Abstract

Tom Ford

Reification and Smith’s “As it were”

“As it were” could be called Smith’s signature phrase, a verbal formula that he uses frequently to indicate that something is practically, but not literally, the case.  Like Kant, Smith turns to the subjunctive (“as if,” “as it were”) to express symbolic relations that have real effects.  In TMS Smith uses the ontology of “as it were” to resolve the problem of how we can feel for others.  We cannot feel what others feel, and yet our daily experience is made up of just such impossible acts of fellow-feeling:  we place ourselves “as it were” in their bodies.