Abstract
I argue that, for Heidegger, to be a self is to be a particular way of making some environmental affordances stand out as more salient than other, and of aligning affordances into coherent trajectories to be followed in pursuing our projects. When Heidegger argues that the self of everyday existence is “the anyone-self,” he means that we tend to polarize situations into affordances that solicit us to act in such a way as to reinforce public, average, and levelled down ways of engaging with the world.
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Notes
- 1.
“The self of everyday existence (Daseins) is the anyone-self, who we distinguish from the authentic self, which is to say, from the self apprehended in its own way” (BT 129). All parenthetical references in this paper refer to the page numbers in the 1953 German edition of Sein und Zeit. These page numbers (or close approximations to them) are found in the margins of both English language translations of Being and Time (Heidegger 1962 and Heidegger 2010), as well as in the margins of the Gesamtausgabe edition of Sein und Zeit (Heidegger 1977). Translations of Sein und Zeit are either my own, or modified versions of Heidegger 1962.
- 2.
See, for example, the case of “Assassin,” discussed in Fischer and Ravizza 1998, 29 ff., or the 2014 remake of the movie Robocop.
- 3.
You can, however, buy a kit online to build a remote-controlled cyborg cockroach. See Schupak 2012.
- 4.
Sartre holds that there are other aspects to our nothingness as well. He thought, for instance, that in identifying myself as someone – in terms of a certain social role, for instance – the very act involves a gap between the self forming the self-conception and the self as the object of the self conception. Thus, he argued that to even aspire to sincerity – to being simply and purely what I am now – is a particularly pernicious form of bad faith, since it fails to recognize that the self aspiring to be sincere is not purely and simply who it now is.
- 5.
Of course, Heidegger’s analysis can have implications for a philosophy of culture, even if Heidegger himself has no aspirations to such a philosophy. For instance, Heidegger readily acknowledges not just that there is a kind of ethical obligation to take over the task of being an own self (that is, of owning oneself), but also that there is considerable historical and cultural variation in the “forcefulness and explicitness” (Eindringlichkeit und Ausdrücklichkeit) with which the anyone rules over our existence (BT 129). Thus the pervasiveness of this “not-myself” phenomenon could be one metric with which one might try to judge different cultures.
- 6.
That is, (fictional) cases where I am no longer myself because I find myself inhabiting a new body – perhaps, the body of a parrot.
- 7.
- 8.
Other variants of this approach to the self are Mark Johnston’s “arena of presence and action” (Johnston 2011, 137) and Dan Zahavi’s “experiential self” (Zahavi 2015). Heidegger’s relationship to this concept of a pure ego is nuanced and subtle. He sees it as a correct way of “prescribing the direction” for an inquiry into the self, but criticizes it for its tendency to promote a view of the I or self as an occurrent entity. See Being and Time, §64.
- 9.
Different narrative theories ground their account in different I-candidates. Some theories, for instance, see the narrative self as a particular kind or shape of self-consciousness – hence, a version of a type-2 account. Others see the narrative self as a certain psychological capacity for creating narratives – hence, a version of a type-4 account. Yet others see the narrative self as a practical self (type-5), but emphasize that filling a practical role involves bearing a certain diachronic narrative structure: having a back story, filling a social role, and aiming toward certain ends or goals. For an excellent overview of narrative theories of the self, see Schechtman 2011.
- 10.
I suspect that William Blattner, Taylor Carman, and John Richardson approach the anyone-self in such psychological terms. Carman argues that the anyone-self is a self that “conform[s] appropriately to anonymously instituted social norms.” (Carman 2003, 139) Along similar lines, Blattner explains that the anyone-self is the self that is “completely subject to social normativity” (Blattner 2006, 72). When I am an anyone-self, Richardson argues, “I identify myself with . . . not my ends, and not my moods, but the community of talkers around me. In the everyday form of talk I identify and align myself with this social group. I defer to the meanings its words put on the things I encounter. I interpret myself as an average member of this group, as das Man myself. And insofar as I do so, my self is a das Man self” (Richardson 2012, 117–8). That means, Richardson elaborates, that “I mean things simply as the community means: I mean them using its words, and I defer to the meanings it puts on those words” (Richardson 2016, 352). In each case, what makes me an anyone-self is my adoption of the beliefs, desires, feelings, goals, etc., held by other members of my community.
