If you live long enough, at some point you'll come to discover that you already knew many things even before you knew that you knew them. One of such things is that life is difficult. We all know that. We all think that; we all expect that. But perhaps not so nearly as much as we were accustomed to believing when we first thought it. That the storms will give way in our lives, and that there will come a more fashioned way of doing business for all of us - these are the certain triumphs of existence. We do not need awesome philosophy for all of this. We do not even need science. What we need is sociological imagination, as sociologists have told us. We need to be able to place ourselves at the center of being, like Heidegger does, and see if we can forge a poetry of life. After all, everything for him starts with poetry. We need to brace forth and capture the past, the present and the future in one neat embrace, and see if we can forge some logical coherence from all of them - see if we can get our fifteen minutes of fame by playing God. How cool is that!
Poetry is not the only thing that starts us out on the philosophical journey to the end. By the way, who was it that said that philosophy is an exercise in masochism, because we keep searching even when we know we will never find truth? It's like going round and round in circles or playing musical chairs - just at that moment when the music stops and we desperately seek a chair, we find it removed from under our butt. Sad. Classic disappointment seems to await those that seek fervently for what they cannot have. Yet they go on seeking. We all go on seeking as if that's all we really can do. Wait a minute - it's all we can really do. Anyway. The poetry that begins our metaphysical exploration of what is lurches forth into the dark recesses of the unknown and first presents us with the seeming that is born in strife. This seeming is either a semblance or a reality, according to Heidegger. If it endures and stays true to its nature, to the phusis, then it is becoming. Otherwise it is deceit.
Metaphysics for Heidegger is true philosophy. It is a return to the things themselves, to greatness that begins the great enterprise of German destiny - all great destiny: all it is that deserves to exist, to justify why there is being instead of nothing. In this grand Daseinic revelation, we cannot not step into the same river twice - but even if we aren't Christians, and even if the waters of Heraclitus have been muddied by Poseidon in an eternal quarrel with Athena's human lover, we are all poised to speak our minds and to form a concept of the trail that leads us to the gates of Hermes, or worse still, Troy. Are we telling the truth; can Odysseus be brought to do the same? And what will that truth be? Not even Pilate knew. And are we going to ask like him what that truth is? What is truth? Is it that thing, that set of words, that makes listeners go "Ah!"? Because if one should tell me otherwise, such a person would let loose a torrent of questioning. The whys and hows and whiches and whats would amaze in their number; but who would guarantee that they would not simply lead to more such questionings, in a grand geometric assemblage of potential refutations and speeches?
The start of life is poetry. Poetry is not science. It is ontological and interpretive, and it is originary. It is artistic, and it is great. It tries to explain why there is being instead of nothing. The grand philosophical question that has eluded human grasp for centuries is finally taken up by poetry. Poetry questions in a uniquely different way than science. It stops short only at the gates of Hades, whereas science never even ventures to leave the physical world. Why is there being instead of nothing? It is a question that troubles Heidegger. It is a poetic question. Define nothing. Define being. Define the source of questioning. Why is there anything? What would Hegel say? What would be the synthesis that results from the dialog between being and nothing? Seeming? Becoming? Or just the grand strife and the glorious struggle that animate and define life? What would John the Evangelist say? What would Mary of Magdala for that matter say? There would be many conjectures, but we would never know the truth. Such questions would ever be beyond the reach of probable science.
Why then is there being instead of nothing? The originary, poetic underpinning of existence a la Heidegger is a poetic explication of contemporary understanding of metaphysics. There is no way to escape the question, which poetry naturally takes upon itself in its bid to afford teleology to the strife that clouds the human experience. The greatness that starts out great inspires, exhorts, challenges, and we may or may not rise to it. If we do, then we take bold strides into a future marked with human progress that is not scientific. If we do not, we may be bogged down by mass production, and economy-driven sophistications that do not lead to real growth of the human spirit. We would by that token trade the soul for the trappings of materialism, and fall again into the quagmire that Berkeley sought so ardently to unshackle us from. We would be redefining humanity in a negative way and in the process undermining our own existence.
Is there hope? What would Heidegger say?
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