Relationality and Commitment: Ethics and Ontology in Heidegger's Aristotle. Issue 50 (2nd October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Knudsen, Nicolai Krejberg
• Is Part Of: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. Issue 50:Number 4(2019)
• Page Start: 337
• Page End: 357
• Publication Date: 2019-10-02
• Subjects: Heidegger -- Aristotle -- ethics -- relationality -- communication -- commitment; Phenomenology -- Periodicals; Fenomenologie; Filosofie; Phénoménologie -- Périodiques; Phenomenology; Periodicals; 142.7
• DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2019.1574218
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0007-1773

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article discusses the tension between social relationality and self-relationality central to Heidegger's ontology of Dasein and the possible ways of reconciling this tension. Arguing that this is a tension between communicability and existential commitments, the article poses the question: How are existential commitments responsive to communication? After problematizing the quasi-Kantian and communitarian ways of settling the tension, the article uses Heidegger's early reading of Aristotle to develop a third hermeneutic model of ethical relationality according to which existential commitments are shareable in communication, since ethos – the existential posture towards the good – arises out of pathos that exposes Dasein to coexistence. The account of ethical relationality found in Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle thus takes the world to be a shared and dynamic ontological condition and emphasize that the world constitutes selfhood in a way that is constantly at stake in ethical communication.