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This chapter elaborates on the idea that, in order to jointly actualize our ability to feel-towards together, we have to be able to exist as our group. It articulates the following proposal: the faculty we human individuals have to emotionally respond to certain occurrences in a genuinely joint manner is grounded in the ability we have to exist in certain situations in terms of some possibilities we share with concrete others—the ability we humans have to jointly be our (shared) possibilities. The chapter begins with a clarification of what it means to have a justifiable sense to the effect that we (the involved individuals) constitute some particular social group. By means of a sort of case study I then explore some intuitions concerning the idea of a number of individuals caring with one another about something. I suggest that we can best cash out this idea in terms of the image of a number of persons existing in the relevant situation in light of some possibility they feel able to jointly actualize. I propose that in these situations the involved individuals are, in virtue of a non-purely instrumental actualization of their ability to be the relevant group, pursuing a joint actualization of some of their personal abilities—of some existential possibilities. To understand this idea is fundamental in order to make sense of the following suggestion: in those situations in which we are jointly actualizing our ability to feel-towards together we are caring about something ultimately for the sake of a group we take ourselves to co-constitute. This discussion allows me to further clarify the sense in which emotionally responding to some occurrence in a genuinely joint manner can be understood as a characteristically human ability.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-33735-7_8

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