Another Story Shuffle, this the 8th, the one year anniversary celebration and a theme of Anniversaries, was held in my Fishtown rowhome last week.

I told the story of Voyager II, an un-manned spacecraft sent out 34 years earlier in order to go farther than we ever have before. Like other ships send to deep space, it had to get far enough away so it could be seen, a subject I found fitting for both the space program and our own depiction of ourselves.

Give it a listen below or find all the stories here.

Listen here.

Below is a Creative Commons photo depiction of the Voyager II spacecraft.

Watch below a video interview with famed scientist Carl Sagan when Voyager II first passed Saturn.

Instagram photo by Daniel Victor.

In philosophical discourse, discussions of reason are not without precedence. It seems that all of the great thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries had thoughts on rationality and its role in history, society and individual decision.

German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) is known for his unshakable resolve towards his truth and ethics, so, it is understandable that he held a strong belief in the meaning of reason, as derived from an interpretation of moral action (Kirkbright, 85).

Conversely, a great many other philosophers are more famously tied to the topic in discussions of the ‘myth of reason.’ Prussian-born Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) criticized rationality for its idealism, its ability to be understood and evaluated by the actor. As an example, tying the system of reason to Socrates, Nietzsche suggested that rationality eroded Greek tragedy because it forced the art to follow the forms of its idealism (Stewart, 307).

Michel Foucault (1926–1984), a French philosopher, has devoted his time to deriding reason for its role in created power relationships, particularly those that are unevenly distributed. Foucault asserted that the pragmatism of rationality is used to create contemporary forms of relations in which means are misused by powerful parties, injuring their lesser, all in the name of reason. There is then, he would suggest, a ‘myth of reason’ (Stewart, 315).

While some have purported that Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770–1831) defended the bland reality of reason, others have questioned this and pointed out his own criticism of rationality. In his 1996 book The Hegel Myths and Legends, philosophical author and coincidentally-named Jon Stewart asserts that Hegel more appropriately belongs in the “irrationalist tradition” that came after him because he, too, writes of reason being too time-orientated, lacking any absolute (Stewart, 306).

At the core, this might be the truest form of the ‘myth of reason.’ Perhaps the most important role of rationality is to evaluate action, judging what should, could, or would be done in a particular situation. However, it often becomes difficult to demonstrate rationality in history, so there is no normative basis of reason that can pass under a historical lens. Using reason, one should be able to gain insight about the world around us, historically and today, and the rationality of actions as time passes. Using reason, we reconcile ourselves to this world, yet, the atrocities of the past (colonialism, the international slave trade, the Holocaust, Russian purges, etc.) and particularly those of the present (civil war in Iraq, AIDS crisis in the African continent, etc.) question truth in that reconciliation.

Reason would suggest that genocide wouldn’t be a brutal reality in the 1940s and certainly not in the twenty-first century. While the world produces enough food stuffs, has enough technology, and consumes enough wealth to solve almost all of the great crises that plague our contemporary global environment, ignoring rationality, these answers are ignored, and so unneeded suffering persists. Nietzsche questioned the practicality of reason’s idealism, Foucault worried that reason is misused by the powerful, and Hegel suggested that reason is inextricably linked to environment. In these and other ways, there is no rationality in the form we like to see, but rather, only a ‘myth of reason.’

Sources
Kirkbright, Suzanne. Karl Jaspers: A Biography–Navigations in Truth. Yale University Press. May 2004.

Stewart, Jon. “Hegel and the Myth of Reason.” t. 306–318. The Hegel Myths and Legends. 1996. North-Western University Press.

Prepared for a class on Existentialism taught at Temple University by Lewis Gordon.

We are so often caught up in final words. I suppose we write stories because we most enjoy understanding something’s beginning and its end. It follows then, if only in a casual way, that suicide, its finality, the control and closure it is said to provide, is irrationality that some can come to understand. One of the most important elements to the act is the note, those final words. Otherwise, pain lingers longer and doubt clouds the mind.

Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist who came to know a great deal of self-inflicted death, his interest led him to establish much of contemporary understanding of suicide. This very paper will use Durkheim (1858 – 1917) to vet out the varied causes of suicide, using the final words* of those killed for insight into possible motivation.

