Re-Thinking the Sociality of the Self

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"As Kurt Mertel puts it in the preface to this book, 'the Frankfurt School has, for the most part, dismissed the emancipatory and social-philosophical import of fundamental ontology without performing the kind of deep exegetical work necessary to adequately substantiate such a rejection.' Indeed, the 'deep exegetical work' Mertel offers may open yet other doorways, not yet visible. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the publication of Being and Time, four decades after Habermas's modernity lectures, the time might be more propitious for a serious and thorough reconsideration of how ontological and materialist traditions of critical thought might be integrated. Kurt Mertel's very timely book will also be addressing a new generation of critical theorists with a more pluralistic understanding of critique, and therefore less attached to long-congealed interpretations that serve only to foreclose the critical and emancipatory possibilities of such an integration." (Nikolas Kompridis, University of Toronto, Canada)

"This illuminating two-volume opus charts the labyrinthine landscape of the hermeneutics of facticity and the existential analytic of Dasein by unveiling the originary emancipatory impulses that animate an authentic sociality of self-relation in Sein und Zeit , while furthermore disclosing a fortiori the uncanny pathways of the foundational entanglement of Heidegger's fundamental ontology with the impetus of critical socio-political theory." (Nader El-Bizri, University of Cambridge, UK)

"An impressive work, the first of two volumes, in which Kurt Mertel offers an original interpretation of Heidegger's account of selfhood in Being and Time . By proposing an 'appropriative view', Mertel shows that Heidegger's opus magnum can be understood as a theory of emancipation for human subjectivity, provided one understands it as a social ontology. In this very rich and well documented book, Mertel argues for the need to overcome both the traditional existentialist individualistic readings of Being and Time , and the mainstream interpretations of the Frankfurt School that reject the so-called 'jargon' of authenticity, but are unable to consider the emancipatory implications of fundamental ontology (with the exception of Marcuse's interpretations). The immense merit of this book is to show that Heidegger's phenomenological ontology should be read as a central component of critical theory, in as much as it offers a non-foundationalist and post-metaphysical theory of emancipation, carried by an ontology that Heidegger calls fundamental only because it is, as Mertel argues, profoundly social." (Claude Vishnu Spaak, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi)

"Nearly a century ago, Herbert Marcuse attempted to read the 'fundamental ontology' of Heidegger's Being and Time as socia l ontology and as such a philosophical foundation of Critical Theory. Marcuse soon abandoned this attempt, discouraged by the theoretical difficulties involved and Heidegger's embrace of National Socialism in 1933. In his ambitious new book, Kurt Mertel takes up where Marcuse left off by playing the untapped potential of fundamental ontology against Heidegger's own understanding of it and by arguing for the indispensability of such a move for Critical Theory today." (Mikko Immanen, author of "Toward a Concrete Philosophy: Heidegger and the Emergence of the Frankfurt School" (2020))