3.1Bearing a name and standing in estimation in the community through valuing interplay

...und Hoffnungen nennt man in der Republik der Geister die Republikaner, das sind jene Menschen, die sich einbilden, man dürfe seine ganze Kraft der Sache widmen, statt einen großen Teil von ihr auf das äußere Vorwärtskommen zu verwenden; sie vergessen, daß die Leistung des Einzelnen gering, das Vorwärtskommen dagegen ein Wunsch aller ist, und vernachlässigen die soziale Pflicht des Strebens...

Robert Musil
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften I Tl. 1 Kap. 13

...and promising individuals in the republic of intellectuals are called republicans, who are those persons that flatter themselves that one may devote one’s entire energy to the substantial issue instead of expending a great deal of it on getting ahead; they forget that the individual’s achievement is small, but getting ahead is everyone’s desire, and neglect the social duty to strive...

In my everyday life, I am concerned not only with pragmatically taking care of what needs to be done for the sake of living, but also with the stand I assume as somewho in the community, i.e. in the mirroring view of others. My being-in-the-world is essentially immersed in the socio-ontological dimension of whoness, including even a possible deficient view of me in which I figure as merely one among many, or as a piece of data. My proper name is associated, as underlying subject, with all the acts I undertake in daily life and the quality of my life; how I can live, depends on the regard in which I am held by both others and myself. Regard and esteem, self-regard and self-esteem inhere essentially in the dimension within which I assume a stand as somewho (just as the self-showing of things is always also a self-showing not only of what they are in terms of physical properties, but also of what they are good for and thus what they are worth). My manifestation as who is thus not simply the revelation of a fact, but involves the showing of estimable worthiness or otherwise and is in this sense a showing-off, where this term is not to be understood in any pejorative or derogatory sense. In the view of others I always stand in their estimation, and they always stand in mine. We estimate each other in every encounter in a kind of mirroring interplay of who we are in our respective who-standings. This mirroring is a kind of mutual recognition and includes the entire gamut from awe and praise through utter indifference to negative modi such as hatred, condescension and disdain. Estimation means placing a value upon, as worthy or otherwise. Human being in its self-showing cannot escape this dimension of estimation of who-status. Phenomena such as fame or calumny cannot be thought as modes of being (presencing-as...) without the prior dimension of whoness as the site where they are ontologically situated.

A who is always viewed or regarded within the dimension of esteem. My reputational standing as somewho is essentially situated in a vertical dimension with above and below; in the view of others I am always held in high or low regard and esteem or somewhere in between, including, at first and for the most part, at the mid-point of indifference or averageness. Being somewho is thus always a being valued somehow or other as a who of such-and-such a reputational standing, even if this standing be average or neutral or indifferent. Just as things in their being, as encountered in everyday life, are always regarded as good or unsuitable for some application or other, so too are people in their whoness always regarded or esteemed highly or lowly or somewhere in between. Such valuing of each other is not a matter of mutually ‘subjective’ value judgements as distinct from some ‘objective’ valuation or other (e.g. that could be measured by collecting empirical data), but of the mirroring interplay in between in which individual qualities, above all abilities, come to be reflected in each other’s estimation, and is thus subjective-objective, situated in the connecting hyphen (from Gk. ὑφέν ‘together’ ‘in one’ f. ὑφ’, ὑπό under + ἔν one.). Status as who within the dimension of whoness therefore is constituted in the between and is prior to or undercuts any distinction between a subject and an objectivity standing over against it.