For Durkeim, suicide was all about social circumstances, not quite Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) discussion of it being self-inflicting rage but not quite American Mortimer J. Adler (1902 – 2001) who said it was directed not at oneself but outward. Instead, Durkheim felt it was the interplay between the two. In his interpretation, there were three types of suicide. Egoistic, caused by a lack of integration into society or some group therein, anomic, caused by insufficient social regulation or a transition that would disrupt one’s understanding of that, and altruistic, caused by one feeling his death would benefit those left behind. Using these three and suicide notes that might suggest these three areas, this paper will distinguish Durkheim’s three causes.

First, this paper will discuss a possible example of an egoistic suicide, in which the person killed herself because she lacked personal intimacy enough to see any reason to remain alive.

“You cops will want to know why I did it, well just let us say that I lived 61 years too many. People have always put obstacles in my way. One of the great ones is leaving this world when you want to and have nothing to live for. I am not insane. My mind was never more clear. It has been a long day. The motor got so hot it would not run so I just had to sit here and wait. The breaks were against me to the very last. The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens.”

This particular note was written by a 61-year-old divorcee, and appears, sadly, to be a precise example of an egoistic suicide. She wrote about how “people” put obstacles in her way. Moreover, the note was addressed to police, no loved ones were included at all. Even in her final moments, she couldn’t seem to conjure up any memories of happier times, noting that the extent of her life as she can remember it has been an over-extension of what it should have been. Whether it is true or not, when this woman wrote her final words, she was in a despair caused by a complete lack of belief in having anything, indeed, having anyone for whom to live. Without that connection, which dictates to most of us that killing oneself would do great damage to those left behind, this woman, and many like her, can’t seem to believe there is any reason at all to remain living.
Secondly, this paper will discuss a possible example of an altruistic suicide, in which the victim killed himself believing full well that those around him would be better off after he is gone.

“My darling wife,
This afternoon I am going to make a third attempt at bringing my turbulent life to an end. I hope that it is successful. I don’t know what I want from this world of ours, but you see I am due to go soon anyway. My mother died a 60ish as did her brothers and father. Also Alf has gone now.
Please don’t get Margaret to come over here, but you go as planned. It will do you good. Put the bungalow on the market and have a sale of the chattels. Then buy a smaller one. The field will have vacant [illegible] … if you want to sell that. The wills are in the safe. My love to you, Margaret, Michael and Janice. I love you all and you have been so good to me.”

There are many common themes of suicide notes that appear in this. Firstly, though not depicted here, the date and specific time were listed, a recurrence of the finality of the decision, providing preciseness for those behind. Secondly, he left instructions for his wife, helping her transition to what he seems to think will be a better time, once he’s gone.
He makes mention of how he probably doesn’t have much time anyway, but the focus is on transitioning his wife to after his death. In closing, he mentions his loved ones as if they did him a favor by loving him, as if his suicide is an unwanted house guest leaving his host after wearing out his welcome.
Thirdly, this paper will discuss a possible example of an anomic suicide, one in which the deceased killed herself because of a difficult transition, which caused insufficient regulation in her life, or so it can appear.

“My dearest Andrew,
It seems as if I have been spending all my life apologizing to you for the things that happened whether they were my fault or not. I am enclosing your pin because I want you to think of what you took from me every time you see it. I don’t want you to think I would kill myself over you because you’re not worth any emotion at all. It is what you cost me that hurts and nothing can replace it.”

This final note was written by a young woman just 21-years-old. It goes without mention that she was likely writing with passion to someone with whom she once felt truly intimate. While suicide is most intimate among elderly men, the next most prone age group are teenagers and young adults, when our children are going through great personal, emotional and physical changes, often without enough guidance. It may very well be that this young woman was going through the heavy transition of lost love, something that is a truly difficult task by all accounts, and may have fallen victim to its burden, a tragic case of anomic suicide to Durkheim, to be sure.
Indeed, in these three brief examples, using brief notes left by suicide victims, Durkheim’s three major causes for suicide are displayed in vivid and likely upsetting style. Finals words are something we all hold dearly, and can be the only way to overcome such stark tragedy as suicide.

