Abstract:
The concept of place is ultimately a matter of ethical significance—of where something fits in a nexus or structure of meaning. Often this meaning is quite personal, involving a sense of presence we associate with a place. This essay investigates this connection through a study of Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey.” It argues that the notion of a presence-infused place is ultimately that of a second-personal space. Presence is a matter of second-personal openness. Therefore, when presence infuses place, it makes its space second-personal also.
The concept of place is ultimately a matter of ethical significance—of where something fits in a nexus or structure of meaning. Often this meaning is quite personal, involving a sense of presence we associate with a place. This essay investigates this connection through a study of Wordsworth’s poem, “Tintern Abbey.” It argues that the notion of a presence-infused place is ultimately that of a second-personal space. Presence is a matter of second-personal openness. Therefore, when presence infuses place, it makes its space second-personal also.
Machine summary:
Place: Presence as Second-Personal Space Stephen Darwall 1 Andrew Downey Orrik Professor at Yale University, USA.
” It argues that the notion of a presence-infused place is ultimately that of a second-personal space.
What, I want to consider, is the relation between these, between natural sites being places where it is possible to sense a kind of presence and their being appropriate objects of love and, even, worship?
” Presence as Second-Personal Space Recall Wordsworth’s identifying his sense of “a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts” (95-96).
Being in someone’s presence, therefore, means being in a space of second- personal relating to them, whether deontically or non-deontically.
Wordsworth then describes his sense of a deep presence that, enables the poet to hold even the “still sad music” of human suffering because, as we might put it, that which is present holds him: I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of thought, And rolls through all things (94-102).
Heart (in the nonliteral sense) and spirit are, of course, metaphors that are primarily delimited in relation to emotions like joy and sadness as the “place,” or perhaps places, where these emotions are felt.