I reviewed some old posts last week and was happy to discover that I liked them. Here’s a rewording of one of them:
- Another person exists to us in at least two ways: as fellow objects and fellow subjects. The subjective aspect of other people here is called “the other”.
- The subjective influence of other subjects is experienced as a change in one’s self.
- A change in one’s self is not experienced primarily as a change in one’s own qualities as an individual person-among-people, but as a shift in the entire world on the whole and in many parts simultaneously. In other words…
- A change in self (manifested as change in the experience of entire world) is a holistic change.
- Subjectivity pervades the entire world, and in fact is the whole world; it is not localized in an individual’s mind. Mind is not localizable, and therefore is not objective-form.
- Intersubjectivity, then, is experienced as a change in the whole world, attributable to the subjective influence of the other.
- To the degree that it is radical, change in subjectivity is impossible to understand prior to the change. It is understandable only in retrospect. This kind of change is practical transcendence.
- Anxiety (or angst or dread) is the premonition of a radical change in subjectivity. Anxiety is a reaction to impending transcendence.
- Perplexity is the yet unfinished radical change in subjectivity – in the whole world. It is the pain of transcending.
- The impulse to defend oneself against subjective influence is the fending off of anxiety and subsequent perplexity.
- Denial of the existence of truth is commonly a defense against the subjective influence of other.
- The subjectivity of the other is transcendent. The relationship with the other, we-hood is also transcendent.
- An I knows the other in participation in we-hood.
- Each we is a greater self, a whole within which each I is a part.
- By participating in we-hood, an I senses its situation within greater selfhood.
- Each we is embedded in yet greater we
- The concept of an ultimate We points to personhood of God.
- An image of God: The principle common to self composed of instincts; a friendship composed of selves; being that arises where “two or more are gathered”.
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To get a clearer sense of how I understand subjectivity see my second post, “a plan for a short video clip”.