But then how to encourage the personal decision of each one of us? For that to happen, it is necessary to establish conditions for a new oikonomy of relations. To establish a relationship to transcendence, one has to establish a relationship with one’s neighbor. The philosophical name for the neighbor is the (specific) Other. When we enter the domain of consciousness as a decisive space for the establishment of simultaneity, we enter a space of recognizing the freedom of the other being, the irreducibility of the uniqueness of man, the self-affirmation of human dignity as the ethical primacy of the relationship “you”-I. Consciousness is the original place of the original form of the dialectic between self and otherness. For an authentic resistance against the prevailing pseudo-existence to take place, both on a personal and social level, the original surroundings of the “deserted world” should be foreseen with a new mutual hope, and of course with mutual self-confidence. As Anti Climacus says “To hope is to be you to the end.”
But modern man lives “on the battleline” (Patochka), and without a fundamental change in thinking, in the direction of current action, as well as his action without delay, and in accordance with it, leads to self-destruction. The man-at-the-battleline is a man of the group/mass, a man to whom the other (the big Other of capital’s imaginings and the capital’s logic of power) determines a “living space”, which is or becomes in one way or another the space of camps, where man as a single individual is deprived of his own freedom and his way of thinking, dignity and humanity. Despite declarations of human rights, he can be deprived of his freedom in this way, because he is governed by a nameless apparatus. But each person is a part of sublime generosity and the inimitable and unique existence. Therefore, we, who are aware of this, are asked to make a clear determination, and while we must not avoid the anguish and possible despair before the conceptual impotence of reality. Namely, existential communication cannot be defined differently than faith (a thorough but mature conviction), which does not succumb to the conceptual apparatus. In our case, which draws inspiration from Kierkegaard, with the new oikonomia, an obligation to love the other is created – an obligation, which is both long-term, but also anew as a “new act” of passionate devotion. Love for one’s neighbor is at the same time love for the community, for the specific social environment in which that community lives, as well as for the oikos. Its foundation consists of the active, critical absence of calculations and the creation of warmth from mutual giving. We can only give love to another if we receive it from the other, which is certainly not in our power but arises from the transcendentality of existential communication. Is it perhaps utopian, atopic, or both?
This may be a foreshadowing of the reversal, metanoia in the original sense of being, which does not succumb to fear, and which must be unraveled. Perhaps the oikonomia of that turn can be compared to the heteronormativity of a given ‘relation-to-other’ (as a fragile and vulnerable relation to the irreducible to the difference from me…). In this connection, the question arises: are we still capable of being critical not only of our contemporaries but also of ourselves?
The architecture of healing, healing in Kierkegaard’s sense, is the existential dialectic as the fruit of the separation of the established self towards repetition. I have an insurmountable relationship with others, but the other also establishes me as an active other me, in relation to the future, in the openness of the structure, which requires self-awareness and many renunciations. But even when we expect nothing, we still owe everything. Perhaps this is how we reveal the space of allowing and forgiving, the space of dialogue and communication of existence. Allowing the concrete other here and now.
15.12.2023
translated by: Aneta Paunoska