Heidegger spends a lot of time in section 27 worrying about the negative effects of the norms provided by The One (their tendency to "level down", their "averageness", etc.), and these features obscure these very norms’ positive role in making our world significant and intelligible. Thus he makes it hard to understand how the role of the One is essential in distinguishing human being as Dasein, who exist within a referential totality and shared for-the-sake of whichs, from the way of being of other beings in the world (animals, for example.) In this paper, I will try to show what Heidegger means when he says that in the "one" "lies that ‘constancy’ of Dasein which is closest to us,"(p.166) and I will try to make clearer Heidegger’s strong claim that "the ‘one’ itself articulates the referential nexus of significance."(p.167, Dreyfus’ translation.) I will do this by giving a phenomenological account of eating practices to illustrate how norms in this specific realm provide a referential totality and make for-the-sake-of-whichs possible. I separate out those features of the "one" which make intelligibility possible from those negative features which belong to conformism. At the same time I will try to answer the question that, if it is true that norms are the grounds for significance, then why, if this is even possible, shouldn’t we desire the most norms possible, in order to create a world with the greatest significance? To answer this question, I will make a distinction between that aspect of norms which makes coping with a world possible to begin with on the one hand, and the aspect whose purpose is authoritative and therefore "leveling". This, in turn will give help us resolve the conflict between the positive and negative roles of the "one."
First let us very briefly define the key Heideggerian terms involved: "Dasein", "referential totality", "for-the-sake-of-which", "significance", and, most importantly for this paper, this mysterious "one." Roughly, Dasein, Heidegger’s term for human being, is a being whose being is an issue for it. Dasein takes a stand on what it means to be a human being, or defines itself, through its coping with a world full of equipment.* This equipment only makes sense in terms of other equipment, and this interdependent whole is known as a referential totality. Dasein copes with the referential totality for-the-sake of taking his stand on Being. Finally, "These relationships [Dasein’s involvement with the referential totality] are bound up with one another as a primordial whole; they are what they are as this signifying in which Dasein gives itself beforehand its being-in-the-world as something to be understood. The relational whole of this signifying we call ‘significance." (p.120) This is best illustrated by an example which will also soon help us with our phenomenological account of the role of the "one" in all this: "I pick up a piece of food in a dining room, with a fork, in order to put food in my mouth, as a step towards eating dinner, for the sake of my being an active member of my family."
Now, the "one" should not be understood as some external force on human behavior. It is not, as Heidegger says, "something like a ‘universal subject’ which a plurality of subjects have hovering above them."(p.166) Rather, the term is used simply to talk about whatever it is we mean when we say things like, "One eats with a fork," "One eats at a table," "One eats dinner in the dining room," and "One eats dinner with one’s family." The subtle differences between these phrases reveals the ambiguous nature of the "one" and the way it dictates norms. One could interpret these assertions simply as descriptions of practices we have in the west of eating with forks, at tables, in dining rooms, and in the presence of one’s family. Although such an interpretation would not be false, Heidegger sees it as misleading. He is careful to point out that "the who is not this one, not that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them all." (p.164) In other words, statements concerning the "one" are not merely descriptive but have some sense of authority. They can be used to scold someone eating with his hands for example. Heidegger spends a lot of time worrying about how this authoritative aspect of the "one" exerts a force on our behavior. He talks about our concern with what "one" does in dictating our behavior and in making our want to conform to the norms provided by the "one". He terms "distantiality" Dasein’s constant concern with the distance oh his practices from those of the norm. According to Heidegger, this is what accounts for the continued existence of the "one" as it "maintains itself factically in the averageness of that which belongs to it…" In other words, our desire to conform to this averageness perpetuates the one’s presence.
The question can be asked though, is this authoritative aspect of the "one", and in turn our conformism, are necessary in its role as a provider of significance and intelligibility? If I can separate out the authoritative, leveling, aspect of the ‘one’ from its mere description of how humans do in fact happen to act, while maintaining its role as a ground for intelligibility, maybe I can resolve the conflict between its positive and negative roles. In order to do so, we must look more closely at how it is that norms fit into the referential totality and in turn in Dasein’s stance on himself.
