How can we humans avoid being just objects?
Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2024 10:03 am
From a critical point of view, both concepts of being and not being objects aren't free at all from uncertainty. Strictly speaking, we don't even know the ultimate meaning of being an object. I am going to deal with my question from an existential point of view. In an existential context it is clear that frequently we feel ourselves as acting just like machines: I eat because the machine of my body needs food, I even think because the neurons of my brain make me think. But I don't like to perceive myself like a machine, even if it can be enjoyable. Philosophers have thought a lot about ways that should help us to better fulfill the best of our being humans. We can think, for example, of Heidegger's concept of authenticity. But thinking that I am a being towards death doesn't make me so interested in not being an object: is it really better than just enjoying life passively? Something that I find more interesting is my self perception of being me. Given the criticism I mentioned before, I am not going to consider this as a truth, a reality, but just as a perception, a feeling, which as such can even be completely illusory. However, there is a reasoning that seems able to make our self perception tenable, although not ultimately completely free from criticism, as I said before. Let's consider this reasoning now.
When we describe things, it is impossible to talk about things or aspects that are absolutely and completely unique. Even the expression "absolutely unique" is made with words, concepts, that aren't at all absolutely unique. This means that, whenever we talk about individual persons or things, we always talk about things that are shared among them. If you want to talk about me, you can only talk about things and concepts that in me are shared with other people or things. As a consequence, it is ultimately impossible to talk specifically about me as the unique and specific person which I am. It is impossible even to myself: I can't talk to myself about specifically myself. However, here is a paradox, a bizarre and puzzling experience: despite this radical inability to talk to myself about the specific myself, I feel like I can feel it. Here is the puzzle: I am used to the idea that I can describe a lot of things that I can feel, and other people are able to give me feedbacks that make me think that we are talking about the same thing. But, if the topic is my feeling myself (not the feeling themselves of everyone, but the feeling specifically me that I only have in this world) then there is no way of talking about it.
After all, this is somehow understandable, with reference to what I said: language is able to talk about shared things and concepts only. There aren't words to describe anything unique in this world, such as that specific flower. Even if I say "That specific flower in that moment and in that space", this is far from making use of any unique concept: it makes use of a combination of shared concepts that try to capture the object into a cage of coordinates, but they are just coordinates, each of them shared with other objects, they are not a unique name for that unique object.
Because of that, this feeling of uniqueness, unexpressible by principle, seems able to escape any risk of objectivation, it seems to me that this could be the root, the reference point to make me a non-object, a pure subject, a pure human.
There are, obviously, infinite degrees and ways of mentally and existentially living this feeling of uniqueness. In other words, this is just the root, but human life cannot be made of roots only: we also need objects, connections, relationships, mixtures, but it seems to me that that feeling could be the root.
In this context I disagree with the buddhist concept that our individuality should be conceived as something whose destiny is to melt with the whole: this seems to me just metaphysics.
If I am right, this could be the root, the reference point for authentic human existence and also for respect, appreciation and interest of humans between each other.
What do you think?
When we describe things, it is impossible to talk about things or aspects that are absolutely and completely unique. Even the expression "absolutely unique" is made with words, concepts, that aren't at all absolutely unique. This means that, whenever we talk about individual persons or things, we always talk about things that are shared among them. If you want to talk about me, you can only talk about things and concepts that in me are shared with other people or things. As a consequence, it is ultimately impossible to talk specifically about me as the unique and specific person which I am. It is impossible even to myself: I can't talk to myself about specifically myself. However, here is a paradox, a bizarre and puzzling experience: despite this radical inability to talk to myself about the specific myself, I feel like I can feel it. Here is the puzzle: I am used to the idea that I can describe a lot of things that I can feel, and other people are able to give me feedbacks that make me think that we are talking about the same thing. But, if the topic is my feeling myself (not the feeling themselves of everyone, but the feeling specifically me that I only have in this world) then there is no way of talking about it.
After all, this is somehow understandable, with reference to what I said: language is able to talk about shared things and concepts only. There aren't words to describe anything unique in this world, such as that specific flower. Even if I say "That specific flower in that moment and in that space", this is far from making use of any unique concept: it makes use of a combination of shared concepts that try to capture the object into a cage of coordinates, but they are just coordinates, each of them shared with other objects, they are not a unique name for that unique object.
Because of that, this feeling of uniqueness, unexpressible by principle, seems able to escape any risk of objectivation, it seems to me that this could be the root, the reference point to make me a non-object, a pure subject, a pure human.
There are, obviously, infinite degrees and ways of mentally and existentially living this feeling of uniqueness. In other words, this is just the root, but human life cannot be made of roots only: we also need objects, connections, relationships, mixtures, but it seems to me that that feeling could be the root.
In this context I disagree with the buddhist concept that our individuality should be conceived as something whose destiny is to melt with the whole: this seems to me just metaphysics.
If I am right, this could be the root, the reference point for authentic human existence and also for respect, appreciation and interest of humans between each other.
What do you think?