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First published by ontos verlag,
Frankfurt, Germany 2008. Available from online bookstores such as 
Amazon under the title Social Ontology : Recasting Political Philosophy
Through a Phenomenology of Whoness ontos verlag, 2008, Hardback xiv + 688 pp. (271K words) ISBN 978-3-938793-78-7. A second
revised, emended and expanded e-book edition, Version 2.1, July 2011, 785 pp. (299K words) is no longer available on this web-site.
Republished in a third, thoroughly
revised, emended and greatly expanded edition Social Ontology of Whoness: Rethinking Core Phenomena of
Political Philosophy De Gruyter, Berlin 2019, xv + 693 pp. (319K words) ISBN: 978-3-11-061637-8 eISBN: 978-3-11-061750-4
How are core social phenomena to be understood as modes of being? This book offers a
radically alternative approach to social ontology, not least of all by conceiving modes of being
ultimately as modes of 3D-temporality. Recent interest in social ontology on the part of
mainstream philosophy and the social sciences presupposes from the outset that the human
being can be cast as a conscious subject whose intentionality can be collective. By contrast, the
present study insistently poses the crucial question of who the human being is and how
they sociate as whos. Such whoness is a clean-cut departure from the venerable
tradition of questioning whatness (quidditas, essence) in philosophical thinking. Casting human
being hermeneutically as whoness opens up new insights into how human beings sociate in
interplays of mutual estimation that are simultaneously social power plays. Hitherto,
the ontology of social power in all its various guises, has only ever been implicit. This book
makes it explicit. The kind of social power prevalent in capitalist societies is that of the reified
value embodied in commodities, money, capital, &c. Reified value itself is constituted
through an interplay of mutual estimation among things that reflects back on the power interplay
among whos. In this way a new critique of capitalism becomes possible.
Blurb for first
edition: Freedom, value, power, justice, government, legitimacy are major themes of this
inquiry. It explores the ontological structure of human beings sociating
with one another, the basic phenomenon of society. We human beings strive
to become who we are in an ongoing power interplay with each other. Thinkers
called as witnesses include Plato, Aristotle, Anaximander, Protagoras,
Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Adam Smith, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Heidegger, Schumpeter, Hayek, Carl Schmitt, Ernst Jünger,
et al.
"Classical liberalism
has neglected the ontological structure of the interplay of powers in the
practical realm of a plurality of wills, and thus the ontological problematic
of esteem, estimation, evaluation, validation, recognition, etc. among
both human beings and things. In short, ... it is ontologically blind
to the phenomenon of whoness. Instead it has imagined the free individual
as a subject without a social world, and then tried to derive society from
a bunch of atomistic individuals." Chapter 12 i)
"In this lengthy study, Eldred seeks to
rethink social and political philosophy in light of a phenomenology or ontology of Whoness,
especially as such Whoness shows up in various forms of social, economic, and political exchange
or 'interplay'. ... While I have not treated them at all in this review, thoughtful readers will also find
especially insightful, first, Eldred's discussion in Chapter 8 of Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient
Reason and the search for a reliable science of economics, and second, his critique in Chapter 11
of Heidegger's early 1930's attempt at defining a German Volk. In sum, this is a fine study
that ought to belong in any library collection that supports advanced work in social and political
theory." Roderick M. Stewart, Philosophy Department, Austin
College,Texas, review in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Vol. 84 Issue 3, Summer 2010 pp.635-638.
"Eldred warns of the
'phenomenological violence' that has occurred in the Western tradition, because its
third-person approach to ontology fails to account adequately for the social dimension of
human existence. ... In the sway of the third-person approach to metaphysics, and deeply suspicious of
modernity, Heidegger discounted the social ontology of thinkers such as Adam Smith, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, George Mead, and many others." Michael E. Zimmerman, University of Colorado in his article 'The Development of Heidegger's Nietzsche-Interpretation'. Published as: 'Die Entwicklung von Heideggers Nietzsche-Interpretation'
Vol.II Heidegger-Jahrbuch Verlag Karl Alber, Freiburg/München 2005 pp.97-116.
"As the Australian philosopher Michael Eldred remarks, things are not intrinsically valuable, but they are good
for something. Their usefulness, which is reflected and temporarily fixed as exchange value in money,
arises only in the context of usages as a way of our living together, or ethos in the sense of customary practice. The
same can be said with regard of our own abilities or capabilities. ... Both aspects of ... our lives as
validators within a community, are indirectly reflected in the "interplay" (Eldred) of evaluating
things." Rafael Capurro, Prof. em. and Director of the International Center for Information
Ethics (ICIE), Karlsruhe in his article 'Go Glocal:
Intercultural Comparison of Leadership Ethics' in Infopreneurship Journal (IJ),
Vol.1 No.1 2013 pp.1-9.
To find out what
the book is not about, read the uncomprehending repudiation
in apl. Prof. Dr. Dr. Heinz-Gerd Schmitz's review in Philosophisches
Jahrbuch ISSN 00318183
Vol.
116 No. 1 2009 pp. 228-229.
A superior review
from a decidedly critical Marxist perspective is Tony Smith's in
Science
& Society ISSN 0036-8237
Vol.
74 No. 4 2010 pp. 565-568. See my reply
to Smith.
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Last modified: 06-Feb-2024
Version 3.0 October 2018Version 2.1 July 2011Emended, revised & extended e-book Version 2.0 Jan. 2011Version 1.2 Nov. 2009Version 1.1 July 2008Version 1.0 Feb. 2008First put on site 15-Feb-2008