Hi Marsha --
Ham,
What moved you to philosophy?
Your question, direct as it is, struck me as rather odd.
In fact I can't recall ever not being curious about the unknown. Like many
others here, I was raised in a nominally Christian household where church
and prayer were rarely mentioned, much less participated in, except for a
brief period during which I attended Sunday School at the corner 'YMCA' of
our plant town in New Jersey. My Catholic buddy Neal, whose dad was the
plant manager, acquainted me with the catechism while preparing for his
baptismal ceremony. I remember being fascinated by the mystical symbology
of this faith and Neal's blind acceptance of the Catholic dogma.
At about the time I started high school, my father decided it was time to
introduce the family to church. Later, after moving to Toledo, he arranged
to have my sister and me baptized at home by a minister who made house
calls. By that time I had explored philosophical tracts advertised by the
Rosicrucian Society, read a couple of books on Buddhism lent to me by a
neighbor, and even investigated the Jehovah's Witnesses who, I discovered,
were far more conversant with biblical history than any Christians we knew.
I began to realize that philosophy held more interest for me than religion
in college, where I took elective courses in Western Philosophy and Logic
while working for a B.S. in Biology as a pre-med student. That eventually
led me to Kant and his "Critique of Pure Reason", Schopenhauer's "Will to
Live", James's "Varieties", Chardin's "Phenomenonalism", Maslow's
"Psychology of Being", and Alan Watts' "Joyous Cosmology". But it was the
existentialists Sartre, Hegel, Heidegger, Abraham Maslow, and Paul Tillich,
among others, who kindled my interest in cosmology and the essence of
reality.
By age 30, although I had not worked out an ontology, it was clear to me
that one could not have a philosophy of life without a transcendent
foundation. Within a decade I had the manuscript for a book in progress,
but lacking a curriculum vitae or notoriety as an author, I was unable to
convince the tradebook editors that it was marketable. Not until last year,
when I had the time to rework much of this material for a general audience,
did I finally decide to self-publish "Seizing the Essence" through Xlibris.
(Needless to say, sales so far have been disappointing.)
Marsha, it is my belief that everyone's life, in one way or another, is a
search for reality. Man's exquisite sense of value and insatiable thirst
for knowledge are expressions of this quest. Whatever we may think of
religion and mysticism, few if any of us are true nihilists (in the sense of
denying a transcendent reality). This is evidenced by individuals in the
very act of clinging to life and its values, and by human society in its
struggle for survival and passion for "betterness". Whether we acknowledge
it or not, we are all philosophers at heart.
Thanks for surprising me with this question. I hope I've satisfied your
curiosity, if that is what prompted it.
Best regards,
Ham
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