Thinking and Being

175 Pages·2018·6.372 MB·English

by  Irad Kimhi

Thinking and Being

Thinking and Being
Irad KImhI
Harvard UniversiT y Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts & London, England / 2018
Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Kimhi, Irad, author.
Title: Thinking and being / Irad Kimhi.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press,
2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017049673 | ISBN 9780674967892 (cloth : alk.
paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Frege, Gottlob, 1848–1925. | Analy sis (Philosophy) |
Thought and thinking. | Logic. | Ontology. | Language and logic.
Classification: LCC B808.5 .K56 2018 | DDC 128 / .33— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017049673.
Jacket design: Lisa Roberts
Jacket art: (detail) Bedroom with Photo (2005) by Diti Almog, 9 × 18˝
| acrylic on aircraft plywood
Contents
Introduction 1
1 . The Life of p 25
2. The Dominant Sense of Being 68
3. On the Quietism of the Stranger 117
Acknowl edgments 163
Index 165

Thinking and Being

Introduction
1. The Gate of Philosophy
It is night.1 A young man is carried in a glowing chariot by the Daughters
of the Sun to the gates of the Ways of Night and Day. Th ere he is welcomed
by a nameless goddess who will guide him toward Real ity / Truth (aletheia).
This is the opening scene of Parmenides’s didactic poem On Nature.
It is the first work of philosophy, where this is to be understood as the
logical study of thinking and of what is (being). One can look to this
poem for the origin of the very idea of philosophical logic— the idea of
a study that achieves a mutual illumination of thinking and what is:
an illumination through a clarification of human discursive activity in
which truth (real ity, aletheia) is at stake. Philosophical logic, so under-
stood, is a first- personal engagement from within the activity of thinking,
one which allows the articulation and comprehension of thinking to
emerge from out of itself. The personal, so understood, is the logical.2 It
1 Or maybe not. See, for example, Mitchell Miller, “Ambiguity and Transport: Reflec-
tions on the Proem to Parmenides’ Poem,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 30
(2006): 18–19.
2 It is wrong, I s hall argue, to dissociate the concern that I have, in d oing philosophical
logic, with my own thinking, from that which I have with the thinking of o thers— the
thinking of t hose with whom, for example, I can agree or disagree and from whom I can
learn. In par tic u lar, it is wrong to dissociate logic as a comprehension and articulation of
the activity of the logical “I” from a comprehension of the thinking of the empirical “I.”