But it is an argument that very, very few people ever really probe in depth. There are literally millions upon millions of folks on the planet who barely put a dent in the existential narrative they learned as children regarding these things. They will go to the grave thinking more or less as their parents did.
In other words, the idea that one largely views the world as dasein is simply alien – or even inconceivable – to them.
And out in the real world – the world that revolves basically around subsisting from day to day – there are now fully 3,500,000,000+ people who live literally on $2 a day or less. This sort of “philosophical” speculation is not something relevant to them at all. They basically leave such matters to the folks who claim to mediate between them and God.
True, and, in here, these are the folks I am most curious about. Those folks, in other words, who acknowledge the nature [and the importance] of dasein and yet are somehow able to transcend nihilism. I am not able to myself.
Given what can be – in any particular individual’s life – a highly problematic relationship between the past, the present and the future, each ascent and descent must rely on variables like memory, contingency, context, fortuity and the like. What some might see as certainty here I do not. Although, to be honest, there is always the possibility we are talking about two very different things here.
For me:
…there are any number of things “I” cannot be sure of.
For you:
I don’t expect this. On the contrary, “contingency, chance and change” follow us from the cradle to the grave. It’s just that some lives are more uneventful than others. And, when we are not certain, the choices we make can be catastrophic. But, perhaps, not nearly as catastrophic as the choices others make in being certain about something no man or woman can really be certain about. We see this all the time in the consequences meted out by the religious and ideological minds. And, of course, by the minds of nihilists. Everything is always situated out in an enormously complex world.
You seem able to say “so what?” to things I long ago stopped underestimating.
But, again, much that we impart in the words we exchange here is rooted in the actual experiences we have had. And, because of that, what might give me pause [or even stricken me] another will simply shrug off.
Or even revel in.
iambiguous:
You seem rather certain of your Self here. I do not feel that way about my own. Over and again, when put in a situation where I have to choose between conflicting moral and political narratives, I feel ambivalent emotions and think ambivalent thoughts. There does not seem to be a way that “I” can anchor my “self” to any one position. And I recognize that had I been born in a different time and place I might think and feel quite differently from how I think and feel now. “I” [and its value judgments] is ever rooted in contingency, chance and change.
As dasein, do we ever really see most things the way they are? Especially things that revolve around conflicts with others. For example, some listened to President Obama’s speech last night and thought he certainly grasped the economy “the way it is”. Others, however, hear the very same words and conclude he does not really grasp the situation at all. And, how I reacted to it as a radical liberal, bespeaks a context entirely at odds with all the talking heads I listened to in the corporate “media industrial complex”.
And after one has thought about things like this [or the complex relationships in their personal life] and rids oneself of the need or desire for certainty, they are still forced to choose.
You argue that an enlightened perspective can come from this. And, if it has for you, great. But it never really has for me. All I ever see are uncertainty, ambiguity and a convoluted sense of confusion. Especially when the stakes seem at their highest.
In my view, what we contain are individual perceptions of contradiction and conflict. And these perceptions are rooted in all that I argue above. Thus, what we see as contradictory or conflicting contexts, others do not. And all we can do is butt heads with arguments that are equally reasonable given contradictory and conflicting premises that, philosophically, can never be reconciled or resolved. Or, rather, have not been so far.
One need but note any particular moral or political fracas and start in on discussing it from contradictory or conflicting points of view.
It is then that dasein and the limitations of language most clearly reveal themselves. Or they do to me.