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it as a gap between the physical in sight, no ‘home’ to return to,
world, in which everything ex- but instead a hope, an appeal
ists, and the way we actually for a successful human exis-
shaping our lives. Sharli A Pa- tence which includes all the
phitis puts it this way: ‘There is possibilities of things going
a gap for us between our vul- wrong. This is where human
nerability to the chance and ne- freedom counts as crucial: we
cessity of the situations in which have the means of our success-
we find ourselves and the pos- ful living in our own hand, and
sibilities of how we may try to we can use skills, the lead of
realise our lives. It is precisely emotions,1 a sharpened sense
because of this gap that we can of reality and cognition to make
talk about human agency at the world our own domain to the
all.’1 And this is how Jaeggi extend it allows us to do so.
phrases it: Often, this ‘allowance’ is rather
‘The possibility of appropriating limited. To appropriate does not
something refers, on the one mean to ‘make something en-
hand, to a subject’s power to tirely my own’, to put a ‘stamp’
act and form and to impose its over something I claim to pos-
own meaningful mark on the sess control over. However, this
world it appropriates. On the kind of transformation – from
other hand, a process of appro- something that is not my own
priation is always bound to a into something that is – is al-
given, previously existing con- ways only a partly one. The
tent and thereby also to an in- power of controlling all life cir-
dependent meaning. Skills that cumstances is not granted to us
we appropriate are constrained and we better acknowledge it. I
by success conditions; leading can appropriate parts of what I
our own life depends on circum- understand in an act of under-
stances over which we do not standing but I should abandon
have complete command.Rahel the illusion that I can under-
Jaeggi focusses on the how of stand everything. This is why
re-appropriation, where alien- acceptance of the opaque
ation is an open-end project. No parts, in my view, is a crucial
harmony is to be achieved, no precondition for better under-
closed end or a happy end in standing and therefore, re-ap