Communal Spirit II. - Cultural and Communal Life

(Fall 1922)

[Paraphrase and Excerpts]

<Statement of Contents:> The spiritual life of humankind [is] not the entire psychic life (not that of passivity), goal-directed, purposively active, thereby spiritualizing the world. True being and truth as cultural formation.

The personal life in community. Self-determination, social: I-Thou relationship. Social acts, on the ground of the communal experiential relationship to the world. Practical intersubjective understanding, social association. Persisting communal relationships.

Practical surrounding world. Various practical surrounding worlds. Practical present, practical future.

Earthly humankind as a practical universality ("human world"). Personal space as form as well as personal ("historical") time. Within this universe the special communities, communication community (language community).

"Personal life as I-life in relation to a conscious, experienced, emptily presented, thought, valued, actively treated world. In this surrounding world other I-subjects enter through empathy, and indeed as human beings, as bodily-psychic unities, each of which therefore carries an I in itself, has a surrounding world as an I, and indeed one with the appearance of a surrounding world common to the various I's and egoities, the various egoities correspondingly `oriented,' conscious in various modes of givenness, modes of presentation, modes of evaluation, etc. Nevertheless that needs greater exactness. Then we must distinguish between: nature as that of all personal subjects who enter into a nexus of understanding with one another, unconditioned common object-world, which belongs to everyone, which I and everyone experience in harmonious experience, and thoughtfully determine in rule-governed, demonstrative and demonstrable thought, and on the other hand the multiplicity of living bodies, which are not mere nature, but have `animation.' Also these are objects insofar as each and every one, ideally speaking, can be given in an identical way in bodily expression, and determined as existing in itself. Every I finds itself in subjective reflection on itself in original form, every [I] finds every other in the presentification-form of empathy. Each identifies himself as the same one whom the other knows.

"This objective world becomes the substrate of spiritual, subjective predicates as valued, as practically formed world, thereby a new kind of predicate, and indeed intersubjective predicate, self-constituting, intersubjective value-characters, intersubjective purpose-characters (usefulness for everyone) etc. These predicates however do not have the same unconditioned objectivity as the predicates of nature, the physical and psychophysical.

"Spiritual life of humankind: not the total psychic life, not the life of mere dull passivity. We have in mind especially the region of active life, of freely active life, of the life of individual human beings in the nexus of community, the goal-directed, purposively active life, directed to self-posited goals.

"Purposive activity can be directed to physical things and processes. It can be a momentary purposive activity and bestow on the thing a continuingly changed form, which can be understood as one in accordance with the determinate purpose of determinate individuals, as determined by them or as having been determined in accordance with the fulfillment of purpose and as having fulfilled the purpose, pointing back to the developed fulfillment (what remains by the way of fruits). A natural objectivity can from the first be purposively adapted and seen as such, it can be constantly and repeatedly adapted for a kind of purpose; it can also however be purposive not only for a subject to which it is related back, but it can also be purposive in the same for each subject or for many subjects motivated by the same needs. By the same token a subject can have an object formed for its one-time or repeatable purpose, and have endowed it with a purposive form in accordance with persisting or repeatable needs, and at the same time this form can be serviceable for others and for agreeable subjects who are driven by the same needs."

Objects thus contain a value- and purpose-form, a form deriving from the valuing and purpose-setting acts of concerned individuals. Thus there awaken individual, subjectively originating predicates, and also general, empirically general subjective predicates, well distinguished from the predicates the objects of the surround world and the common world have independently of the valuing and practical orientations and active achievements of subjects.

The surrounding world and common world thus contain mere objects and "spiritual" objects, objects with predicates of value and purpose, which may also be observed purely as objects, in which case they then belong to the mere object-world. On the other hand, they are objects in whose objective determinations "spiritual" significance is expressed. And not only objective determinations come into question as the bearer of such predicates: an example is when an object is loved by me because it presents a beautiful mode of appearance when regarded from a certain point of view, and eventually is also formed in such a way as to be able to offer this beautiful mode of appearance.

True Being and Truth as Culture-Formation

"We observe active, freely active subjects. The human being is a true human being only as waking human being, and as such he is continuously affected and is active in accordance with his affections. He is active as experiencing, thinking, insightfully knowing, and insofar as he is active, he strives, he values, he aims at something valued and he seeks it in realizing acts. What is sought is here true being, that which `itself' comes to knowledge in the knowing appropriation. There is however also an anticipatory seeking as in the decision on behalf of a goal in the form of an uninsightful certainty, or in the decision as determination of a questionable, indeterminate being-so, in the seeking of this being-so, but only as certainty, not as insight. Then however the drive can awaken to ultimate decision, to grounded knowledge, to the ultimately fulfilling self, to true being. In general, systems of belief-modalities and the various logical propositional forms and the epistemic decision in knowing certainty. And the change of orientation, in which the goal of true probability etc. exists."

