Our ontological analysis of anxiety in the previous section also sheds much light on skepticism and nihilism. Philosophers again and again attempt disproofs of skepticism about the reality of the external world; nevertheless all such attempts to invalidate the skeptical attitude ultimately fail. This is because any proper conception of our worldliness makes the skeptic’s doubts self-defeating, impossible and devoid of significance. We cannot disprove an unprovable philosophy. Nevertheless, skepticism as a mode of being persists.
Finding the Door: Falling away from our authentic self is thus experienced as a general phenomenon in life, to which every facet of human culture is vulnerable. Its convenience, generality, and particularly its effects in the philosophical traditions, are structural. For if this falling is a consequence of our absorption in the Other, it must be just as much a part of our ontological structure as the fact that we generally fail to find ourselves. Thus the tendency towards falling is an existential characteristic of default human beingness.
Finding the Door: Falling away from our authentic self is thus experienced as a general phenomenon in life, to which every facet of human culture is vulnerable. Its convenience, generality, and particularly its effects in the philosophical traditions, are structural. For if this falling is a consequence of our absorption in the Other, it must be just as much a part of our ontological structure as the fact that we generally fail to find ourselves. Thus the tendency towards falling is an existential characteristic of default human beingness.
English teachers need to rethink presentations. A slide slow (aka PowerPoint) is not a document or a handout on a screen; it is a digital story, a visual explanation that should complement what you say when you speak. This example, created for my AP Literature class, is based on lessons I learned from the book "Presentation Zen." Visit http://www.englishcompanion.com for more info.
In this module, you will journey to the very heart of this course: Philosophy as a subject presents various philosophers offering multiple perspectives on just about any topic including the self. Philosophically, discussion of the self is a basic search for meaning and purpose in life. Determination, rationalization, and identification of the self-set the direction from which an individual travel to fulfill his or her purpose in life. The inability to define oneself leads to a lot of contradictions within the self later on; hence, it is one of the many imperatives in life to know oneself and to go on with the business of leading a life charted by oneself.
This presentation aims to let the students appreciate the existence of Man. Needless to say, they will understand more the complexity of man as human being.
An overview of the positive role of anxiety, and how the work of modern European philosophers can inform a unique approach to helping people face up to, and therefore work through, their fear of fear
Ontology, the science of beingness, reveals deep insights about the nature of human life and experience. An ontological analysis of the human condition—our way of being—shows that our everyday social relations give us a particular kind of preoccupation with the world. This care about the world involves us in a network of conditions and actions we do not choose, leading us away from our authentic self.
English teachers need to rethink presentations. A slide slow (aka PowerPoint) is not a document or a handout on a screen; it is a digital story, a visual explanation that should complement what you say when you speak. This example, created for my AP Literature class, is based on lessons I learned from the book "Presentation Zen." Visit http://www.englishcompanion.com for more info.
In this module, you will journey to the very heart of this course: Philosophy as a subject presents various philosophers offering multiple perspectives on just about any topic including the self. Philosophically, discussion of the self is a basic search for meaning and purpose in life. Determination, rationalization, and identification of the self-set the direction from which an individual travel to fulfill his or her purpose in life. The inability to define oneself leads to a lot of contradictions within the self later on; hence, it is one of the many imperatives in life to know oneself and to go on with the business of leading a life charted by oneself.
This presentation aims to let the students appreciate the existence of Man. Needless to say, they will understand more the complexity of man as human being.
An overview of the positive role of anxiety, and how the work of modern European philosophers can inform a unique approach to helping people face up to, and therefore work through, their fear of fear
Ontology, the science of beingness, reveals deep insights about the nature of human life and experience. An ontological analysis of the human condition—our way of being—shows that our everyday social relations give us a particular kind of preoccupation with the world. This care about the world involves us in a network of conditions and actions we do not choose, leading us away from our authentic self.
Who are we? If we are not a thing, what are we? Who is talking when I say “I”.
Is there any present-day approach to the self which takes into account the naturalistic claim without losing the self, its existence and its durability?
Is there any contemporary account of the self which let us defend the narrative and cultural production of the self without converting the self into a fake, into something strictly decided by others either culturally or evolutionarily.
A response to these challenges can be found by mixing a phenomenological and an hermeneutical approach.
Graspable = ready-to-hand.
Ungraspable = present-to-hand.
Death is graspable only as a possibility.
It can help us choose our authentic possibilities.
