Being And Time

It is tempting to read Heidegger’s discussion of the “they” in Chapter 4 in cultural, psychological, or political terms, as these are the categories through which we usually think about notions of conformity and individuality. A “society” or “culture” is thought, standardly, to establish certain values and related models for living. For example, there is a model for how “one” should live that involves a career, a mortgage, marriage, and children. There are rewards for conformity to these goals and the broader ways of being connected to them. So, there is the obvious instrumental—material and sexual—advantage to not deviating from accepted norms. There is also the deeper psychological advantage. We are, to use Heidegger’s term, “disburdened” (165), from anxiety about the way we should be living and the meaningfulness of this. We can feel secure, and re-assured, for having successfully fulfilled a certain socially accepted role.

Such analyses, however, do not quite capture what Heidegger has in mind here. While, they admit of degrees of sophistication, as seen in the work of Marcuse and Adorno on mass culture, and can certainly be salutary, they do not sit well with Heidegger’s claim that his interpretation of the “they” “is purely ontological in its aims, and is far removed from any moralizing critique of everyday Dasein” (211). Rather, for Heidegger, the nature of the they, and our fallenness in it, follows from our being-in-the-world. It is the structure of the public world of equipment that necessarily sets this up, not any reflective societal “values” or models for living—nor is it primarily connected to contingent psychological or material incentives for adhering to these.

Further, the element of being-in-the-world that does this is social absorption. As Heidegger says, “In utilizing public means of transport and in making use of information services such as the newspaper, every Other Dasein is like the next” (164). In other words, it is not just that other Dasein are implicitly constitutive of my use of equipment and the broader world. It is also that the public world implies, at least to some extent, a generic Dasein. The sign directing me where to stand on the platform, for instance, makes sense because it is directed towards any English speaker, and follower of rules, whatsoever. In this way, and to the degree that I am engaged in such activity, I become like everyone, and anyone, else.

Nevertheless, as discussed, such a structure does not exclude altogether the possibility of individuality. Nor does it imply an absolute absorption in the public world. As said, it is possible to have different relations to this aspect of the world, and to others more generally. This is achieved via an understanding of the varying ways and degrees to which we can become absorbed in the world, and the general nature of that absorption. The question Heidegger has not explicitly addressed is how such understanding is to come about, or not. Heidegger will only show how this is fully possible in later chapters. Still, we can, provisionally, draw a comparison with his initial analysis of equipment and the “breakdown” to provide some clues. We can also consider the situation where this does not occur.

Our relation to the public world can be, and is, sometimes interrupted, or it can contain tensions, or lacunas. Imagine a shop. In it the shopkeeper relates to you entirely as a customer, and you to her entirely in her role as the proprietor. Then you both notice something. It could be a strange turn of phrase, or the peculiar way she said, “Good afternoon,” but with it, the familiar, and totally unquestioned relation between you and this shop is temporarily and minutely disrupted. For a split second, the shopkeeper is a specific human being and not just a function of her social role. Something uncanny like this can, if properly grasped, be the basis for a breakdown in, and hence our understanding of, our absorption in the public world. Similarly, the broken computer revealed my absorption in the task of writing.

On the other hand, imagine a person who never experiences such disruptions in the ordinary flow of life, or someone who never notices or lets things like that disturb them. We might say that such a person lives in total harmony with the world. They simply do not experience this tension or uncanniness in relation to the familiar, or its breakdown. Thus, they understand nothing of it. As Heidegger says, “In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the ‘they’ is unfolded” (164). Totally oblivious, their absorption in the world then becomes absolute. It spreads to all areas of life. It is there in their romantic relations, and time with spent with friends, just as much as in their overtly public role at work. Returning to the point, this type of life shows how Heidegger understands the character of the “they” as ontological. It is something in which one’s distinctive relation to the world, and hence individuality, is entirely lost. It is also something that will take more than good intensions or social critique to remedy.