Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

ISSN: 0007-1773 (Print) 2332-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbsp20

Relationality and Commitment: Ethics and

Ontology in Heidegger's Aristotle

Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen

To cite this article: Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen (2019): Relationality and Commitment: Ethics
and Ontology in Heidegger's Aristotle, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, DOI:
10.1080/00071773.2019.1574218

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2019.1574218

Published online: 07 Feb 2019.

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THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2019.1574218

ESSAY

Relationality and Commitment: Ethics and Ontology in

Heidegger’s Aristotle
Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen
Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article discusses the tension between social relationality and Heidegger; Aristotle; ethics;
self-relationality central to Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein and the relationality; communication;
possible ways of reconciling this tension. Arguing that this is a commitment
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.

In his Letter on “Humanism,” Martin Heidegger rejects ethics in the traditional sense, i.e.
as a normative ethics whose aim is to posit the correct values and imperatives, in favour of
what he calls an “originary ethics.”1 This term, which refers to the pre-Socratic notion of
ethos as dwelling, points to a form of enquiry that no longer considers “ethics” and “ontol-
ogy” to be two separate domains or even disciplines but rather to a form of inquiry that
Heidegger believes to be prior to both practical and theoretical reasoning. The idea of
an “originary ethics” is inseparable from the later Heidegger’s approach to technology
and the history of being, yet the questioning of ethics and ontology is not exclusive to
the later Heidegger, although it takes another form in his earlier work. Heidegger never
offers a set of prescriptions or imperatives that should determine the right way of
acting, but insofar as the earlier analyses of Dasein and the accounts of the dynamics of
coexistence aim to describe the process through which being comes to matter to us, the
early Heidegger also challenges the distinction between ethics and ontology by uncovering
the existential structures that make our engagements with each other meaningful in the
first place.

CONTACT Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen nicolai.knudsen@gmail.com Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas,
Aarhus University, Building: 1465-530, Jens Chr. Skousvej 7, Aarhus 8800, Denmark
1
Heidegger, Wegmarken, 356; Pathmarks.
© 2019 The British Society for Phenomenology
2 N. K. KNUDSEN

In general, Heidegger’s ontology proposes to understand being through a unitary, rela-

tional structure between self, others, and world. If we understand ethics in a sufficiently
broad way, namely, as the questioning of the way in which (inter)action and choice can
transform human existence, it becomes clear that these two modes of inquiry to some
extent inform each other: Our views on human ontology and relationality informs our
conceptions of ethics and vice versa.
Following this line of thought, it becomes a task to conceptualize the ontological
grounds of our normative orientation towards the good and our commitments towards
others. Borrowing a term from Joanna Hodge, Heidegger’s thinking shows how the
human being is “essentially relational” insofar as it is a “form of self-relation which is sys-
tematically connected to others of the same kind, others of different kinds, and to the
ground of possibility of there being such differences and otherness at all: to being.”2 Fol-
lowing this line of thought, Heidegger’s early philosophy poses the question about the rela-
tionality of human existence as this unfolds in the direction of others, itself, and the world.3
How we understand relationality (that is, the interrelation between these different dimen-
sions of human existence) will affect how we understand the nature of normativity and
commitment.
In this article, I will offer a detailed analysis of Heidegger’s elaborate account of human
relationality and the way in which relations to the world and to others are entangled with
our relations to ourselves.4 The interpretative challenge is that it is in no way clear how we
should understand this interplay of relations, and many commentators sense in Heidegger
a tension between social relationality and self-relationality. My aim is to clarify this tension
in Heidegger’s account of human relationality, provide a critical overview of contemporary
attempts to solve it and, ultimately, to argue that the emphasis on communication and
rhetoric found in Heidegger’s early reading of Aristotle is better suited for this than the
candidates currently on offer.
Before we proceed, it is useful to have a bit more context to fully understand the
problem. It used to be commonplace to argue that Heidegger was basically a solipsistic
thinker and that Dasein’s self-relationality undermined its relations to others.5 This line
of interpretation has been effectively dismantled in the recent literature.6 Nonetheless, it
is still much debated how Heidegger conjoins social relationality and self-relationality.
As Taylor Carman puts it, the traditional idea of subjectivity “is the idea of an abiding
relation to oneself that grounds some positive epistemic or normative value” is decisively

2
Hodge 2.
3
Concerning the idea that a “Heideggerian ethics” involves a thinking of relationality, see also Hatab, Ethics and Finitude,
especially chapter 7, and Olafson, Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics. More recently, Benjamin, Virtue in Being, and
Malpas, “Making Sense of Ethics in the Everyday” have both argued that ethics is best understood in terms of the rela-
tionality of human existence.
4
We find this triangular structure in many places in Heidegger’s works. In the early work, we find it in the threefold struc-
ture of the surrounding world [Umwelt], the with-world [Mitwelt] and the self-world [Selbstwelt]. While these are
occasionally used in SZ, the more prominent terms are: 1. The totality of tools [Zeugganzheit] and the in-order-to
[Um-zu], 2. The dimension of being-with [Mitsein] and the Anyone [das Man] as well as the domain of other people [Mit-
dasein] and our intentional relations to them (i.e. solicitude [Fürsorge]), 3. Mineness [Jemeinigkeit] and the for-the-sake-
of-which [Worumwillen].
5
See for instance Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity; Theunissen, The Other; and Buber, Between Man and
Man.
6
In the Anglophone world this was already put into question by Dreyfus’ strong emphasis on Dasein’s embeddedness in
social practices. Other recent attempts take up the issue of Mitsein more explicitly, see for instance Olafson, Heidegger
and the Ground of Ethics; Haugeland, Dasein Disclosed; and McMullin, Time and the Shared World.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 3

rejected by Heidegger in the belief that “[a]ll sources of epistemic and normative value are
worldly through and through,” which indicates that “there is no source of knowledge or
normativity purely immanent in the self’s relation to itself.”7 The problem is, however,
that social relationality alone is not enough to account for the way in which things
come to matter to me. Somehow particular world-configurations bears upon me to a
much greater extent than others. Why does the possibility of being a teacher appeal
more to me than the possibility of being a nurse? I recognize both possibilities as parts
of complex relational systems and yet I only see myself as being involved in one of
them. My self-relation only relates me to one of these. This shows that the issue of rela-
tionality is also an issue of commitment.
I have in mind an ontologically broad sense of commitment, similar to what John Hau-
geland has called an “existential commitment.”8 The issue is not whether or not I have
committed myself to an ontic set of rules nor a specifiable entity or person, but rather
the way in which I always already participate in a way of life that allows me to make
sense of the world, others, and myself. Even if one agrees with Carman that there is no
inner self (and that it is thus not in my “nature” to become a teacher) and that the
content of our commitments is necessarily found within social relationality (within “the
contingencies of historical tradition and social life” broadly speaking9), there are multiple
ways in which we can understand this interconnection. One could, for instance, argue in
favour of a communitarian model according to which the self acquires substantial criteria
for the good life by being raised within a specific, historical community. Alternatively, one
could take a Kant-inspired route and argue that social relationality offers a range of pos-
sibilities to me but that it is possible for me autonomously to commit to one such possi-
bility thus granting it a different normative force.
These two accounts of existential commitment differ in the way that they conceptualize
self-relationality. The communitarian option sees it as rising out of the community, which
renders the individual predisposed to a certain view of the good life, while the second con-
siders it to be an individual matter, since only the individual is capable of distancing and
hence (normatively) modulating social relationality. I am going to show that a third
interpretation of the interconnection between social relationality and self-relationality is
not only possible but also stronger than the other candidates. In order to do so, I will
draw upon Heidegger’s 1924 lecture course on Aristotle, Basic Concepts of Aristotelian
Philosophy, since this lecture course can help us identify the tensions inherent to Heideg-
ger’s understanding of human relationality (especially between static and dynamic con-
ceptions of existential commitment, but also between individual and shared
conceptions of the world) and provides an often over-looked (hermeneutical) way of
reconciling this tension.
I will argue that the recourse to Aristotle enables the following reformulation of the
question concerning the relation between the social relationality of Mitsein and the self-
relational structure of Dasein’s existential commitment: How is it possible to share (com-
municate or speak [legein]) the good [to agathon]?10 While some commentators take

