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Transjectivity (between the object and the subject) - Magical Realist - Mar 18, 2026
Thought of this word last night as a sort in-between state arising between the object and the subject. So I looked it up on Google and lo and behold that is exactly what it means. The state arises out of the dynamic interaction of object and subject (or the agent and the enviroment)--an iterative or feedback loop that is a third mode of being or relatedness.
"Transjectivity is a concept developed by Dr. John Vervaeke that describes a co-created, relational reality existing between the subject (observer) and the object (world), rather than being solely inside the mind (subjective) or solely in the world (objective). It focuses on the dynamic interaction and feedback loop between an agent and its environment.
Key Aspects of Transjectivity
Definition: Co-created relatedness where the agent and the world shape each other.
Examples: Common examples include the meaning of a tool (e.g., a hammer's "hammer-ness" relies on a human hand and a physical object), falling in love, danger, or the "home" feeling.
The "Transject": Instead of a static subject or object, a "transject" is a property or pattern of connectedness that emerges from this reciprocal interaction.
Meaning Crisis: Vervaeke uses this concept to address the meaning crisis by arguing that meaning is not purely subjective (in our heads) nor purely objective (in the physical, scientific world), but lies in the "transjective" relationship between us and the world.
John Vervaeke: Coined as a crucial tool for understanding cognition, consciousness, and meaning in his series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
Connection to Metaxu: Vervaeke notes a similarity between his concept of the transjective and philosopher William Desmond’s idea of the metaxu (the middle ground).
Posthumanism: The concept is also applied in Critical Posthumanism Network studies to understand how human identity and technology interact.
This concept effectively bridges the gap between inner experience and outer reality, highlighting that true understanding is inherently interactive."
Both Heidegger and M Merleau-Ponty understood this idea of transjectivity in the very nature of being. For Heidegger the objects we are constantly surrounded with are used FOR specific intents, like machines and tools and utensils and implements. We encounter these objects in the mode of being in the world, habituated towards using them in a state he called equipmental comportment. The objects are thus always "ready at hand", as transjects, but only become "present at hand", or objects, when they break or malfunction or don't fit. That's when we become aware of them as objects. Like the glasses one wears, always being experienced THRU and never objectively AT until they break at which time they become objects present to us.
M Merleau-Ponty saw perception itself as a transjective form of being. He realized that it only is ever happening while our bodies are moving about and appropriating the various qualities of our environment. Even the body itself is a transject, neither wholly objective nor subjective, and appears in our experience as the enworlding medium or "transparence" thru which phenomenal being manifests itself. It is out of the transjectivity of the body, as being the energetic nexus of all ongoing interactions, that we encounter the world as the split domain of objective and subjective being.
RE: Transjectivity (between the object and the subject) - Magical Realist - Mar 18, 2026
“True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
"Our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system."--M Merleau-Ponty