An Interpersonal Account of Heideggerian Ethics: An Analysis of Being and Time

In what follows, I will present an interpersonal account of Being and Time that runs counter to most of the standard literature. There are a few moving parts to this paper that must be addressed before moving forward. Section II addresses both Heidegger’s political affiliations as well as the connection to ethics. By presenting some of the more prominent interpretations in the literature, a picture of how one can read a political ideology into Being and Time becomes possible. This is followed by Section III, where I immediately address and eschew those concerns by presenting an account that does in fact read the fascist ideologies into Being and Time and, with some careful analysis, I show that interpretations following this nature fall short of the goal. In Section IV, I present some of the exegetical work that shows the impossibility of fascism in Being and Time while beginning to engage with some of the greater concerns from an ethical standpoint. Section IV aims to present the interpersonal account of ethics such that the essence of Being is necessarily directed towards the Other in the world. What begins to come to light is an interpretation of Being and Time that puts the Other first in a way that counters much of the literature concerning what ethics might look like from Being and Time