Saitya Brata Das

Man is an open existence, exposed to mortality and free towards the coming that is revealed to him in the lightening flash of language. Free towards, and endowed with the ever new possibility of beginning, the mortal is endowed with the gift of language that remains beyond his death: here alone lies redemption for the mortals. It is this affirmative question of the coming time that is pursued in this work: it occurs as and in a configuration of questions, not constituting a system: question of mortality and temporality, the flash of language that reveals man - beyond any predication - his finitude, the opening where man finds himself to welcome the coming, and finally redemption in the coming itself in the existential attunement of hope. This article attempts, reading the works of Schelling, Heidegger and Benjamin, to think the gift of language as redemptive, beyond any appropriation, in the face of evil whose possibility is given to the mortal alone.

Philosophical thinking, as it is thinking of existence, is essentially finite thinking. This is to say that as thinking of existence, philosophical thinking is essentially also thinking of finitude. This ‘also' is not the accidental relationship between existence and finitude. Rather, to think existence in its finitude, insofar as existence is finite, is to think existence in its existentiality. Philosophy that gives itself the task of thinking the relationship between existence and finitude, must in the same gesture, be concerned with its own finitude: to philosophize is not only to think the finitude of existence, but the very finitude of thinking that thinks finite existence. To philosophize is not only to philosophize the finitude of existence as such, but also in so far as philosophising itself is a task which is essentially in itself finite. To assume as the task of thinking the finitude of existence is to think the very finitude of philosophical thinking: this is the profound relationship that exists between existence and philosophy, which is that philosophizing existence and an existential philosophy are essentially finite. This is perhaps what Socrates says of philosophizing: ‘to philosophize is to learn how to die.' "To philosophize is to learn how to die": this is to say, to philosophize is to learn that philosophy and existence are essentially finite. Philosophy and existence belong to finitude and gifts of finitude; therefore to philosophize is to learn how existence is this gift. To be able to learn how existence is this gift of finitude, to be able to assume this gift that makes existence essentially finite, which is to be able to assume existence at all, is to be able to die.' Learning to die' then comes to signify the ability of dying, which is in the same gesture, the ability of existing: existence, and dying at the end must be this ability, of existing and dying. Philosophizing must provide, then, the learning of this ability: to be capable of death and existence. To be capable of death is to master it, to be equal to it, to surpass or transcend it and to be immortal. There seems to be a paradox here which we must bring to thought. If to philosophize is to learn how to die, to be equal to or master death, it thereby means to be immortal, to be able not to die, to be capable of immortality; by learning to die, by learning to be capable of death, we become capable of not-dying, or of immortality. To learn to die is to learn how not to die.