A&E/Intro

Introduction: Three Selves—Objective, Subjective, and Reflective

Hi, Robbie, the author here. I should break in here to avoid misinterpretation and make explicit something important about "my story:" It is not a Sargent Friday, just-the-facts-ma'am story. "I-Robbie-me" has three distinct roles in the text. The first performs the central role, the subjective, intentional Robbie. He's the one the story is about. However central and significant, the intentional Robbie will often seem elusive, not because he's trying to hide, but because he is the subjective, inward Robbie, continually experiencing his circumstances, the world as defined by his unique relations to it. The intentional Robbie lives an inner life, much of which doesn't appear outwardly. The second Robbie keeps showing up, like Zelig, doing things at the center of action. He's the objective correlate of the intentional Robbie. The objective Robbie is Friday's guy, just words and deeds; what he does and says declares the facts of the story, whereas the wants and meanings that move the intentional Robbie are always undeclared, motivations that conditionally activate Robbie in his circumstances. The third Robbie is me, the Robbie writing this text late in life, 86+, from a privileged vantage, partially knowing what the two other Robbie's have said and done, both inwardly and outwardly. I wasn't always well informed and my memory stinks, but that imperfect knowledge enables me to be a reflective Robbie who will, at opportunities like this, burst in to raise questions, frame contexts, and suggest interpretations. I want to make the significance of the story as clear as possible as the three Robbies coalesce in the minds of readers where and whenever they may be.

Now, as the reflective Robbie, I have a bit more to say about the two Robbies here at the outset. Frankly, despite my affection, I'd judge the objective Robbie to have so far written modestly interesting work and influenced a few students constructively, but he's not even made it into Wikipedia! Few will attend to his story with the requisite curiosity, even if we cast it well as a cautionary academic tale. I've said, however, that this story primarily concerns the subjective Robbie, not the objective one. By probing the difference, we may recognize potential value in Robbie's subjective story. Let's start with a simplified illustration of the difference, a sketchy construction that helps us grasp what sets an objective and a subjective story apart from each other. Consider objectively, a stew made by a cook and subjectively a cook making a stew. To create the objective story, we observe what the cook does to create the stew, noting what ingredients she chooses and how she prepares them for the pot, the temperature of the stove, how long she leaves the pot with the ingredients on the burner, how she stirs it, what seasonings she adds, and so on. By listing all that and describing her various operations we can codify a recipe and a set of instructions for a cookbook, which if the cook has an appropriate reputation may sell as a normative guide like The Joy of Cooking. Subjectively, the story concentrates, not on the stew, but on the cook, illuminating how she developed the skill to choose among possible ingredients, to judge between too much, enough, or too little of each, and to acquire the facility to choreograph and perform the operations needed to actually cook such dishes, and beyond that, as in Julia Child's My Life in France, her story may explore more extensively and deeply how the cook encountered the culture and life of the cuisine she masters.

What might people learn from Robbie's subjective story that would give it compelling importance? It must rest on the factual experience of the objective Robbie. He has had a long career working with considerable talents and skills addressing an important question from a variety of perspectives, trying to better understand how a sense of meaningful agency emerges for living persons as they repeatedly find themselves having to act, deciding what to do, how to do it, why, with whom, when and where.

I want to observe further, as the reflective Robbie, how the three of us may together presume that we have a story that others may find worth attending to. We have our doubts whether the objective Robbie has a claim on substantial attention from the reading public. He has been an imaginative and dedicated scholar, but his achievement has not lived up to the expectations projected onto him. *** The importance of distinguishing how the subjective Robbie differs from the objective. The subjective Robbie lives in a world pervaded by his ignorance.....*** The subjective Robbie may more reasonably attract significant attention, but only if that attention is well directed. In telling my story, I want to better understand how a sense of agency emerges for living persons as we repeatedly find ourselves having to act, finding ourselves ignorant in the midst of actual circumstances about what to do, how to do it, why, with whom, when and where. I think this emergence of agency in its unique set of circumstances takes place inwardly. It's a subjective phenomenon: the cook stirs the pot, attending to many conditions impinging on the dish she intends to make. Her skill in cooking emerges as she, herself, attends to all these conditions that constitute her circumstances. I'm not interested in recording the objective features these circumstances—listing ingredients, measuring their quantity, describing the various operations she performs in order to codify a recipe and a set of instructions for a cookbook. Instead, I want to understand how she developed the skill to choose among possible ingredients, to judge between too much, enough, or too little of each, and to acquire the facility to choreograph and perform the operations needed to actually cook such dishes.

[Fill out. . . . do this reflecting on my own case, seeking to understand how my own sense of agency, the ongoing emergence of what I can and should seek to do while immersed in the actual circumstances of my life, has come about. I do this cognizant that the lifeworld which became actual with me on August 17th, 1939, was unique to me and remains so as I in interaction with it have continued to develop. My reflections on this process give rise to no transmissible or reproduceable model. But the reflective effort may stimulate similar efforts by others, leading to more refined purposes, greater skills, and deeper insights. And as numerous reflections on how a sense of agency emerges in unique and different lives accumulates, insight into common resources and pitfalls may build, leading not to normative models, but to more helpful support and counsel to persons seeking to foster the ongoing effort by distinctive persons forming their abilities to act purposefully within their unique set of circumstances.