Co-entanglement: One’s Own Hi/stories, Others’ Hi/stories, and Universal Hi/stories

Abstract In Wilhelm Schapp’s philosophy of hi/stories, the emergence and transmission of hi/stories are grounded in the dynamic interplay between narrating and listening, through which a hi/story unfolds beyond the limits of the immediate act of narration and opens onto broader horizons of meaning. Hi/stories spread within the hermeneutical space of those who receive them, intersecting with their own life-hi/stories and shaping every form of access to reality and to others. From this perspective, no experience can be understood outside the network of hi/stories in which individuals are entangled, and even self-understanding arises through an immanent engagement with one’s own intertwined hi/stories. These hi/stories are multiple, stratified, and inseparable, forming a dense web that constitutes the horizon of lived experience. Within this framework, a fundamental distinction emerges between one’s own entanglement and the entanglement of others, while the notion of co-entanglement expands this structure to include relations with other human beings, animals, and the natural world. At the same time, hi/stories can take on a collective dimension, giving rise to “hi/stories of we,” which articulate different levels of shared belonging, from concrete communities to universal forms of human coexistence. In this way, individual and collective existence are understood as unfolding within a plurality of interconnected hi/stories that shape both personal identity and broader forms of communal life.