What I am “obsessed” with is grappling with the question, “How ought I to live”?
And then in exploring the limits of philosophy [logic, language] in providing an answer.
Much of what constitutes my own identity is not unknowable at all: gender, race, age, weight, height, state of health, residence, income, family, neighborhood, nationality, current interests, personality, character and on and on and I. There is much about myself that is clearly true objectively. It has nothing to do with dasein.
No, what fascinates me are those aspects of any particular sense of identity that revolve around conflicting value judgments that revolve in turn around conflicting goods.
Why and how do each of us come to accumulate a set of moral and political values that prompt a set of behaviors that, time and again, come into conflict with others? What experiences did we have, what people did we meet, what information did we happen upon that shaped our values over the years? And, in a world of contingency, chance and change, who knows what new experiences, relationships, knowledge etc, we will happen upon to reconfigure our values and behaviors down the road.
Is there a way philosophically to resolve these conflicts or, instead, must we always resort to either “might makes right” or “moderation, negotiation and compromise”?
All I insist is that when we discuss these relationships our words need to be fully integrated into the world in which we live.