To take the example of an adhesive further, but with regard to the adhesive’s exchange-value, we see that the situation is entirely different. Because the adhesive is potentially useful, as we have seen from the discussion of Aristotle in 5 i), it also has the derived potential of being exchangeable for some other use-value. This potential is also more than a merely formal possibility, just as the adhesive’s usefulness is also more than a merely formal possibility, i.e. in Hegel’s sense, merely conceivable as non-self-contradictory. Nevertheless, the conditions and above all the activity required to translate the adhesive’s exchange-value into actuality differ essentially from the conditions and the activity required to translate the adhesive’s use-value into actuality, because now the former activity does not have “its possibility solely in the conditions and the matter at hand” (ihre Möglichkeit allein an den Bedingungen und an der Sache, § 148), but depends also on the activity of an other who has a demanding desire for the adhesive. The activity of realization has split into two independent activities. Moreover, this other’s demanding desire for the adhesive depends not only upon whether this other has a use for it, but also upon what and how much has to be given in exchange. Exchange-value always has essentially a quantitative aspect, namely the exchange ratio, but the quantity of exchange-value does not reside solely in the adhesive itself but only in relation to that for which it is exchanged which simultaneously actualizes its exchange-value. The actual, quantitative realization of exchange-value is therefore the result of an interplay between the (at least) two exchange-values and also the activities of the (at least) two exchangers who must each decide, but mutually, at what exchange ratio, or range of exchange ratios, they are prepared to actually exchange. There are no contingently given conditions as pre-posited, pre-supposed (Vorausgesetztes, § 146) that could guarantee that “the matter [here: the adhesive’s exchange-value ME] must become actual” (§ 147).
Even if the other’s demand for the adhesive at an exchange ratio (or price) of x is included among the pre-posited conditions that are supposed to make the actualization of exchange-value a necessity, and the exchange concluded on those terms, this implies that the actualization of the adhesive’s exchange-value is not the necessary actualization of an essence inherent in the adhesive itself, but is conditional upon, i.e. merely contingent upon, not only an offer made by another, which itself is merely contingent and has no necessity, but also upon whether this offer is accepted (there is no necessity to accept the offer and no inherent, essential, quantitative exchange-value that would dictate the acceptance of a certain offer). Conversely, even if a fixed exchange ratio (or price) of x is set (ultimately: arbitrarily) for the adhesive, whether this quantitatively fixed exchange-value is actually realized then depends on the contingent decision of another (the ‘buyer’), having nothing essential to do with the adhesive’s inner essence, to actually exchange at that set asking rate (or price). The higgling over exchange ratios in the market-place is a contingent interplay whose ‘post-posited’ outcome is determined with necessity neither by the commodities exchanged in themselves nor by the actors in themselves.
There is no actualization of an essence inherent in the commodity taking place when it is actually exchanged, but rather the coming about of an outcome of a dyadic interplay in which the exchange-value first comes to be what it actually, but contingently, is as a certain definite quantitative exchange ratio. Because of the dyadic or split structure of interplay, there is no unified “totality of form for itself, the immediate self-translation of the inner [essence] into outer [reality] and of the outer into the inner” (Totalität der Form für sich, das unmittelbare Sichübersetzen des Inneren ins Äußere und des Äußeren ins Innere, § 147). Hegel says that “this self-movement of the form is activity, activation of the matter [= content, ME] as the real ground that lifts itself up to actuality, and activation of contingent actuality, of the conditions” ([d]ies Sichbewegen der Form ist Tätigkeit, Betätigung der Sache [= Inhalt, ME], als des realen Grundes, der sich zur Wirklichkeit aufhebt, und Betätigung der zufälligen Wirklichkeit, der Bedingungen, § 147) In the present context of dyadic interplay, however, there can be no “self-movement” because there is no single self, but at least two selves, each with its freedom of movement. Furthermore, the matter here is the exchange-value (the essence) which cannot lift itself up into actuality, even if pre-posited conditions are given.
The dyadic interplay (and even more the polyarchic interplay of markets) is therefore groundless, and this groundlessness is of the essence of interplay. Strictly speaking, the dyadic ontological structure of exchange interplay is itself doubled because each exchange-value has its bearer, who as a free self is a groundless origin of decision. This doubledness of dyadic exchange interplay makes it a quadratic interplay in which each player is empowered by the exponent of an exchange-value with its inherent potency to exchange.
The dyadic ontological structure of exchange interplay must not be confused with a binary structure since the options of the free other in the interplay are not restricted to the binary choice between 1 and 0. Such a binary logic would again make the interplay calculable and therefore controllable. The other as free origin of movement can play in a contingent way, choosing a counter-move that is between 0 and 1, ‘no’ and ‘yes’, or outside a merely quantitative option altogether. The exchange situation in itself cannot be grasped quantitatively; only its outcome of a certain quantitatively determinate exchange ratio is quantitative, and this is because the practice of (ultimately universal) exchange is an abstracting one that abstracts from the qualities of the goods being exchanged, thus reducing them to quantity. The moves and countermoves of the two (or more) exchange players may change the complexion of the exchange situation altogether, vitiating any prospect of necessity. The dyadic interplay is not ruled by necessity at all, but is in itself already the outbreak of freedom, making the pretensions to power of the one over the other nugatory.
The generalized or universal dyadic exchange interplay is the market interplay that entwines all the market players and their goods within itself, constituting a moving unity that attains the palpable, reified, singular form of the universal equivalent or money as mediator of exchange in which exchange-value is universally actualized as price. This practically achieved unity in commerce, i.e. in the meeting of the goods for living well, however, does not do away with the differences among the goods, nor does it bind them into a necessary actualization of an inherent exchange-value, but rather allows the free play of the many differences to play itself out in the interplay. The unity of exchange-value as a sociating web of interchanges is hence the unity of unity and difference or of the one and the many. The many are not absorbed in the unity of the one; on the contrary, their free play is enabled precisely by the looseness of the sociating interplay which nonetheless achieves a dynamic, pliable, constantly changing unity.
