The Role of the Third in the Genesis of a We-perspective

ABSTRACT

According to a recent and prominent view, a ‘we-perspective’ arises out of a dyadic I-you relation involving a special form of reciprocity in which I relate to another as a you – as somebody who is also attending and addressing me. As important as this argument might be, one obvious limitation lies in that it typically applies to dyadic forms of ‘we’ which are bound to the here and now of face-to-face interactions between ‘ad hoc pairs of individuals’. Drawing inspiration from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason and Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, I will argue that in order to trace a way out of this impasse, one needs to shift the theoretical focus from dyadic face-to-face (immediate) relations of reciprocity between I and You, self and other to ternary relations of ‘mediated reciprocity’ involving the figure and the functions of a third party (le tiers).

KEYWORDS:

• we-perspective
• third party
• I-you relationship
• group identification
• phenomenology of sociality
• Jean-Paul Sartre

Acknowledgments

This paper has received funding from the AIAS-COFUND II fellowship programme that is supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (Grant agreement no 754513) and the Aarhus University Research Foundation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to a well-known typology drawn by Simmel, we can make a fundamental distinction, namely between the ‘group made up of many’ or a plural group – formally more than three, but in fact an undefined number of participants – and the ‘group of two’ or a dyadic group (Simmel 1964, part II, chap iii, iv and v).

2. This alternative is brilliantly summarised by Descombes (2001, 117–155) and further discussed by Benoist (2001, 19–41).

3. I take here the symbolic order, in a certain proximity to thesis from Freud and Lacan, as the social realm of customs, institutions, laws, mores, norms, practices, rituals, rules and traditions (entwined in various ways with language) into which individual human beings are thrown at birth, and configuring the fields of inter-subjective interactions. According to Lacan, the collective symbolic order (sometimes named ‘the big Other’) can be understood as roughly equivalent to the overarching ‘objective spirit’ of trans-individual socio-linguistic structures configuring the fields of inter-subjective interactions. In his own terms, the symbolic – through language – is the ‘pact which links … subjects. The human action par excellence is originally founded on the existence of the symbol, namely on laws and contracts’ (Lacan 2013, 230). Unfortunately, further elaboration on this point is beyond the scope of this paper. Let it suffice to note that the contributions of psychoanalysis are the most cogent and useful to complement the Sartrian concept of the third.

4. This conceptual distinction first made by Simmel (1964, part II, chap iii, iv and v) is currently adopted in social theory, for instance by Fischer (2013), among others.

5. If one looks to the social sciences, one finds some rich considerations about the figures and functions of the Third. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate in German social philosophy and social theory which centers on whether social theory should turn to the analysis of the role of the third party in order to conceptualize social phenomena, classically viewed from the standpoint of the ‘Other’. See Bedorf (2003, 2006); Fischer (2013); Bedorf, Fischer, and Lindeman (2010); Esslinger et al. (2010); Cooper and Malkmus (2013); Breger and Döring (1998). See also, Waldenfels (1997); Lindemann (2005). Despite all this work, however, we do not find any reflection centered on the function of the third in the emergence of a ‘we-perspective’, neither in social theory nor in the philosophical (and social ontology) debate on the ‘we’. My main concern in this paper is precisely to move beyond this impasse. Specifically, I intend to explore the role of the third in the genesis of a we-perspective in a ‘group made up of many’.

6. See, for instance: Schilbach et al. (2013); Eilan (2014); Carpenter and Liebal (2011); Reddy (2008); Darwall (2006).

7. This argument is particularly important as a critical one against the position of those, such as Heidegger (1996, [1928/9] 2001) but also of Arendt (1994), who postulate the preexistence of a ‘we’ in relation to individuals and believe that our ‘being-with-others’ (Mitsein) could be the foundation of our consciousness of the Other, as well as of our ‘being-for-others’ in general. It is clear, in fact, that the experience of being engaged in a ‘we’ cannot be primary; it cannot constitute an original attitude toward others since, on the contrary, it presupposes a preliminary recognition of the others.

8. Not all German classical phenomenologists confine themselves to the I-you relation in the attempt to explain the possibility of attaining a ‘we-perspective’. A great diversity of approaches can be found, for instance, in Reinach (1913) and Walther (1923). The later Husserl’s phenomenology of generativity has also been read in this fashion, as an attempt to go beyond the here and now of two individuals facing each other. Among these fairly divergent approaches, Sartre seems to me the most interesting one as an analyst of the group relation. He approaches the question of how it is possible to attain a ‘we-perspective’ not only by two pairs of individuals facing each other but by complex social configurations disposed to merge into groups and institutions in a more systematic and detailed manner than the others, and he never hesitates to modify his earlier conceptions throughout the stages of his intellectual progress, leading to the social philosophy put forward in the Critique of Dialectical Reason.

9. It is worth recalling that Sartre’s Critique has largely been ignored both in social ontology and in the burgeoning field of phenomenology of sociality. Almost everyone who has written about Sartre’s ideas about the ‘we’ mistakenly considers the presentation in Being and Nothingness to be definitive. That work, which appeared in 1943, does contain an analysis of ‘Being-With (Mitsein) and the “We”’ in the chapter entitled ‘Concrete Relations with Others’. But shortly after he published Being and Nothingness, Sartre began to modify many of its fundamental points. In this respect, it is important to bear in mind what he himself said near the end of his life: ‘What is particularly bad in L’Être et le Néant [Being and Nothingness] is the specifically social chapter, on the “we”, compared to the chapters on the “you” and “others” […] that part of L’Être et le Néant failed…’, Jean-Paul Sartre (1981, 13).

