Article Reality's foundations lie beyond reason

[C C]

https://iai.tv/articles/realitys-foundat..._auid=2020

INTRO: We like to think of the world as ultimately fully intelligible, a place that we will one day be able to make complete sense of, emotionally and rationally, a place where we might feel at home. But while this dream has seduced philosophers and scientists alike, it's ultimately a fantasy, argues G. Anthony Bruno. Whenever we try to make sense of the world—through experience, reason, art, or anything else—we find that our activity is shaped by certain brute conditions that are simply given, without reason. Philosophy’s task is not to dispel this strangeness, but to find how to live productively within it... (MORE - details)

[Magical Realist]

We must therefore ask anew whether bruteness is impermissible or unavoidable. We must ask anew whether we are incipiently at home in an intelligible world or face the uncanniness of being in that very world. We must ask anew whether we are held by the absolute freedom of thought or are thrown into the groundless givenness of being. Ich bin or Es gibt. There is, it seems, no third.

The very foundations of intelligibility are themselves grounded in a mode of thinkingly engaging with the world. We arrive on this treadmill of reason in progress, feeling as if we are touching the roots of reality. We are not. It is all already set up for us thru history and language and culture and society. The only way to get a real feel for any sort of beyond outside of the vivarium we find ourselves encased in is thru the experience of the uncanny and the strange, which is always gnawing from underneath at the crust of our worldview. And we will either encounter something totally new and unexpected, or go mad trying.