By relating to it through the other possibilities that are similarly our own.
Death is also graspable as a condition.
Self-concealing because it is non-existential.
It increases the significance of every choice we make.
Death as a context adds meaning, distinguishes authentic being.
Death can be ontologically characterized as the own-most, non-relational and inevitable possibility. It is an omnipresent, inescapable but non-actualizable possibility of our Being. Thus it is an ungraspable but undeniable aspect of every moment of our existence. It follows that we can only relate to death in and through its relation to what is graspable in our existence—namely, the genuine existential possibilities that constitute our daily life. Death thus remains beyond any direct existential or phenomenological grasp. But it is graspable indirectly, as an omnipresent condition of every moment of our directly graspable existence. Death is not a specific feature of the existential landscape, but a light or shadow emanating evenly and implacably from every such feature. It is the context within which the existential features configure themselves, a self-concealing condition for our capacity to authentically disclose our own existence to ourselves.
Our ontological analysis in the Being in the World series shows that authentic Being is ontologically possible within our default mode of being in the world. But merely to theorize the possibility of such a state of complete integrity and mature individuality is insufficient.
Call of the Friend shows how to actualize the possibility of being integrity in our everyday life, despite the fact that in being in the world, our individuality is always already lost in the Other. Here we identify the ontological roots of the ontic possibility of integrity as wholeness. We also identify existential evidence for practically realizing our possibility for authenticity.
Affective Ontology and Dialogical Epistemology of the "Self‟ and the "Otherinventionjournals
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention (IJHSSI) is an international journal intended for professionals and researchers in all fields of Humanities and Social Science. IJHSSI publishes research articles and reviews within the whole field Humanities and Social Science, new teaching methods, assessment, validation and the impact of new technologies and it will continue to provide information on the latest trends and developments in this ever-expanding subject. The publications of papers are selected through double peer reviewed to ensure originality, relevance, and readability. The articles published in our journal can be accessed online.
Are you caught IN THE MATRIX? - Nonduality
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All the platforms I Am on:
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Essay about The Philosophy of Existentialism
Essay about Existentialism
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Becoming is the process of changing your Being.
The dictionary defines Becoming as follows:
Be•come v. Begin to be; grow to be; turn into; (of a person) qualify or be accepted as; acquire the status of: ‘she wanted to become a doctor’.
For applications like Ontological Education, Integrity and Leadership, we are especially interested in this part of the process.
We can call this The Process of Becoming.
The Buddha defines Becoming as follows:
“Kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture. The consciousness of living beings… is tuned to a lower property… to a middling property… to a refined property. Thus there is the production of renewed becoming in the future. This is how there is becoming.” — Bhava Sutta (AN 3.76)
Becoming is the process of changing your Being.
The dictionary defines Becoming as follows:
Be•come v. Begin to be; grow to be; turn into; (of a person) qualify or be accepted as; acquire the status of: ‘she wanted to become a doctor’.
The Buddha defines Becoming as follows:
“Kamma is the field, consciousness the seed, craving the moisture. The consciousness of living beings… is tuned to a lower quality… to a middling property… to a refined property. Thus there is the production of renewed becoming in the future. This is how there is becoming.” — Bhava Sutta (AN 3.76)
“And how is a person of integrity endowed with qualities of integrity? There is the case where a person of integrity is endowed with conviction, conscience, concern; he is learned, with aroused persistence, unmuddled mindfulness and good discernment. This is how a person of integrity is endowed with qualities of integrity.”
— Cūḷa-puṇṇama Sutta (MN 110)
We use a positive model of integrity. It provides powerful access to enhanced performance for individuals, groups, organizations, and societies.
In our model, we discern (recognize) four phenomena dealing with right and wrong:
• morality
• ethics
• legality
• integrity
What is the teaching of the Buddha?
Is it a religion, or is it really something else—something we don’t even have a word for?
Why does Buddhism have so many rules?
Is there a scientific basis for integrity, ethics, morality, right and wrong?
What are the benefits of precepts like truthfulness, mindfulness and renunciation?
Aren’t they just outmoded beliefs?
Unity or oneness is the goal.
Mindfulness misdefined as open, receptive, pre-verbal awareness.
The Buddha does not speak with final authority because of cultural differences.
Idealism or perfection is unrealistic, against human nature.
Suttas should not be read as literal descriptions but as poetic mythology.
The Suttas encourage meditative activism.
