Beyond Objectivity
Further reflections on ‘thinghood’
So far during our exploration into what we’ve called ‘symbolic determinism’, the concept of thinghood has come up several times, which warrants giving it more attention.
What we’ve proposed is that thinghood isn’t the property of being-an-object, since ‘objectivity’ is a concept that derives from a particular metaphysical perspective — a perspective that deserves closer scrutiny in its own right.
Instead, thinghood is a product of that capacity, afforded by the symbolic, that allows us to posit a being as a being in the first place.
This capacity doesn’t come after a ‘thing’ has been encountered in the world, as if the capacity ‘overlays’ the already-existing object. Just the opposite: the encounterability of ‘things’ (which we, in our particular historical and philosophical moment, are accustomed to calling ‘objects’) is only possible on the basis of this capacity.
Things are posited through speech
If not with the encounter with an ‘externally-existing’ object, how do ‘things’ get posited in the first place?
In speech. But this speech doesn’t simply consist of corresponding words to objects, as we explored in a previous article. Instead, speaking affords thinghood by positing…
