Advice for Philosophy Undergrads

Please only participate in this discussion if you have a Philosophy Batchelor’s degree, or are currently pursuing one.

Being or Becoming? And why?

And when you answer please shout out your university and year. Thank you.

being

Cal State Dominguez Hills 1971

Backtracking to Silhouette: back in the 60’s you didn’t have to go around hanging your head down cause you liked Heidegger, on the contrary.

Why?

Why not!

Don’t troll the new guy :laughing:

Not a particularly specific question, obviously, so your terse replies are at least understandable.

He probably wants some Heidegger help or something from the sounds of it. I’ve heard a few people here reference him, but most don’t appear to be of the standard of education that he’s requesting.

For such a general question, I’d pick “becoming” as per Heraclitus. That’s how reality seems to be to me.
States such as “being” seem more of a useful tool for analysis to model reality, rather than a direct description of reality as it is.

It was a different time when it was cool to be hip.it was cool to get inside your head and see the world &, I mean the whole world there.

Why not just post the assignment? Might get more help that way. 5 words…not enough context.

Being! because like Newton, man he got thousands of miles looking at things as objects, all those nice formulas, still working on the local level, billiard balls us all. And then like the Periodic Table, essence. We are made of stuff, everything is made of stuff. Combinations of stuff. Then the whole Platonic forms how the universe seems to run on math, it stand consistantly behind all we encounter. Natural laws and all that. Laws. That stuff don’t change, memories and the essential thrust of my soul, so Being.

But then

Becoming! Wait a minute there have been changes to those laws, certainly back in the Big Bang era, but evidence mounting that some constants and ‘Laws’ have changed over time. And then a Body, my body, it ain’t a thing, it’s more like a river. Changing Heraclitianly all the time, matter being replaced. Processes, nothing stable. Then zoom in some more and we don’t find particles we find waves or particles in superposition waiting to be looked at or committed in some way to either a location or a velocity a la Heisenberg. So not things, and not even determined as in determinism but seemingly probablistic. Quantum foam, potentials, maybes, tendencies, particles interfering with themselves, a universe in flux with no objects. And this I, or ‘I’, it keeps changing tastes, energy, attitudes, let alone when reincarnated.

So it is very clearly both, each to the utter exclusion of the other. It is Being not Becoming and it is Becoming not Being.