The existential acceptance

Even a moderately sustained consideration of epistemology- the study of the nature of knowledge and thought- will lead, sooner or later, to a single brutal, honest admission. An admission that, for a brief yet punishing moment, may leave one deeply unsettled. It is an admission, a realisation, and eventually an acceptance, that I found myself facing recently.

We simply cannot know.

There are a great many things we cannot know with absolute certainty in the course of our lives, and most likely we will pass from existence without ever knowing. Fundamental questions about our nature, about the universe and all of existence, are perhaps so fundamental that they cannot be answered. Ever.

But this is not what I speak of. By paring back these questions that rely yet on fundamental assumptions, on the fundamental assumption, by considering them over and over that single assumption can be separated from the rest and held up for what it is.

It is the oldest question of philosophy and epistemology, the one upon which all such bodies of thought rest, the question with which Descartes and countless others wrestled without ever fully besting:

Do I truly exist, and how can I ever be really sure of it?

Do I truly exist? The age old question that philosophers have loved to wax lyrical over for centuries. But, perhaps, this is still one of those fundamental questions we could never truly know. Cogito ergo sum- ‘I think, therefore I am’- has been challenged through the centuries yet seems to, largely, hold up. But such a simple, obvious expression of rationalist logic cannot grasp the complexity, the uncertainty, the in-deterministic nature of our existence. Nor does it account for the existence of anyone or anything else bar the subject’s consciousness. The subjects physical body, even, may simply be an illusion.

Yes, we may perceive the universe as purely deterministic, as cause and effect, as a + b = c, yet perception is not necessarily truth. Perhaps our linear, deterministic perception is merely a hazy afterimage, like the shadows cast by  the sun. Perhaps our minds, clearly far from their full evolutionary potential (whether for good or ill, I shudder to think), cannot endure the full complexity and chaos of existence, the absence and falsehood of the fundamental assumptions we hold so dear. We simply cannot know.

And here we come to crux of the matter- we cannot ever be truly, utterly sure of our existence, independent of our surroundings.

Not in the utter surety we look for in our lives, that we tell ourselves we see everywhere, because to accept otherwise might render us totally incapable of living the lives our simple, linear minds set for us.

The honest mind, upon making this admission, must come to accept it with that familiar incongruous duality of our race. We must accept the uncertainty, the frail incompetence of our minds to even begin to truly understand a universe, an existence far larger, more complex and more chaotic than we could possibly know. And for a long, torturous moment, we must let ourselves bask in that knowledge, to glory in the sheer, terrifying freedom that comes with releasing the human impulse to always know, always understand, and to accept that we simply cannot know for sure.

Wisest is he who knows he does not know.

Perhaps Socrates, the father of western philosophy, was way ahead of us all.