The being and the image

27 June 2022. Published by Benoît Labourdette.

6 min

The images we look at, share, imagine and create have an important impact on our being in the world. Why do they do so? And how can we make good use of images to “be better”? Philosophical hypotheses and practical questions.

Too much resemblance makes the image be mistaken for that which gives it birth, too much dissimilarity makes the appearance of image disappear, to the point of making one believe that the image is a new reality. In both cases, the image disappears in favor of what is taken for the thing itself. The image thus obliges us to think a double nature, contradictory, made of a paradoxical combination of Same and Other. In this perspective, it appears that the question of the image, of the representation of something, merges with the question of the very criteria of truth.

Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, Philosophie des images, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2001.

What is the image?

The image is in itself an object much more vast than what our senses make us perceive. The image maintains close relations to language, because to see is to recognize, that is to say to name. Here is the proposal of not one, but several definitions of the image, to try to embrace this concept in its great diversity:

First of all, the image is what we perceive through our vision apparatus (the eye, the optic nerve and the brain): the light reflected by the objects in front of us, captured by the “dark room” that is our eye, projects an image onto our retina, which is then, by a physico-chemical reaction, transformed into electrical impulses that will make it perceived by our neuronal system. The image projected at the back of our eye is the first image.
What is commonly called “image” is most often a concrete object in the space of reality: a photo, a drawing, a painting, a film, an architecture...
If this manufactured image occupies the whole of our field of vision, we speak then of “virtual reality” (VR).
The image can also be mental, linked to the real or the imaginary, conscious or unconscious (in the dream, the memory or the desire).
An image can be born in our mind by words, read or heard, it is a literary image.
But the words themselves, by their writing, are also images!

The image, materially and conceptually, is present in all places of life. Moreover, the image has multiple “modes of operation”, specific functions, depending on techniques, contexts, people and cultures. Here are some examples of the functions of the image:

trace,
memory,
heritage,
communication,
information,
knowledge,
document,
evidence,
creation,
entertainment,
sacred,
propaganda,
simulation,
self-image,
orality (in the exchange of images via social networks),
and many others, which are invented as human technologies and cultural mutations evolve.

What is being?

To be or not to be?
To be or to have?
To be in the world?
To be oneself?

The conscience of our being and our existential questionings come from the fact that we are the only species of the animal regime endowed with a fictional imaginary, not connected to reality, with which our languages manufacture images external to ourselves (cf. Yuval Noah Harari). The other animals also have languages to communicate, as well as mental, cartographic, historical, sensitive images, etc., but they are not image makers of the imaginary, as we homo-sapiens practice it. For example a cat, that we can very well see dreaming, will not be able to write or to draw its dream and to tell it by romanticizing it, as we could do it. His dream cannot become a myth shared by the other cats.

Our symbolization by the image, that is to say our work to represent the world, thus ourselves, takes place largely outside our body, by the images that we make and receive, it is the cultural construction, without which we would not have an existence as human. We also symbolize through words, of course, which are most often producers of mental images too. Here, I focus on the image, words are another subject, even though they are intimately related. The images that we receive/co-produce through our perception, that we share and that we produce, constitute us well as a being.

To summarize, it is the images that we create that in return produce our being in humanity. And this permanently. This is why a work on the image will have an immediate impact on our being in the world. The philosophy of the image thus represents, in my opinion, a conceptual activity of the most performative kind to change oneself and the world.

Today, at the beginning of the XXIst Century, the image that transforms us is much easier to apprehend than in the past, due to the fact that we almost all carry with us permanently a device for receiving, sharing and producing images, which innervates our reports.

Lives in images

In 2016, six years before writing the present text, I published in the magazine Esprit the article « Des vies en images », which sketches the link between our being and our images in the digital reality that has become ours. I explain, for example, that regularly changing one’s profile picture, or posting images very often in networks, is not so much an addiction or a frenzy as a modeling of our human interactions. Indeed, we see the images of others, who see our images, which sets the framework for our interactions. For example, putting on makeup and getting dressed in the morning, in a different way depending on the circumstances to come (daily life, work, love, events...), is to create an image to enter into a relationship. And this is essential to a social life in a given culture, in the same way as the photos that we post on our “wall” or in our “story”, sometimes very often, depending on our rhythm of social interaction.

What is living?
Is it rather to act to be, or to be to act?
Or, in relation to images: is living to make images in order to be, or rather to be first, so that images are made and feed my being in return?

If I make or receive an image, it builds me by symbolization, and if I post it on a social network, it will also enrich my peers, then it will appear to me as having been appreciated, and I will come out of it all the more nourished, built as a human being. But, as we know, the “race for likes” can also be destructive, leading to an addiction to dopamine, the reward hormone. Even the “Tweet” of the phone receiving a like is enough to trigger the activation of dopamine in my neurotransmissions, and if we are not careful, it can lead to a need for more and more requests to feel good. So how do we do it?

Born images

It seems to me that wanting to “force reality”, to impose the image that I have inside me in order to want to transform it by my actions, that is to say to place the action before the being, risks to produce not very anchored, superficial images, and thus to nourish a codified and plated being. Perhaps that can seduce, by the very superficiality of the operation, those who do not risk to be either, who recognize themselves in this surface. It is a simulacrum of mutual enrichment, a false image.

In my opinion, what needs to be worked on is first of all the being. And the image will be born in this state of being. One does not know which image, which images, one does not know either if these images will be received, created, rare or numerous. But if we work on our “being there”, it will be the right images that will come to us, often from within, because our invested presence puts us in contact with the truth. No matter the number, the place, the modalities... the images that constitute us will emerge by vital necessity, to re-constitute us.

It is always rather surprising to note that often, in this way of floating listening particular to the being there, unfold productions much more prolific than in the voluntarist devices. Like the life that we let flow. And this on an individual or collective basis.

These births of images in our state of being will make us, bit by bit, reborn. And this is concrete in biological terms: will create new neuronal connections in the brain, which actually create life in the brain tissue. This happens through real openness and not through external overstimulation.

Let go technique

To leave this necessary space for the birth of images, the condition is to “let go”. How to do it ?

Naîtra = n’être à.
Renaître = re n’être.

In these two equalities of signifiers, we can notice that birth is associated with not being; that is to say, in order to become being, one must leave all the space, thus not being, to be able to be.

This is the paradox of letting go, which to be effective must be sincerely without expectation (cf. Romain Graziani). But yet the very idea of letting go is in itself an intentionality, so it can’t work... So, should we never do anything at all, wait for everything to come by itself? Not at all, because that is still an expectation, and nothing would actually happen. So how do you actively let go? It is by inducing a direction, rather than an intention, a field of openness, flexible, a state of listening. Thus, no waiting, but a chosen field, on which what will happen there will be born. If we do not provide a fertile ground that we designate, nothing can grow.