In the case of exchange-value, therefore, actuality does not proceed beyond contingency to become necessity as the actualization of an essence, and this is so because of the dyadic ontological structure of the exchange situation in which freedom meets freedom. The difference (Unterschied, § 144) between the inner essence or matter and the outer, contingent reality of conditions is not brought together in a ground that would guarantee necessity. Even both players acting in accordance with ‘reason’ or ‘rationally’, whatever that might mean (the fictional rational economic actors posited quaintly by economic theory?), would not guarantee with necessity the actualization of an essential exchange-value inherent in the commodities exchanged. It is entirely ‘reasonable’ for the players to exchange at the rate freely und mutually agreed upon as the (non-pre-determined) outcome of their interplay, where ‘reason’ in this (social) context means only ‘in accord with the (dyadic) ontological structure of the exchange situation’. It would also be entirely ‘reasonable’ for the players to mutually refrain from the exchange if agreement cannot be reached.
Moreover, on the one hand, the players are not free in the Hegelian sense of acting with the knowing awareness of an insight into a necessity insofar as there is no quantitatively definite exchange-value inhering in the commodities that could be actualized in exchange as a quantitatively definite exchange ratio or price. Their freedom is therefore from this perspective that which Hegel maligns as mere arbitrariness. Then again, however, the players are indeed free in the Hegelian sense insofar as they act with insight into the dyadic ontological structure of the playful exchange situation, which precisely does not necessitate that a quantitatively definite, inherently predetermined exchange ratio nor even that an actual exchange at all come about, but rather ‘necessitates’ only that the players play freely with one another, validating each other’s freedom of movement, with each player having, from its individual viewpoint, insight only into the conditions pertaining to the currently concrete situation of play, which may necessitate one strategy of play as being more favourable for that player rather than another. Whether an exchange actually takes place nevertheless remains an open contingency depending upon the interplay of freedom with freedom, whose outcome is not necessitated by pre-posited conditions, and whose ostensible arbitrariness and caprice are, in truth, the truth of interplay in the Hegelian sense, i.e. the correspondence of the reality of interplay with its ontological concept. What seem to be mere arbitrariness and caprice, because unnecessary, are in truth well-considered moves in the interplay. The ontology of interplay breaks the mould of tight, productionist necessity.
Because the interplay of exchange remains open and does not close together in a necessity, it also cannot be characterized further as a relation of substance (§ 150, in this context: the purported “value-substance” (Wertsubstanz, Marx, MEW23:49) of exchange-value) manifesting itself in its accidents. Such a ‘value-substance’, if it existed, would be, as Hegel claims for “substance”, an “absolute power” (absolute Macht, § 151), but the unity of such a power is broken already in its originary dyadic ontological structure, and exchange-value is therefore only ever a relative power at play with other powers, viz. the potencies of other exchange-values. Nor can this (non-)substance of exchange-value be determined as an “originary matter” or “cause” (Ursache, ursprüngliche Sache, § 153), actively effecting an effect (Wirkung, § 153) as the actuality (Wirklichkeit, § 153) of an actual exchange, because the other exchange-value never merely passively ‘suffers’ itself to be exchanged. Nor can the Hegelian ontology be saved by positing the interplay of exchange as a relation of reciprocity or reciprocal action and reaction (Wechselwirkung, § 155) between two exchange-value substances in which each acts on and reacts to the other, because the action of one exchange-value on another cannot be characterized as one of cause and effect in the first place. Instead we are left with the hitherto untackled task of thinking the unfathomability of interplay itself in all its facets.
This has consequences in particular for the ontological concept of (exchange-)value as the fundamental concept for Marx’s theory of capitalism. Such a concept, in Hegelian terms, would have to be a “totality in that each of the moments is the whole that the concept is and is posited as an unseparated unity with the concept” (Totalität, indem jedes der Momente das Ganze ist, das er ist, und als ungetrennte Einheit mit ihm gesetzt ist, § 160). These moments of the concept are universality, particularity and singularity. As a free totality, there is no rupture in the unity of the concept.
But what about the concept of exchange-value? One could say, perhaps, that there is a totality of exchange-values, namely, the commodities. The universality of the concept of exchange-value would be particularized into a totality of different, particular, real commodities, each of which being merely a determination of the universal or a “determination of the concept” (Bestimmtheit des Begriffs, LII W6:283). This totality of many commodities as exchange-values would again come to the unity of universality and particularity in the singularity of money which embodies value in its universality in a single, real thing which, in turn, mediates between the particularity of particular commodities and their universality as exchange-values. This mediation takes the form of the commodities having a price for which they would have to be sold. The pure universality of the concept of exchange-value would thus have “climbed down” to the singular reality of money as the embodiment of exchange-value in a single thing. The Marxian concept of value would thus be shown to be truly of Hegelian provenance, and value could go on to assume the status of an absolute subject, since the Doctrine of the Concept is the domain of free subjectivity, not subject to blind necessity, that culminates in the absolute idea.74
Alternatively, the universality of pure value could be differentiated into the totality of particular kinds of commodities, and these kinds of commodities further determined as the singularity of the individual commodities. In the opposite direction, according to the formal con-clusion of the apodictic judgement, each individual commodity, having such-and-such a particular quality (qualifying it as a use-value), would be part of the totality of commodities and therefore also a value. This assumes that being a genuine use-value guarantees a commodity’s status also as exchange-value.
