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APPENDIX 1

THE POWER OF THE REAL

I commit to Appendices those questions which constitute a fuller development of points already covered in the text, or that comprise items falling outside the general context of the book but which may still clarify some of its ideas. The latter is what now occurs with the idea of the power of the real.

We have already seen that power is the dominance of the real, that is, the dominance of the powerful. But there is an important distinction to be made on this point. Power is, of course, a moment of the de suyo; to wit, it is real power. Some real things can dominate over others. This power can be dominant in two aspects. One, that of real things, the real things as real powerfulness. Yet there is dominance in another respect: not that of real things, but of the moment of reality itself qua reality. And then it is not the case of powerfulness, but of what I have called the power of the real qua real. This power is the fundament, the fundamentality of my personal reality. It is about this power of the real that we have been {90} concerned. This power is that dominance according to which reality, the real as real, captures me. But in order to clarify the ideas, it may be useful to consider at greater length those powerfulnesses as real powers, even though they may not be the power of the real.

These real powerfulnesses are found, for example, in the more or less ancient religions in the form of gods. Therefore, leaving aside that they may be gods and may belong to religions (points which both go beyond the present line of argument), let us concern ourselves only with the form in which these real things, which are gods, dominate over things. Those modes of dominance are precisely their powerfulnesses, their real powers. This power has many manifestations:

1) It is a power which appears to us principally as the power from on high, the “most high”.
2) It is also a power of time as a living measure of reality.
3) It is a power of separation of forms.
4) It is a power of germination of reality.
5) It is a power of organization, primarily of life.
6) It is power of the future.
7) It is a power, not only of the material reality, but also of the intellectual reality of man.
8) It is the power of the personal intimacy which binds man into families, tribes and nations.
9) It is the power which fills everything in space just as much as in time.
10) It is the power which hovers over life and over death.
11) It is the power which directs social life.
12) It is the power which is called “destiny”. {91}
13) It is the power which rules the justice and the cosmic-moral structure
of the universe.
14) It is the sacralizing power.
15) It is the enduring power.

The list could and should be extended greatly. But what has been said suffices to show how, independent of the underlying conception of the gods, the items in the list taken together constitute the complex physiognomy of the real power of the gods.

Now, when this power does not correspond to real things, but simply to their reality, then real power becomes something more radical, the power of the real. It is with this power, and only this power, that we are concerned as fundament of our personal reality. And about it we now pose the third question: How does fundamentality occur?


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III

How does fundamentality occur?

The foundational is the power of the real, which fundaments by seizing me. This seizure by the power of the real is not a relation into which I, already constituted a reality, enter with respect to the power of the real; but it is an intrinsic and formally constitutive moment of my personal reality. It is a constitutive respectivity. I am a personal reality thanks to this seizure in such a fashion that the power of the real is a kind of support a tergo, not in order for me to act as a living being, but for me to be real. Not only is man nothing without things, he needs them to compel him to make himself. Being able to and having to make himself is not sufficient; he needs an impulse to actually make himself. And this impulse is an intrinsic and formal turning towards the power of the real. Man is not a personal reality except when he actually depends upon the power of the real, so that in virtue of the aforementioned seizure we are not extrinsically subjected to anything. We do not “go to” reality as such, but on the contrary we “come from” it. The seizure implants us in reality. This paradoxical seizing when it seizes me, makes me to be constitutively separate “when facing” that very thing which has seized me. Therefore, the seizing occurs by ligating us to the power of the real in order to be relatively absolute. This peculiar ligature is just what I term religation. Religated to the power of the real is how we are sustained on it, in order to be relatively absolute. Put differently, {93} the formal subject of religation is not nature, but the person, or better still, it is personized nature. In itself, religation affects man not as separated from things, but insofar as it affects everything. However, only in man it is formally religation; only in man it is the formal occurrence of fundamentality. A person is not simply linked to things or dependent upon them, but is constitutively and formally religated to the power of the real.