*Three suicide notes come from class manual, though the specific book was not listed. This was written for a class on Death and Dying at Temple University.

We are so often caught up in final words. I suppose we write stories because we most enjoy understanding something’s beginning and its end. It follows then, if only in a casual way, that suicide, its finality, the control and closure it is said to provide, is irrationality that some can come to understand. One of the most important elements to the act is the note, those final words. Otherwise, pain lingers longer and doubt clouds the mind.

Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist who came to know a great deal of self-inflicted death, his interest led him to establish much of contemporary understanding of suicide. This very paper will use Durkheim (1858 – 1917) to vet out the varied causes of suicide, using the final words* of those killed for insight into possible motivation.

For Durkeim, suicide was all about social circumstances, not quite Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s (1856-1939) discussion of it being self-inflicting rage but not quite American Mortimer J. Adler (1902 – 2001) who said it was directed not at oneself but outward. Instead, Durkheim felt it was the interplay between the two. In his interpretation, there were three types of suicide. Egoistic, caused by a lack of integration into society or some group therein, anomic, caused by insufficient social regulation or a transition that would disrupt one’s understanding of that, and altruistic, caused by one feeling his death would benefit those left behind. Using these three and suicide notes that might suggest these three areas, this paper will distinguish Durkheim’s three causes.

First, this paper will discuss a possible example of an egoistic suicide, in which the person killed herself because she lacked personal intimacy enough to see any reason to remain alive.

“You cops will want to know why I did it, well just let us say that I lived 61 years too many. People have always put obstacles in my way. One of the great ones is leaving this world when you want to and have nothing to live for. I am not insane. My mind was never more clear. It has been a long day. The motor got so hot it would not run so I just had to sit here and wait. The breaks were against me to the very last. The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens.”

This particular note was written by a 61-year-old divorcee, and appears, sadly, to be a precise example of an egoistic suicide. She wrote about how “people” put obstacles in her way. Moreover, the note was addressed to police, no loved ones were included at all. Even in her final moments, she couldn’t seem to conjure up any memories of happier times, noting that the extent of her life as she can remember it has been an over-extension of what it should have been. Whether it is true or not, when this woman wrote her final words, she was in a despair caused by a complete lack of belief in having anything, indeed, having anyone for whom to live. Without that connection, which dictates to most of us that killing oneself would do great damage to those left behind, this woman, and many like her, can’t seem to believe there is any reason at all to remain living.
Secondly, this paper will discuss a possible example of an altruistic suicide, in which the victim killed himself believing full well that those around him would be better off after he is gone.

“My darling wife,
This afternoon I am going to make a third attempt at bringing my turbulent life to an end. I hope that it is successful. I don’t know what I want from this world of ours, but you see I am due to go soon anyway. My mother died a 60ish as did her brothers and father. Also Alf has gone now.
Please don’t get Margaret to come over here, but you go as planned. It will do you good. Put the bungalow on the market and have a sale of the chattels. Then buy a smaller one. The field will have vacant [illegible] … if you want to sell that. The wills are in the safe. My love to you, Margaret, Michael and Janice. I love you all and you have been so good to me.”

There are many common themes of suicide notes that appear in this. Firstly, though not depicted here, the date and specific time were listed, a recurrence of the finality of the decision, providing preciseness for those behind. Secondly, he left instructions for his wife, helping her transition to what he seems to think will be a better time, once he’s gone.
He makes mention of how he probably doesn’t have much time anyway, but the focus is on transitioning his wife to after his death. In closing, he mentions his loved ones as if they did him a favor by loving him, as if his suicide is an unwanted house guest leaving his host after wearing out his welcome.
Thirdly, this paper will discuss a possible example of an anomic suicide, one in which the deceased killed herself because of a difficult transition, which caused insufficient regulation in her life, or so it can appear.

“My dearest Andrew,
It seems as if I have been spending all my life apologizing to you for the things that happened whether they were my fault or not. I am enclosing your pin because I want you to think of what you took from me every time you see it. I don’t want you to think I would kill myself over you because you’re not worth any emotion at all. It is what you cost me that hurts and nothing can replace it.”

