Between an Object and a Person: an Inverted Image / Icon

Abstract

Relations between persons in the contemporary world often resemble those of the same persons towards objects. We are accustomed to ‘use’ – and even see – others as if they are, to put it in Kantian terms, merely a means to an end, and not as if they are an end in themselves. Such blurring of lines between objects and persons surely has significant moral and political consequences. However, in this paper I reach instead for a very traditional example and suggest it as a possible model for understanding these contemporary issues. I’d like to offer an analysis of icons, with regard to the concepts of latreia (worship) and proskynesis (devotion), developed and discussed in the Byzantine empire during the era of iconoclasm. By revisiting this old quarrel, I wish to invert the issue of persons becoming (like) objects, since in the case of the icons the question is whether an object can and should be treated as a person. Such an inverted image could, in my opinion, offer us a new perspective on contemporary intersubjective relations and present us with a double optic, which can teach us to distinguish between esteem for objects and respect for persons.