Unity or oneness is the goal.
Integrity is difficult because it is misunderstood.
We are conditioned to be out of integrity.
Without integrity we are less than fully human.
Difference between ordinary schooling and ontological education.
Be ready to examine your assumptions about life.
Show up fully present, participating with integrity and being yourself authentically.
Look up and clear your misunderstood terms, as discussed in Becoming Genius.
Be committed to something greater than yourself, as described in What is Skillful Living?
Be willing to be cause over changing your Being, as discussed in Being and Becoming.
Being Integrity uses a certain technical terminology. You may think—and even find that others agree—that our language is unnecessarily complex, and could be made much simpler and more understandable.
Do not make this mistake, because if you do you will block the full benefit that this series makes available to you. The semantics of this material is very carefully crafted to provide a specific result. Substituting other terminology will deprive it of much of its power and effectiveness.
Most people have become so alienated from themselves by being in the world that they do not hear the silent summons of the Court of Conscience within their hearts. Thus they are convicted by default, and live the rest of their lives in dread of death.
Karma does not require any external agency, an omniscient divine judge or mystical accounting system. We ourselves are the plaintiff, the judge and the bailiff. Knowing well what we have done and not done, we condemn and sentence ourselves to a just punishment. The vast majority of human beings go after death to lower embodiments: animal wombs or other hellish conditions. These are already conditioned by their activities in this life. The process of Dependent Origination reliably brings that name-&-form into manifestation in the next life. This can happen over an entire lifespan, or in a moment. This dukkha: suffering or displeasure. The Buddha taught dukkha as the First Noble Truth, because realizing how deeply we are caught in the web of suffering is precisely the motivation to getting out.
The Call of the Friend can happen to everyone. It is a potential that can occur at any moment, due to the inherent tension of Being in the World. The Call of the Friend leads us out of this tension towards a resolution based on achieving our authentic individuality. The Call of the Friend can be heard from within ourselves. It also can be echoed by someone outside of us—someone who is further along in the process of regaining their authentic Being. This is a special kind of friendship, not based on attachment or seeking reward, but on regaining and maintaining one’s individual integrity (wholeness).
We can now join the components of our analysis of being in the world into a coherent whole. Our characterizations of default human beingness as thrown projection, care, being towards death and being guilty are complementary views of the same ontological structure from different angles. But one of our goals remains unfulfilled: we still require existential proof that a person stuck in inauthentic being is capable of attaining integrity. If our analysis is accurate, the Voice of Conscience articulates the Call. The Call is a hint within our everyday existential inauthenticity that we are anxious about our potential for authentic existence. It is the voice of our repressed but still existing capacity for genuine selfhood. But if that capacity is genuinely repressed, how can it speak out? If we can hear the Call, its repression must already have been lifted. We must have already discovered our possibility of authentic being, no matter how minutely.
We have presented a rationale for choice and values that retains the authenticity and integrity of an individual’s life. The advantage of this model is that it gives unity to a life as a whole without requiring submission to a more or less arbitrary external authority. To achieve this wholeness, we still require to relate our life to something transcendent, beyond or outside itself. But in this case it is related to something that is one’s very own—that is, to death.
The ontological model presented herein is firmly rooted in philosophical rigor yet fully compatible with postmodern sensibilities. However, it would be premature to conclude that we advocate nihilism or atheism. The purpose of the spiritual agnosticism of Being in the World is to create an experiential ontological platform free from theological complexities. Our phenomenological approach provides a new model for theism grounded in direct personal experience of the Supreme instead of authority. Succeeding Parts of Friend of the Heart will develop this model in detail.
We have been leading up to this topic.
Care for ‘the world’ is an inadequate basis for choice.
Awareness of impending death provides a basis for integrity.
It shows that choosing for ‘the world’ is completely inauthentic.
It robs us of our self-determinism, energy, attention and authenticity.
Integrity is required for authentic Being.
Integrity is the subject of one of our advanced courses.
We use a positive model of integrity, versus the typical normative virtue model.
We define integrity as “the state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition.”
Our analysis of death is part of our search for a complete ontological description of being in the world. Mortality often seems to be an insuperable obstacle to grasping the ontological structure of human existence as a single, unified whole. But our analysis demonstrates that understanding our mortality is actually a precondition for any individual to attain existential integrity. Our existence can become genuinely individual and whole only by seeing death ontologically as an ever-present impossible possibility that makes the possible impossibility of our existence inevitable.