But, no matter which of the two schemata of universality, particularity and singularity is applied in this case, such a purported unity and transparency of the concept of value has to be examined more closely to prevent a precipitous entrance into the inexorable dialectical movement toward the totalizing absolute idea. To this purpose, let us reconsider the simple exchange situation. Already here, the incipient concept of value must be present. The owners or, more neutrally, the ‘bearers’ of commodities A and B are bargaining over an exchange of their commodity use-values. Or even more primordially, the persons A and B themselves are bargaining over mutually exercising their abilities for each other’s benefit. A and B are each interested in the use-value of what the other has to offer, either in ‘coagulated’ objective form or in the ‘liquid’ form of live, labouring activity, and the exchange-value of each use-value is its power to exchange for the other use-value. A pair of shoes may be worth ten loaves of bread, or eleven, or twenty. Or A may offer B, I’ll make you a pair of shoes if you make me ten loaves of bread. There is nothing inherent in the shoes or the bread themselves, no inherent value, that would necessitate a factual exchange, but rather, A’s exchange-value is nothing other than xB if a transaction comes about at exchange ratio x. If it doesn’t come about because, say, B does not really like the shoes, they are then, for the moment, worthless relative to B. A will have to try to bring his shoes (or his shoe-making abilities) into play in another way to have success in the interplay of exchange. If he makes the wrong particular kind of shoes for the prevailing fashion, he may have very little success in the exchange game, and his shoe-making activity, even though it is the exercise of genuine abilities for making perfectly usable shoes, may gain little or no estimation and validation by others in exchange.
If, now, money acts as medium of exchange, this singular thing may be regarded as the universal of value incarnate having the power to exchange, again relatively, for anything offered on the market at such-and-such a price, but such mediation does not obviate the particular use-values from having to be brought into play to actually become exchange-values, and the problem of exchange-value being actualized only in an exchange transaction would only be displaced from another commodity to money. It is therefore wrong to conceive the pure concept of value as being particularized in the totality of commodities of various kinds, because this totality is still only a totality of use-values which may, indeed, be related to each other as representing a division of labour that ‘adds up’ to an organically differentiated and interconnected totality of use-values of some kind or other.
But a totality of differentiated products or a totality of differentiated labouring abilities still only becomes exchange-value within the interplay of exchange itself wherein it turns out what each particular commodity product or ability is worth, either in other commodity use-values or monetary price, and the configuration of exchange-values that thus arises is infinitely variable depending upon how the multitude of exchange-players plays, i.e. on how the exchange interplay plays out. Each individual commodity, (or each individual ability), has to negotiate its very existence as an exchange-value through its interchange with an other commodity (or exercised ability). Prior to the exchange transaction, its exchange-value is merely a possibility depending upon the contingency of its use-value being recognized and esteemed by another. The essence of exchange-value thus revealed in its relativity rather than substantial absoluteness by considering the very simple and primitive exchange situation is not altered when many transactions on myriad markets and mass production are considered. Such complexity only obscures the view of the simple, groundless, ‘playful’ essence of exchange-value.
5.6Exchange as core phenomenon of social intercourse: Interchange and interplay
Up until now I have been examining only the exchange of commodity goods with the aim of uncovering its ontological structure as a kind of movement sui generis. In singling out the phenomenon of the exchange of goods, I am not merely following in the footsteps of the tradition starting with Plato and Aristotle of regarding exchange as the elementary kind of social intercourse that sociates human beings. A direct consideration of how we have dealings with each other in taking care of our daily affairs shows just as well that exchange is indeed one of the elementary acts of social intercourse that makes up the complexion of daily life. This observation in itself justifies putting the phenomenon of exchange (barter, bargaining, buying and selling, hiring, trade, commerce) at the centre of attention for initiating the investigation of the ontology of the movement that is sociating life. In the early days of political economy, exchange was even exaggeratedly accorded a quasi-absolute status in the constitution of society, e.g. “Society is purely and solely a continual series of exchanges. [...] Commerce is the whole of society.”75
This contrasts with a political opinion commonly heard today, according to which society, or ‘living’, begins only where commerce ends. Nevertheless, I claim to have uncovered a paradigm for social ontology that has to be clearly distinguished from production as the paradigm for all of ontological thinking on movement from its beginnings up to the present day (cf. sections 5.4 and 5.5 above). The ontological structure of exchange, although simple, is more complex ontologically than the phenomenon of production that has ruled onto-theological thinking from its inception. This ontological complexity has as yet untold and unthought consequences for all philosophical and modern scientific thinking, for it brings into play the mutually estimating interplay between human beings in their whoness as an as-yet-unaddressed issue for ontological thinking and not merely, as has been the case hitherto, as a topic for philosophical ethics. Traditional ethics itself has lacked a proper grounding in an ontology of sociating movement.
Social ontology investigates the whoness (quissity) of whos in the mutually estimative, sociating movement of social life, in contrast to the traditional ontology of movement applicable to the physical and productive movement of whats in their whatness (quidditas, essence), thereby providing an ontological basis for thinking through social life itself, which has always been the concern of ethics. Social ontology based on an ontology of mutually estimative sociating movement supersedes ethics in its traditional sense, starting with Aristotle. It is as if thinking had always skirted arounded the simple, and therefore difficult, questions of social ontology with the characteristic features of its necessary ontology of peculiarly social movement, in favour of merely pronouncing (ethically, morally) what should be or criticizing social reality with a view to changing and improving it, whilst leaving the prevailing ontology of productive movement unchallenged and intact, as well as avoiding the ontological questions of whoness vis-à-vis the long established and entrenched ontology of whatness. The bipolar and multipolar essence of exchange, its bi-archy or polyarchy,76 breaks the mono-archic ontological cast of “productionist metaphysics” (Michael E. Zimmerman77) and reopens the realm of future historical possibility on the basis of a social ontology that rests on the alternative paradigm of exchange or, employing terms derived from the Greek, katallaxy,78 allagae or synallagae.
The phenomenon of exchange is richer and more multifaceted than the mere exchange of goods, i.e. the practices of barter, trade, commerce, etc., and indeed it can and must be interpreted from within the ontological dimension of whoness as the paradigm of social intercourse pure and simple. For, not only goods (reified whats) are exchanged among people, thus sociating them in social relations in which they effectively serve each other, but people (desiring whos) sociate and maintain social intercourse with one another by exchanging also greetings, smiles, waves, glances, simpers, views, opinions, news, compliments, insults, blows, kindnesses, gifts, sexual favours, etc., etc. They do this in sociating interchanges (μεταβολαί) whose ontological structure for the movement of whos is homologous to that of commodity exchange, a movement of whats. Exchange and interchange are the metabolism of social life, and they are the soil for the freedom of movement of many individual human ἀρχαί.
