We still don’t know whether or not some of us are simply just born to be wise. Sure, we can dub ourselves Homo sapiens sapiens, but being wise? Is that a gift or the product of hard work? Take what we call ourselves, for example: “Human beings.” What’s that designation?
There’s that troubling word: Being. It’s been a topic of interest probably from a time long before the ancient “philosophers” who were arguably the first “wise” people. Being? Existence. Doesn’t everything everywhere exist? What’s so special? Oh! That’s right, HUMAN being, and not only that, but also a WISE, WISE (imbued with so much wisdom, it seems, that we are twice wise, sapiens sapiens) human. I feel sorry for our immediate predecessors, you recall, those we label Homo sapiens. Poor dumb predecessors, only one sapiens to their name. What? No high tech? No nuclear weapons? No tartrazine?
Dubious definitions of wisdom aside, we might want to focus on being, or, rather, Being. Isn’t that what we want ultimately to understand? We’re obviously not the first to ask about existing itself, about Being with that capital b. Ever spend some time trying to wade through Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein and Zeit)? Want to feel a bit unwise as though you have too few crenulations on the surface of your brain? Then read through Being and Time and write a book report someone with only one sapiens behind H. could understand.
Being. The question of being is not a series of questions about beings. We have plenty of answers to questions about beings: questions about what they do and what characterizes them. Science does a relatively good job at providing such answers. Tartrazine? We call it Yellow No. 5 and use it to make Mountain Dew yellow. See. Answers about entities of all kinds, all provided by science.
But Being with a capital b. Now that’s one for sapiens sapiens to ponder. Is it a meaningless question? Not according to Heideggar. “One may…ask what purpose this question is supposed to serve. Does it simply remain—or is it at all—a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?” (29)*
Why should sapiens sapiens concern himself or herself with a basic, concrete question? Isn’t there enough going on daily with which one has to be concerned? But underlying all the activities of being there (or being here) lie those nagging questions about what, where, and the big one, why. So, what does it really mean to have being? Do we have it? Or should we reword the question: What does it really mean to be being (to be)? And is there just a collection of finite beings, human or otherwise, or is there an underlying Being that is “the most basic and the most concrete”?
And if there is an underlying or all-encompassing Being of beings, then where do the individual beings have their existence? Without some reference, individuals who happen to “be here” might feel hopelessly lost. If directionless, then is wise, wise man incapable of determining why he or she possesses being, and is H. sapiens sapiens further incapable of understanding the relationship of being and Being? It certainly seems to be a problem for many of our kind.
If we don’t have the wisdom to understand the underlying nature of our individual being and of all beings, are we not like the character Chance, called Chauncey Gardiner, in Being There? Adopted by a man, the simpleton Chance grows up to tend the man’s garden. Unaware of the outside world except through TV until he is evicted after his benefactor’s death, Chance becomes famous just by “being there”—thus the name of the novel by Jerzy Kosiński and the movie starring Peter Sellers. Is it a coincidence that Heidegger’s term Dasein also means “being there”? Are we, like Chance/Chauncey, simpletons regardless of our lofty designation H. sapiens sapiens?
Test
Yeah. I know. I failed the same test. And every time I retake it, I fail it again.
I might note, however, that there are those who don’t even bother to take the test, and there are others who think the whole matter isn’t worth the effort. Some dismiss the test as the mark of foolish simpletons who want to find security in some all-encompassing Being. Some argue that What Is is because it always was or is. Others, like Stephen Hawking, argue that Nothing Itself demanded that Something Be, that the nature of nothingness is to produce something. The Math just seems to argue for it.
And there are those whose “acquired wisdom” says to them, “Existence is an act of will, and that implies that we are here because a Being beyond beings decided to create. The ninety-two naturally occurring elements didn’t make themselves. Same with their quarks and electrons. The Creator created, and the Creator is Being beyond beings.”
That begs that previous problem: What is the relationship between being and Being? Does your “being there” bear the mark of Being as John declares in his Gospel: “Nothing was made that was not made through…”?** Or, are you the product of some unconscious Hawking vacuum or some eternal set of universes called branes that the multi-universe physicists might suggest? An unconscious beginning for consciousness, for becoming twice wise? Really, we are twice wise by chance? There is wisdom in Chance? “Maybe,” you say, “that’s what seems to emanate from the mouth of Chance in the movie Being There. Even a President follows his advice.”
As I said, I keep failing the test. If you have the answers, I’m willing to forego some classroom ethics and cheat. I’m desperate for those answers because I want to help those for whom “being there” is meaningless, those who find “being there” so hopeless that they want to cancel their membership in the H. sapiens sapiens club. Maybe those who choose suicide just don’t realize that being wise requires repeated failure to answer the questions in an unending search for wisdom.
Want to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? It’s a title of merit based on an unending quest. Being Homo sapiens sapiens is a matter of becoming wise.
*Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York. Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962.
**Choose your translation; it all amounts to the same idea. All that exists bears the mark of Existence. All that exists, exists in the image of Existence or bears the image of Existence. It is Being that finds its expression in beings; Being puts Its (His, Her) stamp on all creation. In the standard way of saying it, “made in the image of God.” For John, being there is only there because of the Word. Augustine of Hippo thought similarly. “Nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” Now, run off to page through all those old philosophy and theology books. As for me, I’m going to retake the test yet again; I’m determined to earn that second sapiens.