10. This famous distinction between the grammatically subjective ‘we’ and the objective ‘us’ deserves some elaboration. As Catalano summarises, ‘Sartre agrees with Heidegger that we do indeed collaborate with others and are conscious of ourselves as a “we”. He denies, however, that Heidegger’s description of “being-with” indicates a fundamental structure of the human reality’ (Catalano 1974, 188). In other words, Sartre denies the existence of a ‘we’ in the sense of an a priori, positive bond uniting human beings – an idea that he terms the ‘ontological we’ – but he admits that we do have an objective union with others in the world – which he terms the ‘us-relation’ – insofar as praxes produce artefacts or objects, through which we cooperate with each other. Therefore, as Catalano summarises, ‘The “we-object” or the “us” is a true but secondary modification of our consciousness; it is a more complex form of our relation to the other through the look. The “we-subject”, on the other hand, is a purely psychological apprehension of our cooperation with others’ (Catalano 1974, 189). This means that I discover the ‘Us’, in whom I am integrated outside, in the look of a third person. On the other hand, the we-subject is experienced from within but, as such, it is a purely psychological experience. As I show in this paper, Sartre modifies his earlier conception of the ‘we-subject’ in the Critique of Dialectical Reason, where he grants a limited use of the ‘we-relation’ in the fused-group or group-in-fusion.

11. Sartre doesn’t abandon the meaning of the third as witness in the Critique, but he confines this meaning to the analysis of dyadic relationship. See Sartre ([1960] 1976, 106–109 and 114–121).

12. As Catalano, briefly remarks, ‘although he will still deny the existence of a we-relation, in the sense of an a priori positive bound uniting humans (and as an ontological relation), he implicitly redefines this notion in the Critique’ (Catalano 1986, 34).

13. I have chosen this expression (in-group agent) to put special emphasis on the following important point: the mediating third in the Critique is a ‘functional concept denoting the praxis of the individual as group member, that is communicating an identity of interest and purpose’, as brilliantly expressed by Flynn (1997, 127).

14. I am well aware that it would be more appropriate to use ‘it’ instead of ‘he’ in referring to the third party to avoid gendering whenever possible. However, the non-gendering manoeuvre is complicated by the fact that Sartre refers to the third as male. Therefore, I chose ‘he’ when I refer to quotes from Sartre, but ‘it’ when I refer to the third more generally.

15. The so-called ‘fused group’ or ‘group-in-fusion’ is a newly constituted – yet still unstructured and leaderless group – which arises under the pressure of adverse circumstances (e.g. the pressures of enemy groups or the pressures of material threats such as famine, scarcity, etc.…) and realises the unification of singularities ‘on the spot’. In Sartre’s own terms, a ‘fused group’ emerges ‘hot’ (à chaud) and acts where previously there were only gatherings. However, through this ephemeral formation, ‘everyone glimpses new, deeper, but yet to be created, social units’ (Sartre [1960] 1976, 357).

16. As I read Sartre, there are two ways of understanding the third party, in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. There is what I call a weak way: the one that consists of conceiving the third party as a third in-group agent. But beyond this, there is a strong way: the one that consists of positing that the third is a temporary leader, a director, or an organizer whose function is to lead the group for a while. As I will argue for here, the third in Sartre’s Critique ultimately appears not only as a third in-group agent – as it has been abundantly proposed in the secondary literature on Sartre’s Critique, which include the important prior contributions by Catalano (1986, 2010) Santoni (2003) Rizk (2014, 2011), Flynn (1997) – but also as a temporary leader or as a provisional representative of the group’s aims and values.

17. Sartre clearly expresses this concept: ‘His praxis is his own in himself, as the free development [….] of the action of the entire group which is in the process of formation’ (Sartre [1960] 1976, 371).

18. In the group-in-fusion, this is obvious because every person is a potential sovereign who can lead the group for a while. However, identifying the third party with a leader is both an error and an exaggeration, in that it represents a function, and not a concrete figure, and most importantly, it represents a function that can be played by various actors in the group. However, this analogy contains a grain of truth in that the third party embodies the leading idea in which the group’s members can have a share and which weld them together.

19. Since the example that Sartre has in mind is the French Revolution, we might think of the case of revolutionary groups. Typically, in a revolutionary group, an agitator-organiser will emerge. He is not a leader stricto sensu, nor one who commands or is in charge. But he acts as a director, a medium, and a channel for popular opinion.

20. It’s worth recalling that this is ‘the technical meaning of praxis as distinct from mere action: praxis is action precisely insofar as it is historical’ (Catalano 1986, 36).

21. A similar argument borrowed from developmental psychology is made by Bedorf (2006).

22. At the end of the chapter entitled ‘Being in Love and Hypnosis’ Freud designs the graphic representation of the process of group identification that he previously defined as follows: ‘A primary group […] is a number of individuals who have substitute one and the same object for their ego ideal and have consequently identify themselves with one another in their ego’ (Freud 1959, chap. VIII).

23. Le Bon (1895), Tarde (1890) and Freud (1959) can be considered as the founding fathers of crowd psychology, which they jointly established, while attempting to solve the mystery or the riddle of group formation. Another important figure in this debate is McDougall (1920). A historical and systematic reconstruction of their contributions can be found in Moscovici (1985). Many other books contain accounts of the relationships between Freud, Le Bon and Tarde. See, in particular, Giner (1976), Adorno (1972, viii, 35).

24. It is worth recalling that all the emotional ties upon which a group depends are of the character of instincts that are inhibited in their aims.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [754513], and by  the Aarhus University Research Foundation.