This final note was written by a young woman just 21-years-old. It goes without mention that she was likely writing with passion to someone with whom she once felt truly intimate. While suicide is most intimate among elderly men, the next most prone age group are teenagers and young adults, when our children are going through great personal, emotional and physical changes, often without enough guidance. It may very well be that this young woman was going through the heavy transition of lost love, something that is a truly difficult task by all accounts, and may have fallen victim to its burden, a tragic case of anomic suicide to Durkheim, to be sure.
Indeed, in these three brief examples, using brief notes left by suicide victims, Durkheim’s three major causes for suicide are displayed in vivid and likely upsetting style. Finals words are something we all hold dearly, and can be the only way to overcome such stark tragedy as suicide.

*Three suicide notes come from class manual, though the specific book was not listed. This was written for a class on Death and Dying at Temple University.

The life of French philosophical writer and activist Simone Weil made a noticeable impact in many spheres of intellectual thought despite her politically-orientated, voluntary starvation little more than three decades after her birth. Despite her attachment to 20th century philosophy, perhaps her most powerful mark is her use of the idea of affliction.

As Weil (1909-1943) wrote, very few souls are able to attain affliction, which she described as broad suffering as a means to unite with God, yet it is through it that we can come closer to our Creator. One avenue for approaching her use of affliction is to view it as a theodicy.

Since the Greek term’s German beginning in the early eighteenth century, theodicy, which is an attempt to rectify the existence of evil with the idea of a benevolent God, has been a popular theme for thinkers of every breed. From German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) to French Protestant theologian John Calvin (1509-1564) and his eponymous movement of accepting all acts as part of God’s just plan, legends of intellectual thought have wrestled with this spiritual paradox, rectifying a benevolent Creator and a painful existence.

Countless stations of thought on the matter have been set. Often those exercising theodicy will suggest that God’s divine plan is so widespread as to be incomprehensible to man. You can’t, of course, see the whole sky through a bamboo shoot. Others argue that the Creator is so superior to man that his actions cannot be judged by man, while others contend that God must do evil, in order to be without lacking of any quality. To scribe one last of the many arguments, there is no absolute evil, some have posited, but rather just a lack of good. There are lighted rooms and there the very same rooms in which the lights have not yet been switched on.

In another fashion, Weil suggests that the world is the very manifestation of God’s love, encompassing the evil, brutality and affliction she recognizes as a part of life. The base necessity of human existence, codified by the chance that plagues all of our plans and goals is as much a part of that love as is the joy that we all cherish. In that way, well beyond simple suffering, to feel pain, a very raw emotion that is part of a large array of God’s creations, is to become nearer to him. As she famously wrote in Gravity and Grace, Weil suggested that a man facing affliction should not understand his pain as punishment but rather, he should see that, “it is God holding his hand and pressing rather hard.”

“For, if he remains constant,” The precocious activist went on to say, “what he will discover buried deep under the sound of his own lamentations is the pearl of the silence of God.” It is in this way that Weil’s account differs from much of Christian thought on the matter. In no way should affliction simply follow an immoral act, but rather find its way to our beings by chance, in the way that chance encounters of misfortune find us all. Ignoring this is to ignore so much of what is God. These thoughts may be Weil’s lasting legacy.

The woman who is said to have finished second in her class at École Normale Supérieure, the elite Parisian university, narrowly beating out fellow French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), had rejected a life of relative privilege and chosen instead to work in a factory, expose injustice and fight social ills. After 34-years of frailty, Weil, who had not long before been diagnosed with tuberculosis, died of a heart attack, an attack that is most often attributed to her refusing to eat more than what she felt her fellow French were offered while under German occupation. This was a final act of civil disobedience, taking on affliction and holding her Creator’s hand tightly and noting his righteousness all the while.

Prepared for a class on Existentialism taught at Temple University by Lewis Gordon.

I have never been confused for a great thinker. Philosophy is a world of thought, unprovoked and often aimless, an unlikely home for someone like me. I think I enjoy it anyway. I enjoy it because I have assignments that ask me to define an existential paradox.