Without having explicitly seen the 3D-temporal clearing for being itself as the openness for presencing and absencing, nor having thought through the ontological phenomenon of whoness as a dimension sui generis within in the folds of being, Aristotle nevertheless associates the susceptibility to good and bad (ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ Pol. 1253a18) with the essential determination of human being as τὸ ζῷον λόγον ἔχον (1253a10). This susceptibility and openness to understanding good and bad is not to be thought in the first place as a moral category, but rather pragmatically as the openness to seeing what is good in the sense of beneficial and suitable, and bad in the sense of what is harmful or useless (τὸ συμφέρον καὶ τὸ βλαβερόν 1253a15). The openness to being itself is not objective or neutral, but is essentially value-laden, ‘coloured’ with a valency. In other words, τὸ ἀγαθόν (the good) is another name for τὸ εἶναι (being itself), not only with regard to the self-showing of things themselves as what they are good for, but also and especially with regard to the self-showing and showing-off of human beings as who they are and how they are to be estimated and esteemed.

My proper name is the seed crystal of who I am that marks my singularity, my Jemeinigkeit in language, thus, paradoxically and painfully, making my singularity universal. To be a who means to bear a proper name and to bear the contradiction between singularity and universality. This means that proper-named-ness is an essential aspect or phenomenal-ontological moment of whoness. To this seed crystal of my proper name adhere all the practices and usages of everyday life I perform (ably or poorly) in which not only I understand myself, but through which also others view and regard me as who I am. My way of living is not only visible both to myself and others, but it is, as attributable to the underlying proper name which I bear, that for which I also bear responsibility. How I live is attributable to me as an individual human being leading my life, and shaping, casting my individual existence. My way of living is, on the one hand, the expression of my self-understanding with which I identify through self-reflection, i.e. my self-identity, that mirror-reflection which belongs to me as who I am. Self-reflection is to be understood here in the etymologically primal sense of a bending back on myself, which is the ontological structure of all self-identity. For others, on the other hand, my way of living is visible not only in having to do with me, but above all in what they hear about me. What they hear about me is my reputation, or in German, Ruf or ‘call’ or ‘renown’. My reputation presents a view of me to the world which informs the views of others regarding how and whom they hold me to be.

Being held to be somewho in the view of others is also being held to be responsible for who I am and what I do. Who I am is always being estimated, both by myself and others. In my self-estimation resides the call of conscience (lit. co-knowing of my self, genitivus subjectivus) that estimates through self-reflection who I am and what I have done and how well I have done it. Being who thus means continually striving to stand in esteem and self-esteem, for the view of who I am is always subject to estimation, i.e. valuation. The striving to stand in esteem or honour is what Plato calls φιλοτιμία, literally, the ‘love of esteem’ or ‘striving for esteem’, and it is a phenomenon which plays a major role throughout Plato’s thinking, in particular, in his Republic (Πολιτεία), although, it must be underscored, there is no ontology of whoness to be found in either Plato or Aristotle. This circumstance has given rise to the fateful disjunction between ontology and ethics. The striving to stand in esteem, i.e. to be validated in one’s self-stand by others, is synonymous with the striving to be a human being with a standing in a community.

For human being, the world opens up not only in understanding things and states of affairs in their various interconnections, but also in estimating things, states of affairs and other persons in their goodness or badness in the amoral sense of whether they are good for something or good for nothing. Such goodness or badness is estimated in terms of whether the thing, state of affairs or person in question is beneficial or deleterious, suitable or unsuitable, applicable or inapplicable, relevant or irrelevant. Such estimating does not consist in sticking values onto so-called value-free facts, as if the facts were ‘objectively’ there first and the values were superadded later by a ‘subjective’ act, but rather, the world opens up from the outset, i.e. a priori, in what the situation, the thing, state of affairs or someone is good for. Their value is in their being, i.e. their mode of presencing, itself.

Whereas the being of something shows itself as good for or suitable for some application of other, the being of somewho is disclosed first of all in a reputation and regard which disclose what the person concerned is good for, thus being worthy of esteem. The goodness of a person does not mean in the first place that the person is morally good, but rather competent and able, excellent in some respect. Said negatively: the old Greek saying, οἱ πολλοὶ κακοί, does not mean that most people are morally bad, but that most people are good for nothing, or ‘useless’, ‘worthless’, which goes against today’s democratic grain. Sharing the openness of 3D-temporal being as a social, sociating being means in its essence striving (through to the privative mode of failing to strive) to achieve and maintain a standing in reputation and regard that provides a good view of oneself, thus occasioning others to hold one in high regard as a worthy person.