7
Carman 307.
8
Haugeland, Having Thought, 341.
9
Carman 307.
10
This aspect of Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle is somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature. When
dealing with Heidegger’s early interpretation of Aristotle, most commentators take their cue from the lecture course on
4 N. K. KNUDSEN

Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle to overemphasize self-relationality and neglect social rela-

tionality,11 I find that Heidegger’s text contains not just one but two different accounts of
how the self-relation emerges out of relations to others. The first option is communitarian
and argues that the good is shared insofar as our upbringing within a community naturally
brings about a certain interconnectedness of our practical goals and, hence, our self-
relations. In my view, however, this way of reconciling the tension rests on a conceptual
flaw, since it relies on a static conception of sharedness that limits our social relationality to
those with whom we already share a polis. The second option is more promising, but
requires a bit more textual exegesis. According to this interpretation, the good is shared
and shareable in communication, insofar as rhetoric – the art of persuasion – can affect
its listeners in such a way as to change their posture towards the world. This is made poss-
ible by the way that communication as pathos undermines and exposes the self-relational
structure of ethos, because ethos is a response to (Aristotle would say “habituation of”) a
pathos that opens us to others.
In the first section of the article, I introduce the fundamental elements of Heidegger’s
early reading of Aristotle’s practical philosophy, show how they relate to the issue of rela-
tionality and commitment, and problematize traditional ways of settling the tension
between social relationality and self-relationality. In the second section, I argue that Hei-
degger’s interpretation of Rhetoric provides a different (and ultimately better) account of
how existential commitments are responsive to coexistence.

1. Logos and Agathon

For the present purposes, two different moves in Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle are
crucial. They both spring form the passage in Politics, where Aristotle describes man as a
zoon politikon. Allow me to quote it at length:
Now, that man is more of a zoon politikon than bees or any other gregarious animals is
evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal
who has the gift of logos. And whereas mere voice [phone] is but an indication
[semeion] of pleasure or pain [hedoes kai luperou], and is therefore found in other
animals (for their nature attains to the perception [aisthesin] of pleasure and pain and
the intimation [semainein] of them to one another, and no further), logos is intended to
make manifest [deloun] the beneficial [sumpheron] and the harmful [blaberon], and there-
fore likewise the just [dikaion] and the unjust [adikon]. And it is a characteristic of man
that he alone has any experience [aisthesin] of good [agathon] and evil [kakou], of just
and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes
a family and a state.12

Plato’s The Sophist from 1925 and focus on the issues of phronesis and arethe. See for instance Bernasconi, “Heidegger’s
Destruction of Phronesis”; Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle, chapter 5, and “A Response to Robert Bernasconi’s ‘Heideg-
ger’s Destruction of Phronesis’,”; Elliott, “Heidegger and Aristotle”; and Long, “The Ontological Reappropriation of Phron-
esis”. Those who have worked on GA 18 largely focus upon Heidegger’s understanding of rhetoric (and the conception of
logos) in isolation from the question about the good (to agathon), see Escudero, “Heidegger on Discourse and Idle Talk”;
Gross and Kemmann, Heidegger and Rhetoric. Elden 59–60, takes note of the issue but concludes that the two elements
remain in an unsolved tension and are mutually exclusive.
11
Taminiaux, “The Interpretation of Aristotle’s Notion of Arete in Heidegger’s First Courses” and “The Platonic Roots of
Heidegger’s Political Thought”; Volpi, “Being and Time”; “Dasein as Praxis”; and “In Whose Name?”; Gonzalez,
“Beyond or Beneath Good and Evil?”.
12
Aristotle, “Politics” 1253a.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 5

Aristotle defines the human as a zoon politikon by emphasizing how humans have the
capacity for logos in common. Logos is distinguished from phone, the mere voice,
because it alone enables the manifestation of the beneficial and the harmful, the just
and the unjust, the good and the evil. With these remarks, Aristotle names the capacity
that allows human beings to share a world in a normatively distinctive way; that allows
them to orient themselves in a world of shared values; that puts them into relation.
Logos is thus the ontological capacity that makes our world an inherently shared world
and what governs the social dimension of our life.
In addition to claiming that humans have logos, Aristotle also suggests that the human
has an experience of good and evil, and, elsewhere, that all our actions (in fact, everything
at all) aims at the good (NE, 1094e).13 On the one hand, then, a telos or an aim structures
all of human behaviour. On the other hand, logos seems to have a decisive influence on
what this telos is, since it makes the good itself manifest, and since only the human
being, as the only being with logos, can have an experience of good and evil.
Even if everything aims towards some good (NE, 1094e), the human orientation
towards the good is inherently related to its capacity for logos – the same capacity that
renders it a social being. How does the social condition inherent to human life relate to
its implicit striving towards the good? How does our agathon relate to the shared world
of logos? In the following, I will pursue these two threads.

1.1. The Determination of Logos

Heidegger clearly has the passage from Politics in mind, when he describes logos as the
capacity to make something manifest, i.e. as what brings phenomena to light. Logos is apo-
phantic in the etymological sense of the word (rather than the narrow sense of the word
that Aristotle ascribes to it in De Interpretatione):
Logos: “speaking” [Sprechen], not in the sense of uttering a sound but speaking about some-
thing in a way that exhibits the about-which of speaking by showing that which is spoken
about. The genuine function of the logos is the apophainesthai, the “bringing of a matter
to sight.” Every speaking is, above all for the Greeks, a speaking to someone or with others,
with oneself or to oneself. Speaking is in concrete Dasein, where one does not exist alone,
speaking with others about something.14

Heidegger emphasizes how there is a communal aspect to this process of manifestation:

logos takes place with others. This is why he translates it as speaking [Sprechen]. When
Heidegger says that speaking can be to someone or with others, with oneself or to
oneself, he describes different ways in which our comportment towards the world can
take place. We can share a comportment with someone, they can be the intentional
object of a comportment, or we can bring something (or ourselves) into view for ourselves.
Later on, Heidegger even argues that the ability to bring something into view for oneself is
grounded in the more primordial phenomenon of bringing it into view through inter-
action with others (GA 18, 60).

