Objectifying

Our everyday experience of things, in the wider sense of the word, is neither objectifying nor a placing over against. When, for example, we sit in the garden and take delight in a blossoming rose, we don’t make an object of the rose, nor do we even make it something standing over against us in the sense of something represented thematically. When in tacit saying we’re enthralled with the lucid red of the rose and muse on the redness of the rose, then this redness is neither an object nor a thing nor something standing over against us like the blossoming rose. The rose stands in the garden, perhaps sways to and fro in the wind. But the redness of the rose neither stands in the garden nor can it sway to and fro in the wind. All the same we think it and tell of it by naming it. There is accordingly a thinking and saying that in no manner objectifies or places things over against us.

Heidegger, ‘Phenomenology and Theology, Some Pointers with Regard to the Second Theme’, tr. Hart and Moraldo