Just as Dasein’s transparent coping with the world is ontically closest to us and yet ontologically farthest away, Heidegger says that the norms provided by the one are the "hardest to grasp", the more openly they are at work.(p166) This means that precisely because these norms are so pervasive, they are the least accessible to detached analysis. Let’s look again at our dinner table example. Heidegger is aware of the fact that without these pieces of equipment (the fork and the table, among others) the dinner as we know it could not exist as it does. And without the dinner, I could not take part in the family world in this same way. In this we can start to see the positive function of the "one," for the facts that "one eats with a fork, at the table, etc." constitute the norms that allow this shared dinner world to exist. If we didn’t have such norms, Heidegger seems to suggest, each person would be doing their own thing, and nobody would know what to do at the table. "When entities are encountered," he explains, "Dasein’s world frees them for a totality of involvements with which the "one" is familiar, and within the limits which have been established with the "one’s" averageness."(p.167) Moreover, the transparent nature of these norms (their "slyness") is as important to the dinner functioning properly, for if each person were consciously thinking about the place of the each piece of equipment at the table, they would obviously be distracted from the shared experience. We can see that the norms of the one allow for the significance of the dinner by two of their features: first, they are shared by each person in the dinner world, and, second, they are transparent.
These norms also have another aspect which I will argue is not essential though, and that is what I have called their authoritative aspect, and what Heidegger means in the above quote when he talks about "the limits which have been established with the one’s averageness.". We have seen that the norms constitute the shared world, without which we would each be having individual experiences. However, this does not necessarily mean the behavior in that world has to be dictated by those same norms. To make this clearer, it might be useful to bring in Dreyfus’ example of distance standing practices. It is true that these practices conform to certain norms. However, it does not follow that we stand at the distance we do because "this is what one does." I think we cannot give any reason at all for the distance we stand, not even this empty one, its just the way we happen to behave. If someone stands too close to us, we move away, not because that’s what "one does", but simply because we feel more comfortable that way. If we look at it this way, we avoid Heidegger’s conclusion that we are "covering up" the groundlessness of our behavior. This will become clearer if we go back to our original example.
It is tempting to think that the authoritative nature of "one" statements is necessary, that "we do in fact eat with forks because ‘one eats with a fork in the west’." However, there is nothing blocking the removal of the "one’s" authority by reversing the claim, stating, "‘one eats with a fork in the west’ because we do in fact eat with forks." Moreover, an awareness of such a reversal allows us to continue living in accordance with (not necessarily following) the norms of the one, without covering up their arbitrariness. If it is the nature of Dasein to dwell in shared worlds, then these worlds will necessarily have certain features (in the family world, people eat dinner at tables,) and these features should not be understood in terms of a force exerted by a mysterious "one" on the individual members of the world.
This conclusion also allows us to do away with the question posed in the introduction concerning the desirability of more norms to create more significance. If we are not following norms at all, but rather norms are following us, then it is meaningless to say we should create more norms. Instead, we can desire more significant practices, practices which allow us to dwell in our shared worlds, and out of these practices norms will automatically exist to explain these practices.
I can foresee the following objection to this formulation. One could say we need the authoritative function of the "one" to explain how individual Dasein’s are socialized into their shared worlds. In other words, one might ask how can we explain the evolution of certain practices if we do not show the force of the "one" in causing individuals to conform to the norms of those practices. However, this objection misses one of Heidegger’s main theses in Being and Time. That is, we should not try to reduce practices that exist in shared worlds to the way individual subjects learn these practices. When Heidegger says that "because the one presents every judgment and decision as its own, it deprives the particular Dasein of its answerability,"(p.165) he seems to contradict himself, worrying too much about the individual subject as the source of significance.
© October 18, 1998, Tao Ruspoli