Abstract
In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson (2012) in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger’s account of ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time. They have criticized his account for a lack of attention to primary intersubjectivity, or immediate, face-to-face interactions; he favours, they argue, embodied interactions via objects. I argue that the same assumption underlies their argument as did earlier critiques of a lack of an account of the body in Heidegger (e.g. Sartre 1989; Krell 1992); namely that because the body is not explicitly discussed in Being and Time, embodiment, rather than stressing the immediacy of experience, is insufficiently acknowledged in his emphasis on ‘being-in-the-world’. Through placing Gallagher and Jacobson’s accounts of intersubjectivity and the body alongside Heidegger’s accounts of Mitsein and Leib, this article shows Heidegger’s radical position on the body as immersed in a holistic environment, and its reverberations on his account of intersubjectivity. I argue that Dasein’s embodied engagement in the world is always one of immediacy and that the body of the other is perceived as ‘tied into’ its context, as well. In so doing, I offer an Heideggerian account of ecstatic involvement which moves away from the distinction between primary and secondary intersubjectivity toward an immediate engagement with objects and people always already ‘tied into’ a context; an account that, through the concept of Fürsorge, includes shifts of attention between objects and people that allow for the ethical distinctions Gallagher and Jacobson are looking for.
Highlights
In this article, I respond to important questions raised by Gallagher and Jacobson (2012) in the field of cognitive science about face-to-face interactions in Heidegger’s account of ‘intersubjectivity’ in Being and Time
Heidegger reacted to this criticism by stating that his idea of the body should not be seen in the light of a dichotomy between body and mind and that he was not talking about an object called body (Körper) but rather a living body open to the world (Leib) (2001, p. 89–90)
If there is anything like secondary intersubjectivity in Heidegger, in which others are mediated through objects, this secondary intersubjectivity marks a step back from our fundamental embodied existence in the world
Summary
In Being and Time Heidegger argues that Dasein is always already in the world and that we are, always already surrounded by objects. As Cerbone (2000) and Overgaard (2004) amongst others have argued, such a discussion of the body’s functioning as proposed by Krell removes this body from the world it is engaged in, by putting attention to the arm rather than the hammering.. As Cerbone (2000) and Overgaard (2004) amongst others have argued, such a discussion of the body’s functioning as proposed by Krell removes this body from the world it is engaged in, by putting attention to the arm rather than the hammering.6 It turns the arm into an objective thing—what Heidegger calls Vorhandenheit [objective presence]—or at least into the object of our objectifying thought, and delineates the body from consciousness, bringing us back to the Cartesian dichotomy between body and mind that Heidegger is trying to overcome. The Cartesian dichotomy that Heidegger is overcoming is that between body and mind, and that between the (embodied) subject and their environment (see Wheeler 2005, p. 22–23)
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