Heidegger

GEVANS613 at aol.com wrote:

>*For those who know not what they are.*

>The meaning of BE has recently been traced the to Proto Indo- PL P?FA
>[the ? denotes that this morpheme remains unknown] It is the basis for
>the well-represented PIE word *bheu-, which is now thought to mean:
>/’be somewhere’,/ from P?FA-FA, /’be prominent-frequentative’/ = /’be
>customarily noticed at’/ (previously reconstructed from PIE root as
>P?FE-FA, ‘(place of a) pair of feet’.

as usual, the etymological information you provide is fascinating; and,
I will save it for future reference; but, it is irrelevant to the issue
at hand: the validity of the thought expressed in the CPI, ‘I know that
I am; but, not what I am’.

I’ve previously described two situations in which one might want to
assert the CPI; and, these are worth repeating.

first, someone who as been raised in the teachings of some church might
at some point in his life question those beliefs. for instance, someone
raised to believe ‘I am a Soul’ might question that belief. while in
that state of unknowing, the inquirer may describe that state as ‘I know
that I am; but, not what I am’.

similarly, someone who has never believed that the human being was
anything more than a human body might come to question that belief.
before finding an answer to the question ‘What am I?’, this inquirer can
make the same claim as the former, ‘I know that I am; but, not what I
am’.

our language in which philosophical discourse takes place must provide a
way to express this state of knowing that one does not know; otherwise,
that language begins to resemble orwellian newspeak.

do you remember newspeak? it was the language invented by the
totalitarian state in _1984_ to prevent rebellion by eliminating the
possibility that rebellious ideas could even be thought of in newspeak.

similarly, if some philosopher claims that, whenever I say ‘I am’, I
always already know *what* I am; then, the CPI becomes a rebellious
thought. if the language of philosophical discourse must either accept
this rebellious thought as a legitimate thought (which might be either
true or false); then, the discourse is being conducted in the
philosophical analogue of newspeak — a double plus ungood result.

Joe

–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda

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 http://what-am-i.net
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Posted on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
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