He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars;
General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer:
For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
- William Blake, Jerusalem

This was originally written for my students.

What is an idea? Ideas are partitions of the senses, both present and absent, divisions of spacetime into objects, into this-and-thats in-the-world. This-and-thats are action-potentials, or affordances: layers of what-it’s-for within this-and-that. Our ideas have a direct effect on what we can do and what we imagine we can do. The can-do is a function of the what-it’s-for of a field of affordances, a what-it’s-for that is both invented and discovered, both in-us and in-the-world.

The properties of the spacetime bundle constrain the what-it’s-for by defining the physical limits of what-can-be-done. To stop thinking of a chair as a chair may change the what-its-for, but it can not take on the what-its-for of a lamp. We also, however, invent the what-it’s-for. Our ideas are world-embedded, overlaying on the this-and-thats of the real. The what-it’s-for emerges out of how the idea modifies the affordances of the physical, a uniting of both what-can-be-done and what-we-see-it-as-for. Though we may not be able to change the what-can-be-done, modifying our concepts modifies the what-it’s-for through modifying what-we-see-it-as-for. Conceptual engineering is also agential engineering, the changing of our ideas for the sake of changing the what-it’s-for of things around us and opening up new possibilities.

There are, however, things that do not have a what-it’s-for, or where the thing-itself is what-it’s-for. This is the Unique, that which is itself-in-itself and irreplaceable with any other. The what-it’s-for of the Unique is Uniquing, unfolding as it is in the way that is right to it. The Unique grounds value, everything is either valuable-in-itself as Unique or valuable-to-a-Unique. Ultimately, the what-it’s-for of all things is the Unique, everything else appearing as valuable in the overlapping Uniquing of Uniques-in-the-world.

Every person is a Unique in this way. People are that which do not have a what-it’s-for or who are themselves their own what-it’s-for. This extends to all living beings: life-itself is the Unique and the Uniquing of all is life-itself. Life is what does and acts in the world, and which through this doing makes manifest the what-it’s-for of everything else. This means that the what-it’s-for is mutually-shaped, not just a what-it’s-for for me but a what-it’s-for for me and you and you and you and you. The what-it’s-for is -for all of us and to exist in community is to take all others as the what-it’s-for of your activity. What-it’s-all-for is me. And you. And you. And you.

What-it’s-all-for is all of us. All of our hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties. All of our pasts, and all of our presents, and all of our futures. All of our wants and needs and desires and loves.

What-it’s-all-for is the world-as-it-is and the world-as-it-could-be.

He shewed me a little thing, the quantity of an hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. – Blessed Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Image: The Human Condition by René Magritte (1933)