Why do you think the great philosophers don’t agree on the most fundamental of questions, you know, the questions you asked when you were four years old? “Mommy, why…?” You can add all the basic ones on your own. There are variations, of course, but they ultimately reduce to a single question about being, or, in Heidegger’s philosophy, Being. Those other questions, at least most of them, are so easy, the “what?” questions. “What’s this?” “What’s a cloud?” “What’s a star?” But the question that always underlies all the what-questions is a why-question, and it has to do with being (Being).
Thousands of years of thinking and writing, from the earliest philosophers and theologians to our contemporaries, and we still can’t agree on an answer, or at least on a satisfactory answer that enables us to say without doubt, “Oh! Now I understand.” Is it because—as Martin Heidegger might argue—great minds have always thought alike, and because they think alike, there’s little chance for some philosophical paradigm shift that provides the new insight? I’m thinking Copernicus-like thinking, Newtonian-like thinking, and Einstein-like thinking. Thinking that overturns the cycle of thought that always sees any kind of philosophy generate its antithesis just the way political philosophies like Marxism and Capitalism seem to go round and round generation after generation. Heidegger claimed to break the cycle, but if he truly had broken it, there would be no need for post-Heideggerian thinkers—yet, there are many of them.
Think Bishop Berkeley had the answer? Remember? He was probably the precursor of thinking that led to the Matrix and the question “Is it all just in my mind?” “Do I think existence?” Or, the story The Lathe of Heaven, less well known nowadays, but twice told in film and a story that has reality change because of someone’s thinking (or, in this instance, dreaming). Hey, didn’t you recently have a dream after which you awoke to say, “Wow! That seemed so real.” Are you dreaming now? Have you just written another of my blogs? (You’re making me feel so useless; it’s bad enough that I exist only in your cyberspace world)
Anyway, back to being (or Being). Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are you here? What’s that you say? “Randomness,” “chance,” “purposelessness fulfilling itself.” That last one is a great oxymoron, isn’t it? And that’s one of the problems that philosophers have always had: oxymoronic thinking. Don’t they all devise thinking systems that ultimately run to their antitheses? “What?” is relatively easy to answer. “How?” can be challenging, but thanks to science, answerable. But “why?” is still a mystery.
Seems great minds think alike because they have failed to provide the definitive answer we all seek, the answer to the question “Why?”
Thousands of years of thinking and writing, from the earliest philosophers and theologians to our contemporaries, and we still can’t agree on an answer, or at least on a satisfactory answer that enables us to say without doubt, “Oh! Now I understand.” Is it because—as Martin Heidegger might argue—great minds have always thought alike, and because they think alike, there’s little chance for some philosophical paradigm shift that provides the new insight? I’m thinking Copernicus-like thinking, Newtonian-like thinking, and Einstein-like thinking. Thinking that overturns the cycle of thought that always sees any kind of philosophy generate its antithesis just the way political philosophies like Marxism and Capitalism seem to go round and round generation after generation. Heidegger claimed to break the cycle, but if he truly had broken it, there would be no need for post-Heideggerian thinkers—yet, there are many of them.
Think Bishop Berkeley had the answer? Remember? He was probably the precursor of thinking that led to the Matrix and the question “Is it all just in my mind?” “Do I think existence?” Or, the story The Lathe of Heaven, less well known nowadays, but twice told in film and a story that has reality change because of someone’s thinking (or, in this instance, dreaming). Hey, didn’t you recently have a dream after which you awoke to say, “Wow! That seemed so real.” Are you dreaming now? Have you just written another of my blogs? (You’re making me feel so useless; it’s bad enough that I exist only in your cyberspace world)
Anyway, back to being (or Being). Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are you here? What’s that you say? “Randomness,” “chance,” “purposelessness fulfilling itself.” That last one is a great oxymoron, isn’t it? And that’s one of the problems that philosophers have always had: oxymoronic thinking. Don’t they all devise thinking systems that ultimately run to their antitheses? “What?” is relatively easy to answer. “How?” can be challenging, but thanks to science, answerable. But “why?” is still a mystery.
Seems great minds think alike because they have failed to provide the definitive answer we all seek, the answer to the question “Why?”
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