenology; there's the body, there's human development, there's parts of the everyday which have huge consequences for the understanding of human being like the workday and fatigue. These are incidental features in Heidegger's phenomenology; their specifities get absorbed by the features of facticity.
The workday, for example, is fundamentally a thrown-ness disclosed through varying dispositions rather than one of the biggest constraints on human activity with its own character. You can say the same about an illness - say broken legs, it'll change the phenomena which realise thrown-ness and projection but you won't notice that distances expand, it brings about conflict in your identity (say if you do sports) etc. This doesn't even begin to deal with the changes brought about in people's lives when they have kids, have chronic mental illness and so on.
The only way you're going to incorporate such things into the ontology of human being is through comparative accounts. You can't get at this stuff through raw formal indication and recursive interpretation - you have to treat people's bodies, moods, illnesses, lives as ontical experiments just as much as you posit human being in general as the subject for analysis to get at human being more thoroughly.
This is why I said such things can only be gotten at comparatively; the structural (ontic) ways human beings differ is just as important as their constitution ceteris paribus for the ontology of human being.
Yes, it is :)
This "with" has an instrumental character.
I think the solipsist could say that 1) is actually a misrepresentation on your part. I think they could say that your critique of 1), ultimately, misses the point. The solipsist could say he can overcome 1). To do so, he could grant that, yes, Dasein is not a present-at-hand entity; Dasein is fundamentally not an inner, mental I-Thing containing categorical properties such as sensation-al representations or mental pictures that may or may not correspond to objective, property-laden, present-at-hand objects on the 'outside.' The solipsist can admit that, yes, Dasein is worldy, Dasein is existence, Dasein is a being in-the-world, Dasein is thrown into context, Dasein is for the most part absorbed through skills and knowing-how, Dasein for the most part encounters equipment and dwells in a with-world, Dasein is temporal, Dasein does not first "have to give shape to the swirl of sensations" in order to "leap off and finally arrive at a 'world', and so on. The solipsist can admit "yes, Heidegger is not a Cartesian solipsist - Heidegger is not denying the existence of any substance that is not me - but, he is a solipsist insofar as the entities encountered, the world itself, and the "transcendental generality" that constitutes the structure of the ways I understand and navigate my lifeworld is not only always-already 'in terms of my concerns and goals', but given to or constitutive of the Being of the entity that I am and only of the entity that I am. The Others I encounter are not in-themselves-other-Dasein, they are projected from me and by me, and as such, given to me alone. Ergo, not "to be is to be perceived" but 'to be' is 'to enter within the range of the intelligibility that I - as a finite, temporal, world-embedded disclosure - essentially am'. So, on this idealist (more so than solipsist) interpretation, one avoids falling into the subject-object relation/Cartesian representationalism/an ontology of the present-at-hand while precluding the possibility of the 'existence' of any other Dasein that either transcends the horizon of my intelligibility, dwells within my horizon, or co-constitutes the horizon to which I belong to and essentially am.
^This way of avoiding your critique is not overcome by turning to 2), I think. The fact that I am always-already involved in anything and everything that I am always-already involved in - the fact the world is always-already a world for-me or 'in terms of myself in one way or another' - does not, on its own, entail solipsism or idealism. One must take the additional step to say that 'the Others encountered within-the-world are not Other Dasein: they are subjective manifestations ultimately reducible to myself' which would mean that 'Being-with is merely the structure of how I relate and understand social relations but not how I access or relate to other real people." But this additional step is what is already presupposed by the solipsist's/idealist's argument in the preceding paragraph. Does it have a slight Cartesian flavor to it? - maybe I'm not sure. Though I am not sure you can just right that critique off by saying it's grounded in the subject-object relation and use that as a trump card to reject it, since it accepts most (and enough) of the non-present-at-hand-ness of what Heidegger is arguing for.
So, I think, the only way to really take down the solipsist/idealist is to say both that the entities encountered within-the-world are not subjectively constructed phenomena and that Being-in-the-world itself is not a 'projected-by-me-and-only-me meaning making capacity or activity.' You have to say that the entities in the world are the things-themselves disclosed to me but not reducible to me. I can only access, grasp, or make sense of that which discursively and hermeneutically enters within the range of the socially-shared world to which I constitutively belong. The world is public, literally co-constituted by multiple Dasein's who are each immersed in the world. That which does not enter within the range of the world to which I belong and the possibilities that I understand in terms of is not accessible to me and as such remains "hidden" or "concealed". Being always exceeds my grasp. Being-with is my always-already immersion in a co-opened or public world. So, a
strand of non-Cartesian, interpretive realism. I think.