- 11.
In certain circumstances, however, the intimate relationship between a practical identity and a psychological self can come apart. One finds oneself committed to playing a practical role for which one is dispositionally or attitudinally unsuited. Take for instance Tomas Ericsson in Bergman’s Winter Light, whose social role and practical identity as a pastor requires him to provide spiritual guidance to Jonas Persson, a suicidal parishioner. But Ericsson, himself struggling with despair, finds himself psychologically unable to do so when it “suddenly hits him” that life (with all its cruelty, suffering, loneliness, and fear) makes a lot more sense if there is no God. Pastor Ericsson’s psychological traits and social roles have, in that moment, come apart.
- 12.
- 13.
See, for example, Heidegger 1975, 233.
- 14.
See, for example, Heidegger 1975, 432: “Das Bewendenlassen als das vorgängige Verstehen von Bewandtnis läßt das Seiende allererst als das Seiende, das es ist, d. h. im Blick auf sein Sein verstehen.”
- 15.
An affordance, in other words, is always with something. In Heidegger’s jargon, an affordance is always for (bei) something, and with (mit) something: “within the affordance is: letting use for something with something” (BT 83). The clearest example Heidegger offers is that of the hammer: “what we call a hammer,” Heidegger explains, “has an affordance (Bewandtnis) for hammering, with hammering, it has an affordance for fastening, with fastening, it has an affordance for protection from the weather.”
- 16.
“It is precisely when we see the ‘world’ unsteadily and fitfully in accordance with our moods, that the available shows itself in its specific worldhood, which is never the same from day to day” (BT 138).
- 17.
“Disclosedness […] concerns equiprimordially the world, being-in, and the Self” (Erschlossenheit . . . betrifft gleichursprünglich die Welt, das In-Sein und das Selbst.) (BT 220).
- 18.
Division One, Chapter IV: “Being-in-the-world as being-with and being-a-self. The ‘anyone’”. Heidegger returns repeatedly to the theme of selfhood at various points in Division Two, including §64 “Care and selfhood.”
- 19.
The idea of polarizing affordances in particular, and my reading of Heidegger’s account of selfhood in general, is influenced and inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s account of être au monde – itself an interpretation and elaboration of Heidegger’s notion of the self as a being-in-the-world (Merleau-Ponty 2012, 115/143).
- 20.
“Existence ‘clears away,’” Heidegger says, “insofar as it factically exists” (BT 299).
- 21.
And whether there is or not stability or constancy in any given instance is an open question (see, e.g., BT 117). Authenticity, Heidegger argues, involves achieving the right kind of stability or constancy in the self – “the ‘self-constancy’ of the existing self” (BT 303). This constancy is achieved in resoluteness.
- 22.
Heidegger recognizes a considerable degree of historical and cultural variation in the forcefulness, extent, and explicitness of these tendencies. Some ages and cultures are more public and more conformist or “anyone-ish” than others.
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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Post-Kantian Seminar at Oxford University, at Conventionalism: Heidegger’s “Anyone” and Contemporary Social Theory, and at the 2016 meeting of the American Society for Existential Phenomenology, held at Franklin & Marshall University. I’m grateful to the participants at those events for their probing questions and insightful suggestions. Particularly deserving of thanks are Joseph Schear, Hans Bernhard Schmid, Gerhard Thonhauser, Taylor Carman, John Richardson, and Wayne Martin. Thanks are also due to an anonymous referee. While I have not been able to answer all their questions to my satisfaction, I have no doubt that this is a stronger paper as a result of their objections.
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Wrathall, M.A. (2017). Who is the Self of Everyday Existence?. In: Schmid, H., Thonhauser, G. (eds) From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2_2
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