Philosophy, Fiction, and What Happens

Meditations, such as this one, written on a Sunday morning, are best left to journals and then cast aside, but I have promised myself I would write something in my blog each day. I wished I had a quick and meager story to post, but I have been working on my latest big story, which has taken up the better part of my paltry imagination.

I reread the “Introduction to Being and Time” last night and read well into “Letter on Humanism”. I am slowly learning Heidegger’s philosophical concerns and quickly becoming a fan of his, not withstanding the difficulty of his writing. I suspect that if I read German, the whole thing would go a lot easier.

Heidegger makes me think there is still room for philosophy and that it will not be completely nudged aside by science. I am thinking more in terms of philosophy of mind, the current hot area. In much the same way, Heidegger makes me think there is adequate room for fiction too.

Fiction and philosophy run together, blend into each other, and describe the feeling of what happens in our lives. If not siblings, they are cousins. The two, in their making, are a blend of imagination and analysis. It easy to assign fiction to imagination and philosophy to analysis, but try writing either a novel or a philosophical essay and you quickly find that imagination and analysis are bedrock elements required to complete either project.

I guess that is why I have quickly become entranced by what Heidegger has to say. He explores and elucidates what is behind the immediate experience of life, the feeling of what happens. Good fiction does that too.