Date: Fri, 07 Feb 1997 10:35:07 +0000
From: Patrick Lysons <plysons-AT-ocrs.com>
Subject: "true believers"


To the question "are there any true believers on this list?"
The spirit of inquiry negates belief.  Heidegger wants to deconstruct 
both "belief" and "thinking"--he is really saying that since Plato we 
have (philosophically) been using the same language and asking the 
same questions.  His "quest", if that's what it is, is to appropriate 
philosophy to poetry; i.e., to make the philosophical scientistic 
quest obsolete.  All we can know is what we want.  In Heidegger's 
later work he says, "Aus der Erfabrung des Denkens:  'Being's poem, 
just begun, is man.'"  The question, as asked, is meaningless.  Belief 
implies unbelief. To have belief means that you want to end 
uncertainty by believing in something that transcends doubt.  
Existentially, belief is only a way of perceiving--a way of wanting 
conclusions when everything Dasein experiences is irresolution.  You 
may not accept that answer, but really, "true believing" is an 
impossibility in a place where all belief can be challenged and no 
belief is proveable.  The structure of individual consciousness is 
governed by thought which is interested only in its own continuance, 
pragmatically.  Sorry, I don't mean to disappoint.  Kierkegaard posits 
the idea of philosophy as "doubt"--prior to doubt there must have been 
certainty.  Certainty is eternity.  It is not in the temporal at all.  
Hence, the best thing philosophy can do is bring doubt to belief, or 
unbelief to faith.  Belief/unbelief:  two sides of the same coin.
Faith is not a part of the self that wants belief to be "true."  
Investigate it; examine the thinking that passes as "belief".  Then 
see if true believers "belong" on any list.
Patrick Lysons
El Nath
-AT-ocrs.com


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