13
Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics”, 1094a; from now on referred to as NE followed by the Bekker pagination.
14
Heidegger, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, 17; Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy; from now on
referred to as GA 18 followed by the German pagination.
6 N. K. KNUDSEN

It would be erroneous to think of this as something optional, as if one can choose to use
logos or not. Speaking is an ontological determination, not another term for speech acts. As
Heidegger says, logos is “the fundamental determination of the being of the human being
as such” (GA 18, 18), because speaking determines the way in which the human being is in
the world as such: “The fundamental mode of being in which the human being is in its
world is in speaking with it, about it, of it” (GA 18, 18).
In his analysis of Heidegger’s philosophy of language, Mark Wrathall offers a helpful
distinction
between what we might call the “communicative” aspect of discourse and the “meaning
articulating aspect.” The meaning articulating aspect consists in lifting referential relations
into salience. The communicative aspect consists in sharing these referential relations with
others, or in helping others become responsive to these relations.15

As Wrathall puts (albeit without reference to GA 18), logos is used in an “ontologically

broad sense” to designate the gathering of meaningful relations.16 It is clear that Heidegger
takes the “meaning articulating aspect” to be explanatorily prior to the “communicative”
aspect of logos, but insofar as the communicative aspect “shares” the meaning articulating
aspect with others this relation cannot be unilateral. Rather, the meaning articulating
aspect must be responsive to the communicative aspect. How and to which extent this
is possible remains to be seen.
The interplay between the fore-structure and the hermeneutical “as” in Being and Time
speaks directly to this problem. The fore-structure is the way in which our environment is
always already understood based on our practical concerns. We live in this pre-prop-
ositional meaning articulating structure. The hermeneutic “as” expresses or picks up on
one of the possibilities inherent in such a practical context, and through communication
attention is directed towards certain possibilities within this structure, certain relations are
brought to salience. In contrast, Heidegger uses the apophantic “as” (referring to the tech-
nical sense of logos apophantikos from De Interpretatione) to describe the copula in a
theoretical truth-apt judgement. In contrast, to the hermeneutic “as” of speaking, the
theoretical judgement decontextualizes by obscuring the relation between what is said
and the phronetic environmental whole of meaning.17
Similarly, logos determines beings, positions them within certain limits or a horizon:
“logos, ‘speaking,’ is to exhibit beings in themselves, if this speaking is of such a character
that it shows beings in their having-of-limits [Grenzhaftigkeit], that it limits [begrenzt]
beings in their being” (GA 18, 40). Heidegger here invokes the terminology of liminality

15
Wrathall 131.
16
Wrathall 126. Wrathall’s analysis of logos serves to show that Heidegger’s concern with language is not limited to his
later thought but a continuous concern for him. Günther Figal makes a similar argument, which focuses on the decisive
influence of Aristotle in Figal, “Heidegger’s Philosophy of Language”.
17
For an account that links the discussion of the “as”-structure in Being and Time with Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle
(especially De Interpretatione), see Sheehan, “Hermeneia and Apophansis”’. In general, I agree with Sheehan’s analysis
of the tripartite structure of hermeneia. He does, however, miss just how close this is to the account given in §§ 32–
34 of Being and Time by conflating the fore-structure of the understanding with the hermeneutical “as”. Heidegger
upholds a distinction between the two by categorizing the hermeneutical “as” as a form of interpretation [Auslegung],
which is, by definition, expressed: “The ‘as’ makes up the structure of the explicitness [Ausdrücklichkeit] of something that
is understood. It constitutes the interpretation [Auslegung]” (SZ 149). For this reason, it cannot be “primordial, unthe-
matic, prepredicative,” as Sheehan would have it (“Hermeneia and Apophansis,” 79). The fore-structure of understanding
is practically embedded and unarticulated (like Sheehan’s hermeneia-1), while the hermeneutic “as” is discursive in a
broad sense (hermeneia-2) and the apophantic ‘as’ is declarative (hermeneia-3).
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 7

to name the “meaning articulating aspect” of relationality. In his general approach to

language, he thus distinguishes between two senses of conceptuality or horismos,
namely, lexicographical meaning and the more primordial boundary or limitation that
makes up a lived horizon (GA 18, 31, 41). Considering this emphasis on limitation,
world, and horizon, we can summarize Heidegger’s conception of logos by saying that it
appropriates or determines the world and thus makes possible the very disclosure [Ers-
chlossenheit] of entities (cf. GA 18, 52).
If speaking is an engagement with the world and inherently communal, there must be
an intrinsic relation between world-disclosure (the fore-structure) and communication
(the hermeneutical “as”).18 Logos thus serves a double function: It determines how
things appear and it ensures the communicability of this determination.
We can see just how closely Heidegger considers these two aspects of logos to be, when
he comments on zoon logon echon by saying that “[i]mplicit in this determination is an
entirely peculiar, fundamental mode of the being of human beings characterized as
‘being-with-one-another’ [Miteinandersein], koinonia. These beings who speak with the
world are, as such, through being-with-others [Sein-mit-anderen]” (GA 18, 46). The dis-
cursive nature of our world-disclosure thus marks us as radically social beings. We are
essentially being-with-one-another. A little later, he states:
If logos constitutes the having-there-with-one-another of the world, the determination of
being-with-one-another is constituted in it. And the determination of the zoon logon
echon must then, at the same time, contain within itself the determination of the zoon poli-
tikon. (GA 18, 56)

The determination of the human as zoon logon echon is another formulation of the onto-
logical disclosure of the world that takes place through Dasein according to Heidegger’s
interpretation, and this determination already contains the notion of the human being
as a zoon politikon.
These passages suggests that the analysis of Dasein is already a social ontological
interpretation of the human being, insofar as sociality conditions intelligibility and the
very limits that allow entities to appear. This is not by itself surprising, but as it turns
out the strong emphasis on the communicative function of logos will pose a challenge
to the way in which we think of commitment.

1.2. The Determination of Agathon

Let us turn to the other strand, namely, the question of the good (to agathon) that accord-
ing to Aristotle constitutes the ergon of the human being. In his discussion of the good,
Heidegger maintains his focus on the problem of the limits that allow entities to appear:
18
On this point see Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 161ff; Being and Time; from now on referred to as SZ followed by the German
pagination. Here Heidegger argues that Rede is equiprimordial with intelligibility (the interplay between Befindlichkeit
and Verstehen), since intelligibility is always already structured in accordance with its articulation in Rede. One might
argue that the environmental wholes articulated by Rede are ethically neutral. Take for instance Blattner’s example:
“Every act of walking on a sidewalk tends publicly to communicate, that is, make known, that sidewalks are to be
walked upon” (Blattner 73). Yet, the wholes of significance (networks of in-order-to relations) thus articulated must
necessarily relate to a for-the-sake-of-which in order to have any bearing on my life at all. In this sense, the disclosure
of Rede, even if I am indifferent to that which it discloses, necessarily refers to an ethos, since this is what determines
what I take to be important and what I remain indifferent towards. In this sense, everything that appears to Dasein
appear in light of some existential commitment.
8 N. K. KNUDSEN

What is the ergon, the “genuine achievement” and the “concern” in which human beings as
human beings live in their being-human? From there, we will read off the mode of its being,
since every ergon has, as ergon, a defninite limitation [Begrenzung] that is in accordance with
its being. Its peras is constituted by its agathon (not value!) … The limit of such a being is
telos. We are led to the determination of eudaimonia as this telos, to the determination of
that which beings ith the character of life carry within themselves as their basic possibility.
(GA 18, 43f)

