H eidegger, Sociality, and Human Agency

According to H eidegger's B eing and T ime , social relations are constitutive of the core features of human agency. On this view, which I call a ‘strong conception’ of sociality, the core features of human agency cannot obtain in an individual subject independently of social relations to others. I explain the strong conception of sociality captured by H eidegger's underdeveloped notion of ‘being‐with’ by reconstructing H eidegger's critique of the ‘weak conception’ of sociality characteristic of K ant's theory of agency. According to a weak conception, sociality is a mere aggregation of individual subjects and the core features of human agency are built into each individual mind. The weak conception of sociality remains today widely taken for granted. I show that C hristine K orsgaard, one of the most creative contemporary appropriators of K ant, operates with a weak conception of sociality and that this produces a problematic explanatory deficiency in her view: she is unable to explain the peculiar motivational efficacy of shared social norms. H eidegger's view is tailor made to explain this phenomenon. I end by sketching how H eidegger provides a social explanation of a major systematic concern animating K orsgaard, the concern with the importance of individual autonomy and answerability in human life.