Abstract

The dissertation is a study of Martin Heidegger's concept of "co-being" , its meaning, and its import within Being and Time. It also probes, as an illuminating interpretation of this notion, Jean-Luc Nancy's reflections on what he calls "inoperative community" . ;I pursue an answer to the following question: Within the framework of Heidegger's project of an ontology of human existence as a propaedeutic to establishing the meaning of "being" in general, what does it mean to be with and for others? In other words, what is the significance of sociality or communality in Heidegger's understanding of the essential constitution of human being? ;The manner in which Heidegger structures and develops his analytic of existence poses two important difficulties. On the one hand, there is the succinctness of his account of communality; on the other, the quasi-egological or pseudo-egocentric flavor of his emphases on "mineness" , singularity, and authenticity. ;The dissertation addresses each of these difficulties in turn. Chapter One offers an in-depth account of Heidegger's conception of the essential communality of human being. Chapter Two takes issue with the egological interpretations of the notions of "mineness" and singularity, as well as of the phenomena of dread and dying, from which they are read off. Chapter Three engages the problematic of authenticy in relation to the essential communality of human being. Chapter Four rounds up the interpretation by discussing Nancy's project of an existential re-thinking of community as the being-in-common of finite, singular beings. ;I seek to provide a non-solipsistic and thoroughly communitarian reading of Being and Time, faithful and congruent with the text, but which also brings out the possible ethico-political bearings of existential thinking. A key move is the interpretation of conscience as an ethical injunction to become oneself that attains its fullest crystallization in a political moment of co-decision with others. I submit that this moment of co-resolve, ensuing in historicity as the most proper occurrence---i.e., co-occurrence---of human being, will in turn have to result in a proper publicness as space of law and normativity regulative of everyday living with one another.