One strives to present oneself in a good light and to show off that one is good for something or other with respect to the fulfilment of communal usages or what is appreciated and recognized by the community, however this community may be defined, be it a clique, a subculture, a peer group, a township, an electorate, or whatever. Such disclosure in a reputation, of course, does not have to correspond to how the individual concerned shows itself of itself as itself, but may be only partial or even totally deceptive, distortive and deluding. Furthermore, there may a great and painful disjuncture between how I regard my self and how I am regarded by others or by you. (The phenomena of recognition and you-and-I as modes of mutually mirroring and casting who each of us is will be investigated more closely in later chapters; cf. especially Chapter 5.6)

3.2Human social being as self-presentation and showing-off in the 3D-temporal clearing in an interplay of estimable reputability (politeness, pride, vulnerability, arrogance, conceit)

Social intercourse and encounter, as I have said, take place in the ontological dimension or element of estimated and esteemed whoness, which enables and requires that the human beings encountering and entering into intercourse with one another regard and acknowledge each other a priori as worthy persons, where worthiness is regarded as an all-encompassing dimension covering also privative and neutral modes of estimation such as denigration, derogation, depreciation and indifference. This mutual regard (including one-sided disregard) applies even when the reputation of the other is hardly known, so that mutual acknowledgement becomes a matter of formal politeness. Politeness is the mode of conduct which pays formal regard to the estimable views or masks which the social actors present of themselves and show off as persons in general, daily social intercourse. As such, by formalizing the paying of regard, politeness allows social life to revolve around its pole without unnecessary friction. This lubrication is necessary only because human beings are somewho. Impoliteness too, of course, is situated within the dimension of estimated whoness as a deficiency in or privation of politeness, and can be characterized as the refusal to pay formal regard to, i.e. to disregard the worthiness of somewho as a person, which is a formal character mask, a persona. The worthiness to which politeness pays regard does not have the specific reputation of the individual concerned in view, but rather, politeness is a formal acknowledging of the status of estimable whoness in general. The other is formally and abstractly regarded as a worthy person, regardless of, and perhaps even despite, their particularity.

To be a person means to wear a mask of self-presentation to others, to present a look of who one is to others, and the polite intercourse among persons consists in the first place of calling each other by name. Impoliteness consists in overstepping the bounds of customary formal regard for the other as a person and may consist even in failing to address the other person by his or her proper name, the bearing of a proper name or proper-namedness being a hallmark and nub of whoness. The formal character of personhood means that the showing-off of oneself in social encounter and intercourse resembles the presentation of a mask through which the person pretends to be who they are. This mask is the form, i.e. εἴδος or look, that is presented to view. This pretence does not mean necessarily that there is anything false in the self-presentation, but merely that there is something schematic and even standardized about the view which an individual presents in the public open as a person.

One could ask why we are bothering with a phenomenon as banal, trivial and innocuous as politeness, a subject apparently more suitable for a sociology of manners. Why this concern with a mundane phenomenon of everyday life in a context concerned with the question of society as such? Would it not be more appropriate to discuss higher phenomena such as purportedly inalienable human rights and the dignity of the human person? Isn’t it such noble, elevated ethical principles which should be the focus of our attention when discussing what it means to be a human being? However, are such principles of human dignity to be simply posited as celestial ideals, or rather, must it be asked how such principles can be grounded on Earth in view of the simple quotidian phenomena themselves that are first encountered? Is it not the case that the dignity of human being has its roots, and must have its roots in daily life if it is to be more than just some dreamt-up, concocted Utopian ideal or posited dogmatically as a birthright, putatively innate? How is the origin of human dignity (and indignity) to be located if not in social intercourse and encounter as they are lived everyday? One could perhaps offer an anthropological, evolutionary quasi-causal explanation in terms of the development of homo erectus, or a social history of mores, but such evolutionary arguments and social narratives are ultimately vacuous because, like all the sciences, they do not and cannot, as science, think through carefully and simply the phenomena themselves in their ontological structure, but instead necessarily implicitly presuppose them. Human being as such has to be thought as being’s having laid claim on humans, appropriating them as human beings to the 3D-temporal clearing.

