Module 9: The Human Person and Their Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity :
“inter” – refers to “between” or “among”
“subjectivity” - refers to a subject’s first person perspective of experience of the world.
- It is the experience of one self-determining entity, that is, a human being,co-constituting
the social interaction with that of another subject.

The three concepts of human reality’s intersubjectivity:

1.1 Man as Being-in-the-World

The human being is the Dasein, which means “Being-there”.

Martin Heidegger – was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to
phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism.
He further claims: Being-in is "the formal existential expression of the being of Dasein,
which has being-in-the-world as its essential state".
Being and Time - the 1927 magnum opus of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a
key document of existentialism.
Dasein – being-there
- Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human
beings.

“The concept of facticity 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

Martin Heidegger argued 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”.

Human existence is manifested by your doing and by your "destiny" to understand that you
are a "being-with" others. “Being-in” is a form of doing. It may be the recognition of the
metaphysical concept that you are a spirit, but the reality is that you are in the world with
others.

1.2 Man as Being-for-Others

In his 1943 book, Being and Nothingness, Jean Paul Sartre explained that it is through the
"other-as-a-look" that the "I" - experiences the self or is revealed.

"Other" is the other conscious for-itself who, like the I or the Being, is a lack of
understanding and knowledge and appropriates one's possibilities.

The I and the Other objectify each other by the act of the "look" because by doing so, the
Other is alienated to transcend its possibilities.

Sartre claimed that when you look at a person, this act of objectification allows you to
capture that person's freedom to be what he or she wants to be. That is, you are limiting a
person's possibilities by a look.
 Sartre argued 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 of intersubjectivity (the human person's ability to empathize) due to
conflict (I against the Other) might be argued through the concept of We.

“In the "We," nobody is the object. The We includes a plurality of subjectives, which
recognize one another as subjectivities. Nevertheless, this recognition is not the object of an
explicit thesis; what is explicitly posited 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 subjectivities is analogous to that of the self-recognition of the
nonthetic consciousness. 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
“The "We" is experienced by a particular consciousness; it is not necessary that all the
patrons at the cafe 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
then We-which, as such, are nevertheless perfectly normal consciousnesses. If this is the case, in
order for a consciousness to get the consciousness of being engaged in a We, it is necessary that
the other consciousnesses which enter into community with it should be first given in some other
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.”
- Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• Through the "We," there is a certain particular experience where the being-for-others reveals
its foundation, but it only happens in special cases. The collective consciousness of treating
others as subject does not happen all the time.

• According to Sartre, the concepts of "Us" and "They" are 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 The situation
involves the I confronting the Other.

• Supposed the Other is looking t the I, then a Third came in and looks at the I. The I feels that
the Other and the Third forms "community" of "They-subject"; the notion of the objectification
of the I never changes.

• 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.

“There is constituted here a metastable state which will soon decompose 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 cannot 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.’’
- Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
What Sartre means is that this relation of being for others change depending on where the look is
directed to. Each look changes the structure of the relation of being-for-others.
“These few remarks do not claim to exhaust the question of the "We." They aim only at
indicating that the experience of the We-subject has no value as a metaphysical revelation; it
depends strictly on the various forms of the for-others and is only an empirical enrichment of
certain of these forms. It is to this fact evidently that we should attribute the extreme instability of
this experience. It comes and disappears capriciously, leaving us in the face of others-as- objects
or else of a "They" who look at us. It appears as a provisional appeasement which is constituted
at the very heart of the conflict, not as a definitive solution of this conflict. We should hope in
vain for a human "we" in which the intersubjective totality would obtain consciousness of itself
as a unified subjectivity.”
- Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
• This Sartrean conception of intersubjectivity reveals that the original relationship is a
conflict. The I and the Other treat each other as object through the "look". For sartre, it is
evident that the "we-subject" has a feature of objectification when the They looks at Us as
Others-as-objects.
• Intersubjectivity happens only when there is no conflict between the “I” and the “Other.”

2.0 Dasein’s Being as Care

Dasein's being-in is what Heidegger called the "disclosedness of Dasein". Man can know the
environment if it is being disclosed to him or her. This care is revealed in different concerns.
These concerns arise from the fact that Dasein finds itself in the world, understands the world,
and expresses its understanding in discourse.
Heidegger names two modes of disclosedness of Dasein's being: affectedness (mood) and
understanding.
"Affectedness is being in a mood or being in an affective 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 delivered
over. I am responsible for what I make of myself, how I exist, which possibilities of being I
realize, but I am not responsible for having this responsibility. I find myself existing and with the
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.”
- Paul Gorner, Heidegger's Being and Time
Dasein is disclosed to itself as itself of being there, in the world. Being-in-the-world, or
transcendence, is a condition of the possibility of intentionality. Only an essentially mooded
being can have a world and be "in" the world. Such affection cannot be reduced to objects having
a causal impact on the organs of sense.
The possibility of intersubjectivity in Heidegger's being disclosed is affectedness or being-in-the-
mood to be affected by other entities (ontical), including other Daseins (ontological). The
possibility of 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 expressions of this mental life-in texts, works of art,
institutions and so on. Understanding as a mode of disclosedness is not an ability but a way in
which Dasein is. As repeatedly expressed, being-in is engaging or being disclosed or revealed.
Dasein knows itself as Dasein as it is disclosed. Since it is not a simple ability, Dasein, in its
understanding, understands its own being as existing.”
- Gorner, Heidegger's Being and Time

It is through active engagement or

doing with things, objects, and/or
people that we find meaning in our
existence.

Heidegger's concept of Dasein as care exposes Dasein as 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, understanding contains within itself the possibility of development, in the
sense of the appropriation of what is understood in understanding.

3.0 Man as a Historical Being

As Gorner pointed out, "Human beings are historical beings in the sense that each of us has a
history. We belong to communities which themselves have a history." 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 form 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
ontological 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 possibility of both of these things.”
- Paul Gorner, Heidegger's Being and Time
Dasein has a past. When Dasein projects its possibilities into the future, part of it is the past that
has been inherited.
“Dasein as such is determined by tradition, but it can also "explicitly pursue" tradition. "The
discovery of tradition and the disclosure of what it 'transmits' and how this is 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.”
- Paul Gorner, Heidegger's Being and Time
Dasein as a product of history will be able to disclose itself to itself on the grounds of its
temporality together with the temporality of other Daseins. It will be able to engage itself of its
past that will push it forward to its possibilities in the future. It is, as stated, going backward and
forward because temporality is part of the nature of Dasein.