The Fragile We: Ethical Implications Of Heidegger's "Being and Time" (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) - Softcover

Vogel, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810111403 ISBN 13: 9780810111400

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Critics have charged that Heidegger's account of authenticity is morally nihilistic, that his fundamental ontology is either egocentric or chauvinistic; and many see Heidegger's turn to Nazism in 1933 as following logically from an indifference, and even hostility, to "otherness" in the premises of his early philosophy.

In The Fragile "We": Ethical Implications of Heidegger's "Being and Time," Lawrence Vogel presents three interpretations of authentic existence—the existentialist, the historicist, and the cosmopolitan—each of which is a plausible version of the personal ideal depicted in Being and Time. He then draws parallels between these interpretations and three moments in the contemporary liberal-communitarian debate over the relationship of the "I" and the "We." His book contributes both to a diagnosis of what there is about Being and Time that invites moral nihilism and to a sense of how fundamental ontology might be recast so that "the other" is accorded an appropriate place in an account of human existence.

About this title

About the Author

LAWRENCE VOGEL is assistant professor of philosophy at Connecticut College.

Edition details

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810111403
• ISBN 13: 9780810111400
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 140