Beilage XXXI: Personal Life. Social Connection on the Basis of Voluntary Institution - On the Basis of Instinct - On the Basis of Sympathy. Participation ("Sympathy").

(November 1932)

[Paraphrase and Excerpts]

"I am either in a private orientation (in the asocial I-orientation) or in a social one, and so each person in his personal existence, and indeed in his conscious life, has stretches of an asocial (not in the ordinary sense `unsocial') life and stretches of social life.

"Every person as personal human being among human beings, knowing himself in the horizon of his fellow human beings, is `member' (companion, socius) of many personal human associations established through social acts between him and his companions. In the life of persons these are always newly instituted, perhaps in a fleetingly passing manner, e.g. related to determinate near-lying ends, or to far-lying ends which nevertheless lie in finitude, or also to a practical generality of ends of a certain kind, and perhaps with limited time, perhaps also with an openly endless time-horizon in the form of the indeterminate `from now on we want perhaps to work together communally in selling, in scientific activity etc.' That thus produces an enduring sociality, in these examples, on the basis of a voluntary institution through the social acts of those concerned, through these acts of persons entering into an association of will. But of course other acts of institution occur which do not have the form: I will to bind myself with N N..., motivating him through communication to associate himself with me in an achievement of the will, to set himself an end which is the same as the one I set for myself, thus to determine that he not only will this end, but that he will it as it is willed by me, so that I will the same as is willed by him. Thus my will penetrates through his will, and his through my will, and the end is a common end for us both. Therein it lies implicite that each of us wills equally and correlatively the connection between us, or the personal bond itself. Of course institution of this type has many particular forms, grounded in the various modalities of the will, in its immediacy and mediacy, its horizonalities and thereby indeterminate generalities and determinate particularities.

"But before the will and its volitional ends lie the preforms of I-striving, of affective being-attracted-towards, of determining oneself, which we call instinctive. Thus the original self-instituting of the sexual-community, as it already occurs among animals, in distinction from marriage as a [community which exists] through voluntary institution with a determinate goal, and here with abstraction from the time-horizon of the whole life. But it is the same with a friendship in which one wishes to bind oneself with the other, comes to an association through `sympathy' and without a special decision of the will and thoughtful goal. On the other hand however it is also the case that one on the ground of the living sensing sympathy of wish and will is directed to come to an association with the sympathetic person. Thus I am always in associations: associations <which> I have instituted or co-instituted in relation to special purposes, and in associations into which I have entered in other ways but always on the basis of my own participation. In my family I am awake, and the association with my mother is the most original of all associations. Later there awaken in me many other associations with brothers and sisters, with comrades, with friends. I awaken however into the traditional community, in that of my family in an historical sense (my `Geschlect'), in that of my nation with its customs, its language etc. Also in this awakening into the assumption of tradition lies a co-institution through modes of will.

"Now human life is of two kinds, as already said: the human being lives either asocially or socially. We may illustrate what that concerns with the following examples: I take a walk, I hold my cigarette, I eat - but not as a member of a dining society; thus I have in what I do and let happen a private sphere in a widest sense, not merely one related to legal sociality. In the act of social living the human being enters with others into actual connection, whether this involves a new association, or participating in an already instituted social association as socius, as functionary. But here there is probably also a distinction: I work e.g. as a scientist for myself, without thinking of my `scientific public,' of the society in which I work... It is different when I am conscious of the others... In such cases I am in the actual we-orientation.

"It should be noted that I thereby not only experience the others as co-present or `know' of the others as co-existing, as coexisting in the world in actually conscious fashion in the form of a doxic certainty, but I exist as I, as center, associated for purposes of accomplishment as accomplishing subject of my activity with the other as subject of his activity. I am active in him, he is active in me, I work in his work, he in mine. As a lover in the community of love (friendship), and indeed in my actuality, I view (I, the loving observer, the one who enters lovingly into him) him not only as living in such and such a way, he is in my ontic field not only as such, but I live in his life, I live it along with [him], and also I am for him perhaps one who co-lives not only from the outside, but his living-along-with encompasses my living-along-with.

"Nevertheless, do we not have to distinguish from the associated sociality in the reciprocity of communalization the one-sided kind? Now certainly that is `empathy' itself: in the motivation through which the other becomes conscious of me, I am in correspondence with him, my empathizing life exists in quasi fashion in his life, co-acting, co-suffering, co-perceiving, co-meaning etc. However there belongs to empathy only a basic layer of actual active co-living, being-co-active in him, the layer there whereby we have a common surrounding world, I the same as he, and he as I (without social connection).1 //1. Apperceiving the world on the basis of the passive achievement of association, which motivates empathizing presentification, with affection from the commonly apperceived surrounding world. Then however my activity harmonizes or does not harmonize with that of others.// However I have my ends as practical I, he has his, I will what I will, and not that which he wills, and I `understand' him therein, but I do not adopt [his ends], when I accomplish empathy, I do not co-live his life (active behavior) as valuing, as practical; also not when I understand him as a thinker, thus without further ado his thinking life, his judging, concluding [life] etc. If I do that, then that can happen in the form of sympathy, but also [in the form of] the loving and hating going-along with him in him.

"What about co-willing? It can also be the case that I (while nevertheless no reciprocal connection is produced and he perhaps has noticed nothing at all of my existence) come to will in him and his will. I perceive that he is directly present to kill an animal that is vexatious to him. I assume his aversion..." The being of the animal motivates me sympathetically to will the act, to co-feel, co-desire, and co-will. I do not myself act, I must first grasp the fact that he is already in action. I wish not only that the animal were dead, but insofar as the other kills the animal, he realizes my wish as his will, in which I participate in co-willing fashion. "Of course this co-will is not will in the usual sense. It is the `will of sympathy.' I can `participate' in feeling, desiring, willing. Co-feeling, co-desiring, co-willing do not <exist> simply as my feeling etc. which runs parallel with that of others, and in the same way they do not exist in the mere inner being of this coming together in the mode of feeling etc. When I perceive in conversation that my partner behaves like me, or see the same movement of emotion in the drama my neighbors present, that is not this `participation,' not this co-feeling with the feeling of others.

"In co-feeling, I am, as I, sunken in others and their feelings, co-living, co-feeling. I am as person not directed to the other person as object, I am directed to that to which he is directed as a person who comports himself in such and such a way. Thereby I am sunken in him, in correspondence with him in the conscious possession of the same surrounding world and in the egoic direction to `the same' thematic objects; but as participant I exist in correspondence with the empathetically presentified I, i.e. co-feeling, co-desiring, co-willing in its feeling, desiring, willing. I am not thereby in general directed to myself, as when I reflectively articulate my participation. I comport myself in the mode of the harmony of co-comportment, whose counter-mode is that, while he perhaps gives way with aversion before a snake in the grass, I find this below me, and do not inwardly co-perform his act (in sympathetic co-action), that according to his movement, but accompany [it] with a counter-will. To co-feeling, co-acting, co-participating then corresponds counter-feeling etc., their negatives.

"Out of that, feeling and willing, acting can awaken, which are to be distinguished from co-feeling. The sympathetic co-suffering (participating) is not ~suffering with the other' in the same way that he suffers. One then has his suffering in the fact that he suffers, which does not mean that one is sunken in correspondence with him, feeling with him, wherein one does not in general have him in feeling, indeed as `living with him,' as an object, a thema. However, one proceeds out of the other, and the original co-suffering is therefore a founded act...founded in original and then fundamental co-feeling.

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