Nov 5, 2025 06:20 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 5, 2025 08:15 PM by Magical Realist.)
It is easily concluded that all our knowledge of our world is mediated by our sensations and perceptions of it. It is how anything is made immediately present to us. It is the foundation of empiricism, which in turn is the basis of Science. That the world shows itself only thru our senses. Or does it?
Consider the sun. Immediate sensory experience reveals it as a blindingly radiant circle gradually transiting the sky, and little more besides that. To be sure SOMEthing is made present by our perceptions of it. But the sun as it is in itself, as a star in outer space with such and such properties and relations to the universe, is only grasped thru thinking the sun. I call this thoughtful consideration. The sensory data we receive about the sun does not really make the sun present to us. It only manifests to us an image, a view, a snapshot, with no understanding of what we are seeing. Thinking is the only way we encounter the being in itself of the sun in all of its rich details and history and nature. It is THIS that thoughtful consideration unveils for us---the facticity of the sun as a star in the universe. Sensory perception reveals appearances. But only thinking reveals Being.
"Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home."---Martin Heidegger
Consider the sun. Immediate sensory experience reveals it as a blindingly radiant circle gradually transiting the sky, and little more besides that. To be sure SOMEthing is made present by our perceptions of it. But the sun as it is in itself, as a star in outer space with such and such properties and relations to the universe, is only grasped thru thinking the sun. I call this thoughtful consideration. The sensory data we receive about the sun does not really make the sun present to us. It only manifests to us an image, a view, a snapshot, with no understanding of what we are seeing. Thinking is the only way we encounter the being in itself of the sun in all of its rich details and history and nature. It is THIS that thoughtful consideration unveils for us---the facticity of the sun as a star in the universe. Sensory perception reveals appearances. But only thinking reveals Being.
"Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home."---Martin Heidegger
