Positive Post #32: Philosophy Nerdiness

I'm going to geek out on philosophy a little bit today. I'm trying to sort through a small bit of an essay I found yesterday, and I think if I share it as I do that, it will be clearer for me. If that sounds fun, come along for the ride. If this is not your brand of geekiness, I promise I'll be more conversational tomorrow.

Also, the bit of this essay I'm picking at today was written originally in German. I don't speak or read German, so I'm working from a translation. At some points I'm going to substitute a synonym for the word used by the person who translated it, to make it more clear for myself. So if you google the original later, you'll see some discrepancies.

Here we go, from Martin Heidegger's Letter on Humanism:

"To embrace a 'thing' or a 'person' in their essence means to love them, to favor them."

OK, that's pretty clear. To accept someone or something as they are is what love is. To embrace them for the essence of who they are is to favor them ... to give them attention over something else. To focus on them. Like when we focus our eyes on one thing, out of necessity we lose focus on other things for the moment. Another synonym I found for "favoring" is "honoring."

Next line:

"Thought of in a more original way, such 'favoring' means the bestowal of their essence as a gift."

Hmmm, "the bestowal of their essence as a gift." I'm not sure if this means I give them their essence as a gift, or I receive it as a gift. Either way, that sounds pretty magical. The essence of another human being, with all of the extraneous stuff boiled away, is a gift to me. OR I give them the gift of seeing their essence instead of the flaws and disappointments and annoyances. (I think this is what happens when we are first falling in love. We see only the essence, and not the flaws, and we bestow on the other person the gift of seeing themselves that way, too.)

"Such favoring is the proper essence of unshackling, which not only can achieve this or that; but also can let something essentially unfold in its provenance, that is, ... let it be."

OK, there's a lot here. The original translation says "such favoring is the proper essence of enabling," but enabling is a loaded word these days, so I looked it up and found empowering instead. But I think empowering is overused and so I tried unshackling instead, because that means removing barriers and permitting something or someone to act unfettered, as it would act without its current constraints. So when I favor someone, or love them, or attend to their essence, I allow them to move, unchained. When I do that, it permits certain achievements, sure. It can "achieve this or that." But that's not the important thing. The important thing is that loving someone in their essence allows them to "unfold" in their "provenance."

I had to look up provenance. It's not an everyday word at all. I thought it meant something like destiny, but it's more like "origin story," for all of you superhero fans. It can also mean a record of the history of something, like a famous work of art that was created and then bought and sold and held in museums. So if I love someone in their essence and allow them to unfold in their own origin and personal history, it's like watching a flower bloom. A rose isn't going to bloom like a sunflower, because its origin story is that of a rose. So now I have a deeper understanding of "essence." A person is who they are, and they can unfold into their fullness, but they can't unfold into SOMEONE ELSE'S fullness. Only their own.

And also we get a nice Beatles reference here. To "Let it Be" is really to love someone or something by seeing the gift they are when they unfold and blossom into their own story.

Next:

"It is on the strength of such unshackling by favoring that something is properly able to be."

OK, that's easy. It's under the shining light of love (favoring) that someone can blossom into BEING who they are. Less emphasis on blossoming, more emphasis on just being. They don't have to DO anything. They can just BE their essence, in the embrace of my love.

Next:

"This unshackling is what is properly 'possible,' whose essence resides in favoring. From this favoring, Being enables thinking. The former makes the latter possible. Being is the enabling-favoring, the 'may be.'"

OK, this was confusing for me the first 10 times I read it. Here's what I think: I love someone as their essence, and that sets them free to BE themselves. In that freedom, there is all the possibility that is available in their essence. In fact, their essence lives inside my love. ("Whose essence resides in favoring...") Without love, the essence can be lost. It doesn't have a place to live. Once they are loved in this way, a person can BE. And once they can BE, they are able to think and create possibilities and opportunities ... the dreams that "may be."

I'm starting to think this essay is about parenting. But maybe all love is the kind that can allow people to unfold into their fullness...

Next:

"As an element, being is the 'quiet power' of the favoring-unshackling, that is, of the possible."

I think this means that the ability to love someone enough that they can just be themselves is the quiet power that makes anything possible.

That's pretty powerful.

Next:

"Of course, our words 'possible' and 'possibility,' under the dominance of 'logic' and 'science,' are thought of solely in contrast to 'actuality'; that is, they are thought on the basis of a definite - the metaphysical - interpretation of being as action and potential, a distinction identified with that between existence and essence."

OK, here he is explaining that when he says "possibility" he doesn't mean a probability or a scientific likelihood. It's not the same "possibility" as saying there is a one in two chance I will flip a coin and get heads. That's just a comparison of potential outcomes, and comparing them to what actually happens. Now he is going to explain what he really means when he uses the word Possibility:

"When I speak of the 'quiet power of the possible' I do not mean one option of a merely represented set of outcomes, nor potential energy as the essence of an act of existence; rather, I mean BEING itself, which in its favoring presides over thinking; and hence over the essence of humanity, and that means over its relation to being."

Man, there's a lot in this section, but it's the end of the part I'm looking at. So here we go. Let's finish strong:

When I speak of the quiet power of the possible (man, that's beautiful!) I don't mean probabilities or statistics or the potential energy of a ball at the top of a ramp. I mean the quiet power of BEING. Of being myself. Of unshackling myself from disappointments and failures and "should-haves." ... The quiet power of BEING, which is LOVE: unconditional love for the essence of things and the essence of people. That kind of powerful love, the quiet power of the possible, "presides over thinking." That kind of commitment stands at the front of the room in our brains and has authority over our thinking. That kind of love guides and moves everything.

"... and hence over the essence of humanity, and that means over its relation to being."

That kind of love/honor/focus, because it guides our thinking, also presides over the essence of humanity (ALL HUMANITY!) and over its relation to being. Love (favoring/supporting/honoring and unshackling) allows things to unfold in their essence, and therefore allows all humanity to unfold in its essence.

It even unshackles us from our "relation to being" ... our confining ideas of what it means to be.

To be ourselves.

To be human.

To be a mother.

To be a father.

To be a partner.

To be a friend.

To live.

To die.

To be.

Love presides over what we say "being" means.

That sounds about right.

Thanks for playing along. This was easier to dissect in "public" somehow.

I'm including a photo of a sycamore tree in Philadelphia. The "provenance" or origin story of this tree is easy to see. At its origin, someone planted a sycamore sapling and put a protective wrought iron fence around its base. And while it's not possible now to literally unshackle this tree from its bindings, it has been thriving in the light of the warm sun and the nourishment of its roots for decades. And now it has transcended its shackles and stretches into the fullness of its possibility. "Such favoring is the proper essence of unshackling, which not only can achieve this or that; but also can let something essentially unfold in its provenance, that is, ... let it be." The sycamore will become the fullness of its being as a sycamore, iron fencing and all.

Previous Positive Posts: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/alicefoeller/detail/recent-activity/posts/