ABSTRACT
In the recent debate on collective intentionality, philosophical theories of action have notably faced the problem of how it is possible to share an intention while doing something together.
In contrast to the standard approach, this chapter follows the phenomenological insight expressed in Heidegger’s Being and Time, according to which the experience of social life is primarily anonymous. Yet, against this background, the question of how social agents gain a consciousness of their social perspectives, i.e., the awareness of being part of a community distinguished by its own situations, preferences, intentions, etc., stands out. This question will be understood in three different ways, as referring to: (i) how agents become aware of their own individual social perspective against the background of the anonymous structure of social life; (ii) how the possibility of perspective assumption (perspective-taking) is the condition of the interest in other individual social perspectives; (iii) how we can also speak of the discovery of a collective social perspective if social groups, and even whole societies, face alternative or even conflicting social structures.
