Embracing Futility

If anything might be deemed the “essence” of our existence, it is the recognition that we had no choice in its coming about. Indeed, as individual entities we had absolutely no say in our conception — nor in our being brought to term. In a word, our existence is utterly incidental to our wishes, desires, and needs.

We are “thrown” into the world in which we find ourselves. This groundlessness; this miserable accident is not of our own doing. It’s the burden upon which we all were shouldered and must bear for the duration of our existence.

In our very being we are our possibilities — the ultimate of which is our own-most possibility of non-existence. The only grounding, and perhaps the most un-satisfactory grounding conceivable, is our being in time.

Temporality (and by this I mean something more ‘primordial’ [to use Heidegger’s terminology] than linear, chronological time) is being. But if temporality forces us to take account of our own finitude, then our conclusion can only be that our most authentic existence is opening up the possibility for our own total collapse; our very own no-longer being.

Upon entering this realization, it becomes clear that we are thrust into existential futility; this futility is distinct from run-of-the-mill hopelessness. Rather, it is a reward — the only reward available to free us from our collective sickness: fanatic hope. Existential futility is the cure to the illusion that  life has meaning; that the universe owes us something.

The only available means to fight the onslaught of existential nihilism is with nihilism’s own weaponry.

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“Ownmost

In the context of the human Being, our ownmost Being is the inner-consciousness that constitutes the ‘meness of me’. In the context of Being in general it is however its most primordial and authentic aspect.

Therefore “own”, when used in the sense that is use[d] here, is not meant as “belonging to Dasein”, that is to say it is “a property of,” but rather it is something fundamentally constitutive of the Being of Dasein itself. [ref. 4, page 32]”

The “Being of Dasein” is not simply human being, but humans who ask the question of Being. In later writings, Heidegger speaks of the call of thinking, a call that one has to become receptive to in order to authentically question Being. That call is what is one’s ownmost; one heeds what is one’s ownmost, one heeds the call of thinking. In Being and Time this opens up the question of Being for Dasein. Later, this becomes important for Heidegger in multiple ways.

Edit: Sometime when I write about Heidegger I wonder whether or not I have said anything at all, and not just spun around in a circle to come back to the beginning having learned nothing. And, just like Socrates, I find myself asking the same question over again, only to find a different interlocutor to question.

This is one of those times. Some different mood having overtaken me poses the question in a novel way.

I ask, what is my ownmost? The question elicits anxiety. I do not know. I feel separated from my ownmost. The question elicits withdrawal. A question chases withdrawal: What is withdrawing away from me in a question followed by a question? It is an open space, a clearing in the woods, opened by placing myself into the anxiety of a question. And at once, the questions become one question. Why is there something and rather not nothing? Only it seemed like there were two questions, because this question interrogated me as I asked it. It did not say why are you, it said how is it such that you are asking the question.

This question has been asked to many throughout history, but many of them heard the wrong intonation in the question. Many thought the question was about the state of the world, and they asked questions that became science, and we have a lot to thank the achievements of science for. But, they are not asking The question.

Many think that the question is asked to them personally, and these people have advanced culture and civilization; they emphasized the “you” in the question.

But, the real mystery of the question, the abyss of all understanding, what is the “it”. How is it such that you are asking the question. The “it” means all of existence, and we are asking how all of existence is, firstly, only followed by the second half of the question “such that you are asking the question”.

It is, you are. It is perennial, you will one day not be, but right now you are asking the question that interrogates yourself. How is it such that you are asking the question. I am in time, and time will come when I am no more. It is temporal. It is in time.

Time goes by, it goes on, and it don’t stop. Like a river, time flows by, making arable the land, making the banks fertile, making life possible along its shores.

And I feel that my mind has wandered farther into a circle than the original answer to this question, and farther into nonsense than using a riff raff song as part of answer on Heidegger. And I must leave behind all these excessive words before I go mad. Am I no closer to having answered the question of the meaning of one’s ownmost?

I may delete this edit tomorrow as I return to this question with a more apollonian mind. But, I must publish, otherwise I cannot stop interrogating myself.

Oh dear, now I have gone into Descartes style theatrix: help, I am spinning uncontrollably and I cannot find the idea of a perfect god to save me!

to be deleted, or, to be continued, who knows?