As Hegel puts it in the language of subject-object metaphysics, “This relationship of will to will is the characteristic and genuine soil in which freedom has determinate being” (Diese Beziehung von Willen auf Willen ist der eigentümliche und wahrhafte Boden, in welchem die Freiheit Dasein hat. RPh. § 71 Übergang vom Eigentum zum Vertrage). All social relationships are interchanges of some kind, and the interchange is always, i.e. essentially, embedded in a mutual estimation of the value of each other as who one is and what one has. Such mutual estimation as an existential-ontological structure, of course, includes also deficient and negative forms of estimation such as indifference, derogation and disparagement. The interchange that forms the moving fabric of economic social life, in particular, is a mutual estimation of the value of each other as who one is and what one has, and that with a view to mutual benefit in the sense of the use-value of what one has to offer each other in the broadest sense, and be it merely interesting conversation.
With regard to the presentation in the preceding sections of this chapter, even the paradigm of the exchange of commodity goods chosen for an exposition of the peculiar ontological structure of interchange and interplay, although well established in traditional socio-political thinking and thoroughly familiar from everyday life, is not the most originary paradigm that could have been chosen. As shown in 5 iv), the exchange of goods involves two pairs of δυνάμεις, or the four terms of commodities-whats, A and B, and their respective desiring who-bearers. The use-values exchanged are embodied, reified in the commodity products, and that they have been produced is presupposed. More elementary and primitive is the exchange simply between two individual whos of their useful abilities, their powers, in the sense of what each can do for the other by way of exercising their (labour) powers mutually for each other’s benefit in providing services for each other. Such a simplification allows it to be seen without obstruction that “what holds everything together” in society on an everyday basis are interchanges in which people do things for each other.
Services in the sense of the exercise (ἐνέργεια) of individual powers are more elementary than products, which are the independent end or ἐντελέχεια of the exercise of such powers; the independent, separate (χωριστός) existence of the product as a what is not essential to an economic exchange. Indeed, the exchange of commodity products is derivative of the exchange of powers because the products are the object-ive results of the expenditures of individuals’ abilities, i.e. their labour powers. Social interchanges thus take the form in the most elementary socio-ontological situation — which could perhaps be called the (ontological, and not merely ontogenetic, historical, chronological) primal scene of sociation — of mutual estimation of each other’s individual powers with a view to exercising these powers for each other’s benefit. This interplay of mutual estimation and validation also makes the ontological structure of social interchange as a power play transparent already on the economic level. What people, i.e. whos, (offer to) do for each other is the simplest manifestation of the power play as an interplay of (the mutual estimation of) powers that has been latently present already from the start in the present investigation of the ontology of whoness, and which forthwith will thematically accompany, either in the foreground or in the background, this socio-ontological inquiry throughout. But to continue with a consideration of interchange in general:
‘Interchange’ (συναλλαγή) here is a bland, general term for human sociation and intercourse on the level of myriads of interwoven everyday practices. There is always a reciprocity in our interchanges. We do not just meet, but we meet each other or one another, and that as who we are. This ‘each other’ or ‘one another’ expresses the reciprocity that is necessarily a part of sociating interchange, and this reciprocity is itself a kind of exchange based on our conducting ourselves toward each other that is always also a mutually mirroring recognition and estimation of each other as whos. In my conducting myself toward you, I am from the outset attuned to how you, in return, conduct yourself toward me, i.e. my conduct toward you is always already reflected in an anticipated reciprocal conduct of you toward me.79 I can conduct myself toward things, i.e. whats, but a thing cannot conduct itself toward me, and there is no reciprocity of conduct in my relations with things. I also do not expect anything from a thing by way of reciprocity. I can also conduct myself toward animals which in some way or rather behave, sometimes even seeming to behave themselves toward me, but it is moot whether animals have selves at all which would be the presuppostion for their behaving themselves.
But my relations with people (whos) are all based on a reciprocity of our conducting ourselves toward each other, even when that conduct is deficient (e.g. impolite or deranged) or displays indifference. The very lack of response on your part when you conduct yourself indifferently toward me, ignoring my very presence, is precisely the deficient reciprocity of your conduct in this case. In my relations with things, by contrast, there can be no indifference on the part of the things I use, because a thing cannot conduct itself toward me or respond to me at all. This difference between my relations with things and my relations with others rests on the fundamental twofold in being between whatness and whoness, between quiddity and quissity. From the very start, all relations between human beings must be considered as (sociating) relations between whos, not whats. This simple observation has far-reaching ramifications, as we have already begun to see.
Interchanges can also be,and frequently are, asymmetrical and may even be deficient in lacking reciprocity (e.g. being snubbed). Giving and receiving a gift or assistance is an asymmetrical interchange, but — pace Derrida — it is still reciprocal because a gift or assistance offered still has to be accepted and can also well be refused. There is an interplay of offering and accepting, and such a reciprocal interplay can be very subtle and delicate, depending on the who-status of each player in the interplay. By contrast, the non-reciprocal interchange of one-sidedly insulting or assaulting someone out of the blue where the one insulted or assaulted has no chance of responding is a deficient mode of interplay which shows, through the absence of reciprocity, just how essentially interchange is based on reciprocity. Being insulted by a stranger suddenly in a public place may be so outside the context of any interchange and so lacking in reciprocity and mutual estimation that it does not even amount to an insult, but only to the ranting some disturbed person who need not be taken seriously. Physical assault by a stranger where the one assaulted defends himself is a kind of reciprocal interchange, albeit an involuntary and deficient one aimed at physical negation of the other who through the exercise of physical power that, in this case, is sociating, albeit that the whos are in a sense thus degraded to whats.