This has to be brought to light in the very first place. It is being itself which brings humans to stand as human beings in their being enpropriated to being, and it is the open temporal clearing for presencing and absencing as well as the truth of being that enables and empowers human beings to shows themselves off as who they are. Whoness is a phenomenon of being sui generis. It is being (the 3D-time-clearing) itself that in the first place enables and brings humans to stand as who by situating them in the clearing in a sociating interplay of estimable reputability. From such esteem and estimation springs not only the phenomenon of formal politeness, but also phenomena such as pride and vulnerability. Pride is the offensive showing-off of one’s standing as who, whereas vulnerability arises from each who’s being inevitably exposed to estimation by others, which includes the possibility of derogation and denigration.

Whoness is the essential, core, originally-enabling, social phenomenon of showing off to each other as human beings, and one’s standing as somewho out there in the open is not just a neutral or ‘objective’ self-showing, but a showing-off which craves estimation and acknowledgement that can well be denied by others. To be human means to be concerned with and to care about one’s standing in being estimated in the regard of others as somewho. This is an essential moment of the care of being human as the care of self, Selbstsorge. Human beings not only come to stand in being claimed and overwhelmed by being, thus being exposed to an understanding of being in an attunedness to it, but they also come to stand and be estimated in a look by each other in social interplay. The dimension of social interplay in sociative intercourse contains the folds of being into the first and second person, the phenomena of I myself, you yourself, we ourselves, you-and-I — phenomena that we will have to think through more closely in this investigation.

The circumstance that the whoness of whos is constituted through an interplay between and among whos implies that it is a thoroughly relative (πρός τι) phenomenon lacking the traditional substance (οὐσία) and also the very opposite of anything absolute, thus autonomous, self-contained, infinite. The relativity of whoness signifies the finitude and vulnerability of human being itself in its social, sociating nature. The vertical dimension of metaphysics is absent here; there is no longer any transcendent orientation toward a supreme being, whether it be God, the Absolute, the highest values or whatever.

Politeness is the mode of public social intercourse in which each person’s standing as who in general is left uncontested and is formally acknowledged and respected, regardless of their specific merits or otherwise. Such formal respect for the other as a person (which is a kind of mask, a certain ‘look’) in everyday life must be regarded as the germ of general human dignity: the abstract, formal dignity of the person in its who-standing. Such possibility of standing as who is granted to humans in the first place by the openness of being’s truth itself for revealing and concealing; insofar, a person’s standing as who is not of their own making. From the outset, each human is cast into a standing as somewho. One may be proud, perhaps overweeningly so, of the standing one has achieved in one’s social milieu, but the dimension of whoness which opens up the possibility of such a standing in the first place is not human-made and, in its mysterious grantedness, is not to be taken for granted and overlooked. The natural human dignity of a person as the mask-bearer of whoness is thus granted by being (the 3D-temporal clearing) itself in an ontological precasting; in other words, nature has to be understood in the early Greek sense as φύσις, i.e. as a name for being, meaning the emergence of beings into the open where they assume a stand as beings with their ‘looks’.

