Re: (++) Shoes and people


Tom says:

"I think it's important that still, even as he moves into the "poetic",
in TOWA concerning the shoes, the shoes are understood in terms of work,
lonliness and work. From the workshop examples, the "hammer" onward,
Heidegger really fails, I think, to open up the primary space of the
social world."

Yes, I would agree; and I think this is one of the several major
differences between Heidegger and Sartre. For Sartre, instrumentality,
as part of the meaning of an object, is not given beforehand, but is
contingent upon one's project. If there is a social source, it is one
that is always in question, precisely through the individual's choice
of a project, which includes the way in which one includes others, and
sees oneself seen by them. While he couches this (one's
Being-for-others) in terms of antagonism, anxiety, or shame, this is
essentially for the sake of example, in order to make the structure of
what he is looking at clear. But the structure that he describes has
plenty of room for the "gentler" feelings, and opens itself to all the
intentions the peasant woman might have toward or with respect to whom
she is returning to across the fields. In a sense, Sartre does not
leave room for considering an object (like shoes) authentic -- arrived
at when the peasant woman does not think about them as she walks.
Authenticity accrues to the project itself, which gives the shoes and
other things their meaning, within that authenticity. For Sartre, one
chooses authenticity (or not) in and among one's relations to others;
on Heidegger's account, authenticity accrues by following his
(Heidegger's) project, of letting being be, of gelassenheit. When you
say that Heidegger's account fails at this point that the Mitsein does
not include that sense of going to the world of others, of one's
primary relationships, I think you are suggesting Sartre's argument.

Martinot



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