An Investigation on Heidegger’s Concept of Jemeinigkeit of Dasein and Scheler’s Individual Person

The objective of this paper is to clarify the peculiar meaning of the Jemeingkeit of Dasein, as distinguished fundamentally from the individual person in the philosophy of M. Scheler. There is a common feature in the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein in Heidegger and the individual person in Scheler. This common feature consists in the fact that the essence of man is not defined in terms of “whatness,” which points to the universal thing or the universal ego. In contrast to the traditional determination of man that has a danger of reifying consciousness Heidegger and Scheler inquire the new essence of man in the mode of question of “whoness,” in which the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein and the individual person manifest. In opposition to Kant’s “rational person” directed toward the supra individuality, Scheler attempts to establish a “feeling person” founded in the individuality. Yet he argues that although man is defined as an individual person, this does not mean that man is identified as an empirical ego. Scheler’s individual person that is founded in the intuition of essence encompasses the universality. And this concept of the individual person is only revealed in the phenomenon of feeling. However, what Scheler means by feeling does not refer to the traditional understanding of feeling. By feeling, he wants to show das Fuehlen that is essentially different from Gefuehl. Gefuehl signifies the feeling of pleasure and displeasure that takes place in the inner consciousness. In contrast to this, das Fuehlen has an intentional structure and because of this, it is not reduced to a subjective feeling. For Scheler, the essence of individual person must be sought in the realm of feeling which is constituted in a concrete and universal reality. Following up on Scheler, Heidegger also tries to define the essence of man in respect to the individuality, which he calls Jemeinigkeit. And similar to Scheler, the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein is disclosed not in rationality but in mood. However, it is important to see that mood arises in the world and consequently, the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein is closely bound up with the historical communal world. According to Heidegger, Scheler’s concept of individual person, which is situated in the idealistic tradition, still remains in consciousness. In contrast to this, the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein is founded in the collective existence in the historical community, in which the temporality of past and future is united. Thus, while Scheler’s person is a disencumbered individual person in the idealistic sense, Heidegger’s Jemeinigkeit is an encumbered individual. Here we can discover a new concept of the individual person that is rooted in the historical world with others.