Quoting fdrake
Ok so your main beef with Heidegger is, not only that his existential-ontological analysis can't account for many ontical contexts, but more so that he considers many aspects of life/what it is to be human to be 'ontic' that are in fact ontological and as such necessarily constitutive of life/everyday life/etc. In a sense I think I agree with you on the body: it seems that the body is for the most part always-already 'linked up with the whole of me' as I engage in milieus of meaning. If the world is opened up to me in such a way, my body automatically operates within the understanding that it helps to co-constitute, I guess. Though I think, for Heidegger at least, cases like broken-legs or the workday are for the most part already covered by the ontological analysis: a broken-leg disclosed as "broken" or how a broken-leg effects my self-identity is grounded on my-self understanding that is already in turns of mood-related and socially-constituted possibilities that I project and am thrown into. The workday can be explained as what it is by the web of spatial and social referential structures to which I am embedded and understand my workday through.
^Though I think I see your point. It would take a more refined and detailed analysis which could include comparing different contexts to illuminate their meaning in order to examine whether or not they should be included in the fundamental analysis of what it is to be human. The crux is that you would have to show why what Heidegger considers ontic is actually ontological - constitutive of Dasein's disclosedness itself. Seems like we'd need to more about a method - comparative or not - for doing this. Good stuff though.
In Being and Time, Heidegger says
"Dasein in itself is essentially Being-with."
"Being-with is an existential characteristic of Dasein"
"Being missing and ‘Being away’ are modes of Dasein-with, and are possible only because Dasein as Being-with lets the Dasein of Others be encountered in its world."
"Being-with is in every case a characteristic of one’s own Dasein;"
"Being-with, like concern, is a Being towards entities encountered within-the-world...These entities are not objects of concern, but rather of solicitude... Solicitude proves to be a state of Dasein’s Being."
"Being-in is Being-with... Dasein’s ownmost meaning of Being is such that this entity (which has been freed environmentally) is Being-in."
"So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being."
Checkmate.
I explicitly anticipated this kind of response in my post, though it was a long post so it's understandable it wasn't a particularly memorable part. But I'll use that you picked up on the theme to give some more elaboration of my point.
What I already wrote:
Quoting fdrake
You played the agglomerative part out exactly here:
This is pretty much what I'm pointing out. When you have a how question, the Heideggerian response is to immediately to give its transcendental preconditions without batting an eyelid on the more mechanistic/procedural aspects of the question. If you will allow a change in vocabulary, I think of it like: saying that X is grounded in Y is saying that Y is (a) condition of possibility for X (or that they are co-primordial). But! X being grounded in Y should contain an account of how X is grounded in Y as a procedural component of an entity's behaviour. Heidegger, and Heideggerian analysis, very rarely actually does this.
So, a question like - how does a broken leg impact a person's life? It's answered just like you did: we've already taken this into account with the thrown-ness/disposition couple. Ontologically sure, Heidegger's doing the job as he sees it well - ontically that's just saying 'a person's got a broken leg and it effects them somehow'. The epoche Heidegger performs on the ontic makes it very difficult to ask this kind of question.
Maybe the epoche is fine, but the recursive exposition (hermeneutic spiral/circle) he does needs to permit of taking comparatives or ontic differences as a theme, which is a bit of a change from the 'first philosophy' feel of pre-turn Heidegger.
And asking this kind of question is really important, it opens up questions of comparative differences in Daseins - for example, people with broken legs or chronic mobility issues evaluate distances differently from those who are closer to the every-day Dasein. Is this a mere ontical difference, or does the fact that human senses of spatiality differ over individuals highlight a weakness in dealing with humanity only as far as the analysis of a strictly generic individual (which never actually exists)?
The thinking of being is just as much the thinking of beings as of being alone.
Or, just for shits and giggles: Being being beings is being being.
