Phenomenal Forms and Transcendental Shadows (2): The Concealment of Being, the Unveiling of Truth

Translated by AI

We are used to living in a three-dimensional world.  

We’re accustomed to length, width, and height— to objects our hands can touch, to boundaries our eyes can see, to ground our feet can press against. 

We believe in what we see.  
We believe the world is as it appears: a mountain is a mountain, water is water, a shadow is just a shadow.  

We rarely question it, because our eyes tell us: “It’s there—you saw it with your own eyes.”

And so, we take it for granted— that the world is just like this.  
Nothing more. Nothing less.
But what if you were willing to think a little deeper?

The world is what it is because we see it that way.  
But have we ever questioned who decided how we see?
Philosophers have been asking this for centuries.

Immanuel Kant said that what we see is mere phenomena— while the thing-in-itself, the noumenon, forever lies beyond our perception. Our senses draw the boundaries of the world, allowing us to grasp only a fragment, never the whole.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that seeing is never a passive act.  
It is an interaction— between the body and the world.  
Our gaze is never neutral;  it is shaped by memory, experience, culture.  
We think we are looking at “the world,” 
but in truth, we are only seeing the part we’ve grown used to.  
And what lies outside our field of vision may be the most essential of all.

Michel Foucault warned us: seeing is a form of power.  
When you think you're looking at the world, your vision has already been shaped, domesticated, guided toward a pre-designed reality.  

In the same way, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in three dimensions, accustomed to time as linear, to the relationship between object and shadow. And so we never pause to consider: perhaps the world is far larger, far more intricate, and perhaps—entirely different from what we perceive.
But it’s Martin Heidegger’s idea I love the most— that truth is not something to be “found,” but something that must be un-concealed.

The world does not freely offer up its truths. It is used to hiding— tucked within the gaps of language, within the frameworks of culture, within the things we think we already understand. We think we’ve seen— but what we’ve seen is only what we’ve been allowed to see.  Like someone who has lived indoors for years, adjusted to the muted lamplight, the yellowed walls, the gentle, familiar tones.  

Then one day, stepping outside, they are stunned by a world so vivid, so alive— perhaps even blinding. Our eyes have grown accustomed to a veiled world. And when the truth suddenly stands before us, it unsettles us.

The world we see is like the shadow of the cylinder. Its shape isn’t defined by the object alone, but by the light that falls on it, by the angle from which we look.  

We think we are seeing— but even seeing has been orchestrated. Our language,  our culture, our memories— they shape what we’re capable of understanding.  And in doing so, they also define what we may never see. Perhaps what we’ve never seen— is the true outline of the world.