The striving of human beings to stand as high as possible as somewho, may assume, for instance, the form of appearance of arrogance and conceit. In the phenomenon of arrogance, one claims too prominent a status for oneself in one’s showing-off as who; one arrogates too much regard to oneself, similar to the phenomenon of conceitedness in which one narcissistically nurtures an overweening opinion of oneself and overestimates one’s own qualities and worth. Originally, ‘conceit’ meant simply ‘conception’ or ‘opinion’ or ‘view’ and is thus related phenomenologically to Greek δόξα. Such self-conceit is, in the first place, the view one holds of oneself, one’s self-image in a self-mirroring (but not in any ‘inner’, psychological sense). Such self-mirroring is enabled by the who’s bending back (re-flecting) on its self. Such a view may correspond to how one is in truth but, in view of the striving for self-esteem, one’s conceit of oneself tends to be, at first and for the most part, an over-estimation.26 There is a striving, a reaching, an ὄρεξις on the part of every who to stand as high as possible in the interplay of whoness, and this leads inevitably to an over-estimation of oneself and a showing-off of oneself in order to stand as high as possible and thus to be more, higher, greater. This striving for a high standing as who could be termed the phallic germ of phallocracy. Another term would be vanity, which consists in holding a high opinion of oneself (a holding of oneself to be, to presence highly in the clearing for presencing), one that exceeds one’s genuine abilities and merits and perhaps even covers up an intrinsic worthlessness. Social life is therefore not only ineluctably a showing-off of who one is, but for the most part is a parade of showing-off of standing and status and a display of untruth in the sense that humans as social beings tend to show themselves off as more than who they are based on their genuine abilities, merits and achievements.

One could object that the above discussion of personhood, proper-named-ness, politeness, the wearing of masks of self-presentation properly belongs to a sociology of social roles. But this would be superficial, for it would miss the point that all who-interplay of mutual estimation played out around the nub of the kernel of whoness consisting in my own proper name requires as stage not merely the world shared with others, but, prior to that, the open 3D-temporal clearing of being itself. My own proper name is the publicly visible side of my self. Selfhood has long since been an important subject in the modern ontology of consciousness, the nugget of self accompanying, as Kant says, all experience of the world. Once the phenomenality of whoness comes into view, however, it can be seen that the self bears masks of self-presentation to the world shared with others in mutually estimative games. I constitute my very self through such games of estimation, and that in a temporally three-dimensional way, because my self is not merely in the present moment, now, but itself temporal stretched into all three temporal dimensions. I am also who I once was and how this yester-self shows itself to me today. I am also who I may one day become, which may even be palpably visible to me in my ambitions, career-plans, etc. My polite comportment may be considered in the present situation, but has also its temporal correspondences in yesterness27 and future. My impoliteness in the past, for instance, may well carry over to today in spoiling my reputation in the interplay with others who have heard rumours. Or my practising the locution of my speech may be part of as who I aim to present my self in the future. The theme of selfhood will recur in the following. It should be kept in mind that the playground for constitution of the self is ultimately the 3D-temporal clearing.

3.3Further exemplary phenomena of standing and not standing as somewho (flattery, manliness) — The existential possibility of coming to one’s very own, genuine stand as self

The complement to the phenomena of arrogance and conceitedness is that of flattery. Flattery is a comportment toward the other which mirrors to this other an unjustifiably aggrandized view of their standing as who. Flattery tickles the other’s conceit and panders to their vanity in order to curry favour with the other. As such, flattery is a form of untruth of the who in the sense of a distorted self-showing that allows the other to wallow in vainglory and self-exaltation, either loudly and overtly or quietly and covertly. The flatterer presents in words and gestures a mirroring view of the flattered one which unjustifiably aggrandizes their standing and qualities. The flatterer does not reflect in words the view which the who presents of themself as themself, but rather reflects a distorted and exaggerated view of the flattered one. To exist as somewho means inevitably and essentially to be exposed in showing-off to the dangers of the falsity of both self-conceit and flattery in social intercourse. As far as oneself is concerned, at first and for the most part, one tends to over-estimate oneself and is thus in untruth with regard to oneself (vanity). Because of this tendency to over-estimate oneself, one is also prone to fall for the flattery in the manipulative mirrors which others hold up to magnify one’s standing in order to achieve their own ends. Later (Chap. 5) we will see that this mirroring interplay is a power play among whos.

