Between finitude and eternity
04
Apr
The Greek gods and myths were immortal, 
but their mixture with nature made them almost as human as men, they had vices so much so that they had their own goddess, the goddess Cacia or Kakía (Kακία), who personified vice and immorality, and was opposed to areté (virtue).
We’ve already posted about the differences in the concepts of immortality and eternity in Hannah Arendt and in her reading of Byung-Chul Han (see the post), the question that remains is how possible it is in the space-time we live in to be aware of and able to experience this desire for the eternal.
There are those who hope for a great miracle from science, freezing their bodies to wait for this future (cryogenics), the controversial Raymond Kurzweil wrote in 2005: The Singularity is Near: when humans transcend biology, and spent years preparing his body for immortality, but now at 77 he has reduced the amount of medication he takes for this, he made computer software at 15 and is one of Bill Gates’ advisors.
But human delirium will not give in to the most plausible and generous idea of eternity, the universe is there, now with the fantastic discoveries of the James Webb megatelescope there is already the theory that it has always been there, and another even more plausible one that time is an illusion.
A quote from Byung-Chul about Heidegger (in his Black Notebooks) is interesting: “What would happen if the presentiment of the silent power of inactive reflection were to disappear?” (Han, 2023, p. 63), of course the question is philosophical, yet it refers to being: “the presentiment is not deficient knowledge, it opens us up to being, to there, which escapes propositional knowledge” (idem).
It is a “preliminary step on the ladder of knowledge.” He writes, quoting Heidegger, to establish a pre-category of the conscious as Being-Disposed [Gestimmt-Sein], explaining: “It is not a subjective state that colors the objective world. It is the world … it is more objective than the object, but without itself being an object” (page 66).
So we “cannot dispose of the disposition. It takes us over“ (p. 67), not activity, but being-thrown [Geworfenheit] as original ontological passivity defines our original being-in-the-world” (idem, p. 67), so we have to deny it because the world “reveals itself in its unavailability” (idem), the disposition precedes all activity, and concludes, it is de-fining.
He even defines our thinking, which means “opening our ears”, listening and corresponding, and quotes Heidegger again: “Philosophy is the truly consummate correspondence that speaks insofar as it heeds the call of the being of the entity” (p. 68).
And he reflects on Artificial Intelligence, which “cannot think, because it is not capable of pathos. Suffering and suffering are states that cannot be reached by any machine“ (p. 69), man can reach renunciation, Heidegger thought: ”Renunciation is a passion for the unavailable … renunciation gives“ (p. 71), being: ”gives itself in renunciation. Thus, renunciation becomes an ‘gratitude'” (p. 72) again quoting Heidegger.
It is true that Heidegger is close to this feeling of eternity, and Byung-Chul Han is very close to it, writing: “the salvation of the Earth depends on this ethic of inactivity” and quoting Heidegger: “to save means, in fact: to leave something free in its own essence” (pg. 73)
