Monographs

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WE, TOGETHER: The Social Ontology of Us
(OUP 2023)

In We, Together, I argue that our living together is a joint activity. Joint activities involve shared intentions, and shared intentions have plural intentional subjects. We are, thus, the plural subjects of our shared intentions in the same way as we are the singular subjects of our individual intentions: through pre-reflective self-awareness. Just as there is no substantive, singular “self,” “I,” or ego, there is no substantive “we.” In order to understand who we are, together, it is important to see that intentional subjects are a feature of intentionality.

EVIL IN JOINT ACTION (Routledge 2021)

Taking Augustine’s pear theft from his Confessions as a case study, I argue that it is possible to discern the elements of a convincing account of intentional evil action. The Pear Theft represents a case of joint radical improvisation that lacks collective deliberation. As such, a new perspective emerges on familiar and more intuitive forms of evil in joint action that involve group identification and institutional action.

MORALISCHE INTEGRITÄT: Kritik eines Konstrukts (Suhrkamp 2011)

The enlightened view of human nature assumes that individuals act in accordance with their core values when they are not subjected to coercion or strong temptations. However, social psychological research paints a different picture. Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments on authority obedience, for instance, appear to have demonstrated how alarmingly easy it is to lead people to violate even their deepest moral convictions. Using the example of Milgram’s participants, I argue that the blanket diagnosis of moral corruptibility associated with this must be based on a poorly constructed ideal of integrity and therefore should be reconsidered.

To develop an adequate understanding of moral integrity, my thesis suggests that one must examine what it means for individuals to be in the company of others. Because in a community, one could argue, no one is truly integral unto themselves.

PLURAL ACTION: Essays in Philosophy and Social Science (Springer 2009)

Collective Intentionality is a relatively new label for a basic social fact: the sharing of attitudes such as intentions, beliefs and emotions. This volume contributes to current research on collective intentionality by pursuing three aims. First, some of the main conceptual problems in the received literature are introduced, and a number of new insights into basic questions in the philosophy of collective intentionality are developed (part 1). Second, examples are given for the use of the analysis of collective intentionality in the theory and philosophy of the social sciences (part 2). Third, it is shown that this line of research opens up new perspectives on classical topics in the history of social philosophy and social science, and that, conversely, an inquiry into the history of ideas can lead to further refinement of our conceptual tools in the analysis of collective intentionality (part 3).

WIR-INTENTIONALITÄT (Verlag Karl Aber 2005)

Anyone who wants to understand what sociality is cannot ignore the phenomenon of shared intentions, feelings, and beliefs. This book uncovers the intellectual barriers that have hindered a proper consideration of this phenomenon in social ontology until now. In a critical engagement with contemporary analytical action theory and drawing on promising but previously overlooked analytical approaches in early phenomenology and existential philosophy, central elements of an adequate theory of shared intentionality are assembled. It becomes clear, among other things, that our blindness to the structure of shared intentions is itself an essential phenomenon of our shared existence. This finding is discussed in a critical examination of the economic behavioral model.

SUBJEKT, SYSTEM, DISKURS (Springer 2000)

It is widely accepted that Edmund Husserl failed to address the problem of intersubjectivity, and the consequences of this failure are well-established. Contrary to the widely asserted “farewell to the subject,” there is a strong argument that contemporary social theory is more about a reformulation of transcendental subjectivity. According to the critical thesis of this book, neither the reformulation of subjectivity as “integrity” nor the reformulation of subjectivity without “integrity” convincingly solves the problem of intersubjectivity. This is a reason to revisit a direct engagement with Husserl’s theory of transcendental subjectivity. It turns out that Husserl’s much-criticized and scandalized attempt to ground the meaning of the “Other” in the “Self” is counteracted in the transcendental phenomenological theory of subjectivity by a reversed relationship of justification.

Edited Volumes

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