Editing Martin Heidegger (section)

====''Das Man''====
As implied in the analysis of both attunement and discourse, Dasein is "always already", or [[a priori]], a social being. In Heidegger's technical idiom, Dasein is "Dasein-with" (''Mitsein''), which he presents as equally primordial with "being-one's self" (''Selbstsein'').{{sfn|Inwood|1999|page=31}}

Heidegger's term for this existential feature of Dasein is ''das Man'', which is a German pronoun, ''man'', that Heidegger turns into a noun.{{sfn|Inwood|1999|page=212}} In English it is usually translated as either "the they" or "the one" (sometimes also capitalized); for, as Heidegger puts it, "By 'others' we do not mean everyone else but me.... They are rather those from whom for the most part, one does ''not'' distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too".{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|page=118}} Quite frequently the term is just left in the German.

According to philosopher [[Hubert Dreyfus]], part of Heidegger's aim is to show that, contrary to Husserl, individuals do not generate an intersubjective world from their separate activities; rather, "these activities ''presuppose'' the disclosure of one shared world." This is one way in which Heidegger breaks from the [[Cartesianism|Cartesian]] tradition of beginning from the perspective of individual subjectivity.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=142}}

Dreyfus argues that the chapter on ''das Man'' is "the most confused" in ''Being and Time'' and so is often misinterpreted. The problem, he says, is that Heidegger's presentation conflates two opposing influences. The first is Dilthey's account of the role that public and historical contexts have in the production of significance. The second is Kierkegaard's insistence that truth is never to be found in the crowd.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=143}}

The Diltheyian dimension of Heidegger's analysis positions ''das Man'' as ontologically existential in the same way as understanding, affectedness, and discourse. This dimension of Heidegger's analysis captures the way that a socio-historical "background" makes possible the specific significance that entities and activities can have.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1991|page=143}} Philosopher [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]] expands upon the term: "It is that of which I am not simply unaware... but at the same time I cannot be said to be explicitly or focally aware of it, because that status is already occupied by what it is making intelligible".{{sfn|Taylor|1993|page=325}} For this reason, background non-representationally informs and enables engaged agency in the world, but is something that people can never make fully explicit to themselves.{{sfn|Taylor|1993|page=327}}

The Kierkegaardian influence on Heidegger's analysis introduces a more [[existentialist]] dimension to ''Being and Time''. ([[Existentialism]] is a broad philosophical movement largely defined by [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and is not to be confused with Heidegger's technical analysis of the specific existential features of Dasein.) Its central notion is ''authenticity'', which emerges as a problem from the "publicness" built into the existential role of ''das Man''. In Heidegger's own words:

<blockquote>In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as ''they'' take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as ''they'' see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the 'great mass' as ''they'' shrink back; we find 'shocking' what they find shocking. The 'they', which is nothing definite, and which we all are, through not as the sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness.{{sfn|Heidegger|1962|pages=126–27}}</blockquote>

This "dictatorship of ''das Man''" threatens to undermine Heidegger's entire project of uncovering the meaning of being because it does not seem possible, from such a condition, to even raise the question of being that Heidegger claims to pursue. He responds to this challenge with his account of [[Authenticity (philosophy)|authenticity]].