12 - Worlds Emerging: Approaches to the Creation and Constitution of the Common

Summary

Implicit in the idea of world-making are the assumptions that human beings are the makers of their own history and that in the incessant shaping of their sociohistorical worlds they experience some sort of commonality. This dual presupposition entails the attribution of at least some sort of control to both individuals and emerging collectivities over the status and direction of sociohistorical institutions and life-trajectories. The allegedly ‘common’ world, emerging and/or persisting in time, poses a number of theoretical problems, of which this chapter attempts to examine only those relating to its creation and constitution. However, a preliminary task that I would like to undertake here involves the clarification of the meaning and characteristics of this ‘common world’, or, to be more precise, a questioning of the very nature of a socialhistorical world in general. While there are certainly a number of legitimate ways of pursuing theoretical insights into the issue, in this contribution I intend to draw primarily on Heidegger's early phenomenological-hermeneutic understanding of the ‘worldhood of the world’ and of historicity, as well as on Gadamer's concept of ‘belonging to a tradition’ while sharing a culturalhistorical horizon. In both cases, an attempt is made to situate the authors' elaborations within the wider context of their works so as to give a clearer picture to the reader and to avoid the grave consequences of complete decontextualization.