This is not a mere theoretic conceptuation, but an analysis of facts. Religation is above all else a fact perfectly verifiable. Moreover, religation is something which affects the totality of my human reality, from my most modest physical characteristics to my most elevated mental traits. And this is true because what is religated to the power of the real is not just one aspect or another of my reality, but my own personal reality in all its dimensions; indeed it is through all of them that I make myself a person. Religation, consequently, is not only a verifiable fact, but a complete, integral fact. Finally, religation is something basic and radical. Religation is the very root of this personal reality of mine. It is not only a verifiable and complete fact, but is above all a radical fact. Therefore, religation is not one function among a thousand others of the human life, but is the root from which each life may become, physically and really, not only an I, but my I.

Religation is not obligation, because obligation presupposes religation. We are obliged to something because we are previously religated to the power which makes us be. In order to be obliged we have to be a personal reality already, and we are only a personal reality because we are religated. As I said in the preceeding pages, {94} in obligation we are subjected to something through being personal realities. Hence in an obligation we “go to” something; in religation, on the contrary, we “come from” something. Therefore, “we go” inasmuch as “we have come from”. In religation, more than the obligation to do, there is the yielding to the recognition of that which makes everything be.

Nor is religation the feeling of unconditional dependency. In the first place, any feeling has an intrinsic and formal moment of reality. To be sure, in any feeling there is a moment of affection, e.g., in his feelings a man is affected. But this affection is a way of being in reality; otherwise it would not be a feeling. Any feeling is affectant, but this affection is a mode of being in reality. Any feeling is affectant just as any intellection is sentient. In the second place, in order for me to have a sense of dependency, the moment of reality must be actualized as something to which I am ligated, as something anterior to the feeling itself. Finally, the unconditionality is only possible when the one that is dependent is an “ab-solute”. Any unconditional dependency presupposes a relatively absolute reality. That is, it presupposes religation.

Therefore, I find myself religated to reality in its power. Religation is religation to the power of the real. Man is relatively absolute precisely and formally because he is religated to reality as power. Fundamentality occurs in religation to the power of the real.

This unity of the power of the real and religation, as I said before, is precisely the seizing. It is not a unity which is real de facto, but rather a unity which formally transpires in the seizing.

{95} And this unity has at least three characters. First, in religation to the power of the real man has an experience of what the power of the real is, and consequently an experience of what reality is as power. Religation has, therefore, an experiential character.

What is experience? Experience here does not mean aísthesis, that is to say, it is nor the sensible datum. Neither is it what Aristotle called empeiría, the recognition (mnéme) of the same thing in different perceptions; experience here is not the empirical. Nor does it mean what we designate as life experience. Experience is something different. Above all, it is a kind of test to which something is subjected, a test which is not mere corroboration in a conceptual sense, for example. Rather, it is the operative exercise of the act of testing: it is physical testing. Of what? Of the reality of something. Experience is, then, physical testing of reality. Man addresses himself to reality in order to find a support in it, and in turn this reality has a great richness of notes, which are a “such-ification” of the moment of reality and, therefore, are determined by this moment as possibilities of realization. The insertion of these possibilities into the realization of my person is the physical testing of reality. Man, through making his own person religationally, is doing the physical testing of what the power of the real is. It is the test of the insertion of ultimateness, of possibilitation and of impellence into my own reality. When I make myself a personal reality I am, therefore, an experience of the power of the real and thus, of “the” reality itself. Such testing is carried out in every individual, social, and historical venues. From this point of view, all diversity of {96} individuals in the course of their lives, their social milieus, and the resulting historical unfolding at various statures of times, is a fabulous, gigantic experience of the power of the real.

In the second place, religation to the power of the real is not only experiential, but a manifestation of the power of the real itself. Religation is not only experiential, but also ostensive, manifestative of the power of the real. We are not dealing with a purely conceptual manifestation. Anything real has a list of notes which comprise its own richness. In one or several of these notes the reality of the entire thing actualizes itself. Those notes, in which the real actualizes itself, comprise its manifestative dimension. And the actualization in each of its dimensions is precisely the manifestation. The manifestative character concerns the real qua real. Religation is, in this sense, a manifestation, an ostensiveness of the power of the real qua real. And what manifests itself this way is the power of the real as religating.

