Wednesday, December 26, 2007

The rest is ...

... Keeping Silence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

"Funny how when we think of ourselves as a thing, we truly come to acquire the attributes of that thing."

Our discomfort with silence is telling. Even I, who try to spend some time every morning in silence, feel that discomfort from time to time. I was made aware of this especially when I started watching the film Into Great Silence. I have since tried to curb my tendency to multitask. I also think that if we want to get at the truth of reality, we have to start with what we most directly experience of it - ourselves. And we do not know ourselves as machines or chemical reactions or even as effects of causes. We know ourselves as persons. The fundamental thing I know about myself is that I am I. Duns Scotus was right to emphasize the mystery of individuation (what makes this particular thing what it is in particular is precisely what it does not have in common with anything else).

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