Ali S. Harfouch

In this essay I want to reflect on reflection. In our age, the primordial desire to reflect has been replaced with a wanton desire to consume; God has been replaced with an egotistical “I” whose raison d’être is consumption. The world is left bereft of the grandeur of God, animated only by the mana of money. How can we recover reflection in a world misenchanted by capitalism? Reflection, if it is true to its name, is always critical. It is critical, not in the nihilist sense, but in its capacity to negate meanings of a world bequeathed to us by capitalism and to create new meanings. To reflect is to reclaim what is interior to the self; that is, the self that exists independent of the structures of meaning projected by a hegemonic order. The Argentine-Mexican philosopher and theologian Enrique Dussel gives the example of a taxi driver. To the non-reflective self, the taxi driver is a mere extension of a vehicle, whose value is instrumental: to get us from point A to point B. The critical, reflective self recognizes the taxi driver not as an instrument in his own narrow world, but as an authentic “Other”—that is, someone with an existence independent from him.

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