Saying that people exist is almost like attributing a quality to them. It modifies existence, metasemantically, so to speak, which is how existence can come to be something like a quality. People exist suggests that existence is a potential which may or may not be activated, when in fact existence probably has an altogether different relation to activity. For some philosophical purposes, then, it would be better to say that existence peoples.
Perhaps it is only through its peopling that we can understand that existence peoples. That is, we may credit an existence that peoples with an anthropomorphism which we would ordinarily regard as our own, and this is how we begin to grasp its agency, such as it may be. This would be our limitation provided to us by existence, this anthropomorphism. But is this really the right word, anthropomorphism? Are people given as forms, or through forms? By saying that existence peoples aren't we attempting to say something like people are given through or as an activity of existence? Where do forms come in?
We might say that existence peoples epigenetically, in a movement from the amorphous, an emergence. Is the amorphous ever really shaken off by the living? Is a living form ever full?
We might also say that existence peoples phylogenetically, as it lives. Are we existents left to recapitulate, to inhabit forms handed down to us, or do we give epigenesis some fuller meaning, something even approaching transcendence? What is this living we are passing through?
We should reflect on transitivity, the through. Does it go to far to attribute agency to existence when all that we have said is that existence peoples? Who or what does existence people? What would be capable of being peopled? You? Me? Is the peopling of existence in fact reflexive? Does it pass through you and me only on its way to peopling itself? In that case would it be a proper it?
It must somehow be an error to think a pluralism of pluralities, to think existences as Existences. Consider these alternatives: existences people existences, existences people peoples; or, existence peoples existence, existence peoples people. Surely we are talking about *existence, a topic of conversation rather than existences themselves. Do we surrender to conversation? Is that a limitation provided to us by (*)existence? And yet, how do I presume to talk sensibly about the nonexistence of existence (in the singular)?
I see chaoses and things and people. Obviously existences have many modalities. Could existence be one of those modalities? Do existences single out?
What kind of relation is there between peopling and singling out? I venture to say it is a wild relation. There would be nothing necessary or essential about it. One thing I mean by saying that I do in fact see chaoses is that many if not most relations are wild relations, and sense bestowal is both limiting and limited. At the limits of sense bestowal existence peoples.
Whose limits are the limits of sense bestowal?
Sometimes I feel as if existence didn't people for me or through me or anyhow about me.
One can only commit to a personal philosophy. It doesn't come naturally, without reserve, without doubts. Do you suppose that existence is committed to you? I suppose you are committed to existence, but reasons for commitment are opaque to me. Does existence reciprocate commitments? Does existence people in order to reciprocate? Somehow I feel that would be a backwards reading, as if reciprocity were an accident of peopling. And commitment too were an accident.
Accidents happen at the limits of sense bestowal. We can only own them by an accident, or by a series of accidents: that existence peoples, that people reciprocate, that people commit. One can only commit to being given a gift, that is, to be given a gift one must give oneself to being with being given a gift, one must give oneself with giving. Is that asking too much of people? On the contrary, would it be asking too much for people to own commitment just like that without cause or reason, as if they were taking commitment from existence without acknowledging its having been given to them as people? (Yeah, yeah, the gift requires just such a taking.) Possibly many of your commitments will be met with ingratitude. People can be rough that way.
Labels: existence, gift, humans
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