As a phenomenon of reflection of who one is and how tall one stands in the hierarchy of who-status, flattery is a (deficient) kind of recognition. The phenomenon of recognition, in turn, concerns how one comes to stand as one’s own self, and thus with esteem and self-esteem, which will also be explored in more depth later on (cf. Chapter 5.6, Chapter 6.6 and the discussion of Hegel’s “process of recognition” in Chapter 11.1).

Plato brings the phenomenon of flattery (κολακεί́α) into play very often in his dialogues, including the Republic, the Laws, Symposium, Alcibiades, Phaidros, and the Sophist28. It plays its most prominent role, however, in Gorgias, where rhetoric is classified as a merely empirical skill for flattering the souls of others with the aim of getting one’s way with them (a kind of social power). The characterization of manliness in the first book of the Laws, however, provides perhaps one of the deepest insights into the essential nature of flattery as a vice and device that endangers the stand which an individual has won for itself in its existence. There we read:

ΑΘ. Τὴν ἀνδρείαν δέ, φέρε, τί θῶμεν; πότερον ἁπλῶς οὕτως εἶναι πρὸς φόβους καὶ λύπας διαμάχην μό́νον, ἢ καὶ πρὸς πόθους τε καὶ ἡδονὰς καί τινας δεινὰς θωπείας κολακικάς, αἳ καὶ τῶν σεμνῶν οἰομένων εἶναι τοὺς θυμοὺς ποιοῦσιν κηρίνους. ΜΕ. Οἶμαι μὲν οὕτω· πρὸς ταῦτα σύμπαντα. (633d)

Athenian: And, tell me, as what are we to define manliness? Whether simply as the struggle against fear and pain alone, or also against desires and pleasures and such powerful flattering enticements which make the heart as soft as wax, even of those who regard themselves as being above such things. Megillos: In my view, against both of these.

Manliness (ἀνδρεία), which is the abstract noun from ἀνήρ (man) and usually rendered in English as ‘bravery’, ‘courageousness’ or suchlike, is one of the four cardinal virtues, i.e. abilities and excellences, that recur again and again in Plato’s and Aristotle’s ethical discussions without ever gaining socioontological underpinnings as modes of being. As the above quotation, along with many others, shows, manliness is experienced by the Greeks as a steadfastness in the face of both physical and psychic danger. Above all, the psychic dangers, which consist in coaxing, cajoling, enticing, wheedling and flattering the soul with false esteem and the prospect of pleasures and the fulfilment of desire, have to be guarded against by assuming and upholding a firm stand. Such a sober, firm, well-defined manly stand stands like a bulwark in the way of succumbing to ἀκολασία, which means ‘loss or lack of control’, ‘unbridledness’, ‘dissoluteness’. To be a human being means for the Greeks first and foremost to keep one’s desires, i.e. the motive forces of the psyche that reach out (ὀρέγεσθαι), bridled and also to hold one’s ground against phsycial dangers such as attack by an enemy or the terrors of natural forces.

Two typical ways in which loss of self-control takes place with respect to the body are gluttony and sexual indulgence. With respect to the soul or psyche, the principle of self-movement, to assume a manly, self-controlled stand means to exist as someone of good reputation who can regard themself in their self-presentation with self-esteem and can be regarded by others in high estimation. The prospect of pleasure or the satisfaction of desire with respect to both body and soul tends to cloud the view and to seduce the person concerned into a surrender of the control which upholds a commendable stand. In particular, in the case of flattery, the flattered one is enticed into surrendering their well-measured view of themself in favour of a grander view offered by the flatterer’s charming, ensnaring words and actions, which are in themselves a pleasure to hear and enjoy. Such flattery could consist, for instance, in being invited to a sumptuous dinner with the most expensive wines.

