Presence and value

Our presence in the world is guided by values whose roots are contingent and anecdotal. Becoming aware of this makes us more flexible in exploring new experiences where presence and value multiply each other.

Why be aware of the value of one’s presence?

The approach I propose to presence is that of a heightened awareness of one’s own presence. Why strive for greater awareness of one’s presence? It is tied to the value we assign to our presence. We can only desire a “better” presence—to ourselves and to the world—if we attribute value to such a presence. Because the notion of value implies a hierarchy of values. This presupposes that we can qualify, for example, a “good” presence in contrast to a “bad” presence or one of lesser quality, and thus lesser value.

What underlies our desire to improve—to be more present to ourselves, our family, our children, our “values,” our culture—is a set of judgment criteria. But where do these criteria come from? And how do we assign value to these particular criteria rather than others? Ultimately, I believe this is the true subject of an intimate philosophical reflection on our presence in the world, our being here. What defines a good being here or a bad being here? What allows us to invest it with greater value through intentionality?

Behind presence, then, lie values, and behind values lies the political. If we postulate that the political is a set of criteria governing an ideal world (of course, the political is not just that, but here I will take the political in this sense), and since the essence of philosophy is to question everything, including value systems, then the reflection on presence and value lies at the heart of the philosophical exercise, in its very essence.

Starting point of value systems

We must therefore adhere to criteria that will define a value system, which will in turn influence our intentionalities of presence. Why and how do we pledge allegiance to these particular criteria rather than others? For there are many value systems and political utopias. What makes someone suddenly take up weightlifting or start reading philosophy? That is, what makes them assign greater importance than before to a certain way of being present and thus invest themselves more in it?

What makes external criteria—such as the proliferation of gyms or the democratization of philosophy through accessible books and insightful interventions by philosophers on social media—resonate with a person’s intimate desires, their very identity, leading them to adopt this value system?

I believe we have all, at some point, had the experience of discovering ourselves in an author’s words while reading a book. These words we are reading seem to open doors within us and toward ourselves. This example of reading illustrates the encounter between external criteria—the text we read—and our internal criteria, which are revealed to us. There is a kind of revelation, a meeting between what we fundamentally are (which often eludes us) and others, in a system of resonance that makes us feel enlarged by the encounter with articulated thought, whether through writing, direct dialogue, or listening.

Moreover, here I am referring to intellectual encounters based on words, but this type of meeting between external and internal value systems can just as easily occur in physical activities, such as sports (which require no words), chess, artistic creation, dance, etc. The encounter is not solely mental and discursive; it can also unfold in other spheres of our existence beyond speech and language.

The story of bugs on car windshields

Ecological awareness, for example—said to be more democratically widespread in the early 21^st century than before—is sometimes fueled by deeply intimate and sensory experiences, such as noticing that there are fewer bugs splattered on car windshields during highway drives than in the past. Here, we are dealing with something sensory and physical, which brings us into contact, in our intimacy, with external criteria tied to nature.

No one has explicitly stated that there are fewer insects on windshields today than forty years ago. It is an observation, which can be seen as a kind of external criterion, leading us to construct an internal hierarchy of values. Following this observation, one might conclude that it is worse to have fewer bugs on windshields. In short, one might think: “It was better before.” Because this observed fact aligns with an intrinsic sentiment that the world is better with more animals, since diversity is the essence of life.

But one could imagine another internal value system where fewer animals being killed by cars—even if they are insects—is seen as positive. And perhaps someone, likely uninformed about ecological research, might feel that a less diverse world would be cleaner, more coherent. This is, after all, the logic perpetuated by intensive agriculture, for instance.

Driving through many regions in France, one passes vast monoculture fields with no hedgerows. Here, we are confronted with the homogenization of life, and this has been the case for a long time. It may even be one of the causes of the decline in insect populations (this is just a hypothesis; I have no well-founded criteria on the subject).

But one could imagine that the encounter with this external criterion—“fewer insects today than before”—could feed two opposing value systems, depending on what it resonates with in a person’s sensibility. Yet our sensitivity to certain things also depends on other criteria. For example, a younger person who has never experienced hundreds, if not thousands, of bugs stuck to their windshield after a highway trip lacks this point of comparison and thus perceives no difference between a “before” and an “after.” For them, the absence of something that once existed is not a fact, because they observe no difference between their own past and present. Of course, they can imagine that the world was different before their own sensory experience, but these external criteria will feel even more foreign because they are disconnected from their lived reality.

The contingency of our value hierarchies

Thus, there is a profound contingency in our hierarchies of value criteria and, consequently, in our intentions of presence. There is who we intrinsically are, the culture we inherit from our family, our readings, the social spaces we traverse. But all this, in my view, is shaped in an extremely contingent, if not anecdotal, way.

For example, take someone who works excessively and is exhausted. Some might tell them, “Take a break, rest,” because in the contingencies of their own lives—due to their type of profession—they have found it extremely beneficial to take vacations, travel to the other side of the world, or unwittingly oppress populations through tourism for personal satisfaction. Or perhaps by buying a countryside home, they have contributed to impoverishing rural social fabric, acquiring the privilege of occasionally occupying spaces that remain empty most of the time, enjoying a silence of death for which they are unconsciously the morbid contributors. (I am somewhat critical of the social impacts of this culture of relaxation.)

