The Limits of Care in Heidegger: Self-Interest and The WellBeing of the World

Abstract

This paper seeks to establish the limits in Heidegger’s account of how human beings are with one another in the world. Toward this end, we will examine Heidegger’s finding that human beings exist in the world as care, as a finite movement that needs to seek the perseverance and growth of its being. We will be brought to find that, in Heidegger’s thought, this finite movement is essentially worldly and holistic, and that this means that the essential formal structure of human relations is that of reciprocity. The form and limit of such relations of reciprocity will be pursued by examining Heidegger’s account of how these relations are lived in inauthentic and authentic ways. In the case of the former, we will find that human relations abide by a logic of tit-for-tat. In the latter case, however, such relations of reciprocity will be seen to open onto and foster the growth of the wellbeing of the world as a whole. In closing, we will ask whether Heidegger’s account of our finite movement in the world can accommodate relations of non-reciprocity.