Can we truly see another? As I understand it, this question is not about the kind of seeing that improves with spectacles. What impedes the kind of seeing I have in mind is not some condition of the eye, but the preconceptions we carry around with us as we interact with each other, enacting and responding to the various social roles we play.

We all inhabit different social personas; we are children, friends, partners, students, mentees, jazz aficionados, teachers, colleagues, parents, or employees (to name just a few) – often simultaneously. We identify with many of these, yet are identical with none of them in particular, continuously trying to integrate them and to fulfil the various demands each places on us. Doing this, let alone well, is challenging; we frequently encounter situations in which demands associated with different personas we inhabit pull into different, even opposite directions. In such cases, we must take hard decisions, prioritise, negotiate, often falling short of meeting some, maybe several demands. As we struggle to navigate the different spheres that jointly constitute the fluid whole of our modern existence, we sometimes lament our condition. Finding our existence fractured and riddled with incommensurable commitments that accrue to us from the numerous roles we play, we dream of simpler lives, with fewer demands (ones we can meet) – lives relieved of our normative burdens, in which we can truly be ourselves.

In sociology and social psychology, for example, role theory is a powerful theoretical tool. And if we acknowledge that our individual conceptions of social roles, while socially and culturally mediated, are also deeply perspectival, we can model and analyse an impressive array of social systems and constellations. The question raised at the outset, however, aims at a kind of understanding that penetrates social roles. It targets a much more elusive entity: the individual playing them.

Likewise, if we lament our condition and dream of simpler lives, doing so need not be a matter of imagining ourselves as occupying different roles. It may, often will be, a matter of wishing to be just that – the individual behind the roles we play, liberated from the personas we inhabit, free to follow our natural inclinations towards what we deem good.

Our behaviour towards others is often unreflectively guided by the expectations we associate with the roles we take them (and ourselves) to play, and we tend to judge them relative to how well they conform to these expectations. But there is a real risk that in doing so we fail to do justice to the individuals we face. Individuals cannot be reduced to one of their personas, nor to the sum total of the roles they play. Indeed, if we rest with treating our students according to their role as students, the actions we direct towards them are likely to be unresponsive to their needs, strengths, and the idiosyncratic ways in which each seeks to harmonise the various personas they inhabit.

“Love”, as Iris Murdoch beautifully puts it, “is just attention”, “knowledge of the individual”, and “the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.” Truly seeing another, in a way that does justice to them, may be extremely difficult. It requires coming to know them well and, Murdoch suggests, a good deal of unselfing. But arguably, the ability to teach, mentor, and support students crucially depends on a realistic evaluation of who they are and what they can accordingly do. So if with Aristotle we consider teaching (and mentoring) students an art, our artistry will be the more refined the more we are attuned and responsive to them, to what options are available to them, and to what to them these options look like. And if at Ashoka, we strive for excellence, we must aspire to be true artists – to teach, mentor, and support our students not as mere occupants of the social roles they inhabit, but lovingly and realistically (in a Murdochian sense): i.e. in a way that does justice to the individuals they are.

Raja Rosenhagen is Assistant Professor of Philosophy. Though German, his entire family has ties to India - hence the Indian name.