Time is the ultimate ontological constraint.
Time provides the ultimate object of care: death.
Phenomenological process discloses the relation of care with death.
Inauthenticity comes first.
Temporality means being in time.
Authenticity includes being authentic about our inauthenticity.
Totality includes all sides of our being: inauthentic and authentic.
Our ontological analysis of our default being in the world has been static—without considering its relation to time. Continuing our analysis of the underlying ontological structure of Being, we will connect the concepts of care and temporality. As before, we will forge that connection through a methodical process of phenomenological self-reflection. Our analysis of being in the world so far has been restricted to the negative. First, we focused upon inauthentic modes of being by concentrating on our average everydayness. Second, we downplayed the general structure of life as a unified whole by concentrating on the ontological structure of specific moods such as anxiety. We now reconsider these topics to demonstrate the fundamental relation of Being in time. The triple ontological structure of this section and those immediately following is authenticity, totality and temporality.
Skepticism—Look it up!
Nihilism—Look it up!
Doubting the world is a non-issue.
Skepticism toward claims is a good idea.
The only reality for us is our experience.
The world is the context for ordinary being.
Skepticism toward the world is unprovable.
You can doubt anything!
Skepticism is logically self-defeating.
The skeptical attitude finds sufficient evidence to nourish it.
Everyone is fallen.
Inauthenticity is convenient.
Traditional philosophy is inauthentic.
The cause is the structure of being in the world.
Impersonalism = objectification.
Thrown = bias toward inauthenticity.
Absorption = looking for ourselves in other entities and phenomena.
Ontology—Look it up!
Omitted from school — JT Gatto.
Trained to be a slave for 12+ years.
Experience—not external authority.
Being—not knowing, thinking, doing or having.
Care = our default way of being in the world.
We sacrifice authentic Being, trapped in the world of the Other.
Success comes from Being—not knowing, thinking, doing or having.
This video series presents an extended ontological analysis of a subject that concerns and involves us all: Being in the World. Each section of the analysis will be accompanied by a detailed Study Guide giving directions for further observation and study.
We will analyze the ontic qualities of being in the world according to the ontological criteria and phenomenological methods given in the previous series, Becoming Genius. Needless to say, a working knowledge and practical familiarity with the methods presented in our previous series will be necessary to follow the discussion in Being in the World.
me•ta•cog•ni•tion, n. Awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes.
Metacognition is cognition about cognition, or knowing about knowing. It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or problem-solving.
There are generally two components of metacognition: knowledge about cognition, and regulation of cognition.
The Ontological Triple is the atomic unit of ontological structure—a triune entity usually consisting of subject, object and their relation. Generally the parts of a Triple correspond with the subject, object and predicate in the grammar of most ordinary languages.
Any relationship can be expressed in the form of a Triple. Any number of Triples can overlap in being-space to express complex structures and relations.
Four Stages of Becoming Genius For any given subject: Duplication: Making an exact copy of the source
Understanding: Systems thinking through logic
Analysis: Contemplation of abstract relationships
Metacognition: Realization of new state of being
Welcome to the Program Your Destiny course. In this course, we will be learning the technology of personal transformation, neuroassociative conditioning (NAC) as pioneered by Tony Robbins. NAC is used to deprogram negative neuroassociations that are causing approach avoidance and instead reprogram yourself with positive neuroassociations that lead to being approach automatic. In doing so, you change your destiny, moving towards unlocking the hypersocial self within, the true self free from fear and operating from a place of personal power and love.
Being in the World 3: Anxiety, Skepticism and Nihilism
1. Being in the World 3:
Anxiety & Skepticism
— The Esoteric Teaching —
dharmasar@gmail.com
2. ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
Our ontological analysis of anxiety in the previous section
also sheds much light on skepticism and nihilism. Philosophers
again and again attempt disproofs of skepticism about the
reality of the external world; nevertheless all such attempts
to invalidate the skeptical attitude ultimately fail.This is
because any proper conception of our worldliness makes the
skeptic’s doubts self-defeating, impossible and devoid of
significance.We cannot disprove an unprovable philosophy.
Nevertheless, skepticism as a mode of being persists.