The proper function or task of the human being – that which provides it with its proper
limits – is the good. Human life unfolds within limits, and these limits are determined
through its orientation towards the good.
Following from this and drawing upon the definitions provided in Rhetoric,19 there is a
discussion of the relation between the beneficial [sympheron] and the good [to agathon].
To summarize, the beneficial refers to an end outside of itself, while the good is an end in
itself. The good is thus ou heneka (GA 18, 58–62). The good is that towards which everything
strives, and since this relation should be understood in terms of a phenomenological disclos-
ure, this striving means that agathon is that which determines or delineates how things appear,
i.e. whether things are seen as being beneficial or harmful. In this way, the agathon is the end
that determines in the sense of the “as” discussed above. It is the end, not in the sense of aim as
in a crude teleology, but in the sense of the limit: “the agathon is primarily end, telos, or more
precisely peras [limit]” (GA 18, 62). To put it in terms of phenomenological disclosure: “The
telos is in such a way that it maintains the being in its presentness [Gegenwärtigkeit]. The
sense of being is determined by this being-present [Gegenwärtigsein]” (GA 18, 93).
This, of course, runs parallel to the distinction between the in-order-to [Wozu] and the
for-the-sake-of-which [Worumwillen] that we know from Being and Time. The beneficial
[sympheron] is instrumental in the pursuit of an end external to it, which must, ultimately
and for fear of infinite regress, be an end in itself. As in Being and Time, this self-relational
end can only be Dasein itself. The relational structure is anchored in Dasein’s care for its
own being (GA 18, 44; SZ, 12) and its for-the-sake-of-which (GA 18, 82; SZ, 84). This
means that the good towards which human behaviour strives is entirely formal and
self-relational. It has the structure of praxis:
The being of human beings is determined as concern; every care as concern has a definite
end, a telos. Insofar as the being of human beings is determined through praxis, every
praxis has a telos; insofar as the telos of every praxis, as peras, is agathon, agathon is the
genuine being-character of human beings. (GA 18, 65)

Dasein’s concern for itself and its own way of life anchors any totality of significance.
Dasein’s concern for itself constitutes its existential commitment, the way in which it
makes sense of itself, others and its surroundings. In other words, if the good is an end
in itself, it can only be Dasein’s self-relationality. The formal, self-relational character of
the agathon as the ontological determination of Dasein allows Heidegger to explain the
doctrine of eudaimonia in equally formal terms: It describes a how of existence (i.e. a
certain way of relating to one’s own existential commitments) rather than a substantial
account of the necessary conditions for a good life (GA 18, 97). The formality is intentional
on Heidegger’s part. As I noted in the introduction, he does not, pace Aristotle, aim to
describe a normative role model who exemplifies the virtuous life. Rather, he aims to

19
Aristotle, “Rhetoric,” 1362a; from now on referred to as Rh followed by the Bekker pagination.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 9

uncover the existential structures that make certain things, relations, and possibilities
appear better or more salient (qua sympheron) for a given individual. The analysis of
agathon and praxis reveals that our practical self-relationality is required in this
process. In this sense, an orientation towards the good makes something like an ethos
possible if by ethos we understand a basic normatively oriented stance (Heidegger uses
the word Haltung) towards the world (GA 18, 68), in which relations appear differently
based on different degrees of normativity.
The self-relational structure of the agathon constitutes the limits or determinedness of
one’s being-in-the-world. This is a necessary condition for Dasein to become oriented in
the world and therefore, also, to achieve a sense of self in the sense of an ethos: a character
or a determinate existential posture.

1.3. The Limit of Heidegger’s Interpretation

Both social relationality and self-relationality are said to be constitutive of the delimitation
of the world as a finite realm of appearance. How are these two elements related to each
other? Is there a priority between them? How would such a priority play itself out? At stake
here is the relation between Mitsein and Dasein, between coexistence and goodness,
relations to others and self-relation.
Some commentators argue that the self-relational structure of the agathon leaves no
space for the social dimension of human life at all. Franco Volpi, for example, writes
that the “the ‘ontologization’ of praxis (…) results, so to speak, in the evaporation of
(…) its inter-personality and its rootedness in a koinonia.”20 Similarly, Jacques Taminiaux
argues that the reference to Worumwillen translates praxis into “strictly ontological terms
with no ethical connotation.”21 They thus both take the self-relational determination of
agathon to annul social relationality, and Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle to end
in a “heroic solipsism” or an “ontology of solitary Dasein.”22
This line of interpretation is, of course, incredibly uncharitable, and is mostly motivated
by the attempt to transpose a questionable existentialist reading of Being and Time back
upon the reading of Aristotle, where it is arguably an even worse fit. Nonetheless, Volpi
and Taminiaux indirectly point to the fact that this issue concerning the ethics of relation-
ality is also prominent in Being and Time, where a Kantian reading has championed the
existentialist reading. Steven Crowell thus argues that praxis and phronesis are self-forget-
ful ways in which we navigate the world, but themselves insufficient to account for agency,
since “such [practical] reasoning will always presuppose a prior commitment of some
kind, some practical identity to whose norms I am actually trying to live up.”23 Sub-
sequently, Crowell draws upon the analysis of anxiety and argues that only Dasein’s
self-relation can account for this prior commitment, since the breakdown of anxiety
reveals that I myself am responsible for the “normative motivational force” of the practical
identities offered in such phronetic relationality.24 In this way, “I become responsible for”

20
Volpi, “Dasein as Praxis,” 51.
21
Taminiaux, “The Platonic Roots of Heidegger’s Political Thought,” 19.
22
Volpi, “Dasein as Praxis,” 51; Taminiaux, “The Interpretation of Aristotle’s Notion of Arete in Heidegger’s First Courses,”
25.
23
Crowell 300.
24
Crowell 298.
10 N. K. KNUDSEN

the possibilities offered in the relationality of the shared world “either by making them my
reasons or refusing to do so.”25 Crowell thus solves the tension between self-relationality
and social relationality by arguing that social relationality offers me a set of norms, but that
I must myself transform these into reasons and thus change the way that I am committed
to them from “quasi-mechanical” conformism, where I act in accord with the norms, to a
(practically) reflected way of acting in light of them.26 Self-relationality is the way in which
I actively commit myself to social relationality, thus modifying my existential
commitments.
The explicit solution offered in the lectures on Aristotle, however, goes in another, more
communitarian, direction. Somewhat despite his contempt towards traditional readings of
Aristotle and their reliance on a certain concept of nature and a simplistic interpretation of
teleology, Heidegger seems to be happy with assuming that a harmonious interconnected-
ness of telê grows naturally out of the polis. He for instance writes that Aristotle
wants to show that the polis, a characteristic way of being-together, is not brought to humans
by chance, but rather that the polis is the being-possibility, physei, that itself lies enclosed and
traced out in advance in the human being’s genuine being. Consequently, the polis arises
[entspringt] out of a definite being-with-one-another that, for its part, is grounded in a
having-with-one-another of something, in the specific sense of a koinonia of sympheron
and of agathon. (GA 18, 49)

