Astonishment at Being

@Reconstructo,

The antibodies attack!

Isn't the human condition one where we are jaded by experience, world-weary, cynical about life and the possibility about anything really new being able to happen? I would have thought this is the wet blanket that smothers the possibility of wonder.

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs;129136 wrote:

the antibodies attack!

Nice way to put it!

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;129127 wrote:

Being. The light that discloses beings. Consciousness. Pure subjectivity. All of these words are beings or objects of consciousness. As far as "nothing" goes, Hegel said that indeterminate being was nothingness. Kojeve conceives of man as a nothingness that nihilates in space. Man is time is a nothingness, a desire for a desire. And so on. All kinds of mind-twisting beautiful and difficult conceptions that indeed may be characterized as poetry by those who have more limited conceptions of the purpose of philosophy.

Oh, that. Of course! At least twice a day, when I am otherwise engaged. Being. I thought you said "beans".

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@kennethamy,

kennethamy;129161 wrote:

Oh, that. Of course! At least twice a day, when I am otherwise engaged. Being. I thought you said "beans".

Kids fart at funerals. And?

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@Reconstructo,

Being remains astonishing, even after it's ontology is discovered. We know how it is structured, or at least I feel that I do, but not where it came from.

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@Reconstructo,

It is the task of the philosopher to wonder at that which men think ordinary.

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs;134889 wrote:

It is the task of the philosopher to wonder at that which men think ordinary.

beautifully said. Two fascinating quotes that tie the numinous together as terrible and magnetic.

"Philosophy begins in wonder." Aristotle
"The fear of God is the beginning of Wisdom." Ecclesiastes, if I remember correctly. Could be proverbs.

And as I think the numinous is a byproduct of pure negativity, this makes perfect sense. Creation and destruction are one. Synthesis is negation.

To tarry with the negative is to find the positive.

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@jeeprs,

jeeprs;134889 wrote:

It is the task of the philosopher to wonder at that which men think ordinary.

That makes philosophers sound like fools, who are too stupid to know what is obvious. Presumably, you meant something else by it.

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;128414 wrote:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

When you ask "why", you're asking for a reason but a reason is itself something. So, a reason for there to be something rather than nothing would already be something. Therefore it's a contradiction. The question doesn't make sense.

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@Pyrrho,

Pyrrho;135044 wrote:

That makes philosophers sound like fools, who are too stupid to know what is obvious. Presumably, you meant something else by it.

Well, Pyrroh, you actually complete the picture. Because Aristotle said both that the philosophy begins in wonder and that he should be astonished at nothing.

The truth is both at the same time. First you wonder. Then you find the structure and are no longer astonished, except that the structure is there in the first place....

---------- Post added 03-02-2010 at 10:11 PM ----------

Night Ripper;135077 wrote:

When you ask "why", you're asking for a reason but a reason is itself something. So, a reason for there to be something rather than nothing would already be something. Therefore it's a contradiction. The question doesn't make sense.

That's an excellent point. Kant tackled this. It goes to show that causality is transcendentally imposed.

But it's also a brilliant question. It's an attempt to penetrate the structure not of any little thing but of the entire universe.

You are actually making a brilliant point. You quoted an old post of mine, i think. Since then I have learned a few things....

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;128414 wrote:

As a young teen, before I knew anything of philosophy, I was sometimes struck by the "miracle" that anything existed at all. These moments were accompanied by an intense sense of the beauty of things. It's all too easy now for me to forget this astonishment. Heidegger clicked for me right away as I feel that he was referring to the same thing.

Why is there something rather than nothing? An old question. Do we really expect an answer, or is this question a poem?

because " nothing " has no ability to anything more than " nothing "

where as something has the ability to be both

in terms that something gives the living, thinking being , the ability to dwell upon the concept of nothing , relising though that at the same time that nothing could never really , BE

2 Replies

@north,

north;135095 wrote:

because " nothing " has no ability to anything more than " nothing "

where as something has the ability to be both

in terms that something gives the living, thinking being , the ability to dwell upon the concept of nothing , relising though that at the same time that nothing could never really , BE

I think this is close to my current view. man is the collision of pure negativity and spatial being, and this collision gives birth to culture and self-consciousness, as this negativity shapes his experience into concepts. And these concepts are the images of a possible future.

Time is only the existence of human concept in the spatial present. For humans, it is nothing more.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;135080 wrote:

Well, Pyrroh, you actually complete the picture. Because Aristotle said both that the philosophy begins in wonder and that he should be astonished at nothing.

The truth is both at the same time. First you wonder. Then you find the structure and are no longer astonished, except that the structure is there in the first place....

Folklore about Einstein is that he was filled with wonder at the fact that structure is discernable...

I was thinking about purpose and I arrived at a vantage point on being (for me)... the purpose of eating is to end hunger, the purpose of questioning is to get an answer, the purpose of any quest for satisfaction is to end the quest. But life is both the hunger and the eating. So life has no purpose, it's the forum in which purpose exists.

