A Conversation for Heidegger's Ultimate Question - the original revised version
the question at hand
Researcher mindless wonder Started conversation Oct 29, 2001
The beauty of the question at hand is possibility. why is there anything rather than nothing? anything is possible- so possible that even nothing could have happened, yet instead this is what we have at hand.
why am i free to choose rather than set in one path? anything is possible. am i set in this one path, predestination-i'd assume not because who would have thought to put me here, typing these words? and thus anything continues to be possible.
the possibilities are the anything and thus negate the nothing- unless this is a dream and all we know as reality is in all actuality nothing and thus negates the anything (the meaning of meaningless)
the most important fact to consider as a living human being though, may just end up being that nothing is still possible when anything is possible.
the question at hand
Grimethorpe2k1 Posted Oct 31, 2001
Hi RMW,
Sorry I'm late...I didn't notice your new Conversation for some time and then I had to think hard to come up with anything approaching adequacy in the light of the quality of your remarks.
I think this is a wonderful and truly authentic response to the question. Like Sartre in particular, you see the world as full of infinite possibilities. For Sartre, however, to be in infinite possibility is to flounder around with no meaning, 'condemned to (absolute) freedom'. So his view was that one should freely choose a commitment in life - a 'project' to freely limit the possibilities and create your own meaning for your life. But first why not enjoy your experience of Heideggerian authenticity!
One of the possibilities must be, though, that we don't actually have such freedom.
And yes, one of the possibilities must be a return to nothing. If we don't really know why we're here, and science can't help us on that, then we can't know that the world might disappear at any time. The predictions of science are based on the assumptioin that the future will resemble the past, which Bertrand Russell in his 'The Problems of Philosophy' pointed out, we have no reason to believe. It always has done so far - but that was in the past!
Grime
the question at hand
Grimethorpe2k1 Posted Oct 31, 2001
er...that the world might not disappear...
G.
Key: Complain about this post
the question at hand
More Conversations for Heidegger's Ultimate Question - the original revised version
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."