Off Centre.

21 The second world is the inner world, Innenwelt. This is the world given to the human being inside her own body (Leib). The double aspect here lies in its existence as a soul and as an experience (Erlebnis). Humans recognize their self (or “soul,” as Plessner calls it) as underlying every experience and, at the same time, are able to experience their own experiencing by taking a step back (364).

22 The third and final mode of human existence is what Plessner labels the Mitwelt. This is the world of human interactions, ontologically not different from the first two worlds (376). The Mitwelt is necessary to form one’s character. As a consequence of their eccentric positionality, humans are in a constant state of unrest, since they have to create themselves over and over again: “Als exzentrisch organisiertes Wesen muß er sich zu dem, was er schon ist, erst machen” (383). Human beings have lost the instinctiveness of living; this is how and why, according to Plessner, culture is founded (385). It is specifically human that human beings care about their own existence: “bis auf den Menschen kennt es [alles Lebendige] keine Sorge um das eigene Dasein oder gar um das Dasein anderer Wesen” (394).[4]The thought that caring about oneself is distinctly human, on which Plessner draws here, became only recently very popular in contemporary ethics through the writings of Harry G. Frankfurt, see for example his collection of essays entitled The Importance of What We Care About (1988).

23 After this sketch of Plessner’s theory, we might now ask how it helps us further for the concept of eccentricity we are searching for. We took an interest in Plessner because it emerged that eccentricity has to do with very fundamental questions of living and valuing, which is Plessner’s field of research, and because the word “eccentric” features so prominently in his theory.

24 Contrary to our expectations, however, it appears that Plessner’s theory is of no direct use for our purposes. Although Plessner builds his theory of human beings on what he calls eccentric positionality, he talks about a wholly different thing than the kind of eccentricity we are trying to grasp. Why is that? In Plessner’s use of the word, “eccentric” signifies, as we have seen, the characteristically human mode of existence. However, what we are looking for is a concept of eccentricity which signifies certain individuals as being different in a certain way from others. Our concept of eccentricity is a concept of discrimination, whereas Plessner’s concept of eccentric positionality is a concept which of necessity applies to all human beings, since it is their distinctive mode of existence. With Plessner’s use of “eccentric” in mind, we would never be able to call someone “eccentric” as we do in everyday language because the crucial point here is that the person using the word considers himself not to be eccentric.

25 Thus, if we were to adopt Plessner’s meaning of “eccentric,” we would have to abandon all our previous points about the features of eccentricity and this would mean that we would be talking about a totally different subject. We started with the question in what way the eccentric person differs from the non-eccentric with regard to fundamental attitudes towards life and Plessner’s theory is unable to provide an answer to this because from his point of view this question simply is without any meaning. However, although his concept of eccentricity is categorically different from ours and therefore not useful for us, his description of the human condition nevertheless captures something very important which will lead us, as I will argue, to a final understanding of eccentricity.