The phenomena of love of esteem, flattery, manliness, etc. so prominent in the texts of Plato and Aristotle should not be viewed merely as admixtures, embellishments and ornamentation to the more serious, ‘proper’ concerns in their thinking, but instead should be interpreted in relation to how the Greeks experienced being and human being and human social being as presencing, as presentation and self-presentation, as self-showing and showing-off. The phenomenon of being ‘who’ is a phenomenon sui generis not to be thrown together undifferentiatedly with how Plato and Aristotle think through the being of beings in general as ἰδέα, εἶδος and in the κατηγορίαι (including δύναμις and ἐνέργεια). Rather, the phenomenon of ‘whoness’ should be put by us emphatically into relation with the more explicitly ontological concepts that capture the Greek experience of beings qua thingly beings in order to develop a social ontology with its own, specially fashioned and differing concepts.

Such a phenomenology of whoness brings to light a multifaceted ontological structure within a clearing, namely, the clearing of 3D-time in which human beings present themselves as who they are. As situated within the temporal clearing for presencing and absencing, the dimension of whoness is a clearing of possibilities for self-presentation as who in all three temporal dimensions, and the corresponding phenomenology is of modes of being, i.e. modes of presencing and absencing crossed with modes of revealing and concealing in the time-clearing,29 and not merely an ontic typology. The open 3D-time-clearing for presencing and absencing offers a manifold of possibilities for self-presentation, both to oneself and to the others, which, in a German book.30 I have called the Gewer. The prefix ‘Ge-’ in this context signifies a gathering into a manifold, whereas ‘wer’ means ‘who’. Some of the existential possibilities held open by this manifold of whoness have been discussed above. They are above all possibilities of defining one’s self both in one’s understanding of oneself, so to speak, in one’s self-image, and also for the others, in the look one presents of oneself.

At first, who I am is defined by how the others, or you, reflect back to me who I am. My self-understanding depends on who the others and you hold me to be, and I fashion my self-presentation in the shared openness of 3D-time accordingly. The cast I give to my as-yet-absent self in casting into the temporal dimension of the future is, at first and for the most part, borrowed from the others and you. By contrast, how I am held to be by others in their opinion is my reputation that is shaped largely from what they have heard about who I have been in the temporal dimension of absence. I continue to be also who I no longer am, my now absent who is also who I am, just as much as how I cast my self to be in a still absent future also constitutes an aspect of my whoness (e.g. my ambition), along with the present in which I present my self to myself and others. Whoness therefore is itself a temporally three-dimensional phenomenon of was, is and could be, all three of which are open to interpretation.

Your self-esteem is gleaned from the esteem in which others or I hold you to be at present based on your wasness as who. Coming to your very own, individual self-casting as a shaping of your own self-stand in existence is attained to a degree, if at all, only in freeing yourself from the approving or disapproving self-definitions and reflections held in stock by others. You come to your very own self-stand as who only in discovering and uncovering how your own world could be shaped in grasping your best existential possibilities, that is, your highest potentials. These potentials as powers residing in your individual freedom of self-movement in the world first have to be uncovered and nurtured into abilities. Only then can they be set to work as an energy, an ἐνέργεια, literally, an in-work-ness, and your self-presentation in the world then becomes the showing-off of your genuine inherent potentials and developed abilities, and does not remain merely the adaptation to the mirror images of how others, and be it ever so subtly, hold you to be.

This existential possibility of coming to your or my genuine, individual self-casting is only granted within the open dimension sui generis of the manifold of possibilities for being somewho. The manifold, itself a fold of being, must be granted a priori. Since my self-esteem, i.e. my estimation of who I am myself, is always intermingled with how I am held in esteem by others in the ongoing interplay, there is no autarkic self-definition entirely devoid of dependence on a shared world, no self-image that were not also a reflection from others. The standing in my self that I attain is thus always inclined, more or less, toward the others and you, and I gain my very own, genuine self-standing only through a differentiating process of estimation with certain others who mirror who I am to be. “Me in his eyes.”31

So much for now on unfolding the phenomenon of whoness which will continue in later chapters. The phenomenon itself is present explicitly or implicitly throughout our entire inquiry into social being. Why? Because all social phenomena, as phenomena of sociating movement among the inevitable plurality of human beings, are of the estimative interplay of whos that is enabled in the first place by the open clearing of 3D-time for presencing and absencing.