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The preceding discussions of personhood and the emergence of the quest for an ideal position-taking, i.e., one which would be maximally satisfying and unregrettable, are abstracted from the social-cultural weave into which each personal history is inserted. Position-takings typically build on the position-takings of Others and, in turn, call forth position-takings by Others which, in turn, etc. Indeed it is difficult to sort out what precisely are the exclusively individual aspects of a position-taking when one considers the extent to which individual agency is founded on the reciprocity of agency and the inherited traditions. The sense of individual personhood is inseparable from the cultivated common world, its interpersonal origins and the community of its agency and of its ideals. If this be true then it would seem that there is an essential life in common which may be teased out. This common life has various strata, some of which are pre-egological-instinctual, others of which are egological but the authorship is anonymous, others tacitly and implicitly affirm explicit achievements of their authors. In our view this functioning common life serves both as the ideal and basis of a critique of the life lived together by persons. This is not an abstract universal power, e.g., the state, which stands in opposition to the single individuals. Rather the common life is essential to each individual's life as both its necessary condition as well as its completion. The alienated group and individual lives may be generally correlated with circumstances in which the essential and ideal common life exists in the form of a caricature.¹ In this chapter we wish to begin a demonstration of how this common life is the fuller context for the discussion of the ideal position-taking which is the desideratum of the ethical epoché. We must keep in mind (see Chapter I) that the absolute ought emerges from the ethical epoché in conjunction with the attempt to survey one's life in the light of what is best. We shall later study the categorical features of the absolute ought (in Chapter IV); in this chapter we point to these discussions and have occasion to remind ourselves that it is only from the standpoint of the transcendental reduction that the ultimate ("absolute") sense of the absolute ought becomes evident (Chapter I).

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-7991-9_3

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