Setting aside this critique, let’s imagine positively the criteria behind these retreats into calm. Well, others, due to the contingencies of their lives, even if exhausted by work, might find inactivity unbearable. They would not relax on vacation because they feel a need to stay active to give value to their presence—that is, to give meaning to their lives, fundamentally. They simply do not share the same value criteria for their presence.

Mr. Hulot’s Holiday

This is portrayed with fine, delicate humor in Jacques Tati’s film Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), where we are immersed in a small seaside hotel in summer, filled with different vacationers. The arrival of a disruptive character—Mr. Hulot, a bumbling but well-meaning figure, a precursor to Gaston Lagaffe—unconsciously unsettles the social order, heightening the comedy. His innocent mistakes reveal the varying modes of presence among the guests: the traditional family, rowdy children, the businessman who always needs to make calls, the young woman discovering herself, the student buried in books, the serene grandmother, etc.

Here, we see characters gathered in the same place, each with entirely different value criteria for their presence. The absurdity, the anecdotal nature of their criteria, is exposed by Mr. Hulot, who disrupts everything, destabilizing them precisely where their values lie. He himself has no values; he is a purely naive being who understands no hierarchies yet is entirely benevolent, fundamentally disturbing every value system.

This is what makes Tati’s film—and his artistic work—so universal. Watching it, we can encounter ourselves and discover different facets of who we are. I believe it is crucial to recognize how deeply our criteria—which define the value we assign to things and thus our commitments to various modes of presence—are shaped by the random encounters of life. We could have turned out very differently.

Yet two people living the same experiences might retain entirely different, even opposing, things based on who they are. So how do we distinguish between who we are and what we wish to evolve within ourselves? Precisely through a hierarchy of value criteria. But the way these criteria are constructed is through anecdotal, contingent encounters in our sensory space, shaped by the happenstance of our life paths.

To avoid drifting into nihilistic relativism

Here, I propose an awareness of how little we are, even in comparison to the utmost importance we assign to what holds value for us and guides our daily actions. In a way, this is also a reflection on human vanity—a timeless theme. But I integrate it here not as a flaw (“human vanities”) but as an intrinsic element of our condition.

For me, engaging in philosophy—that is, questioning everything—goes hand in hand with recognizing how small we are. I do not mean to advocate nihilism, which would relativize the value we assign to things and ultimately lead to the conclusion that nothing matters—as in the closing text of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (1975), which states in essence: “These people, good or bad, are all equal in death.”

I do not wish to contribute to dismantling the meaning behind each human’s engagement in life and the value they assign to their actions. Not at all, because I myself am deeply committed to what I value. For example, I assign great value to writing this text, whereas others might see no point in dedicating time, energy, attention, or strong commitment to a philosophical reflection on how things hold value for us.

Thus, I do not criticize the vital necessity of assigning value to things. I merely wish to highlight that our deeply vital commitments have roots that are highly anecdotal and contingent. That’s all. It is to recognize our smallness in the universe, so to speak—but not at all to devalue the importance, at our humble level, of what we engage in with such lived intensity.

Toward a flexible lucidity…

On the contrary, I believe this lucid perspective I propose can help us feel more flexible, freer in relation to our hierarchical value systems—and thus perhaps, through awareness of our great plasticity (stemming from life’s contingent details), open us to more discoveries. It might encourage us to venture beyond the familiar, exploring unfamiliar realms of thought.

This does not necessarily mean changing our value hierarchies but refining them, clarifying them, understanding them better—and thus understanding ourselves better. This does not mean comprehending everything and achieving mastery (which would be the opposite of a philosophical approach). For me, understanding ourselves better means posing new questions we had not previously considered, thanks to these openings.

And understanding ourselves better means embracing more clearly the fact that the mystery of all that eludes us is far greater than we initially assumed. That is what it means to understand ourselves better—not to reduce ourselves to a definitive comprehension but to open doors, paths, and roads leading to territories where we perceive far more unknowns than we initially believed.

This is what happens in any scientific endeavor: things that seem simple at first glance gradually reveal ever-greater complexity upon closer study. This is systematic, and it is what makes life—and scientific research—so fascinating. It opens within life itself fields of discovery, understanding, and expanded consciousness that shift and unsettle our value systems, our criteria, allowing us to extend our presence into spheres of thought and experience beyond what we initially imagined.

…and its multiplying power

To conclude, these new experiences of presence, these new and different engagements with presence, will generate new contingencies, new anecdotes, new encounters that will modify our hierarchy of criteria, adding new judgment criteria for the value of things. Ultimately, these two concepts—presence and value—will multiply each other, expanding reciprocally in a perpetual rebound, a resonant amplification between two notions that initially seem quite distinct: value and presence.

Finally, reflecting on presence and value leads me to think of their mutual multiplication, comparable to cell division, where one becomes two, two becomes four, and so on. Each new cell divides again, producing exponential growth. And this reveals, to me, the exponential extent of human capacities—if we cultivate them.