November 2016

Each living being must interact with its environment  in order to survive. For living beings,  vital contact between organism and environment  must always be maintained—in the face of all the  risks of breaking away, in a manner of “continuous  discontinuity,” so to speak. We can call this  principle of sustaining contact the “Subject” of  life in the precise etymological sense of subjectum,  which designates what lies at the base of  all living behavior. In so far as the “Subject” can  be effective only as long as the organism continues  to live, it certainly belongs to this organism,  but it by no means resides inside of it. Its place of  being is between the organism and the environment,  therefore in a certain sense outside the organism.  What we are referring to here with the term  “organism” is not limited to a single individual

However, the wish to find a global force that may help us overcome a galloping addictive desire bumps into an unexpected obstacle, a purely philosophic one. There can be no force like that at all. We live in a world where the life order is a patchwork. Indeed, the mass public no longer takes such things as life aims, a personal devotion mission as imperatives for themselves. It’s a rule, not an exception when a person can quit his or her job that brings no more moral or material satisfaction and almost never feel sorry about it. The clearest description of this spirit of the public life was given by postmodernism philosophy of the 60s.

But now, in inner awareness there is a more   complex form of self-awareness. Not only am I aware   of myself by virtue of the egocentric structure 'I...'.   But in inner awareness I am aware of my passing experience   by virtue of the reflexive structure 'in this   very experience [I see this frog]', and part of what I am   so aware of is myself, subject of the experience