Even prior to the reciprocity of our conducting ourselves toward each other, my own conduct is always essentially reflexive, i.e. I conduct myself. This self-conduct is always a presentation of myself as somewho, a self-presentation in which I show myself off to my self, in bending back reflectively on myself, and also to others as who I am and have cast my self to be (cf. Chapter 3.3.1.5). In conducting myself I am always at the same time mirroring myself reflexively as who I am in my self-understanding, i.e. in the ἰδέα or ‘look’ of my self. My ways of conducting myself are therefore an ensemble of masks of self-presentation of my self to myself and also to the world of others; they are modes of self-comportment in which I comport myself with (com-portare, literally, ‘to carry with’) the masks of self-presentation that show off who I am. The term ‘comportment’ will be employed in preference to ‘conduct’ to emphasize the bearing of masks that define and show off who I am as somewho (and not as something). I bear my who-masks with me in all my self-comportment. I cannot comport myself at all without presenting myself in the mask of somewho or other.
Thus even in the most rudimentary interchange there is at the very least a reciprocal exchange of the most formal and non-descript masks in which we present ourselves in how we conduct and comport and bear our selves toward each other. Since I always comport myself, no matter how self-alienated and conformist this self-casting may be, this self always has a mode of self-presentation in my comportment, and the same applies to you and everywho else. Our social intercourse is therefore always a reciprocal interplay of mask-presentations that are nothing other than the ways in which we comport ourselves and thus present our selves and show ourselves off as who each of us is. This showing-off, as set out in Chapter 2, is one side of the ambivalent ἀποφάνσις in its middle voice as ἀποφαίνεσθαι: not only do beings show themselves as what they are, but each of us human beings shows off him- or herself as who he or she is.
5.6.1Reciprocally showing off who one is in the interplay of mutual estimation
The reciprocal showing-off of ourselves as somewho takes place in all interchange, including even the impersonal or anonymous exchange of things on the market in commercial transactions. Even the buyer and the seller present themselves as buyer and seller from within a certain understanding of themselves in their specific occupational who-roles in the exchange. At first and for the most part, occupational roles are the masks of self-presentation in daily life. The seller may be a professional seller whose occupation as somewho is designated as merchant or salesperson or middleman or cashier, etc., and in the exchange relation the seller presents him- or herself as a seller, i.e. in the role of seller that defines their whoness in the outline of a certain understood ‘look’. Likewise the buyer. This showing-off of who each is in the transaction is an abstract showing-off insofar as only the general roles of buyer and seller, particularized perhaps according to the particular market, occupation, etc. come into view within the transaction, which is usually carried out anonymously, i.e. without addressing each other by proper names. Where the transacting exchange partners give their proper names, these signs of individual singularity function in this context merely formally, as singular designations only, say, for registration purposes or to deliver the goods or to be polite. Singularity itself has no place in a formal, abstract exchange transaction that requires only general roles of self-presentation as somewho. Nevertheless, calling each other by one’s proper name is part of the ritual of acknowledging each other as somewhos, although in some contexts a ‘Good day’ or simply a nod or a wave may suffice to politely acknowledge the other’s presence.
As shown in preceding chapters, insofar as in all social interchange there is a reciprocal showing-off of who one is, all social intercourse is marked by conducting oneself toward the other as somewho or other and vice versa. This means that there is necessarily a reciprocal estimation80 of each other as some-who, no matter how privative, depreciating or indifferent this estimation may be. Any mode of comportment toward others presupposes some kind of estimation of the other, because I have always already presented myself to the other as somewho in masks of self-presentation, and any response at all (including even no response) to this self-presentation is a mirror of recognition and estimation. Merely being always-already cast into the world, which is always also a social, shared world, casts me into the mould of whoness and also into the mould of understanding the others as presenting themselves similarly from within the ontological-existential casting of whoness. In any interchange at all, we have a priori understood each other as somewho or other and comported ourselves toward each other as somewho or other and thus also willy-nilly estimated each other as somewho or other. Thus all sociating interchange is a reciprocal mirroring estimation of who we are in the double sense of both esteeming each other and also sizing each other up in respective who-status. It is not possible to evade the cast of whoness so long as we are human beings cast into the world. Every encounter is a reciprocal acknowledgement of each other expressed merely by a nod or some kind of salute, calling each other by name through to calling each other names.
At first and for the most part, estimation is in the mode of indifference or the mere abstract formality of estimation of personhood expressed by comporting ourselves politely toward each other, which signals respect for or at least distance from the other as a free human being. This formal recognition in politeness is a kind of reciprocal acknowledgement of each other as who that lubricates everyday social intercourse when conducting the business of daily life. Politeness is the formal mode of recognition of the other as a free human being in civil society. Behind the mask of politeness there may be hidden a deep indifference toward the other or a mere instrumentalization of the other for the purpose of achieving one’s own end (which is the case especially in commercial transactions), but the formal politeness and friendliness is adequate to lubricate the intercourse of everyday living, rendering it pleasant enough. Viewed the other way around, the formal, abstract nature of estimation in commercial transactions, i.e. the exchange of goods and services, dispenses the parties to the transaction from having to make any more elaborate or impressive self-presentations. It is the goods and services and money involved in the transaction that ‘do the talking’ in the sense that each party is interested in acquiring what the other has on offer, and is hardly interested in with whom the transaction is to be carried out.
An extreme, deficient possibility of mutual mirroring as who in the interplay of estimation is provided by the phenomenon of narcissism. This phenomenon is so striking because, although it is derived from the myth of Narcissus falling in love with his own image in a pool of water, this implies precisely a lack of mirroring in interchange with a narcissist. In interchange with a narcissist, namely, there is no mutual, reciprocal mirroring play of estimation, because you are the mirror for the narcissist, but he is no mirror for you. He is a black hole that absorbs all reflected radiation of estimation. The play of showing off who one is becomes unidirectional, instead of being a mutual interplay.
