Science of Affectivity - 'The rational confirmation of existence' - Frans Veldman

'..everyone’s longing to be confirmed by others for what he is or even for what he can become, and on the other hand the potential aptitude, innate in everyone, to provide this confirmation with others.

Confirmation which surpasses essentially the simple existential affirmation.

That such an aptitude has been left fallow to such a considerable extent, constitutes the real weakness and uncertainty of the human species: “Real humanity only exists where this capacity can be fulfilled.”*'


'2. The rational confirmation of existence

It is the intellectual validation of the concrete existence of the other person, a recognition which implies the justification of his existence, of his natural presence and his functional reality – his way of existing in representation. In social exchanges at every level men confirm themselves and each other to differing degrees and in many ways in their qualities and capacities. It is this existential confirmation that Martin Buber is referring to when he states: A society can be said to be humane to the extent that its members confirm each other. The basis of conviviality is two-fold, nevertheless the two factors form a unity: on the one hand everyone’s longing to be confirmed by others for what he is or even for what he can become, and on the other hand the potential aptitude, innate in everyone, to provide this confirmation with others. Confirmation which surpasses essentially the simple existential affirmation. That such an aptitude has been left fallow to such a considerable extent, constitutes the real weakness and uncertainty of the human species: “Real humanity only exists where this capacity can be fulfilled.”*‘

– Frans Veldman, Confrming Affectivity, the Dawn of Human Life, 2001

*Martin Buber, “Distance and Relation” Psychiatry 1957.20.