✧༺ Becoming Constellations ༻✧

On Subjectivity and Relation

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On Subjectivity and Relation

“No fim, eu sempre me encontrava comigo mesmo” — In the end, I always found myself.

The Paradox of Being Subject

It’s easy to be alive — we simply are, just like we’ve been ever since we came into existence, before even our birth, which we usually associate as the beginning of everything to us.

However, it is not easy to be subject to life — because we are alone. We are not alone in life; we are all alive. You’re alive while you’re reading this, and I am in some way alive, partly eternalized in these words. Not objectively, of course — eventually these words will cease to be together — but they still exist in case you’re reading this.

The Search for Relation

As subjects, we don’t want to be alone in our subjectivity. We try to find and establish relations with others with whom we can share our subjectivity together. Of course it is impossible to have the same subjectivity — we are in this alone — but we can share our experience of being subject to life, of living.

I tried to relate to others — but in the end I always found myself.

Subject and Object

When we observe, interact with, or analyze an object (philosophically speaking) — an idea, a person, an experience, anything that takes the role of the object in the relation with the subject — we should pay attention not only to the object itself, but equally importantly, to our relationship with the object.

The relationship between subject and object is itself a third term, a mediating element that transforms both parties. This is the dialectical insight: we cannot understand the object without understanding our relation to it, and in examining that relation, we come to understand ourselves differently.

“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” — Karl Marx