This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Hedges, T. (2023). We and us: The power of the third for the first-person plural. European Journal of Philosophy, 1–14, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12919. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Abstract
(English)
Phenomenological discussions of sociality have long been concerned with the relations between the I, the You, and the We. Recently, dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophical work on collective intentionality has given rise to a corpus of literature oriented around the first-person plural “we.” In this paper, I demonstrate how these dominant accounts of the “we” are not exhaustive of first-person plural experiences as such. I achieve these aims by arguing for a phenomenological distinction between an experience of being part of a “we” compared to an experience of being part of an “us.” To have a “we-experience” there must be a plurality of (unified) subjects sharing in an experience together such that the experience has the phenomenal character of being ours. An “us-experience,” on the other hand, requires the experiential salience of an external “Third” in a way that is constitutively significant. Drawing on Sartrean social ontology, I argue that the “us” is distinct from the “we” on three levels, all of which pertain to the constitutive and unifying role of the Third. I then outline two forms of us-experiences: (1) the experience of being grouped and (2) the experience of apprehending one's seriality.
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We and us -The power of the third for the first-person plural.pdf
