Reflections on Thinking and Being

Abstract

This article investigates the relation between thinking and being against the background of the logical antinomy of negation, which becomes apparent in so-called liar sentences (“The sentence you are presently reading is not true”). Despite the antinomy, thought is connected to being, in a twofold way. First, indirectly through the sensory consciousness we share with animals, and on this basis, second, in a genuinely human way, directly qua thought. However, the sensory connection is only latently or only potentially cognitive. Its cognitive potential must be made explicit and must become actualised by thinking. But then the immediate connection of thinking and being emerges on this basis (and due to it), namely, as an acausal onto-/logical entanglement of both sides in accordance with the subjectivity thesis (“Necessarily, the space-time system contains corporeal subjects”). The double-edged consequences of this for the status of religious consciousness are indicated at the end.