From Bill Griffith’s “Zippy”
“Human reality transcends itself toward the particular being that it would be if it were what it is. It is a perpetual transcending toward a coincidence with itself which is never given.”
-From “Zippy…Are We Having Fun Yet” © Bill Griffith
I know Sartre was pretty hard to understand…but for you philosophy buffs-does this make any sense?
Well, it’s from Being & Nothingness. Here’s a bit from Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed. (The link doesn’t allow quoting.
It’s more clear in the original French.
Really? In English, it’s incomprehensible. In French, it’s incomprehensible AND in a foreign language.
What he was saying was things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Really? I’d read it more in line with Plato’s theory of Ideal Forms. I.e, humans tend to view things while envisioning the ideal version of that thing, and comparing actual Reality vs that Ideal. But since our Reality is always shifting, there is no real Ideal to compare it to…
???
Wait, aren’t those saying the same thing in that there’s no ideal to hold “now” to?
That’s sounds like a better summary of what I was trying to suggest. We aspire to an ideal Form that can never actually Be. Fits with Existentialism as I grasp it…there is Nothing out there but our Existence, no Absolute Ideal to anchor existence on…
this is correct. We are constantly striving towards our idea of what we should be. But as there is no definition, no ideal form, not only is this personal, but it is also unattainable. As soon as you reach the place in your life that you spent all those years working towards, you realize that you want something else for yourself. Thus the existentialist dread. Instead of looking at it like “I can improve myself!” Sartre looks at it like “I can never truly be who I want to be.”
::checks “Answer Fundamental Question of Existence” off list::
Alongside
::engage in Zippy-based philosophical discussion::
