I cannot help but think that Heidegger’s understanding of social being would have been radically different if he had participated in a society that understood fellow human beings as gateways to divine being, instead of in a Protestant Christian milieu (which holds that others are, at best, superfluous in one’s own personal relationship with God) and had developed to a point where National Socialism could dominate it.

*

If you happen to believe other human beings are intrinsically part of one’s relationship to God you’ll consider the conditions for cultivating and preserving relationships sacred. You might occasionally go too far and idolize those conditions, but as long as the relationships are preserved it is possible to reawaken the spirit for the sake of which they are upheld.

*

My experience of social being is exactly like Heidegger’s.

However, I interpret the experience differently. I’d call it a “deficient mode” of inhabiting a culture. Heidegger’s existentiell relationship with his culture distorted his understanding of everyday Dasein — and consequently of Dasein.