More on Metaphysics (the problem of the subject-object relationship):
A key problem to me is the “being-in-the-world” understanding (Heidegger’s “Dasein”) as a human, and the relationship with that which may be both of the world and not of it (e.g., God).
In this case, it seems to me to not be the subject-object relationship that Heidegger had a problem with (as I do, too), but a subject-subject one. That is, instead of “I have a relationship with God” (subject-object either way) one says “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond are mutual.”
But even here linguistics constrains because “mutual” as a universal is the predicate of “God and I and the cosmos and whatever is beyond..”
Another way to look at this is what an anthropologist Eileen and I met with in Mexico City described as the linguistic difference displayed by the Cholojobal Mayan indians in Chiapas, Mexico, from the traditional language arrangement we’re accustomed with. To him (he and his wife lived with them for decades) this tribal group did NOT use the subject-cupola-object relationship (e.g. the fence is gray, or, he loves she) but instead uses a subject-subject linguistic in which the verb is dominant (love/he/she/shared). This is hard for us to wrap our minds around. And even now I have to use the subject/object linguistic to describe it.
Still, this latter way of speaking (linguistics) and knowing (epistemology) and being (ontology) is one thing I’m exploring in metaphysics, including how it impacts identity.
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