Out of our natural or ontological determination as social beings grows a certain way of
being together that bring the community into a certain order of different ends. This is
what he later in the lecture course will call a guiding interconnectedness [Führungszusam-
menhang] (GA 18, 72) thereby suggesting that Miteinandersein corresponds to a plurality
of interconnected ends.27 Accordingly, our existential commitments emerge from the pro-
totypes offered by our historical community.
Yet, it seems to me that neither of these two models can be quite right. The problem
with the Kantian reading is that even if the self does not provide its existential commit-
ments, it nonetheless actively chooses them. From where, one might ask, does the self
make this choice? If the distance to relationality established by anxiety renders me respon-
sible for my existential commitments, the anchor point of my existential commitments
are, once again, placed in a place beyond social relationality, even if self-relationality is
considered to be entirely formal. The grounding of the existential commitments are per-
formed by the “I-myself” in the soliloquy of anxiety and conscience and hence beyond the
disclosive power of communication.28 In this regard, the Kantian reading pushes the
tension between social relationality and self-relationality ahead of itself. Despite Crowell’s
emphasis on accountability, this renders our communicative capacities rather limited,
since commitment is ultimately a voluntary act performed by the isolated I. Accordingly,
we can deliberate in the sense that we can tell people about the internal reasoning inherent
to our practical identities, but we cannot share the existential commitments that grounds

25
Crowell 299.
26
Crowell 204.
27
In his discussion of the concept of Führungszusammenhang, Elden recognises a tension in the concept of phronesis that
both indicate a form of socially oriented guiding and leading but also an ontologically narrow self-relation. Similarly to
Volpi and Taminiaux he concludes that “Heidegger essentially neglects the crucial political, communal and ethical
aspects of phronesis in favour of a personal and ontological approach,” Elden 60.
28
Crowell 295.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 11

these practical identities. The agathon remains non-responsive to logos, even if logos pro-
vides the only content of the formal agathon. Therefore, Crowell’s model of existential
commitment remains individualistic.
The communitarian model, on the other hand, proposes a shared conception of exis-
tential commitment, according to which existential commitments originate in the com-
munity rather than the I-myself. Arguably, this model takes existential commitments to
be self-constituting rather than self-constituted. The problem is, however, that the
model of the Führungszusammenhang is equally unable to account for the way in
which agathon is responsive to logos, since it relies on a static conception of the
world, according to which there is no dynamic process in which existential commit-
ments are taken up in communication, negotiated or disputed, since they merely
arise naturally out of the polis. According to such a reading, my upbringing predisposes
me to a certain existential commitment and, hence, my orientation towards the good
(my for-the-sake-of-which) is non-responsive to communication. Once again, this
imposes severe limits on communicability, and those who do not from the outset
share existential commitments can only have recourse to an instrumental codelibera-
tion in which they check to see whether their separate ends can be meet by the same
mean(s). Since prior communal practices predetermines the ends, they remain insu-
lated from the social encounter.
In order to solve the tension, I believe we need an account of relationality according to
which our existential commitments are not constituted by the self but dynamically consti-
tutive of the self. That is to say, we need an account of how existential commitments are
dynamically responsive to coexistence. I do think that Heidegger provide us with some of
the conceptual tools for doing this but in a way that must excavated from his text.

2. Logos, Ethos, and Pathos

Since we are questioning how agathon is responsive to logos understood as speaking, it is
natural to look for the receptive aspect of said speaking, namely, the capacity for hearing or
listening. Heidegger takes up this question in his discussion of rhetoric and shows that
rhetoric is a dynamic that alters the limits of the world. The reconstructive task is thus
to show how communication as a contestation of the limits of the world affects the self-
relational structure of Dasein’s ethos or orientation towards the good.

2.1. Hearing and Mitteilung

Heidegger understands Miteinandersein as an interplay of activity and receptivity: “In
being-with-one-another, one can be the one speaking and the other the one hearing”
(GA 18, 104). It is crucial to note that hearing is not merely a matter of transferring prop-
ositions between two isolated subjects, for Heidegger, nor is it a matter of the way in which
sound waves stimulate the ears. Rather, hearing is connected with perception [aisthesis] in
the sense that it allows for a “perceiving of speaking [Vernehmen des Sprechens]” (GA 18,
104). Hearing is a way of directing the attention of the listener to a certain phenomenon,
and thus it is a way of pronouncing different elements of the world so that speaking brings
the entity forth in a particular way. This is how Heidegger connects the communicative
aspect of logos with the meaning articulating aspect:
12 N. K. KNUDSEN

All of these modes of natural speaking-with-one-another carry in themselves the claim that
the other does not merely take notice of something, but takes something up, follows some-
thing, reflects on something. The other repeats [wiederholt] that which is spoken in such a
way that in repeating he listens to it, such that the following results: in the being of the
human being as concernful lies the possibility of listening to its speaking. (GA 18, 105)

When I listen, I do not merely cognitively register what is said. I direct my attention
towards it in a concernful way. I take it up in such a way that it comes to matter to me.
Heidegger describes this process as one of repetition, but we should not take this to
mean that I literally repeat what has been said to me for myself by way of internal mono-
logue. Rather, we should understand this notion of repetition as an indication of the
appropriation that relates any speaking to the world in which I find myself. At the very
beginning of the lecture course, the human way of being in the world was thus described
as a way of speaking with, about, and of the world (GA 18, 18). In being responsive to each
other, we are responsive to the world.
Heidegger argues that a similar process is undertaken when we speak to ourselves. As in
the case of actual intersubjective communication, the process of speaking leads to a listen-
ing that repeats the spoken in order to relate it to the practical concerns of an actual
engagement in the world. The human being, says Heidegger, has logos in the sense that
it can listen to its own speaking (GA 18, 105). In order to reason with myself, I must
also somehow change how the world appears to me – there must be a “Vernehmen des
Sprechens” if this internal dialogue is to be successful. It is crucial to note that this
account of communication does not rely on a monological structure despite Heidegger’s
occasional emphasis on auto-affection. While there is room for an internal dialogue in
which we deliberate with ourselves about the right thing to do, the emphasis on speaking,
hearing, and (as we will see in a moment) rhetoric in general serves to show the contrary –
that the possibility of this auto-affection is grounded in the possibility of sharing a com-
portment with others. As he puts it, our ability to reason with ourselves is only one option
made possible by our capacity to reason with others (GA 18, 60). At the very core of Hei-
degger’s interpretation is an attempted break with the metaphysical tradition that under-
stands zoon logon echon as an animal rationale, insofar as the modern concept of animal
rationale dissolves the plurality inherent to Miteinandersein into a pure self-determination
of reason. As he says, anticipating or directly influencing Gadamer, “the human being is a
living thing that has its genuine Dasein in conversation and in discourse” (GA 18, 108).29
It is interesting to note how Heidegger links this account of hearing with the issue of the
agathon:
This possibility of hearing, this akoustikon, is more precisely found together with the mode of
being that is fundamentally found in praxis, with orexis. Every concern has tendency in itself;
it is after something, directed at an agathon that is always there as legomenon, as “something
addressed.” This being-after listens to what is spoken, to what is given in advance of that with
which it should be concerned and how it should be concerned. (GA 18, 105)

29
Gadamer attended the lecture course in 1924. In an interview from 2001, he mentions that he was puzzled by Heideg-
ger’s insistence that logos means language rather than reason. In another interview from 2000, however, Gadamer
expresses his disappointment in rereading the 1922 essay on Aristotle called “Phenomenological Interpretation with
Respect to Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation” because he remembered it to be focused on the
issue of phronesis rather than being itself. He reports that he later on and in contrast to Heidegger developed phronesis
in terms of dialogue, but he does not say how this relates to the interpretation developed in 1924. See Gadamer and
Kemmann 57 and Gadamer and Dottori 20f.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 13