3. In our default state we do not have any Being besides being in the
world.The world is the context for everything we experience or
can experience; just as water is the context for everything a fish can
experience.We never experience the world as a thing in itself, only
the things that exist in the world, including ourselves.Thus, skeptical
questions about ‘reality’ or ‘the world’ as separate and independent
from ourselves are meaningless and unanswerable. It is as useless to
attempt to prove or disprove such ontologically incoherent
statements as it is to try to make sense out of nonsense.
ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
4. Yet, skeptical doubts about individual objects in the world are
not only articulable but also irrefutable, and such skepticism is
pervasive in modern thought. From the ontological point of
view, the skeptical impulse is certainly self-defeating, since its
doubts annihilate the conditions for their own meaning.Yet
skepticism is also self-renewing as a human possibility, affecting
those possessed by it with a near-unshakable confidence in
their own conclusions. How is this possible?
ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
5. Since the skeptical attitude is a human ontological possibility—a way of
understanding and grasping one’s worldly existence—it must be subject
to ontological analysis.That means among other things that it should be
inflected by a particular mood.We can easily observe that the skeptic is
someone beset by gnawing doubts—someone in the grip of anxiety.
Skepticism is anxiety manifest as philosophy. But more than that, anxiety
is one of the most powerful possibilities of our phenomenological self-
disclosure. In anxiety we reveal ourselves as worldly beings whose Being
is an issue for us.Thus we should expect skeptical anxiety to be very
useful in phenomenological self-inquiry; and so it is.
ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
6. Anxiety finds its clearest expression when it has no
particular object. Pure objectless anxiety is related to, and
hence reveals, the worldliness of the world and the
uncanniness or alienating strangeness of being in the
world; thus it helps to disclose our own inherently worldly
Being. It also reveals that our way of being in the world is
that of being not at home in the world. How does
skeptical anxiety confirm this paradoxical perception?
ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
7. One aspect of anxiety is the sense of a disconnect between
ourselves and the world. It gives a sense of a void at the heart of
reality, and a sense of ourselves as not at home in the world.
Another aspect of anxiety reveals a disconnect between ourselves
and others, as if their thoughts and feelings were unknowable.
Thus we often experience ourselves as alone and alienated in the
world. In either mode, skepticism as an expression of anxiety
finds itself opposed to common sense, to what ‘everybody
knows’: the truths of average everyday human existence, being in
the world absorbed in phenomena and the opinions of others.
ANXIETY, SKEPTICISM AND NIHILISM
8. In this opposition to worldliness, the
skeptic discloses and falsifies the default
realities of typical human beingness. For
although we are essentially worldly, we are
also always more than any particular
worldly situation in which we find
ourselves; although we are overwhelmed by
being in the world, we are also individuated.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
Falsification
Contingency
Uncanniness
Worldly Anxiety
9. Hence the argumentative skeptic, in his denial
of our worldliness, commonality and
inauthenticity, also denies the truth of our
being in the world.At the same time, the
objectless anxiety of which skepticism is the
expression, in its fear of accepting absorption
in the world, hints at the hidden truth of our
Being: our innate possibility to attain true
individuality, integrity and authenticity.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
Falsification
Contingency
Uncanniness
Worldly Anxiety
10. Further, if skepticism repudiates the commonsense expressions
of ordinary being in the world, then they must be contingent,
simply an accident of the conditions of our being in the world.
Skepticism shows that worldly articulations of meaning can
continue to affect us only if we continue to care about them.The
self-defeating character of skepticism (“This sentence is false.”)
means the skeptic can effect such withdrawals of interest in the
world even in the guise of the most passionate investment in it.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
11. In other words, the self-subversiveness of skepticism shows
that caring about worldly discourse, in which the issue of our
own Being is most fundamentally at stake, is not automatic. It
is not that expressions of worldliness are part of the
predetermined essence of our existence. Rather, they are a
cultural inheritance that we can choose whether or not to
take responsibility for, in and through our being in the world.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
12. There is also a third aspect that skeptical anxiety helps to
bring out: the uncanniness of being in the world. For the
worldliness of the world to which anxiety is a response is a
system or field of meaning; therefore the sense or meaning
of our existence is ultimately an aspect of our Being.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
13. If that is so, the significance of our lives cannot be derived
from any external source or authority—whether that source
is conceived as God, as a range of Platonic ideals, or as a
structure of values encoded in the structure of reality by
genetics or other physical laws. Our authentic being must be
rooted in the uniqueness of our individuality, and thus must
be sought within ourselves by phenomenal self-examination.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
14. How then can the structures of meaning that give
orientation and meaning to our being in the world
have any genuinely objective authority, any real claim
on us? Skepticism asserts that meaning must be an
essentially anthropocentric construction designed to
cover up the intrinsic meaninglessness of the world.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
15. Anxiety’s disclosure of the world as a domain in
which we are ultimately not at home, and can choose
to accept or not, is perfect confirmation of the
ontological truth that the meaning of our lives lacks
any external ground. It does not prove that the
meaning of our life is arbitrary or synthetic; rather it
can only be derived from a deep ontological analysis
of our being in the world as an as-lived experience.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
16. Anxiety’s disclosure of the world as a domain in
which we are ultimately not at home, and can
choose to accept or not, is perfect confirmation of
the ontological truth that the meaning of our lives
lacks any external ground. It does not prove that the
meaning of our life is arbitrary or synthetic; rather it
can only be derived from a deep ontological analysis
of our being in the world as an as-lived experience.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
17. The uncanniness of our being in the world revealed by
skepticism captures the ontological root of nihilism.
