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From Collectives to Groups—Sartre and Stein on Joint Action and Emotional Sharing

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Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology

Part of the book series: Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences ((WHPS,volume 1))

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Abstract

One of the main elements of Sartre ’s original contribution to social ontology is his distinction between groups and collectives. Groups and collectives are both gatherings of individuals, but they are very different social entities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sartre famously uses the example of a gathering of people waiting at a bus stop (Sartre 2004, 256).

  2. 2.

    Sartre discusses the Storming of the Bastille as example of such a transformation. This is in line with his preference for revolutionary practices throughout the Critic of Dialectical Reason, which is understandable given the Marxist conviction it is built on. In my discussion here, I prefer to use everyday examples.

  3. 3.

    A few years after On the Problem of Empathy , Stein develops a more elaborate account of emotional sharing in Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (Stein 2000). For a detailed discussion of Stein ’s account of emotional sharing (Szanto 2015).

  4. 4.

    This is intriguing because it allows us to postulate continuity between certain collective behaviors in humans and animals, as Stein herself points out (Stein 2000, 176–177 and 182–184; cf. Stein 1989, 58–59 and 68–69).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Gerhard Thonhauser

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  1. Gerhard Thonhauser
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Correspondence to Gerhard Thonhauser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Sebastian Luft

  2. Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, Institut für Humanwissenschaften, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    Ruth Hagengruber

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Thonhauser, G. (2018). From Collectives to Groups—Sartre and Stein on Joint Action and Emotional Sharing. In: Luft, S., Hagengruber, R. (eds) Women Phenomenologists on Social Ontology. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97861-1_13

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