Philosophical Conversations

Me and Nick had a profound philosophical conversation last night, which consisted mostly of him trying to explain Heidegger's text, Poetry, Language, Thought to me, while I responded with something I like to call "ass-talk," which is essentially me talking out of my butt. I decided to post what I got out of the conversation because even though it's muddled (I am obviously not a philosopher), I like it! Basically this is what I got out of me and Nick's discussion:

As far as I can tell, one part of Heidegger's philosophy is that we will never be able to prove the existence of anything without man as a medium. In other words, everything as we know it and understand it originates from us, and if we ceased to exist, then there would be no evidence what-so-ever that anything else existed either. So, for instance, God--or the idea of a god or gods, and because Nick loves talking about the flaws in religion :)--exists through us only. Without us and our conciousness--which I concluded from my clumsy attempts to sum up what Nick was saying, we have no real control over--we would have no concept of God and the idea of God would cease to exist. Thus, in a sense, we have created God. Perhaps for other beings there is an understanding of a higher being, or spirituality of some sort, but because we are only able to understand things that affect us and consequently have the effect of providing us with the tools to create "knowledge" as we know it, we will never really be certain. The essential problem (with religious groups or types, for instance) with saying one thing is truth and another is false, is that even things that are false are true, because by saying it you have made it a reality and reality is truth. Thus, what I have just said, is now a truth. Language is magical (or flawed...) like that :). By saying this, you can also say that what religious groups say is also a truth, but one needs to understand that it is only a truth as far as we are concerned because outside of us and our conciousness it ceases to exist.

And that is the profound, and somewhat illogical and holey understanding I came away with last night when Nick decided to tell me about his reading material. Of course, I may have completely misunderstood what Nick was saying (but the above sounds existential to me, so I may not be too far off :) ), and am definitely not speaking for him since the above was decidedly "ass-talk," but there is something that is inherently true in what I just spouted, so I am of a mind to go with it. We also talked about art, and Heidegger's thougts on that, but I don't feel like getting into it, and if I did, probably would mess it up anywho (as I've probably already done)...so au revoir for now.