Because all social interchange comes about through individuals’ comporting themselves, it is based on human freedom of movement, for each of us is free to comport him or herself in a variety of ways for which bearing we also ineluctably bear responsibility, i.e. for which we have to answer. This implies that we choose the masks and roles of self-presentation in choosing how we comport ourselves toward others, and that we have the power (δύναμις) of choosing such self-presentations. All comporting-myself presupposes my self as distinct from, and aware of, the comportment itself. The power of freely being able (Seinkönnen, ἀρετή) to choose my masks of self-presentation implies that there is a distance between my self as the governing starting-point (ἀρχή) of choice and my self as the ensemble of who-masks of self-presentation understood as embodied ways of comporting myself. Such a self-reflective distance enables not only the possibility of belonging to my masks of self-comportment, thus shaping my identity as the ensemble of self-masks that genuinely belong to me, but also the possibility of presenting my self through bearing masks of self-comportment that do not properly belong to me and therefore fit ill and alienate me from my self in masks adopted from the other (alius) or even in masks that present me distortedly as someone who I am not (deception, imposture).
The power of each of us being able freely to choose his or her self-presentation as somewho or other is neither a natural power of self-movement in the Aristotelean sense, nor is it a poiaetic, productive power, again in the Aristotelean sense. Why not? Because the power of self-presentation to others, of choosing the masks in which we show ourselves off as who we are, is a self-reflexive (i.e. bent-back-on-the-self) social act of sociating interchange embedded in the movement of willy-nilly estimation, but for the most part, as least in today’s Western societies, it does not demonstrate power over the other, i.e. my self-presentation to others certainly induces estimation on the part of others, no matter how deficient or indifferent or negative (e.g. derogatory) that estimation may be, but because the others in turn are likewise free human beings who comport themselves as somewho in showing themselves off as who they are, they are free to respond to my self-presentation in a variety of ways of self-comportment which I am not able to control. I can in-duce some kind of estimation in showing myself off, but I cannot pro-duce a desired, intended mode of estimation.
My power of self-presentation does not reach so far as to rule how others respond, in turn, in their self-comportment toward my self-presentation. Others’ responses lie outside the ambit of the ἀρχή of my being able to choose my self-presentation masks. The interplay of estimation in mutual self-presentation as somewho is thus an interplay of powers that is ontologically isomorphic with the simple bi-archic ontological structure of commercial exchange relations investigated in preceding sections, albeit that it is no longer mediated by reified whats. Whereas in the case of commercial exchange it is essentially the goods, i.e. the whats, that are presented, and the roles assumed and shown off are merely the formal roles of buyer and seller, in the case of other social interchanges, the masks of self-presentation as somewho exchanged and mutually estimated are more elaborate, more concrete, more particular and even individual, singular, idiosyncratic. These masks also carry more weight in the mutual estimation.
5.6.2The interplay of powers of self-presentation – engendering trust
Even in exercising the power to present oneself as somewho in impressive ways of comporting oneself, these impressive masks of self-comportment aimed at making an impression on others are only ever an attempt at impressing the others in the desired, intended way. The will to power can indeed assume the form of the will to impress with one’s own showing-off. This will to power has the structure of being the starting-point for a change in the other, namely, to leave a desired impression as a somewho on the other. Such an impression is a kind of change (μεταβολή) in the other, that will be reflected more or less openly in the other’s response, in the way the other comports him- or herself in response to the impressive self-presentation of who-standing. For the most part, it is sufficient that the other give some small sign that one’s own impressive self-presentation has been noticed at all, and thus estimated. But there is no guarantee that my will to an impressive self-presentation in choosing my masks for showing myself off as an impressive who will in fact bring forth the desired impression in the other or the others, say, in the form of positive comments of admiration or simply in talking about me. My attempt to impress may not even be noticed at all.
This interplay of social powers of self-presentation is indeed a power game, but the game allows no certain, precalculable strategy for winning because the interactors are all free human beings as sources of power of their own self-movement who choose their modes of self-comportment and thus how they respond to others showing themselves off as who they are. This is to be contrasted ontologically, i.e. in essence, with the power of production, i.e. of knowing surely how to causally bring forth a fore-seen, envisaged change in something else and thus an end-product, a topic already investigated in some detail in the preceding sections. The phenomenon of sociating interplay among human beings as essentially (i.e. in their fundamental ontological structure) a power play or, perhaps said best of all, a power interplay will be investigated more closely in Chapter 10.
Quite apart from the reciprocal estimation of each other as somewho that is ineluctable in all sociating interchange, there are those practical interchanges in which the interchange concerns something practical. In practical everyday life, this something is either the goods involved in an exchange or an issue on which agreement is to be reached in an exchange of views. The former is the paradigm of commercial exchange; the latter is the rhetorical situation of deliberation with a view to action. Since each of the parties to an exchange of goods or views is a free starting-point of action with the power to act one way or the other, agreeing on a common course of action, whether it be a commercial transaction or some other practical project, depends on elevating the individual standpoints of the various parties as free starting-points of action into some kind of intermeshed unity in which goods and money can actually be exchanged or a common course of concerted action can be agreed on the basis of a shared view of how the issue is to be practically approached.
The very freedom of each of the parties as individual ἀρχαί means that agreement does not involve the exercise of power of one over the other but is only possible on the basis of trust that an agreement will be kept to. There is an essential element of trust in all practically sociating interchange. Therefore, for an agreement to come about at all, mutual trust must be won and proven through reliability. Each of the parties must give credence to the other (or others) and believe that what has been agreed will actually be performed. In commercial transactions, this credence is called credit and the one giving credit in monetary terms is the creditor, i.e. the one who believes in good faith that the other will pay the agreed amount on the agreed date in the future. But the purchaser, too, gives credence in the sense that he or she has good faith that the seller will actually provide the goods (including services) at the agreed time, to the agreed amount, of the agreed quality, etc.