The possibility of hearing relates to praxis, to our striving for something and to our way of
being oriented within a world. Therefore, hearing feeds into the structure of the agathon,
insofar as our hearing orients us towards something addressed in speech. In order for this
orientation to take place, our agathon must be responsive to speaking. This is how Heideg-
ger interprets Aristotle’s phrase zoe praktike meta logou, i.e. the part of the psyche that is
receptive to logos and therefore morally significant (NE, 1102b–1103a).
For Aristotle, furthermore, this is the foundation of the moral virtues that through
habituation forms an ethos. Heidegger comments briefly on this term by saying that we
should not understand it merely as a term for something moral [sittlich]. Instead, he pro-
poses that ethos means something akin to posture [Haltung], i.e.
how the human being is Da, how he offers himself as a human being, how he appears in
being-with-one-another, the way that the orator speaks, has a posture [Haltung] in the
way he stands with respect to the matters about which he speaks. (GA 18, 106)

Here, Heidegger clearly moves beyond the text of the Nichomachean Ethics and draws a
parallel between the ethos of the moral virtues (the posture of one’s orientation towards
the good) and the ethos known from Rhetoric, i.e. a mode of persuasion. For anyone inter-
ested in a detailed analysis of the Nichomachean Ethics, this might seem like a digression,
but since our problem is exactly how one dynamically shares an orientation towards the
good, the question of persuasion is crucial.
Rhetoric, Heidegger argues, is a way of making the hermeneutical situation show itself.
Or, as Heidegger translates Aristotle, it is the “the possibility of seeing [dynamis tou the-
oresai]”, and specifically, the possibility of seeing that which speaks in favour of a certain
matter (GA 18, 117; Rh, 1355b). In other words, rhetoric is the ability to make people see
things in a certain way and, thus, to disclose situations communicatively. Rhetoric is the
art of interpretation; it is “the interpretation of concrete Dasein, the hermeneutic of Dasein
itself” (GA 18, 110). As such, rhetoric is not a techne that concerns itself with a certain
domain of beings. Instead, it operates across the various environments and practices in
which Dasein moves. Rhetoric discloses the orientation inherent to a practice and
makes it manifest through communication (GA 18, 118). Given how agathon is inherent
in such an orientation, rhetoric concerns itself with disclosing the agathon inherent in the
way that a subject matter appears to us.
The aim of rhetoric is thus to cultivate a certain view on a given matter. Heidegger
even argues that the disclosure that takes place in rhetoric is analogous to that inherent
to truth as aletheuein (GA 18, 119). The difference between the two is that the
aletheuein of a theoretical disclosure concerns itself with that with is eternal and inde-
pendent of human affairs, rhetoric focuses on the practical domain and, hence, of that
which can be different, that which can be revised and contested (GA 18, 138). In speak-
ing for a certain view of a matter, rhetoric highlights, so to speak, different possibilities
of Miteinandersein (GA 18, 134). Thereby rhetoric becomes a site of conflict and
dispute concerning the specific configuration of our shared world: “The possibility of
being-against-one-another in being-with-one-another is thereby brought about. That
one has this view and another has that view, since beings can be otherwise, is the
basic possibility of speaking-against-one-another” (GA 18, 138). In this sense, the
orator (“the one who has genuine power over Dasein” (GA 18, 108)) tries to persuade
people by communicatively transforming the possibilities inherent to the Miteinander.
14 N. K. KNUDSEN

What is at stake in this communication here is the very possibility of transforming the
way that we share the world.
Heidegger’s preferred word for communication is Mitteilung, which has a few advan-
tages compared to the English term. It literally means sharing with, and that which is
shared is, of course, the world itself. Logos
has the character of a definite communicating [bestimmten Mitteilens]. I communicate with
others [Ich mache dem anderen Mitteilung]; I have the world there with the other and the
other has the world there with me, insofar as we talk something through – koinonia of the
world. Speaking is, in itself, communicating [Mitteilen]; and, as communication [Mitteilung],
it is nothing other than κοινωνία. (GA 18, 61)

Heidegger distances himself from any conception of communication that takes it to be a

transference of propositional statements and inferences; rather, the originary phenom-
enon of communication is the process of sharing the world. This process – which is an
interplay of activity and receptivity – brings different relations to salience; it determines
which possibilities are pronounced. As he puts it elsewhere, “speaking [Rede] as communi-
cation [Mitteilung] enacts [vollzieht] an appropriation of the world in which one always
already is being-with-one-another. The understanding of communication [Mitteilung] is
the participation in the manifest [die Teilnahme am Offenbaren].”30 Communication is,
therefore, the enactment of the transcendental condition of Mitsein into different factical
configurations of the world.
In contrast to the communitarian model, this conception of sharing does not presup-
pose a unitary community and is highly dynamic. Teilen means to have in common and to
be divided, and as we have just seen, this kind of being-with-each-other is the condition of
possibility of both agreement and disagreement; and as Heidegger’s emphasis on the
process of communication serves to show, the world configuration is not a sediment
from a historical or cultural community, but something that is constantly stirred up
and reconfigured. “Communication [Mitteilung], as talking something over with one
another, is the way in which, together with others, ‘one’ [‘man’] ‘shares/divides’ [‘teilt’]
and has the cared about world [die besorgte Welt].”31 (GA 64: 30).
This brings the argument one step further, since we can know see that what is at stake in
the tension between the social relationality of logos and the self-relational constitution of
the agathon is really a matter of communication in the sense of how we dynamically
reconfigure the relations of the world. This explains Heidegger’s attentiveness to rhetoric,
since rhetoric studies the details of this hermeneutic process, namely, how we persuade
people, i.e. transpose them into a different world-configration, and thus make them
adapt another orientation towards the good. In Rhetoric Aristotle deals with this question
by discussing three interrelated modes of persuasion [pisteis], namely, logos, ethos, and
pathos.

2.2. Posture and Discomposure

For Aristotle it is a central presupposition in ethics “that we must act in accordance to the
right logos” (NE, 1103b). The relevant phronetic sense of logos is distinct form the kind of
30
Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, 362; History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena.
31
Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit, 30; The Concept of Time.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 15

