Traditional Presentation of Being and Its Implications as the Source of Conflict and Crisis

Afeez Ayinde Sufianu ()
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Afeez Ayinde Sufianu: University of Lagos

A chapter in Peace Studies for Sustainable Development in Africa, 2022, pp 335-344 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The traditional presentation of Being emerges as an attempt to search and know the intelligibly fundamental principles of reality. Traditional thinkers were perplexed and wondered about the unity in the diversity of the universe. Also about how things exist in order, harmony, about the constant rise and set of the sun, the rainy season, and so on. The curiosity of humans to search for the ultimate reality, inevitably set themselves into the task of searching for a rational explanation and general principle to give a proper account of the world beyond a theological explanation of the universe. This theological explanation is said to be pseudo, imaginative, myth, irrational, and therefore, does not qualify to be held as a basic principle of the universe. That is, the world or universe needs to be rationally and intelligibly comprehended. This need made the ancient thinkers seek fundamental reality in a way that could appeal to human reasoning. The curiosity and perplexity to give an adequate explanation of the universe (i.e., both the man and the world) gave rise to fundamental questions. The ancient thinkers introduced water, air, earth, and fire as the elementary or fundamental substances of the universe in competition for pseudo-account. This search was carried on until Parmenides categorically asserted that the ultimate reality is a Being. For him, Being is and non-Being is not. This assertion manifests the problems of Being in philosophy and thereby created a kind of destructive, chaos, fixism, rigidity, dogmatism, fanaticism, and intolerant implications in social parlance. The traditional presentation of Being as Being is the one, permanent and unchangeable cum non-Being is not. Non-Being according to Parmenides is a way of opinion that is contrary to the way of truth and a mere illusion of the mind. This way of presentation of Being is what we intend to address in this chapter and not the meaning of Being in general nor as Dasein. Beyond this, is to take into consideration the problems and implications of this traditional presentation of Being in social parlance and the medicine prescribed by the phenomenologist especially, Martin Heidegger to cure the problems.

Keywords: Being; Conflict; Crisis; Martin Heidegger; Jim Unah (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-92474-4_27

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