In a deliberative exchange of views on a practical issue, the various views presented must be brought to some kind of consensus through an altercation, through having-it-out with one another in such a way that a common decision can be reached. The altercation itself is an exchange of differing views (δόξαι) on the issue supported by arguments pro and contra, by persuasive πίστεις (proofs) aimed at engendering πίστις, i.e. trust and confidence. Such an engendering of trust in each other is necessary because social intercourse is an interplay of free starting-points each of whom remains in its freedom essentially incalculable for the other. The other becomes calculable only insofar as trust is placed in his binding himself to his word. This is the deliberative rhetorical situation described by Aristotle which is oriented toward the future, as opposed to the judgemental rhetorical situation that is oriented toward assessing actions in the past as just or unjust or the eulogical rhetorical situation that is oriented toward appraising as praiseworthy or blameworthy someone who or something that is present.
In the interchange of a deliberative rhetorical situation (which may relate to a common political, social or business project), the other has to be won over to one’s own view through a process of persuasion in which each of the views involved remains fluid. Reaching a consensus view on the issue is not merely a matter of attaining a common truth on the matter but above all of gaining each other’s trust and confidence, and reaching a compromise, so that a common will to concerted action can be formed. Each of us must have faith that the other or others are genuinely involved in and committed to the issue and will also keep to the consensus reached. All agreement in a practical situation is based on trust and faith, and practical situations of interchange can only succeed if faith is not broken and each of the parties is reliable. This reliability, when demonstrated, in turn forms a further basis of trust, so that trust can be seen as the very element and lubricant of social interchange which also grows or can be destroyed and decay. In contrast to the dependability of things that dependably perform the use to which they are applicable, the reliability of other people depends on their fulfilling the faith that has been placed in them by freely acting according to what they have committed themselves to.
Whereas trust plays no part in automated productive movements in which things are subjected to a purely technical process set up to run efficiently, the trust necessary for practical interchanges between human beings is the obverse of the abyssal circumstance that all social interplay among whos is dangerous and risky in the sense of incalculable, unpredictable and uncertain, because each human who is and remains a free starting-point, a free ἀρχή of its own self-movement or, to cite Kant characterizing freedom as “spontaneity” (Spontaneität), each human being as free has the power, “to begin of itself a state of affairs”.81 To take a felicitous phrase from Adam Smith, “...in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own...”8283
The interplay among free powers in the practical situations of everyday life, if it is to be more than merely a chaotic interplay, has to be based on trust and confidence in each other. For practical purposes, whether it be the exchange of goods or the exchange of views in coming to agreement on a course of concerted action, we must have faith and place trust in each other. Such faith as a dimension of human beings’ sharing a world comprises the entire gamut of good faith and bad faith and the thoughtless indifference in between. Bad faith is where a show is made of commitment, a promise is made but without the intention of sticking to the commitment or promise.
In all practical interchanges oriented toward future action, whether commercial exchange or united action (as in political deliberative situations), the word given by each of the parties must bridge the gap between the present and the future. This word is a promise, the sending-forth (L. pro-mittere) of a word that announces and gives hope to the other or others of the performance of a future action. Whether a word given as bond is a rickety bridge and the consequences thereof will be considered later, in Chapter 10.5, when discussing Hobbes’ Leviathan. In coming to an agreement in which a future interaction or concerted action is resolved, we must have mutual trust and faith that promises will be kept. Keeping one’s word in a defined future is where human reliability lies. The mutual giving of promises is thus a significant part of sociating interchange, and such promises are embedded in the dimension of trust and faith that opens up a bridge enabling the world to be shared among free human beings, each of whom has the power to freely act one way or another, but nevertheless find they also have to act in concert in any common project, or reciprocally in commercial and economic exchange. Without the bridge of faith and trust in its positive modi, individual practical human freedom could not be unified into a common action and practical social interchange would be impossible. A free society characterized by individual freedom of movement thus has as one of its indispensable conditions of possibility established usages of social trust.
5.6.3Mutual estimation: Personhood, esteem and respect, the power play over who-standing and the possible intimacy between you-and-me
To return to the phenomenon of estimation: The will to power exemplified by the attempt to impress others with one’s own self-presentations and the embeddedness of existence in the sociating interchanges of daily life show that existence as who essentially involves self-presentation to others and thus the mirroring of one’s own standing as who in the estimation necessarily given by others. All my self-comportment in daily life is more or less a self-comportment also in the eyes of others and is therefore always also a mirroring of my self-stand as who in and through the others, near and far. This circumstance indicates some kind of dependence on how the others mirror who I am in my self-presentation. My very own self-understanding depends in some way on the responsive reflections of estimation from others, and in particular on the estimation by certain ‘significant’ others. These certain others are those whom I respect, i.e. whom I, in turn, estimate positively with high estimation in the inevitably mutual process of estimation. Those whom I estimate highly have more weight in mirroring who I am or can be. Their estimation and recognition of who I am matters most for my stand as self, for my self-esteem. Both with regard to these certain others and in general, entirely privative or indifferent modes of estimation undermine my self-standing, for I am not so independent and autarkic that I could do entirely without affirmative, uplifting estimation of who I am.
The stand I assume as who can be encouraged and firmed by others’ estimation; it can be boosted through affirmative reflection in the mirror of the other, just as it can be shaken by derogatory ways of estimating me as somewho that detract from my stand and drag me down, perhaps into depression, by putting me down. My self, my standing as self is therefore co-constituted by the others in sociating interchange, and it is not possible to entirely insulate one’s self-stand as who against the mirroring reflected by others’ estimation in all its various positive, negative and neutral variants (cf. Chapter 3.3.1). In fact I become who I am also in learning how others mirror who I am. This is a possible interpretation of Pindar’s famous line in the context of the mirroring interchange of recognition: “Become, learning who you are.” (γένοι’, οἷος ἐσσι μαθών. 2nd Pythian Ode, line 72).
