The Horizon of Construal: 18. Beyond the Horizon

We speak of going beyond the horizon as though the horizon were hiding something from us.

There is a world on this side.

There is another territory on the other.

And if only we could travel far enough, see clearly enough, or think deeply enough, we would eventually arrive there.

But we have already begun to suspect that the horizon is not a wall.

Nor is it a line separating two territories.

It marks the limit of a way of making the world intelligible.

So what does it mean to go beyond it?

Perhaps it does not mean going somewhere.

It means becoming able to construe something that could not previously be construed.

This is a different kind of movement.

Nothing need be waiting on the other side.

A new possibility may emerge because the relations that organise the present world have changed.

A distinction that once seemed fundamental may become secondary.

A boundary may become a relation.

A thing may become a process.

What appeared to be one world may reveal another organisation within it.

The world itself has not necessarily acquired new contents.

What has changed is what can become consequential within it.

This is why the horizon can be crossed without being left behind.

We do not abandon the old world.

We discover that it was organised according to a construal whose limits had become invisible.

The new construal carries something forward.

It preserves some distinctions, transforms others, and makes still others possible for the first time.

There is therefore no final “beyond.”

Every new construal establishes its own conditions.

Every new possibility creates a new field of distinctions.

Every new field can eventually encounter its own horizon.

The movement is not:

world → edge → another world.

It is more like:

construal → limit → reorganisation → new possibility → new construal.

The horizon is part of the movement.

It does not stand outside becoming.

And perhaps this is why we should be cautious when we speak of the unknown.

The unknown is not necessarily a place containing answers we have yet to find.

Sometimes it is what becomes available only through a transformation in the relations by which we ask the question.

To go beyond the horizon is therefore not necessarily to see farther.

It may be to see otherwise.

And if that is so, then the most interesting question is no longer what lies beyond the horizon.

It is:

What might become possible when the horizon itself becomes part of what we can construe?