There are folks who focus a lot on becoming aware of being. They tend to use the technique of focusing on bodily experience. Put your foot on the floor and then feel your foot. Another handy one is to take your focus away from your head to your chest.. kind of like you're looking at the world from your heart. It's cool because when you do, your face goes blank.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;135100 wrote:

I think this is close to my current view. man is the collision of pure negativity and spatial being, and this collision gives birth to culture and self-consciousness, as this negativity shapes his experience into concepts. And these concepts are the images of a possible future.
Quote:

I disagree

man is not pure negativity , I'm not anyway

Quote:
Time is only the existence of human concept in the spatial present. For humans, it is nothing more.

yes

time is used to understand the Universe by us Humans but it has no influence on things and their behaviour

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@Arjuna,

Arjuna;135104 wrote:

But life is both the hunger and the eating. So life has no purpose, it's the forum in which purpose exists.

That's very close to my notion, except that Hegel defines the Desire for Recognition are our meta-purpose. In Politics this is the struggle at first for dominance, one tribe by another. But it evolves into the French Revolution, etc.

In the philosopher, the Desire for Recognition is the driving force that leads him to self-consciousness, which can be attained, as far as his essentially human element is concerned. (his incidental element is a mess for empirical psychology, not an ontology of being. )

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 12:26 AM ----------

Arjuna;135104 wrote:

Folklore about Einstein is that he was filled with wonder at the fact that structure is discernable...

I think your'e right about that, but he also said this, which is a key to my philosophy....

Quote:

Albert Einstein, on the other hand, stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."[6]

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 12:28 AM ----------

north;135116 wrote:

man is not pure negativity , I'm not anyway

No, man is the collision of pure negativity and spatial being. But this negativity concept is hard to grasp. It must be inferred. What is the Being of beings? What is raw existence made of?

---------- Post added 03-03-2010 at 12:31 AM ----------

north;135116 wrote:

time is used to understand the Universe by us Humans but it has no influence on things and their behaviour

i think you are thinking of physics time. Humans exist bodily in continuous space, but mentally as a system of concepts. This system of concepts is made of memories of the past (spatial being that is no longer present) and hopes or dreams for the future. Man lives very much in the future, in his imagination. And he shapes the spatial present according to his hopes and dreams. So, in this sense, man is time, and also an evolving being. Because all of us are always learning. We are improving our system of concepts. But where do they exist, before we write them down? Where is the mind?

Human time is made of desire and fear in relation to a system of concepts. But humans have also invented physics time, which is not what Hegel is focusing on. Hegel is focusing on the system of concepts that invented math and physics in the first place.

1 Reply

@Pyrrho,

Pyrrho;135044 wrote:

That makes philosophers sound like fools, who are too stupid to know what is obvious. Presumably, you meant something else by it.

I seem to remember a very well known philosopher who was proclaimed Wisest Man in All of Greece because he said, 'all I know, is that I know nothing'.

Socrates, I seem to remember.

Anyway, sorry if I am pitching a bit high for you, I will try and remember the audience next time I write something.:bigsmile:

POSTSCRIPT - After I wrote the above, I regretted it. It was sarcastic and condescending. So I will have another attempt.

No, it does not mean that philosophers are stupid when they wonder at what is obvious. What it means is that many people take life for granted and never ask questions about it. I think a sense of wonder is essential, not only to philosophers, but also to scientists, and to everyone else.

Einstein has a quote somewhere, along the lines of 'there are only two ways to live you life, one way as if nothing is a miracle, and the other that everything is'.

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@north,

north;135095 wrote:

, relising though that at the same time that nothing could never really , BE

We can't even think nothingness, unless we count empty space. But space is still something, if only space. And it's a thing because we can't think about w/o unifying it into an object, no matter how empty. The whole secret is right there.

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;128610 wrote:

the raw thrill of existing.

Yes!
I think therefore I am a merging of data sets? Bah!
...let us not forget that which compels us to know.

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@Geoveda,

Geoveda;135191 wrote:

Yes!
I think therefore I am a merging of data sets? Bah!
...let us not forget that which compels us to know.

Don't forget that man is not just concept but also qualia, and that the annihilation of the transcendental self is a union of man w/ all of his experience. Man is one with his experience, and always was. He just usually doesn't know it. He posits an inaccurate conceptions of himself...he thinks he is trapped in his body

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@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;135100 wrote:

I think this is close to my current view. man is the collision of pure negativity and spatial being, and this collision gives birth to culture and self-consciousness, as this negativity shapes his experience into concepts. And these concepts are the images of a possible future.

Time is only the existence of human concept in the spatial present. For humans, it is nothing more.

Reconstructo;135178 wrote:

We can't even think nothingness, unless we count empty space. But space is still something, if only space. And it's a thing because we can't think about w/o unifying it into an object, no matter how empty. The whole secret is right there.

we can think of nothingness as ;

having no dimension ( no ability to manifest ) , no space ( no place to manifest ) no movement ( or no time , change for some ) and no breadth ( no ability to expand out )

1 Reply

Astonishment at Being

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