Bakker reminding us that after semantic collapse we might find meanings that can provide a feast for worms, philosophers, and post-nihilists alike.
To be sure, it’s not “enlightenment” we are looking for, but better options for adapting. Re-cognizing neglect, cognitive blindness, and semantic boundaries does not mean we “solve” them, only that we work with them in a different way.
The game has never been about truth or absolute knowledge, but about how to live and live well.
That is, until today.
The one thing I try to continuously remind people is that philosophy is itself a data point, a telling demonstration of what has to be one of the most remarkable facts of our species. We don’t know ourselves for shit. We have been stumped since the beginning. We’ve unlocked the mechanism for aging for Christ’s sake: there’s a chance we might become immortal without having the faintest clue as to what ‘we’ amounts to.
There has to be some natural explanation for that, some story explaining why it belongs to our nature to be theoretically mystified by our nature, to find ourselves unable to even agree on formulations of the explananda. So what is it? Why all the apparent paradoxes?
Why, for instance, the fascination with koans?
Take the famous, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Apparently, the point of pondering this lies in realizing…
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