"Nature. The existence believed and perhaps known in experience and thinking, that now on its side is valued. Joy in the fact that it is so; being-so as such is enjoyable. Demonstration, intention to an `it is actually so' and fulfillment (realization of this `it is actual'). Intention to the `it is actually delightful."

"Is love a joy not mere `on the ground of' or `in' existence, but in `possession?' That would mean: joy in grasping the `self' of the object. Intention of love = desiring. Desiring is desiring for possession, striving for possession. Wish is not without further ado wish for possession, but wish that that exist, thus generally. But is the desire for food loving desire, and is satisfaction in eating a love?

"Loves proceeds to the enduring, to a possession of something that I can repeatedly grasp and can valuationally enjoy in the grasping of the self. But joy in this ability to possess is not love. I can love something that I am unable to possess. Love is an habitual, a persisting transition to joy. I love something when I, whenever I behold it, this enduring entity, enjoy myself therein, and as often as I think of it, and accordingly experience longing, accordingly desire..."

Personal Life in Community

"The self-determination of the I. I in my thinking, feeling (valuing) desiring (striving), willing directed toward myself, I as causa sui.

"The I-Thou-Acts, I as exercising `effects' on the other, on the alter ego, I determining him.

"In determining myself, I not only represent myself, more clearly speaking, I not only exercise self-observation, also not mere self-valuing. Self-valuing: I do not value what I represent or what I know, but I value the fact that I so think, that I know, but also that I value in such and such a way, that I desire, want this or that. Thus in general I value the fact that I accomplish this and that act, that I accomplish such and such ego cogito, perhaps that I take up such and such a position, that I consider this or that as true or know it as true, that I value this and that, desire such and such... Self-valuing however is not only the valuing of momentary acts, it is the valuing of the I itself, the one who manifests himself as the identical person in his acts, and proves who he is by the fact that he behaves a certain way in his present acts...

"Self-valuing is thus valuing of the I himself, the accomplishing of this same I in direction to himself, and in the self-valuing of an act which I have accomplished, lies the valuing of the I himself as determining (showing) himself in such acts, as he is.

"Self-determination is however not determination of being, ontic and predicative determination, but determination here is a `practical' act."

I cannot will to be an other, but I can will to be other, to change myself. In transformation I remain the same, but am better or less good.

But this is only a distinguished case of self-determination, this case of "changing oneself." What is self-determination in general? The case of a will directed to my I, which is founded in a `I direct my attention to myself and value myself.

"How does an I- Thou determination appear? Not every willing an acting directed from an I to an other is an I-Thou-Determining. Not every representing, thinking directed from an I to another I is an I-Thou-Knowing.

"I can see an other bodily, thereby seeing his eyes, and nevertheless not have him `in view' [in die Augen sehen]. I can see the other bodily and in the expression of his corporeality intersubjectively understand a part of his inner life; I can therefore be directed to him and his acts, and nevertheless I am not in the special sense in him and with him, in the special <sense> signified by `looking at the other in the eye' and turning-oneself-toward-`him.' An externalization which I make and which the other understands, e.g. a written one, is not an externalization which is `turning-oneself-toward-him,' in which I direct myself toward him.

"In an act in which an I directs himself toward an other, the following above all lies at the foundation: I1 apprehends empathizing I2, and I2 empathizing I1, but not only that: I1 experiences (understands) I2 as understandingly experiencing I1, and reciprocally. I see the other as seeing and understanding me, and it further lies therein, that I `know' that the other also on his side knows himself as seen by me. We understand ourselves and are in reciprocal understanding spiritually with one another, in contact.

"Looking at each other in the eye reciprocally, finding one another related reciprocally to one another in perceptual consciousness, apprehending one another and existing originarily in relation to one another, noticing one another, be directed to one another in reciprocal spiritual contact.

"Each of these I's is experiencing, valuing, striving and willing in relation to his surrounding world, directed to these or those individual objectivities (things, human beings, animals); each is subject of a life, a living present, which has its horizon of the past and horizon of the future, with respect to which it lives.

"If I see the other, then I apprehend him as subject of his life, who however is given to me only empathetically, in an incomplete, more or less indeterminate, nonintuitive, unclear presentification (everything which in original self-givenness is given in horizons, unclarities, emptinesses, enter in presentification into a modification of a new level).

"I can relate to the other favorably or unfavorably in contact with him...

We are both related to the same common surrounding world.

He exists in my present and I exist for him in his present. We are not merely in the same thing-nexus, at the same "place," but we exist in a common present, in an actually common place, a consciously common surrounding world; we are its subjects and are constituted as "we" with one another: and we are present for one another, each as ego and the other as other. The "we both" is given to me in the form "I and he," and to him in the form which I express as "he and I," but which he expresses as "I and he."

If I have the consciousness of the existence of the other as communicating with me in original communicating life, then I need not be directed to the other in noticing fashion, I do not need to have him in view, and he does not need to have me in view. It is enough if the other exists consciously [so that I am conscious of him], even if unobserved, in the field of my surrounding world, and indeed as one in whose field I exist. ...If I help the other, then I strive with him in his striving, I participate in his action, I make his goal my goal.

