Tuesday, July 8, 2014

I was so inspired by a question on Yahoo! Answers that I am re-posting my answer here

Q: Looking for quote "I exist now"? 
I might be wrong but something along those lines, I heard someone in my class say it but wasn't able to ask from where it came. Not referring to the Cogito Ergo Sum.

[This seems exactly like someone who was in my philosophy class years ago...]

A: Nietzsche has a number of quotes like this, referring to his concept of the eternal return: 

"If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence". See Wikipedia on Nietzschean Affirmation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nietzschean... . 

I also have my own quotes (Nathan Larkin Coppedge: philosopher, artist, inventor, poet, still a student): 

1. "How to count a step along the path, if the path is one?" 
2. "To cause harm to living things is to accept and revel in the imperfections of the world" 
3. "Existence is the zone of neutrals" 

There is also the phenomenological reference to the concept of 'das ding ann sich' --- the thing in itself. This mirrors Greek concepts of Haecceity ("thisness") and Eudaemonia ("Happiness for the common good"). 

There is also the traditional phrase "existence precedes essence", which has been re-used so much as to lose almost all meaning of attribution. A similar phrase is "existence is intentionality". 

In some other cases, Sartre would be a good bet, for example, his concept of Despair. 

There are some quotes by Sartre that may have been brought up: 

"I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating." ---J.P. Sartre 

"One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life." ---J.P. Sartre 

Again, Nathan Coppedge: "While I die I am dead," meaning immortality.

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