The greatest ever study on Disease has shown that humans are progressively living longer, but while being sicker. [1, 2] Medicine has the wrong target because humans have the wrong goal. Our purpose is not to live more. As the Harmonia Philosophica motto at the bottom of the page says, the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things…
Heidegger is one of the most controversial and one of the least understood philosophers. Whenever I am in a forest opening I cannot help it but think of his “Lichtung” (Gr. Αίθριο). Every time I say the word “is”, I cannot but think how he told again and again how we have been driven away from our true mission as Beings. And as Ms. Grene said “It had to happen this way. It had to happen this way because we are fallen out of Being. We are more concerned with beings, from genes to space ships, than with our true calling, which is to be shepherds and watchers of Being. So it is that we are lost, and Being itself has become a haze and an error – nothing”…
Heidegger himself wrote to Jaspers expressing his own tragedy. “For loneliness is nearly perfect” he said. (Ott 42). He was alone trying to fight his two thorns. And as St. Paul in his letter called to God for help, Heidegger boldly claims in his last interview in Spiegel that “only a God can save us now”. The journalists insist on asking him again and again for advice, he keeps on telling them like a Zen master “I can’t help you. I don’t know”. It was like Socrates and his infamous “ Ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα ” was alive once more.
Our fall (Verfallen) to Beings is completed. Things technology offers us work, as the journalist from Spiegel pointed out. “But that is exactly what is scary – that they work”, replied the Professor. We have been dehumanized already. We do not need any nuclear war or a meteorite for that to happen. We have been away from out nature for too long. Away from Earth.
We are already extinct in a way.
Things take a “Kehre” (Gr. Τροπή) …
Disease is required because this is was makes strength perfect. Everyone must face his own «σκόλοπα», ἳνα μη ὑπεραίρηται…
Everything is fine. Until you learn that a loved one is dying from cancer. You then panic. You do not know what to do. And it is really bad that the very good film 50/50 shows how the only way out of such a situation is talking to a social worker or to a foreign psychologist. What happened to friends? What happed to the help pure good philosophy can give you? I could say a personal experience. But I will keep that to me (and my loved ones). I will say what a modern philosopher said instead. His advice is simple but good. Alain de Botton suggests that you let Seneca help you. (thanks opyrgos for reminding me that) Once upon a time the great philosopher thrived and prospered. Until one day Nero ordered him to take his own life. The philosopher’s pupils were devastated. They were crying and falling to pieces in the face of the great disaster.
Seneca just asked them: “What happened to your philosophy?”
Behind every great disapointment lies our inability to fully embrace our true mortal nature and grasp reality for what it really is: ruthless and not at all related to our desires. “Be prepared” was the motto Seneca postulated. Be prepared for anything to happen, because what you wish is another thing and what happens another.
Be happy when you are. And KNOW that everyone one day dies. Think as a philosophers every passing moment, try to build your own philosophy. Try to know your Da-sein in order to know your Sein as well. Your fear to face the innevitable as days pass by, only worsens the panic when something bad happens. Why would you think life owes you something “good”? Why would you think that other people dying are just “news on the TV” while you are some kind of Highlander? He who loves KNOWS that his love is always tragic – one day his loved one will go. But that does not stop him from falling in love!
Once upon a time Socrates wanted to die and by mocking the court sealed his fate. But he did not cry for that. He accepted it and even had a dream during his last night sleep.
One upon a time an unknown person was crucified instead of a murderer. He did not hold hatred in his heart for that.
Once upon a time a woman had lost her son. He went to Buddha to ask him why such a tragedy had hit her. Buddha told her to go and bring him a mustard seed from a house where death had never struck. The woman went and tried to find one. When she failed to find a house where death had never struck, she went back empty handed.
She understood. And started following him.
Behind every great disapointment lies our inability to be a philosopher.
