Fred Dallmayr: The Odyssey of Reconciling Reason

Abstract

In Twilight of Subjectivity (1981) Fred Dallmayr plots a course which takes him through an unbelievably productive period from 1981 to the present. I propose to honor Professor Dallmayr, whose uncanny ability has manifested itself in an attempt to rethink the post-enlightenment tradition, by following his work of this period through a series of reflections that begin with Hegel and end with Heidegger. In Twilight of Subjectivity, Dallmayr makes the argument that we are "be? yond possessive individualism" (Dallmayr, 1981, p. 8). Although Nozick's entitlement theory and Sartre's early writings are said to be representative of possessive individualism, critiques by Voegelin, Althusser, Foucault and Derrida set the stage for a kind of postor anti-humanism which transforms the very idea of what it is to be human. Dallmayr, rather than being a strict antihumanist, wants to have a deflated concept of human beings; not a "master of reality" but rather, following Heidegger, a "shepherd of being." Merleau Ponty, Adorno and, above all, Heidegger substantiate this view. Dallmayr wants to establish an idea of intersubjectivity "once the subject is removed from the cornerstone of social analysis." He argues that a reinterpreted un? derstanding of Mitsein will provide the basis for this view. Here, the crux of the argument is to show that L?with and Theunissen are essentially wrong in their egological interpretations of the early Heidegger. The later Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Luk?cs and Adorno are brought to the fore to support this argument. The discussion ends with a typology of modes of sociality including communalism, association, movement and community. This reconstructed view of intersubjectivity will lead to a different view of the relationship between human beings and nature, reflecting Marx's view of the humanization of nature and the naturalization of man. Here Dallmayr relies on Derrida and Ricoeur to provide him with a non-teleological un? derstanding of the relationship between human beings and nature. From this analysis it is concluded that we can get another understanding of politics and the good life.