This is no simple task, one page limit or not. I can now say that I have read Fear and Trembling by 19th century Danish philosophy Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), and I managed to understand enough to be forced into thought. Still, I am not uncomfortable with admitting that I was forced to do some additional research to even begin to define an existential paradox, and I will try my very best to convey whatever it is I learned.

Any paradox is simply a phrase that seems contradictory to intuition but may be true. In his 1980 essay entitled System and Structure, which appeared in Communication and Exchange, English writer Anthony Wilden defined an existential paradox as a “conscious or unconscious intentionalization… about life which denies the usually accepted categories of truth and falsity about ‘reality.” I didn’t know what this meant when I first read it. I probably still don’t.

San Francisco State Professor Bill Nichols took on the subject in a 1991 book on documentary film, and, after citing Wilden, went on to compare existential with logical paradoxes. Nichols used ‘I am lying’ as an example of a logical paradox. It is a logical paradox, but not existential, because its meaning can be pursued as a subject’s interpretation is involved. ‘Disregard this sentence,’ a paradox that Nichols describes as existential, is such, he claims, because, as a command, “it cannot be obeyed or disobeyed.” (Nichols 1991, 292)

With this brief background, it is my interpretation that while logical paradoxes can be understood – being the logical of the paradox world – existential paradoxes are a bit trickier and, while perhaps able to be true, present difficulty in rationalizing. Of course, something like possibility to understand has never stopped any self-respecting philosopher, has it?

So, with this knowledge in mind, I returned to my notes on and the text of Kierkegaard’s much beloved Fear and Trembling to find an example of and further explain the concept of an existential paradox. Rather predictably, I chose the very broadest and most often recurring theme of Kierkegaard’s work to serve as my example: the story of Abraham in the Old Testament.

The paradox of Abraham’s story is the seeming contrast his ethical and religious responsibilities find. When Abraham is asked by his God to sacrifice his own son, he follows those commands unflinchingly. Ethically, there are few things more reprehensible than killing one’s own son, the task Abraham traveled three days with his son Isaac to do. However, religiously, there was no other reaction than what Abraham did; his faith assured him that God’s commands were just and, as Kierkegaard suggests, Abraham understood that his personal religious responsibilities to Him far outweighed his societal and familial responsibilities to Isaac.

It is in this way that we can better understand the concept of the existential paradox. While the logical paradox, “I am lying,” employs word play, Abraham’s situation, as Wilden’s definition suggests, “denies the usually accepted categories of truth.” Killing his son is no longer immoral, a “teleological suspension of the ethical,” as Johannes de Silentio puts it. Under most circumstances, we would all agree that killing someone, particularly an innocent son, is wrong, but, these normal standards of morality and truth have been rejected, making it an existential paradox. Of course, Abraham’s response to God’s wishes brings up larger questions of faith and responsibility, but to explain the idea of existential paradox, there are few more effective examples.

Prepared for a class on Existentialism taught at Temple University by Professor Lewis Gordon.

In 1947 French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) published The Ethics of Ambiguity, arguably the most accessible explanation of a host of existential ideas and themes. A notable member of a notable age in French philosophy, Beauvoir had a close relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and was a contemporary of Albert Camus (1913-1960) and fellow Parisian Simone Weil (1909-1943). In Ethics, one of Beauvoir’s more memorable techniques was to characterize a series of men with certain existential qualities in order to make the themes easier to understand through their personification.

In one way or another, almost all of the personalities form and fall into one or another, but one is particularly interesting in the problems it encounters, the serious man. This man is enraptured in the very spirit of seriousness, considering his values bigger than his personage, certainly an example of Sartre’s concept of bad faith.

In order to further take on his values, the serious man attempts to destroy his subjectivity in order to lose himself in the object he takes so seriously. To destroy his subject he rejects all of his freedom, lessening it to the cause or his values, which are, most certainly in his mind, unconditional. The idea is that by aligning himself entirely and irrevocably with his values, he gives himself value. In this way, the serious man can seemingly avoid confronting the stress of life by allowing the structure of his value system to choose his path for him.

That said, it is important to understand that the serious man needn’t focus on something that might be considered a serious matter by most. While a serious man might enslave himself to a strict moral code in relation to the perils of life, another serious man could do the same to fashion or something otherwise frivolous and be likewise steadfast in his adherence to whatever code he chooses to follow. That is, the importance is not about what he is serious, but rather that he is serious.

