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T H R E E S y m b o l The subordination of the active life to the contemplative life is premised on the allegedly dubious status of action. Ephemeral and futile, action was displaced by the permanent and the practical in the modes of philosophical contemplation and scientific fabrication. If the active life is to be recuperated, as well as its correlates in human authority and responsibility, these attacks must be addressed. Chapter 2 began the process by showing action to be efficacious in the process of definition. The wonder of perception and subsequent contemplation is premised on action as that which discloses the world. Effective at a formal level, however, the accounts of the former chapter continue to beg the experiential questions as to how and under what conditions action appears. The present chapter thus explores these questions and, most specifically, what Miller calls “the problem of history”—that is, “How is action disclosed to us?” (PH 67). The account of action now moves in the direction of the practical, the concrete , and the symbolic. The midworld of symbols has been designated as the embodiment of action. In the midworld, action is revealed as function. In the symbol, doing and thinking are united in such a way that the midworld becomes the source of not just local-control but also self-control in the mode of reflective and responsible authority. Section 3.1 will address the disclosure of autonomous action amid the forces of empirical circumstance. This discussion provides an opportunity for elaborating on conclusions, in chapter 2, regarding pure action and form. Sections 3.2 and 3.3 will provide a detailed account of the symbol and the diversity of its modes within the structure of the midworld. To discover action is nothing less than to discover the form of one’s world as well as the conditions of its maintenance and revision. The symbol is an object of consciousness and reflection and, as such, a condition of local-control, self-identification, and self-control. These aspects of the midworld are taken up in sections 3.4 and 3.5 where the issues of interpretation and identity are addressed in the context of symbols. 71 §3.1 SYMBOLIC ENVIRONMENT In what actions and through what processes is control instanced? An intimate link has already been established between action and local-control. Action occurs in a locale, amidst determinate circumstances for which no individual can claim sole responsibility but with which each person must grapple. The process of definition supposes this situation. This points to a central paradox of actualism— that is, even as it is instanced in local-control, action also has a fundamental status. “Let what is considered an act appear as an environed event, and it will disappear into the circumstances in which it is allegedly found,” Miller writes. “There its autonomy will be nullified” (MS 77). There are two perspectives at work in actualism. Actualism dismisses romantic hubris and locates action in the context of local-control. Actualism also proposes that the act is unique, unenvironed, and radical. This tension is neither accidental nor unproductive. On the contrary, it highlights the problem of history and what Miller terms “the problem of ethics”—that is, How is an act possible ? (MP 12:14). The union of the absolute and finite is constitutive of the authority exercised in action. If they are truly means of autonomous action, the categories must be more than products of physical reflex and behavioral conditioning . It is equally true that if one is free with respect to these governing categories they cannot be so absolute that they exist independent of human deeds. The two perspectives must be joined. The proper relationship is achieved by recognizing that action and its categories are the absolute and revisable fabric of experience . The key to bringing these two aspects together is the symbol. Beginning in medias res casts into relief the paradoxical circumstance of the authoritative act. The idea of action beyond or independent of any environment lapses into nonsense; the act is made so much, it becomes so authoritative that it cannot be located anywhere (MS 89–90; cf. Arendt, 1978, vol. 2, p. 214). Yet action falls into oblivion when the environment is made absolute; each action becomes a mere function of a determining state of affairs. One is then faced with a dilemma.1 Miller states that action can be described as either ontological or psychological (see §2.1). Ontological action...

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