Abstract
In Rinrigaku, Watsuji Tetsurō criticizes Martin Heidegger's Being and Time for taking as its starting point the standpoint of the individual "I." For Watsuji, this "I" is an abstraction, and starting from it leads the phenomenologist to neglect the more fundamental standpoint of the person who is deeply engaged in social activities. In this paper, I explain that Watsuji's criticism is helpful in shedding light on Heidegger's failure to connect hermeneutic phenomenology to ethics in Being and Time. In particular, it is helpful in understanding the shortcomings of Heidegger's account of authenticity, which in Being and Time is juxtaposed with Dasein's immersion in social relations. I go on to argue, however, that Heidegger had made a more significant connection between hermeneutic phenomenology and ethics earlier, in his 1924 Marburg lectures on Aristotle (Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy), where his treatment of being-with-one-another resonates with Watsuji's later account of betweennness (aidagara).