This ineluctable openness and exposure to estimation by others in the double sense of esteeming and sizing me up makes itself felt above all in my mood, in my attunement as a whole with how I find myself in the world, especially the shared, social world which, in turn, is embedded in the 3D-temporal clearing. As a self, I always already feel some way about my self, either uplifted or downcast. This self-feeling is not just a self-reflexive feeling concerning myself as some kind of ego-point or inner self-consciousness, but the globalized, totalized feeling of how I currently am and find myself resonated in the world. The degree of dependency of my feeling about myself on others’ estimation does indeed, in turn, depend on my self-confidence, on the strength of my self-standing, and the resonant sensitivity to estimation by others is expressed by saying that I am thin-skinned or thick-skinned, i.e. that I am more or less permeable to the mirroring of others’ estimation. Feeling good or bad about oneself is ontically one of those entirely banal, ubiquitous and familiar phenomena of everyday living, but its ontological underpinnings in whoness (a sui generis mode of being) have hitherto remained invisible in the blinding light of obviousness. My self as somewho vibrates moodfully with the time-clearing of world, whereas whats lack ontologically such vibrant temporal sensitivity.
In the general sociating interchanges of daily life, estimation usually takes the form of abstractly formal recognition of each other as persons, whose importance for sharing a world with each in civility is not to be under-estimated. We comport ourselves toward each other politely, i.e. respecting the social forms of the polity, which means, in particular, that we do not in general attack or undermine each other’s self-standing in our dealings with each other. In commercial transactions in particular, which are based on some kind of mutual satisfaction and gain to be achieved by the transaction, the mode of mutual estimation is for the most part friendly and polite, for this kind of formal, affirmative estimation lubricates everyday intercourse and the mutual satisfaction of what we want from each other. This formal politeness and friendliness themselves indicate just how much the self-standing as who of the actors in everyday life depends on the mirroring in the inevitable estimation given and taken in everyday social intercourse.
For the most part, we do not touch each other in our self-stands in our daily intercourse. Our encounters for the most part preserve a distance guaranteed by the formal estimation of each other as persons. But there are also closer encounters in which the interplay of estimation touches us and affects us in our self-standing against our will. Such an encounter may be merely an exchange of glances. Such a momentary glance is a mode of estimation, of estimating mirroring the other. The glance can have erotic import, thus boosting my self-stand in an uplifting feeling, or the glance can be a ‘look to kill’ that tendentially undermines my self-esteem and may even trigger some downcast mood. The exposure to the interplay of estimation in some mode or other that constitutes one essential aspect of sharing the world with others within the cast of whoness is the basis on which familiar, banal phenomena such as the striving for honour or fame or celebrity-status at first become ontologically comprehensible. Only by explicitly understanding the whoness of human beings in contradistinction to the whatness of things can we begin to understand the peculiar interplay of human sociating interchanges (μεταβολαί). The ineluctable daily game of estimation in relations with others and the inevitable exposure to how I am mirrored by others opens the possibility of my being touched in my interplay with an other. The other touches me in my self-standing often in a scarcely present, fleeting in-between. Even the exchange of words or glances with a stranger can touch me in a fleeting moment in which the other becomes a momentary ‘you’.84
As somewhos we human beings are continually casting ourselves into the future, thus defining who we are or could be and one day may be. The situation in which we find ourselves, into which each of us has been individually cast, is always the starting-point for such self-casting. The self-definition achieved in casting yourself into the future can never amount to a substantial, standing presence, even though to be somewho means to be constantly engaged in coming to a stand as who you are by showing yourself off above all through your abilities, i.e. your individual powers, in how your can cast and mould yourself through future actions. Each of us remains an ongoing, insubstantial self-casting that has always already been cast and, as such an open clearing for the presencing of world in striving to show ourselves off and define who we are through mutually estimating interplay, we remain essentially substanceless, lacking enduring stand, almost nothing at all. In other words, the presence of individualized human being in its self-presentation is a moment in the conjuncture of beenness (yesterness85) and future, striving to gain a momentary self-stand (cf. Heidegger GA22:270) as who.
Furthermore, the self-casting each of us necessarily continually engages in takes place in the interplay of estimation with others. Only in such mutually mirroring interplay does each of us come to define a self as somewho. Our encounters with each other are always an interplayful joint presencing in nothingness in which each of us seeks moving self-definition in the mirror of the other in which each of us comes momentarily to a stand that is experienced above all moodfully. Our standing presence as selves is always a who-stand on recall that is dissolving from one moment to the next and is thus being continually temporally generated in an ongoing striving, alleviated only by the standing presence of esteemed works and achievements that our able actions may bring forth, thus affording some degree of permanence to our reputational stance.
A lasting relationship between you and me is constituted only within a continually regenerated, refreshed positive mode of mutual estimation of each other in our respective standings as who and, on the whole, a sheer, uplifting enjoyment of each other’s presence. Such a relationship must be borne by a mutual respect and esteem for each other, especially each other’s abilities, and a mutual attentiveness to each other’s world predicament. Such respect, esteem and attentiveness enable a closeness that for the most part has no place in everyday social life. Mirroring each other by way of esteem, i.e. by valuing highly who the other is in his or her self-standing, is the precondition for our coming close in a relationship of you-and-me in which interplay assumes a very different hue and warmth. Indifference and derogatory modes of estimation destroy the possibility of you-and-me. In general social intercourse, one is on one’s guard and maintains a distance to protect one’s own self-standing against the unkindnesses of those who would bring one down. For the power to show off who one is, to impress the others with one’s own self-stand and to stand as high as possible is more often than not expressed in the striving to put others down in order to stand higher oneself. Since all standing as somewho is social, it is also relative, and therefore a higher who-status can be achieved in many situations by putting others down. This struggle over the altitude of one’s own who-standing arises out of the vertical structure of the dimension of whoness itself, inducing a self-defensiveness and distance in everyday sociating interchanges.