Life or Being: What Possible Existence between Being and Living?

Abstract

The author argues that being-thought, in keeping with the ‘intellectualist choice’ of the Greeks, has narrowed the thinkable to the question of whether something is or is not. The discourse-reason (logos) of the Greeks necessarily lends itself to construction and to its result, which is knowledge. Knowledge in turn trades the singular for generality, e.g. beautiful things for beauty. Because what it seeks is nowhere to be found in the world, such philosophy has located pure in-itself-ness in the beyond of metaphysics, reducing life to metabolism, a shuttling between the extrema of lack and satiety. The Chinese language, because it lacks morphological markers, an imperative mood, and a verb ‘to be’, sidesteps ontology (being-thought) and thus hints at a more fruitful perspective on living, elucidating the notion of ex-istence as a way to provide an exteriority from which to examine living, in all its immediacy, without recourse to any metaphysical beyond.