The merit in understanding this is to be aware that no one should allow himself to justify being stringent and obstinate in any strict code of self-imposed law, no matter the subject, because the problem of the serious man is indifferent to it. Once freedoms are denied to follow an end that one claims are absolute, the serious man appears and that man is, to revert to Sartre again, not only in bad faith but allowing himself less of an existence than is possible. Freedom is existence and any self-inflicted infringement of it is wholly debilitating. A life in the absolute, no matter the cause, motivation or goal, is a dangerous, self-harmful one.

Such is one of the many gifts de Beauvoir offered her readers. There is nothing entirely new about the concept of the serious man, but she may have made it more accessible than anyone ever had before. Indeed, while she was active in the 1950s and the 1960s, noted for her travel writing, fiction and her personal accounts with maturing and aging, and continued publishing through the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Ethics of Ambiguity of the 1940s might be her most important addition to the literary and philosophical worlds.

This was prepared for a class on Existentialism taught at Temple University by Professor Lewis Gordon.

Albert Camus is no small figure in twentieth century philosophy. Born in Algeria to a working-class family, to many, Camus is a central figure who, despite his disapproving, has become the face of existentialism. Because of his importance, his assertion that suicide is the ultimate philosophical question is no small matter.

In the late 1930s Camus (1913-1960) began writing of reality’s absurdity, expounding on the subject in his legendary Myth of Sisyphus and continuing the theme in works like The Stranger and others. Camus’s paradox of the absurd took on the idea that, while we do much to convince ourselves otherwise, with the universe in mind, our lives are unquestionably insignificant.

Rational thought leads all of us to accept that death is an always encroaching reality, waiting to wipe away our work, our time, and our accomplishments. If we are all substantially unsubstantial and with every moment we are nearing a truly forgettable demise, the effort required for existence seems futile. In that way, to Camus, suicide is the ultimate question of philosophy because of its finality. If any sensible evaluation of a life determines that there is little to no reason to continue it, as our effects are so small, and the end is coming anyway, hastening it might seem the only sensible recourse.

That is, while unhappiness is defended because a return to acute pleasure is always nearing, in what way can anyone answer the reality that, understanding the infiniteness of the universe, our lives are, quite simply, meaningless? There is no way to rectify the paradox that arises when we remember that that meaninglessness refers directly to the same existence we regularly cite as important. My life has to be important to me or else there is no reason to put in any effort. My life has to be important, so I can recognize fulfilling employment, healthy relationships and even personal hygiene as worthwhile objectives. However, I also understand that history, set aside the broadness of the universe, will not remember me.

For some, the response to this is the hopelessness and purposelessness of nihilism, something Camus obstinately rejected. As he wrote in December of 1943 to a German friend, “there is something that still has a meaning.” Indeed the French philosopher was active in all the socially-constructed distractions that a nihilist might reject. He was friends with Parisian philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) before they divided over what Camus recognized as totalitarianism in the radical Marxism that Sartre espoused, despite once being a member of the French Community Party himself in the 1930s. Suicide is the ultimate question for Camus because understanding that our lives are essentially meaningless and temporal should be reason enough to give up, rejecting the effort required for daily life. However, that fatalism ignores the beauty of absurdity, the paradoxical magnificence and preciousness of our existence.

Camus died in a car accident at 46, a train ticket left in his pocket and a world of philosophy forever changed. From his beginnings in absurdism in the late 1930s to his ardent defense of humans rights in the 1950s and his continued writing to his death, Camus was a giant, death always a looming reality and suicide always the understandable question.

Prepared for a class on Existentialism by Temple University Professor Lewis Gordon.

Martin Heidegger was born poor and Catholic in a rural village of southern Germany. Believers in fate will know that he was destined to go to university, take academic ranks in Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party, fall out of favor, regain a position of scholarly authority and become, today, one of the most highly regarded philosophic minds of the 20th Century.