Thus advancing: practical intersubjective understanding. Wish for help, plea for help.

Striving, desiring, wanting to appropriate the same things.

Relatively enduring social connections of purposive community and purposive conflict (war). Social unions (societies, companies, commercial associations etc.) The social personality ("we") with the purposeful values. Wish, will, action in accordance with social purpose. The member of society as coordinated social functionary.

Relationships of coordination and subordination. Social unions according to subordination and superordination. Lord - servant - slave. Similar relationships in a society of coordination. One undertakes an achievement in intersubjective understanding with the other, in the limit case or in general.

Possible communal types. Possible goals to be striven for communally. Societies of knowledge, economic societies, societies for the advancement of religious life.

Communities [Gemeimschaften] are no societies [Gesellshaften]. The community of scientific researchers. Here is no unity of will, no assumed obligation in understanding with companions, no social personality. The communal life of language, economic life etc.

Objectivity of societies (communities) and the modes of givenness of the same for each member. They are what they are only as possibly given to the members; they make possible the acts and their habitualities which constitute sociality. Thereby each sociality has its original givenness as oriented, from the standpoint of the concerned members However insofar as he represents the community with its members, every other member is represented as middle point of his possible orientation.

And all of these modes of givenness as intersubjectively accessible are intersubjectively apprehended as modes of appearance of the same social whole and stand in relationships of identification. The true self however is an intentional unity and a true being which has an infinitely open horizon.

Social consciousness of a social subjectivity (a communalized one), social nature, social bodily-personal beings, human beings and animals connected in social nature, social objective world.

Unity of communalization. Each subject is subject of the communal world as one of an open infinity, with open determinable, indeterminate horizons, which is the same in its truth for each subject. To this world belongs an open infinity of subjects. Not only are other subjects present for each subject, but each I can enter into communal relation with other subjects as personal I-subjects in social acts. If it can express, articulate, communicate, then it can accomplish effects in the common world, which are understandable to others as effects which this subject has produced, and it has produced them with the purpose that the other I receives advantage or disadvantage from it, furthering his purposes or restricting them. As I address myself to the other through my efficacious activity, I also address myself to an indeterminately open multiplicity of others. I not only can write a personal letter, I can also write something for the general public. Or I build a fence around my garden in order to prevent others from having free access.

Thus between subjects of the social world there exist manifold social relations of efficacy which have a relatively constant durational character.

But not all subjects of the world stand in such relations. Each subject has an actual surrounding world, a sphere of natural objects and human beings, an actually present sphere of action.

But this present has its practical future. Each I has an open horizon of practical life.

To this practical surrounding world belong not all fellow human beings, but only those with whom I can communicate, with whom I can engage in social acts. I can do this neither with Martians nor with all Earthlings. Every other subject of my practical surrounding world has his practical surrounding world, and this also belongs mediately to my practical surrounding world, insofar as I can act through others.

"Since perhaps the second half of the 19th century the earthly human community has had the power to form its political power-organization into a maximally extended practical community, i.e. a totality of I-subjects, for which a real possibility of immediate or mediate reciprocal understanding and practical social efficacy exists, and indeed in such a way that an expansion to new subjects is no longer possible, or what is the same thing, they are connected through a communal practical surrounding world, in this case the earthly world (world in the sense of world history). Such a maximally practical society forms a practical universal community, a personal universe, a human world. Before the nineteenth century, there were on the earth not one but many human worlds, human universal communities or total communities, as also correlatively various practical worlds. The practical world for each member of a universal practical community is is the same as and includes all members and the universal practical community itself. It is at the same time subjectivity for this world, and belongs to it as practical objectivity. Similar to the way in which a subject observes itself in solitary fashion as included in its practical surrounding world. The subject is for itself at the same time a practical object."

In a practical universal community each personal life is mediately or immediately connected with every other, each consciousness with every other. All persons of this community have or could have one and the same personal horizon, a personal space so to speak as form of the universally communal subject-surrounding-world. Every subject in this world can bring persons to givenness, advancing from the near to the far. Each is itself the nearest, it is the null-point of personal orientation in the human world. To the communal life-stream (a synthetically bound multiplicity of subjective streams) belongs the outer communal surrounding world as intentional correlate, and the totality of possible modes of givenness of this surrounding world.

In this universe all possible special communal forms delineate themselves, "naturally awakening" communication communities with the unity of a language as system of communicative designations. Language as the communication form of a linguistically enclosed community.

Members of such a community can learn other languages, and so become members of other such communication communities, and thereby various such communities can enter into relation with one another. However language also belongs in the practical object-sphere. It can be voluntarily formed and reformed and it is itself a communal formation, awakening from voluntary acts of individuals and transmitted by tradition.

Narrower life- and efficacy-communities in expression-systems or the systematic form of expression of a single language.