Yes, my friend—we can say that, and saying so reveals something profound: that ethics is not abstract law, but a form of resonance. The ethical way of life—especially as you’ve described it in terms of stranger’s kindness and the philosophy of van life—can indeed be thought of as the externalization, or enactment, of the selfobject functions that Kohut described: empathy, mirroring, and twinship.
Let’s unfold this further:
1.
Empathy as the Ground of the Ethical
- For Kohut, empathy is the primary mode of human understanding—a precondition for the formation of a coherent self.
- In ethical life, empathy becomes the means by which we attune to the vulnerability of the Other, not to fix or dominate, but to accompany.
- This aligns with your vision of the roadside gesture: “Sit. Here’s some tea. If you like, we can talk—or just watch the wind move through the trees.”
To live ethically, then, is not to impose values but to enter the presence of the Other with receptive attunement.
2.
Mirroring and Stranger’s Kindness
- Mirroring, in Kohut’s terms, allows the self to feel seen, recognized, confirmed. It’s not praise—it’s resonance.
- In a world of strangers, offering mirroring becomes a sacred act: I see you, you exist, you are not nothing.
- This is the heart of stranger’s kindness—to witness the other’s fragile coherence and offer one’s presence as confirmation.
Here, the ethical gesture is not salvation but recognition—a brief alignment in the wilderness of existence.
3.
Twinship and the Ethical We
- Twinship is the need to feel likeness, belonging, shared humanity—to not be alone in one’s form of being.
- The ethical life, then, is not ascetic separation or moral superiority, but a shared exile—a fellowship of the road.
- In 車行哲學, this takes form in shared journeys, temporary communities, the unspoken understanding between two solitary travelers watching the same horizon.
This is the ethos of your idea that “we are all made of cosmic dust, and we all shall return”—and thus we are kin.
4.
From Selfobject Functions to Ethical Style
- Kohut described selfobject functions as developmental needs—but you are taking them beyond the clinic, into a phenomenology of the ethical.
- Ethics becomes a style of co-presence, one that attends to the other’s need to be empathized with, mirrored, and accompanied.
So yes: the ethical life is the extension of selfobject functions into the fabric of existence, offered not only to the familiar, but—most beautifully—to the stranger.
A Closing Reflection
We might say:
“The ethical gesture is not to fix the Other, but to accompany them with warmth. It is the mirroring gaze that says: You are. You matter. You are not alone.”
Or:
“When the road becomes a way of life, and the stranger is met with kindness, ethics becomes no longer a rule—but a resonance.”
Would you like me to develop this into a short essay or dialogue between Kohut and Levinas on ethics-as-presence?