logos that belongs to the faculty of episteme insofar as it does not rely on deduction or dem-
onstration. The knowledge acquired in practical reasoning is not a knowledge of the uni-
versal and the abstract but phronesis, which is highly particular and contextualized. What
should guide our actions are not principles but our particular circumstances. For this
reason Aristotle refuses to give an ultimate rule for how to act, but merely points to
“the good man” who “differs from others most by seeing the truth in each class of
things, being as it were the norm and measure of them” (NE, 1113a, my emphasis). Phro-
netic logos is thus neither about articulable laws for how to act nor universalizable maxims.
Rather, the task of practical reasoning is to make us see things in the right way.
Likewise, as we have seen, the specific kind of conceptuality that Heidegger addresses is
not about lexicographical definitions but about the limits or horizon in which our practical
and social life unfolds. Like in Aristotle, practical reasoning is not about the universal, but
about how we orient ourselves in a specific situation. The practical philosophical signifi-
cance of rhetoric consists in the way in which it deals with this phronetic disclosure of the
world. As such it cannot rest entirely on propositional reasoning but must take into
account the ethos (posture) of the speaker and how the listener can be affected
(through pathos) to see things in the right way. As Heidegger puts it, “the ethos and the
pathe are constitutive for legein itself” (GA 18, 165). If logos concerns the determination
of the horizon and such determination can only take place as a concernful engagement
with the world, it is clear that a purely propositional (logos in the narrow sense (Rh,
1356a)) engagement with the world cannot stand alone. Successful rhetoric necessarily
invoke ethos and pathos.
Ethos is usually conceived as a mode of persuasion related solely to the speaker; it des-
ignates trustworthiness. Following Heidegger’s discussion of agathon, however, we can see
that he interprets ethos to be something akin to the existential commitment of Dasein, the
orientation towards the good that shapes how the relational structure of self, others, and
world appears to us. The crucial question is, accordingly, in which way our ethos is respon-
sive to coexistence. Insofar as rhetoric is not merely concerned with the cultivation of
opinions regarding matter-of-facts but also has a practical impact, ethos must be at
stake in rhetoric. As Heidegger puts it: “the manner and mode in which I am resolved,
that to which I am resolved, what stands in proairesis, is decisive for my being, for the
manner and mode in which I am, for my ethos” (GA 18, 147). The task of the orator is
to affect the listeners in a way that is decisive for their being, to affect their existential com-
mitments or way of life. Heidegger elaborates on this in one of his idiosyncratic trans-
lations of Aristotle that states that the dialogue is not only concerned with developing a
doxa, a disclosure oriented towards truth aptness [apokeiktikos], “the speaker must
bring himself, and those with whom the decision will lie, into a corresponding Verfassung”
(GA 18, 163, my emphasis, cf. Rh, 1377b).
The term Verfassung is significant, since it addresses an aspect of ethos that illuminate
how Heidegger sees the connection between ethos and pathos, which, in turn, will help to
resolve the question of how we can communicate ethos. In accord with Freese’s and
Roberts’ translations of Rhetoric, Metcalf and Tanzer translate Verfassung as “frame of
mind.” In this context, however, the term “mind” is unfortunate insofar as this metaphor
hinges on an ontological body/mind dualism that is foreign to Heidegger’s thinking. Ver-
fassung means literally constitution (as in national constitution) or more generally a state
or condition of things (as in the mental or physical state of a person). Etymologically, it
16 N. K. KNUDSEN

relates to fassen, to grasp, and Fassung, which can mean both a grip or socket but also com-
posure and self-control. Die Fassung bewahren is to keep one’s cool.
Heidegger describes the ethos – which is derived from the word hexis, disposition – not
only as a Haltung but also as a way of being in a certain Fassung: “The hexis relates to
… ‘how we compose ourselves’ [wie wir uns halten], ‘in which composition we are’ [in
welcher Fassung wir sind]” (GA 18, 168). Haltung and Fassung are similar in the sense
that they both originate from terms related to the action of grasping, holding, and there-
fore controlling something. In the following, I will translate them as posture and compo-
sure, respectively. In order to emphasize the etymological link, I will translate Verfassung
with composition.
Rhetoric concerns itself with the composure of the speakers and aims at bringing the
listener into a similar composition. In this sense, it aims at cultivating a certain ethos. Hei-
degger emphasizes how ethos relates to pathos because the ethos of the speaker affects the
pathos of the listener; it brings the listener into a certain “mood.” If we follow the Nicho-
machean Ethics, it is clear that ethos (“character”) designates the way in which we compose
ourselves in light of our moods, pathe (NE, 1105b). As Aristotle points out, our mere
capacity [dynamis] for moods is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy since we cannot
control the moods in which we find ourselves. This line of argument can be translated
into the Heideggerian vocabulary by saying that while ethos is our posture or composure,
pathos is a certain way of being discomposed, “ein bestimmtes Aus-der-Fassung-Kommen”
(GA 18, 168). When I find myself in a certain mood, I am subjected to something that I
cannot control. I lose my grip on things; I am overtaken and expropriated.
The rhetor must use pathos to affect his/her listeners; s/he must bring them out of their
composure in order to make them see things differently. This is described as a change or
transformation, a metabole (GA 18, 170f; Rh, 1378a). Heidegger describes this by saying:
Pathos is a “changing” [Umschlagen] and accordingly a determinate “coming to be … ” out of
an earlier situation, but not a changing, that would have its course set for itself. Rather, it is a
mode of finding-oneself [Sichbefinden] in the world that, at the same time, stands in a poss-
ible relation to hexis. This chaning into another composition [Verfassung] and the being in
the new one vis-à-vis the old one, has in itself the possibility of being seized [Ergriffenwer-
dens], being-overcome [Überfallenwerdens]. (GA 18, 171)

Underlying any composure is the possibility of a change that brings one out of one’s com-
position and into a new one. The pathos is a way of being seized or being overcome by
something that forces one to lose one’s composure and be brought “out of it.” Nonetheless,
in the same way that ethos is a way of being disposed with regard to the many different
pathe that we cannot control, there is always the possibility of regaining one’s posture
after being thus discomposed. As Heidegger concludes: “so hat also pathos in sich selbst
schon den Bezug auf hexis” (GA 18, 171). Out of a pathic discomposure arises the possi-
bility of adapting a new composition, of regaining one’s composure, and, therefore, of
developing a new ethos.
This, finally, puts us in a position to clarify how the agathon is shared. In a curious
passage, the internal coherence of which presupposes all of the argumentative steps elabo-
rated in the above, Heidegger says:
Coming-out-of-one-definite-composition-into-another relates primarily to the mode of
taking-a-position toward the world, of being-in-the-world. Herein lies the possibility and
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 17

danger of shifting relations [Verschiebung der Verhältnisse]. The right composition is nothing
other than being-in-the-world in the right way as having it at one’s disposal [Verfügen über
sie]. The world, initially and for the most part, is there in praxis, with the character of ende-
chomenon allos, and at the same time with the determinations of “more or less.” The world is
there as agathon or sympheron, and that as “more or less.” (GA 18, 171)

To come into another composition concerns our way of being in the world. This
change is described as the effect of our shifting relations and, hence, as a social
issue. This means that shifting social relations constantly affect the contingent
[endechomenon allos] world, and that having the right composition is a certain way
of disposing or appropriating the alterability of the world. The possibility of being dis-
composed thus underlies the possibility of having the right composure. It arises out of
the alterability of the world, so to speak. This means that the self-relationality of praxis
is not isolated from the contingent and contested social relationality, and, pace the
Kantian reading, that it is in no position to actively commit to one set of norms
rather than another. That the world is there as agathon and sympheron, as good and
beneficial, means that the I cannot choose its existential commitments, but rather
finds itself prevoluntarily committed to social relationality. Existential commitment
does not emanate from the self but overwhelms it. The self takes place within the nor-
mative forces of the world and is therefore inseparable from them. In this regard,
Heidegger’s neo-Aristotelian ethics of relationality proposes a hermeneutic conception
of the self according to which self-understanding is necessarily entangled with the con-
tingent and alterable world-understanding that leaves us exposed to others.32 The
question of whether this process is genuine, eigentlich, or not is not a question of
the extent to which the I has made itself responsible for its pathe and made itself
immune to the risk of discomposure, but whether it accepts this possibility and
acknowledges that the composure with which it identifies is fragile and contingent
but its own nonetheless. That is, it is an issue of whether it recognizes that its own
self-relationality folds into its social relationality.
Heidegger explicitly connects the issue of composure to the terminology of
Eigentlichkeit:
Hexis is the determination of the Eigentlichkeit of Dasein in a moment of being-composed
[Gefasstseins] as to something. (…) Hexis is, therefore, a being-possibility that is related in
itself to another possibility, to the possibility of my being, that within my being something
comes over me, which brings me out of composure [mich aus der Fassung bringt]. (GA
18, 176)

