We are aware of ourselves as agents acting in time, amid histories we did not create but which we must take up, using rules and norms that we did not originate but which we must decide upon, as we are making and approving and changing and continuing social grammars. We moderns are active within a temporal process that passes on meaning, including our own self-definitions.

"This position -- of creating ourselves anew in the light of an inheritance that functions as a pharmakon, as both a nurturing opportunity and a overwhelming danger -- is not just the situation of philosophy. It is at base what is distinctive about human existence -- that we are not complete as natural beings and that it is only by acquiring culture that we become human. . . . [We need] a repetition that reworks [Heidegger's] account of . . . dwelling in terms of a response to a structure of givenness, rather than the language of decision and decisiveness." (Wood 1999, 14f)

In this process, splits and categories and grammars are not just immediately given. But neither are they produced by some immediately given active subjectivity, whether individual or social. We actively maintain our self-description and social identity, though we are also carried along by habits, social inertias and ongoing projects. Places show us habit and social inertia coexisting with active repetition and reappropriation.

Index
Gateway

(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001