There is little debate that the most important work contributed by Heidegger (1889 to 1976) was Sein und Zeit, published in 1927 and quickly translated in English as Being and Time. By most accounts, it was written in haste and, indeed, never completed the goals he set for himself in the introduction he wrote, yet it remains a fundamental work of Western philosophy. Using that and other precepts ascribed to the man, what follows will, in great brevity, review some of his powerful conceptions of the great questions of philosophy has ever posed, those of existence, of being and of death.

ON EXISTENCE

There is no beginning without a question of existence, something Heidegger was posted to take on. He was plagued thoughts on why there is something and not nothing. In his very introduction, Heidegger seems to suggest that others overlook this, the most basic, and necessary, of questions. If we can come to understand being, we can understand what makes being, and, how, in that way, something might approach being. What does it take for me to approach being a lobster, beyond physiology? There are fundamental aspects to being a lobster, or a couch, for source of argument. Then, it becomes important to come to grasp why there is a lobster, or a couch or finger nail clippers, to understand why, instead, there exists nothingness. The difficulty, of course, becomes that, as a being myself, I cannot pursue definitions of myself without further complicating them with my own biases of understanding who, what, where and even why I am.

ON BEING

One of his most involved interpretations is that of that being we try to define. For Heidegger, there are three staples of self, facticity, existentiality and in-authenticity. Facticity is a questioning of who one is by determination of those who surround him. The first self I am is the self they tell me I am, and I did not choose them. At birth, we do not choose our parents, our home, our physical, emotional or mental gifts or anything else of the sort. From our very beginning, the facts of who we are are determined by outside forces, unknown to us. I am tall and white, gifted in some areas and lacking in others, very largely due, not to my own choices, but by a swarm of factors I will likely never fully appreciate or understand. The sooner I accept these decisions made for me, embrace them even, the sooner I can pass this, the first step in understanding my being.

The next is existentiality, perhaps the fundamental question of being. Wherever there is the already-of me, there is the not-yet me. We as people grow and expand and mature and develop and fall and stand and more, with dazzling grace and puzzling disaster. While too many wallow in what has been, too few understand we are not solely defined by what we have been. This backward thinking, linear understanding of our being limits us, indeed, harms us by forcing that we evaluate mistakes made with knowledge since acquired. Instead, it is more valuable that once we be, wherever or however that is, we afford the inevitability of being there again, in almost certainly a different form.

Lastly is inauthenticity, the most human of all dilemmas. We feel the very weight of ourselves, and so society has developed to share that burden, but there is difficulty understanding how much of others we can use as our own before we lose who we are now and are meant to become. Individuality is lauded without a full appreciation of what such a task requires. Our being, with all the specificity and complications that existence involves, is so highly classified that, it might, to some, offer us preclusion from an interaction of true human interest. The defense of this is society, a collection of commonalities and agreements. The social contract, as many call it, long evolved and disparately disseminated, is meant to offer the protection and safety of the similar. We can embrace having experiences of surprising common theme. We watch the same television, and see the same sights and feel, it so often stands, the same emotions. This affords a connection, but threatens an understanding of me as an individual being. The irony, of course, is that a challenged authenticity, burdening our being in the fight between comfort and sense of self, is likely the most encircling of all human experiences.

ON DEATH

Scores of questions that plagued the great minds of Western civilization were lost on Heidegger, cast aside as trivial, trite or boring. Instead, he was fascinated with the idea of death as a possible interpretive factor in our lives.

On that issue of death, Heidegger confronted Epicurus (341 to 270 B.C.E.), the historic Greek philosopher of sizable influence himself. Where I am, death is not, Epicurus roughly wrote. Where death is, I am not. In response, Heidegger espoused that there were two elemental schools of thought. If death is an actuality, then it is the stage of one’s life when the being is at its end. If, rather, death is a possibility, then it is the stage of one’s life when the being is towards its end. The difference is remarkable.

Perhaps more remarkable still is how interrelated these three topics of existence, being and death, are. Understanding existence comes with the complication of death and its dispute with being. Understanding being involves capturing existence and fearing death. Understanding death is knowing its conflict with being and sourcing of existence. No questions as to why Heidegger, social rhetoric and personal background aside, is so highly regarded in the sizeable world of Western thought.

Text as was prepared after a reading of Heidegger’s work for a relgion class at Temple University.