Beilage XXX: Engagement with Things - Engagement with Human Beings (As Though They Were Things and as Specifically Human). Connection - Restriction, Force,

Unanimity of Will, Struggle.

(November 1932)

We in the world, which is ours - our surrounding world of life. Having the world and being personally in the world, being engaged with the world. Having the world, the world exists for me, it exists for me as a world with Others, for whom the same world. the very same world exists. I and every Other are engaged, each with beings, each in his interests as interests in this or that mundane thing, which concerns him. Unified being engaged, unified persons, unified in interests and engagements. I concern myself with "things" - come to know them..., to evaluate them in feeling, concern myself with them in pleasure and displeasure, move toward them in pleasure, cast them away in pain: further, considering them practically and forming them practically in accordance with purposes, using them practically for purposes.

I concern myself with human beings: come to know them..., to engage with them in feeling, enjoy their being as they are, in pleasure and pain. Practically engage with them - as though they were things. I will them to be different, I will to treat them differently, in the same broad sense as things. E.g. they should not be here but ssomewhere else, they should not have these qualities but other ones, in accordance with what their spatio-temporal what-being constitutes. They should not exist... I can will a human being to die. As something real in the region of the human, he is then no longer present in the world. The human being stands physically in my way, I want to move a thing through the room in which he exists. ...The human being restricts me, obstructs my path, stands in the way of my view in a spiritual respect. I persuade him, I come to an agreement with him that he give me my freedom, that he yield. Here I "come to an agreement" with him, but I do not unite with him in common purposive activities, in the unity of a common purpose. Perhaps the agreement lies in the fact that I further his purposes, and he therefore furthers mine reciprocally. In a certain way then, he accepts my purposes, and I accept his, partially - only insofar as this is necessary in order not to be destroyed. If he does not want to, then perhaps I need to use force, I force him. What constitutes force? His act imposes restrictions, which he cannot overcome, except within the personal community of conscious being for one another. It is a volitional being directed against one another in "correspondence," actual and habitual. It is the negative of the positive agreement in willing, directions of will.

Positive unanimity in experiencing, feeling, thinking, planing, willing, acting with one another. Sympathy. But in desiring, in will of the Other, desiring as well and not mere sympathizing. Most extreme case: freely placing oneself entirely in the service of another. Antipathy. Then however in the community of a nonagreement of the will. Not desiring what he wants does not mean in general not desiring (privately) what he wants. He wants something to exist or to exist in a particular way; I want it not to exist or not to exist in that way. ...The being in one another of communalization does not belong to that. That which he wills is his volitional goal and as such has for him its ontic sense. In communalization with him my desire is directed against his volitional goal as such. It is a negative will, will against his goal, and therein lies in the communalization a being positioned against him as a person...

So also in judicatice struggle. I turn myself against the sstatement, the judicative proposition as that of the Other... But it is the same with all propositions, with all disagreement, also with myself. Thus when I remember, and so not "sympathize" with my past "experiential proposition"...

Now in the case of the struggle of wills in communalization "power" is in question. In correspondence it is e.g. such that I turn myelf in my will against his will, his point of view, but he does it nevertheless, and I cannot hinder it. He hinders my act, my bodily act, in that he restricts me bodily or threatens me with death, or he forces me in that he threatens to do me spiritual harm... Insofar as he behaves in this manner, it can be the case that my negative will remains - but as a powerless will. It may also be that I acquiesce, relinquish my negative will, my will against him. Indeed he can perhaps force me to relinquish my total will as something belonging to me in order to be of service to him. I become a slave...