The possibility of Eigentlichkeit and posture is in itself related to the possibility of discom-
posure and, hence, in itself responsive to coexistence. Ethos relies on pathos. The possi-
bility of my being who I am intrinsically relates to the possibility that something
overcomes, disturbs or uproots my sense of myself. This relation between hexis and
pathos thus marks the limits of our composure, of our self-mastery. No matter how
much self-control we have, we are vulnerable to pathos. Even in the self-appropriation

32
Charlotta Weigelt gives a rather concise formulation of this point: “[H]uman behavior must be understood in terms of
praxis and phronesis, where the former is more or less identified with human interaction, and the latter is regarded as a
kind of self-understanding which comes through such interaction. That is to say, through interaction, one develops an
understanding of what it means to be human, which then is reflected back on one’s self-understanding” (Weigelt 114).
18 N. K. KNUDSEN

inherent to our most basic commitments or orientations towards the good there is an
inherent fragility, an exposure to and possible affection by others.
This indicates that the self-relational structure of Dasein’s Worumwillen is not opposed
to but entangled in the contingent and shifting world of Miteinandersein. The ontological
determination as zoon logon echon thus indicates that we exist within a horizon, a limited
world, which is constantly contested and changed by our involvement in shifting social
relations. These shifts come over us as pathe that we cannot control but have to
undergo nonetheless. This is not merely a passivity, but a way in which “etwas mit mir
geschieht” (GA 18, 195). The fact that it happens to me indicates the way in which my
very being – my ethos – is jeopardized, discomposed and possibly transformed. The
claim that composure is inherently linked to and made possible by discomposure
testifies to the way that we have to respond, once such pathos has overcome us. At the
root of every ethos is an exposure to pathe, an irreducible possibility of the world being
transformed or altered. In such encounters, we get a sense of who we are and a sense of
the potentiality and relationality inherent to human life: “By way of something encounter-
ing me, happening to me, I am not annihilated, but instead I myself first come into the
eigentlichen state, namely, the possibility that was in me now becomes genuinely real
[eigentlich wirklich]” (GA 18, 196).33
As Charlotta Weigelt puts it, the idea that logos is constituted through ethos and pathos
indicates that the speaking of the zoon logon echon should be considered an “interplay
between activity and passivity, poiein and paschein: what the speaker says affects the
hearers so as to bring about a response, an action.”34 Once put in terms of pathos and
response, it becomes clear that this account of the relation between the agathon and
logos falls rather close to the Antwortlogik of Bernhard Waldenfels. Waldenfels insists
that ethos is “born out of” pathos, insofar as it is nothing but the way in which we
respond to the claim [Anspruch] of the other that precedes and is irreducible to our inten-
tional response.35 This clearly resonates with Heidegger’s insistence that ethos springs
from pathos and cannot do away with this inherent connection. Nonetheless, there is a
slight difference of emphasis between the two accounts of ethos, insofar as Waldenfels
focuses on our response-ability (our responsivity) towards the other and the way in
which we are forced to respond to the other that calls us into questions. For Heidegger,
on the contrary, the response is not something that we owe to the one who addressed
us, and, hence, the movement between pathos and ethos has a different direction. Heideg-
ger’s pathos emanates from elsewhere like Waldenfel’s, but its affection of my makes my
world crumble by disturbing my self-relation. What is at stake here is not a Levinasian
relation to the other as such, but the configuration of the limits that make up this
world and out of which my self-relation rises. For this reason the response is not

33
A comparison with the role of conscience in SZ exceeds the scope of this paper, but it might be possible to read the
interrelation between discourse, conscience, and resoluteness along these lines, since conscience – as a mode of dis-
course – echoes the formality of this description insofar as it has no content (comes with no hardwired or substantial
imperatives) and yet picks Dasein out in an unmistakable way. “While the content of the call is seemingly indefinite, the
direction it takes is a sure one and is not to be overlooked. The call does not require us to search gropingly for him to
whom it appeals, nor does it require any sign by which we can recognize that he is or is not the one who is meant” (SZ
274). By picking out the singular Dasein without having anything to say, conscience prepares Dasein for its resoluteness,
but it is important to recall that resoluteness does not isolate Dasein from its social relationality. As Heidegger empha-
sizes, resoluteness is necessarily a resoluteness within the world of das Man and of the Situation (SZ 299).
34
Weigelt 112.
35
Waldenfels, “The Birth of Ethos Out of Pathos.”
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 19

something that primarily moves in the direction of the other who addresses me but
towards the self-relation that must compose itself out of the altered world. The response
re-establishes a composure in light of my fragility; it is a way of finding oneself within
transformed horizons, and, hence, it is the difficult movement of a self-relational commit-
ment to a set of limits defined by my relations to others.
Existential commitment is thus grounded in the fragility of communication, not in the
sense of accountability or communicative rationality, but in the sense of an affective
sharing-with. The ethicality of communication consists in the way that it enacts our
shared world, how it reconfigures it factically, and for this reason communication ulti-
mately rests on something pre-propositional, namely, our shared ontological condition
of being-in-the-world. In contrast to the Levinasian model, Heidegger’s description of
the relation between logos and agathon takes ontology and ethics to be deeply intertwined,
since commitment is not grounded in the naked relation to the other beyond the world (in
the Saying rather than the Said36) but in my prevoluntary involvement in the alterable
fabric of social life. In this sense, the primary phenomenon on which the Heideggerian
ethics must rest is the way in which my care for my own being exposes me to and
places me in the midst of the fragile relationality of coexistence.

3. Conclusion
Heidegger’s analyses of Dasein problematizes the relation between ontology and ethics,
which is evident from his struggle to conceptualize the nature of existential commitments.
I have argued that this problem amounts to a tension between social relationality and self-
relationality, which also underlies Heidegger’s discussion of Aristotle’s conceptions of
logos and agathon. Heidegger interprets logos in an ontologically broad sense that encom-
passes both pre-propositional world disclosure and its communicability. This gives rise to
the questions: How are we committed to such disclosure? Is our ontologically deepest
orientation towards the world (our orientation towards the good) shareable and if so how?
I have considered a Kantian and a communitarian model of the interconnection
between relationality and commitment and argued that they both fail to account for the
way in which existential commitments are dynamically shareable. Either, the normative
force of existential commitments springs from the autonomous action of the isolated I,
or we are always already predisposed to certain existential commitments due to our com-
munitarian upbringing. Drawing upon Heidegger’s early reading of Aristotle’s practical
philosophy, I have developed a third model that focuses on the disclosure and communi-
cative power of logos that enables it to transform the shared world. Our orientation
towards the good, our existential commitments, emerge out of this relationality as we
find ourselves discomposed by coexistence in such a way that we must recompose our-
selves in order to retain self-relationality and practically identify with the transformed
world in which we suddenly find ourselves. Existential commitments are neither self-con-
stituted nor settled in advance but meaning that overwhelms us.
The locus of ethical relationality is to be found in the process of communication in
which we enact our shared ontological condition and share the world anew. This
means that the ontological ground for our existential commitments is the way in which
36
Levinas, Otherwise than Being.
20 N. K. KNUDSEN

we can always share the world differently. This renders my existential commitments fragile
and vulnerable to coexistence but also shareable, at least in principle. In other words, we
are capable of sharing the good insofar as we are capable of sharing a meaningful world.

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