This manifestation is along the lines of realization of my person, of my mode of being relatively absolute. Still, the fact that it is a manifestation along these lines shows that what is manifested, namely, the power of the real, manifests that it has an enigmatic character. Religation to the power of the real is the experience which manifests what is enigmatic about this power of the real. Religation is, then, not only experiential and manifestative but also enigmatic. This is the third character of religation. We saw, indeed, that when we are with real things, that in which we are is “the” reality. Any real thing imposes upon us that we adopt a determinate form of reality. And this is where the enigma lies.

An enigma is above all a mode of signifying the real, {97} not declaring what it is, but only indicating it signatively, just as does an oracle. Thus, Heraclitus says that the oracle at Delphos neither says nor hides anything, but that only signifies it. This mode of manifesting reality is what is called aínigma, enigma. The enigma is comprised by a certain ambivalence of characteristics not readily harmonized. However, the character of enigma concerns not only the saying, but also what is being said. What is said or manifested is an enigma because what is said, the real, is enigmatic.

Now reality, what is manifest, is indicated or is manifest qua reality; and this manifestation is enigmatic. This is so because reality, on the one hand, is a moment of the particular real thing with which we are, i.e., its own formality, its own reality. And the other hand, it compels us to adopt a form of reality. Which one? Not necessarily that of this real thing itself, but a form in “the” reality. Now, this is a radical ambivalence, because that with which we actually are is this reality, and that in which we actually are is “the” reality. And both moments are inseparable to be sure, but they are very different. Anything humanly apprehended is real, but none is “the” reality. And what is most important is the fact that it is each real thing which compels us to actually be in “the” reality. This is what we expressed earlier by saying that real things transport the power of the real; they are its vectors. They are not two realities, but only one, one unity enigmatically manifest in our experiential religation. We have to be in reality: it is demanded of us by real things in their reality; but none is that in which we are made to be. This is the power of the real as enigma: to be in “the” reality with real things. It is an enigmatic power.

{98} We shall insist on this point in order to provide greater clarity. I said above that in real things their formal moment of reality is “more” than their moment of mere suchness. To be a real green is more than being a real green. And this is much weightier than one might think. By being “more”, to be real manifests a real thing as a moment of “the” reality. And therefore “this” real thing, this real green, is not “the” reality. Nor is it the case that this reality, of this real thing, is like a concretion, as if it were a contraction of something superior: in such case "this" reality would be “the” reality contracted into the real thing. But, what is “the” reality as anterior or superior to these real things? This would be pure conceptism, unless one turns “the” reality into a sea wherein real things are submerged. And this is something even less tenable than pure conceptism. Rather than contraction one should speak of an expansion of “this” reality towards “the” reality. All the same, this will not take us any further. “The” reality is in “this” reality, but it is so enigmatically. And this enigma is manifest to us in the experience itself of religation. “The” reality is not “this” real thing, but neither is it something outside of it. Reality is a “more”, but not a “more” on top of the thing, but a “more” in the thing itself. That is the reason why, when I am with “this” reality, I am in “the” reality. For the same reason, “this” real thing can compel me to adopt a form in “the” reality. This is not a question of concepts, but a physical character of the power of the real.

This is what religation is, i.e., to be seized by the power of the real. It is not something merely intentional; rather, we are physically thrown “towards” “the” reality by the power of the real itself. And we are so, physically and really constituting personal reality, the relative absolute {99} in which each person consists. We are physically thrown towards something unspeakably enigmatic. By religation we are thrown physically towards the reality which has captured us, not in a blind way, but just the opposite, in an ostensive and experiential manner. Since the power of the real is enigmatic, this enigma impresses its character into the realization of our personal reality: this is the problematic of fundamentality. We make ourselves problematically because we are founded in an enigma, the enigma of the power of the real.

We have examined how a person is founded in reality, what the structure of this fundamentality is, and how this fundamentality occurs. Now we must face the last question: the problematics of fundamentality.