WHY PHILOSOPHY?
The Human Situation – The necessity of meaning
in life – the problematic nature of human existence – a thing that must be done by everyone
– to have a human life we must philosophize. To live is to find meaning in this
world and to decide what we shall be, what we shall believe, what we shall do with
the life given us.
“To sensitive spirits of all ages life is
filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies. Human experience is
capricious and our finite minds are not able to see enough of life at one time
for us to know for sure what is going on. We see only fragments of life and
never the whole … Just under the surface
of the active human enterprise implicit in all we think and do there lies the
eternal question: What is the meaning of existence?”
J. S. Christian
Our life is a perennial surprise. The very fact that you and I exist
at all is a continual surprise. But there is more to it. This life we are
given, or are thrown into, is full of cruel contradictions and it does not lack
the element of tragedy.
Only a complete fool can live or rather vegetate and not see that we are
appearing on the scene together with a host of other beings of all sorts: the universe, completely
unprepared. We are not told beforehand that we are going to live. Nobody asks us
whether we want it or not. Thus we are ‘thrown into existence’ willy nilly to
be always puzzled by this “thrownness
“and finally merge into the mystery
of death. Mystery
is our origin, mystery is our life and mystery is our death.
From the Unknown we emerge, in an unknown we
exist, and we go into an unknown. We are given few moments of surprised
existing only to disappear into another sea of the mysterious past… Very soon
we realize that we are imprisoned in many ways. We are ‘boxed in’ for
few moments of time which is given to us – our lifespan. It is short and there is no escape from this prison of time. We
are also imprisoned in space,
because we are body – whatever this means – and every body is imprisoned in
space. This spells our limitations: very
little time in little space. We cannot do anything about it. We are doomed to
be carried towards an end and we do not even know when this end will come. As Heidegger would say, we
are “beings unto
death.” Our experiences are so short and limited that it seems to be ridiculous
to try to know, what is going on really. Then there are the contradictions we
face: our absolute desire for “happiness” and the cruel
disappointments,
the frustrations. We realize that the brief moments of satisfaction leave us
only thirstier, more dissatisfied. All our dearest strivings are often smashed
against the inexorable wall of
suffering, misunderstandings, cruelty of life and its transitoriness.
Everything moves fast in-between our fingers: we cannot catch any moment of our
existence. It will pass. So will we. The desire for more experience is denied.
I have only this: my few moments of my existence and no more. I live now at
this time, in this
country, in this spot of the world. All this is given to me only once. I do not
have much to say here. This is the element of fate in my existence.
My awareness is limited, my mind is limited, my knowledge is painfully
small, and my whole existence
seems to be a brief awakening to mystery without enough time or possibility to get a closer look…
This is the riddle of my life. The basic fact of my thrownness
and brief co-existence with the world. The world will not let me rest for a while. I am
someone who sees and loves,
hates and desires this world. I
move within it, I suffer it, I fight it… My life is given to me. It is finding
myself in the world for a little surprised awareness. I am carried by this mysterious passing,
which we call time, towards the unknown…
This wonderful surprise of my bare and puzzling existence.
This is my life. I am in it, I am it. I am my life. This is my human situation. It is exciting
and mysterious, it is painful and sweet, it is comical and also tragic. It is
wonderful, that is full of
wonder! For yours and mine basic experience is wonder and surprise! Everything is a
problem for a human being.
Being what we are, we want to know. All men by nature desire to know,
said Aristotle many
centuries ago. To be human means to ask. A stone does not ask questions. It
exists without knowing that it exists. In a way of speaking it exists only for
me, but not for itself.
It is radically different with humans. Enclosed
in everything we do, suffer or experience in any way whatever – at the very roots of each moment of
my existence – consciously or subconsciously there is the eternal question of
all humankind : What is the meaning of
existence?
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