There’s that troubling word: Being. It’s been a topic of interest probably from a time long before the ancient “philosophers” who were arguably the first “wise” people. Being? Existence. Doesn’t everything everywhere exist? What’s so special? Oh! That’s right, HUMAN being, and not only that, but also a WISE, WISE (imbued with so much wisdom, it seems, that we are twice wise, sapiens sapiens) human. I feel sorry for our immediate predecessors, you recall, those we label Homo sapiens. Poor dumb predecessors, only one sapiens to their name. What? No high tech? No nuclear weapons? No tartrazine?
Dubious definitions of wisdom aside, we might want to focus on being, or, rather, Being. Isn’t that what we want ultimately to understand? We’re obviously not the first to ask about existing itself, about Being with that capital b. Ever spend some time trying to wade through Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (Sein and Zeit)? Want to feel a bit unwise as though you have too few crenulations on the surface of your brain? Then read through Being and Time and write a book report someone with only one sapiens behind H. could understand.
Being. The question of being is not a series of questions about beings. We have plenty of answers to questions about beings: questions about what they do and what characterizes them. Science does a relatively good job at providing such answers. Tartrazine? We call it Yellow No. 5 and use it to make Mountain Dew yellow. See. Answers about entities of all kinds, all provided by science.
But Being with a capital b. Now that’s one for sapiens sapiens to ponder. Is it a meaningless question? Not according to Heideggar. “One may…ask what purpose this question is supposed to serve. Does it simply remain—or is it at all—a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?” (29)*
Why should sapiens sapiens concern himself or herself with a basic, concrete question? Isn’t there enough going on daily with which one has to be concerned? But underlying all the activities of being there (or being here) lie those nagging questions about what, where, and the big one, why. So, what does it really mean to have being? Do we have it? Or should we reword the question: What does it really mean to be being (to be)? And is there just a collection of finite beings, human or otherwise, or is there an underlying Being that is “the most basic and the most concrete”?
And if there is an underlying or all-encompassing Being of beings, then where do the individual beings have their existence? Without some reference, individuals who happen to “be here” might feel hopelessly lost. If directionless, then is wise, wise man incapable of determining why he or she possesses being, and is H. sapiens sapiens further incapable of understanding the relationship of being and Being? It certainly seems to be a problem for many of our kind.
If we don’t have the wisdom to understand the underlying nature of our individual being and of all beings, are we not like the character Chance, called Chauncey Gardiner, in Being There? Adopted by a man, the simpleton Chance grows up to tend the man’s garden. Unaware of the outside world except through TV until he is evicted after his benefactor’s death, Chance becomes famous just by “being there”—thus the name of the novel by Jerzy Kosiński and the movie starring Peter Sellers. Is it a coincidence that Heidegger’s term Dasein also means “being there”? Are we, like Chance/Chauncey, simpletons regardless of our lofty designation H. sapiens sapiens?
Test
- Define being.
- Is there (a) Being that underlies all beings?
- Define Being.
Yeah. I know. I failed the same test. And every time I retake it, I fail it again.
I might note, however, that there are those who don’t even bother to take the test, and there are others who think the whole matter isn’t worth the effort. Some dismiss the test as the mark of foolish simpletons who want to find security in some all-encompassing Being. Some argue that What Is is because it always was or is. Others, like Stephen Hawking, argue that Nothing Itself demanded that Something Be, that the nature of nothingness is to produce something. The Math just seems to argue for it.
And there are those whose “acquired wisdom” says to them, “Existence is an act of will, and that implies that we are here because a Being beyond beings decided to create. The ninety-two naturally occurring elements didn’t make themselves. Same with their quarks and electrons. The Creator created, and the Creator is Being beyond beings.”
That begs that previous problem: What is the relationship between being and Being? Does your “being there” bear the mark of Being as John declares in his Gospel: “Nothing was made that was not made through…”?** Or, are you the product of some unconscious Hawking vacuum or some eternal set of universes called branes that the multi-universe physicists might suggest? An unconscious beginning for consciousness, for becoming twice wise? Really, we are twice wise by chance? There is wisdom in Chance? “Maybe,” you say, “that’s what seems to emanate from the mouth of Chance in the movie Being There. Even a President follows his advice.”
As I said, I keep failing the test. If you have the answers, I’m willing to forego some classroom ethics and cheat. I’m desperate for those answers because I want to help those for whom “being there” is meaningless, those who find “being there” so hopeless that they want to cancel their membership in the H. sapiens sapiens club. Maybe those who choose suicide just don’t realize that being wise requires repeated failure to answer the questions in an unending search for wisdom.
Want to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? It’s a title of merit based on an unending quest. Being Homo sapiens sapiens is a matter of becoming wise.
*Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York. Harper & Row, Publishers, 1962.
**Choose your translation; it all amounts to the same idea. All that exists bears the mark of Existence. All that exists, exists in the image of Existence or bears the image of Existence. It is Being that finds its expression in beings; Being puts Its (His, Her) stamp on all creation. In the standard way of saying it, “made in the image of God.” For John, being there is only there because of the Word. Augustine of Hippo thought similarly. “Nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” Now, run off to page through all those old philosophy and theology books. As for me, I’m going to retake the test yet again; I’m determined to earn that second sapiens.
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