Liberating the Self-Relation from Reification and Alienation: Towards an Appropriative Approach
Abstract:
In my dissertation, I provide an interpretation and defense of Martin Heidegger’s account of selfhood in Being and Time. In particular, I focus on what is widely considered to be the defining feature of selfhood, viz. reflexivity or the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. My central claim is that adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology and that the notion of “self-appropriation” is best capable of capturing the constitutive nature of the social for the self-relation. Hence, in the first two chapters, I establish the foundations of what I call the “appropriative view” through a novel, social philosophical reading of Being and Time. The 3rd and 4th Chapters are devoted to the philosophical defense of the appropriative view by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary Kantian, post-Kantian, and Aristotelian approaches and by showing how its framework can provide a more compelling the basis for the diagnosis and critique of concrete forms of self-reification and alienation in advanced capitalist societies (in particular, I focus on the phenomenology of race/racism and the emotional labour of cruiseship workers in the service economy). The end result is to provide the exegetical and philosophical foundations for a Heideggerian Critical Theory in the spirit of the early Marcuse’s attempt to fuse Marxism with Phenomenology.
Abstract:
In my dissertation, I provide an interpretation and defense of Martin Heidegger’s account of selfhood in Being and Time. In particular, I focus on what is widely considered to be the defining feature of selfhood, viz. reflexivity or the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. My central claim is that adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology and that the notion of “self-appropriation” is best capable of capturing the constitutive nature of the social for the self-relation. Hence, in the first two chapters, I establish the foundations of what I call the “appropriative view” through a novel, social philosophical reading of Being and Time. The 3rd and 4th Chapters are devoted to the philosophical defense of the appropriative view by bringing it into dialogue with contemporary Kantian, post-Kantian, and Aristotelian approaches and by showing how its framework can provide a more compelling the basis for the diagnosis and critique of concrete forms of self-reification and alienation in advanced capitalist societies (in particular, I focus on the phenomenology of race/racism and the emotional labour of cruiseship workers in the service economy). The end result is to provide the exegetical and philosophical foundations for a Heideggerian Critical Theory in the spirit of the early Marcuse’s attempt to fuse Marxism with Phenomenology.