I understand that you are criticizing Heidegger's transcendentalism. I get that. By writing what I wrote there, I did not mean to say that your critique neither understands Heidegger's way of grounding the phenomena nor anticipates a transcendental rebuttal; it clearly does: Heidegger's transcendental arguments are the very thing you are reacting to. My reason for briefly articulating an example of how Heidegger grounds the phenomena was to more-explicitly present the standard general way Heidegger's transcendental account is applied to different ontic examples. I did this in order to briefly highlight some of the specific transcendental arguments that your critique would specifically have to deal with in order to overcome Heidegger's transcendental grounding. I got that you probably already understood this, I just wanted to make it a little more explicit in order to bring it to the fore of the conversation. Make sense? So I wasn't pushing back against your critique at all. Though I see how it might have seemed that I was.
However, now after reading your last post, I will push back, though really only for the purposes of gaining clarity and getting more straighten out.
Quoting fdrake
I think you right here: the formal ontological conditions of ontical contexts cannot give us an explanation of an understanding/explanation of ontical contexts. So I agree with you when you say "the formal character of [insert existentiale or structure of Dasein's Being here] does little to facilitate the understanding of [insert ontical context here]." I mean, of course. But nobody claims that, for example, "the formal character of facticity tells us something about the understanding of how the workday effects people." That's why it's a formal structure of Dasein's Being. Throwness, fallenness, projection etc. are the general conditions. They are formal indicators of things more specific. That which a formal indicator (such as projection) is standing-in-for is, at least for Heidegger, what explains/conditionalizes anything ontical. So when you say
Quoting fdrake
my response is, no it doesn't. Aren't you skipping over existetiell possibilities, specific moods, particular involvement structures, etc? Heidegger isn't saying "The general structure of Dasein's Being itself can adequately facilitate an understanding of the ontic." Of course there is more specificity to understanding particular ontic contexts: one lives their life in terms of specific possibilities, one is thrown in a specific world, things are disclosed through particular ways of understanding, existential space is configured in particular ways etc. Heidegger understands this. So, yes if Quoting fdrake, then Quoting fdrake
But not when Y is the general structure.
But it seems that your argument misses this point, I think.
So when I said
I did not mean to say that "broken-legs can be understood merely through understanding the general structure of what it is to be Dasein." Heidegger would not say that either. I have to be concernfully engaged comporting myself towards the future in specific ways within a specific milieu of meaning in order to open up a space such that my broken-leg as my broken-leg is disclosed. So there is a specific story that has to filled in here that the general structure alone can't provide us, and Heidegger recognizes that. What am I missing here?
Maybe I'm missing your point completely: maybe your point is this:
if we start with a particular ontical context, and then cite the general transcendental conditions that make ontical context possible, there is no way to make known or explicitly get at the specific existentiell possibilities, involvement structures, specific ways of being concernfully engaged, specific moods that disclose things as that ontic context, etc so as to explain what the specific meaning or Being of that particular ontic context/event/occurence/entity is. Heidegger's analysis gives no criterion for determining these specificities given that all we have to work with is a particular ontic context and the general transcendental structure of Dasein. So even though a strict-Heideggerian explains the broken-leg example in terms of the general structure of Dasein, he still hasn't explained with enough specificity. While Heidegger does not deny that there is such specificity, he doesn't give a clear or satisfactory method to explicitly get at it. AHHH interesting.
Though, doesn't Heidegger's talk of the hermeneutical situation and the fore-structures of understanding fill that role?
Or are you saying that even if we knew that specificity, we still wouldn't be able to account for certain ontical contexts, such as "how a broken leg affects one's life"?
Am I understanding you?
Also, Are most people on this forum grad students/philosophy students/professors, etc? People who just enjoy philosophy? Both?
I think this is close to what I meant, but articulated much better. I'll try and build on it. But at a later date. This is fun, thanks. :)
Quoting Dan123
There's a mix. Most of the long term members have been studying philosophy as a hobby for a long time, AFAIK practicing philosophers are pretty rare on here. But also AFAIK there are quite a lot of people who studied philosophy, at least a little, at university. If you're interested in Heidegger or Wittgenstein people here are generally motivated to discuss and quite well informed on either or both - you just happened to strike upon an interest in Heidegger scholarship shared by a fair few regular members.