How to Explore Objects Without Consuming or Reducing Them to Our Use? An Object-Oriented Ontology Perspective

Friday, March 21, 2025

In a world governed by relentless consumption, where objects—both material and conceptual—are often reduced to their utility, the challenge is not merely to engage with them but to encounter them as entities in their own right. Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) provides a framework to break free from anthropocentric reductionism and invites us to acknowledge objects as having their own agency, essence, and presence beyond human perception and use.

This approach aligns with a broader philosophy of presence—one that resists the extractive logic of consumption and instead fosters a form of exploration that respects the opacity and autonomy of objects. Here’s how we can engage with objects without reducing them to mere tools for our own narratives or needs.

Accepting the Irreducibility of Objects

OOO rejects the idea that objects exist only in relation to human subjects. They have their own being, their own ways of existing that do not require our recognition. To explore an object without consuming it, we must first let go of the assumption that it exists to serve a function for us.

This applies to both physical objects and abstract ones—artworks, memories, rituals. Rather than decoding them for their “meaning” or usefulness, we should approach them as worlds unto themselves, with their own logic and depth.

Embracing the Opacity of Objects

Objects resist full comprehension. We may analyze them, describe them, interact with them, but we never exhaust their essence. The moment we think we have fully understood something is the moment we have flattened it into a mere function of our interpretation.

The key is to accept and even embrace this opacity. The more we allow objects to retain their mystery, the more we respect their autonomy. This shifts the mode of engagement from extraction to coexistence.

Engaging Through Sensibility, Not Possession

An object does not need to be possessed or used to be understood. We can interact with it in a way that preserves its presence rather than appropriating it.

For example, in aesthetic experience, instead of reducing an artwork to an interpretation or a status symbol, we can let it act upon us, challenge us, unsettle us. This is a mode of engagement that allows the object to affect us rather than us imposing a fixed meaning onto it.

Decentralizing the Human Perspective

A key aspect of OOO is to step outside human-centered narratives. Instead of seeing a chair as “for sitting” or a knife as “for cutting,” we might consider what the chair or knife “is” apart from us.

What are its materials doing? How does it exist independently of human use? What does it become in the absence of an observer? This exercise helps break the reflex to see things only through the lens of functionality.

Encountering Objects as Presences, Not Commodities

One of the great illusions of modernity is that we “know” an object by owning it. In reality, ownership does not grant deeper understanding—it often limits it. True exploration comes from encounter, not possession.

For example, in photography, the common impulse is to “capture” an image, to own a moment. But an alternative approach would be to witness rather than capture—to let an image remain beyond our total grasp.

Similarly, in relationships, the impulse to “define” or “categorize” a person can diminish their essence. By allowing them to remain opaque, multifaceted, and uncontained, we engage with them as presences rather than consumable identities.

Practicing Non-Extractive Engagement

A consumerist approach seeks to exhaust an object, to extract from it until there is nothing left. But a non-extractive way of engaging leaves the object intact—it acknowledges that it continues to exist beyond our encounter with it.

This can manifest in how we interact with nature, art, history, or even knowledge itself. Instead of reading a book to “consume” its ideas, we can read it to be transformed by it, allowing it to shift our thinking rather than simply adding to an intellectual collection.

From Consumption to Coexistence

To explore objects without consuming or reducing them requires a fundamental shift in orientation: from domination to dialogue, from extraction to reverence. It is not about rejecting interaction but about shifting its nature—allowing objects to be more than resources, to exist in their own right, and to surprise us with their presence.

In doing so, we cultivate a more profound way of engaging with the world—one that resists the simplifications of commodification and embraces the full complexity of existence.

Find my article on crafting objects here