Nihilism is an extreme form of philosophical skepticism
concerning the reality or substance of value and meaning.
We must carefully distinguish between the truth of nihilism
and the distortions embedded in its intellectual expression.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
18. The idea of meaningfulness wholly external to our being in the
world is indeed empty of significance. But acknowledging the
internal relation between idle talk and our ordinary Being does
not mean that we deny, trivialize or relativize the conceptions of
truth and reality.Thus, an authentic response to nihilism
acknowledges that life’s meaning lacks any external, absolute
ground without denying its very real effects upon us.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
19. Any absolute external structure of significance would
have to be constituted in ways entirely independent of
the ontological structure of our being in the world. How
could an external source of meaning provide us with
internal articulation of being in the world? How could it
constitute the worldliness of the world, and thus orient
and motivate our practical activities within it?
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
20. The transcendental concept that the world is meaningless
or false, and only a wholly external structure of meaning
can make any authoritative claims, is backwards. Rather, the
only structures of meaning that can possibly make claims
on us are ones to which our worldly Being is inherently
open, and by which it is structured and articulated.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
21. In other words, the idea of absolute transcendental objectivity
that fuels nihilism cannot provide the authority and
authenticity that our worldly fields of meaning could have, but
unfortunately lack. Nor can it be right to think of the
structures of significance in which we exist as merely internal.
The ontological structures of being in the world are all the
meaning there is, or could be, for creatures whose Being is like
ours. Such meanings are the limits or conditions necessary to
determine any being whose Being is worldly, and hence finite.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
22. The truth in nihilism is that our Being is essentially finite or
conditioned.We are not unconditioned, infinite or godlike;
nor are we entirely reducible to our determining conditions.
We are not possessed by an external ground of meaning,
nor are we wholly self-grounding either.Accordingly, to say
that our worldliness is uncanny means that it must be
understood in relation to what it is not and to that which is
not—in relation to nothing and nothingness.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
23. The skeptics truly suffer the reality of ordinary human
existence, for they give philosophical expression to
the pervasive mood of anxiety in being in the world.
However from an ontological point of view,
skepticism does not properly articulate that reality, or
how best to understand its passionate anxiety.This is
a vital task of authentic phenomenology.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
24. Phenomenological investigations of Being must be informed by
some particular mood.We are open to skeptical anxiety; not
only subjecting it to serious phenomenological analysis, but also
allowing it to guide our sense of what matters in the field of
practical activity.Then we become sensitive to the most far-
reaching and primordial existential disclosure of our Being.
What else could better facilitate our attempts to grasp our
Being in as transparent a manner as possible—to make the
existential possibility of investigating our Being truly our own?
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
25. But it is critical that we adopt a moderate attitude
toward the skeptical mood. Especially, we should
not take skepticism’s interpretation of its own
significance for granted.We should not accept the
skeptic’s over-anxious claim of knowing that the
world is not knowable, without acknowledging that
the world cannot therefore be doubtable either.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY
26. Authentically skeptical phenomenology distinguishes the
disclosures made possible by its mood of anxiety from that
mood’s self-concealment and deception.We must overcome
skepticism from within, by being skeptical about its self-
distorted misunderstandings.We must dwell in the mode of
being in the world without making ourselves at home in it.
Only thus can we discover what is truthful about skepticism,
and the actual value that skepticism can disclose to us.
ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF ANXIETY