Tyron Keith Maru V Sabal

For the German philosopher Martin Heidegger man in the contemporary age is living an inauthentic life. This inauthenticity he accounts for man’s misrelating to the world, that is, of things and other men. He sees this misrelating as a threat to man’s existence, that, if not given immediate attention leading towards a resolution, man is to perish together with his history. This inauthenticity that he speaks of is grounded in a forgetting, that is, the forgetting of being. But what is being? In its basic linguistic formulation it is understood as that which is, has existence and not nothing. Man is a being and so are things, and in this fundamental structure he can relate, make sense and know. And yet this definition does not capture its essence for it can easily be assigned to anything as long as it is, thus it can be reduced to a mere entity, but being is more than mere existence in space and time. Heidegger understands being to be that which gives significance or meaningful presence to things and men, that they are as they are is because of their being. Man is always attuned to being, of his own being and that of others. He is able to understand because it is being that which grants knowing, just as a book is a book or man is a man, it is because being gives to them their designation, so there is a relationship made possible by an encounter between beings, that they be known and understood there is harmonious relationship to develop. This is conditioned by a primordial understanding, of man having not yet forgotten, he understands things and other men unto their being.
But everyday man is surrounded with entities, himself being one, and this made him grow familiar with them. This familiarity turned man’s attitude towards a neglect, that is, since he thinks that he already knows their being, it no longer becomes a matter of continuously knowing and understanding them, but instead it happens that there is a taking for granted. The familiarity leads man to take beings for granted unto their essence, thus he forgets and no longer knows, worst is that man will not even know that he no longer knows, that he no longer remembers. Man lives in a state of oblivion. He relates to entities as if he understands them in their being, but is not. This is evident in a chaotic epoch that man is now situated.
A clear example of this situation is man’s abuse of the environment and its resources. Man is here seen as a mindless consumer who views the environment as a reserve where goods are stocked, waiting and ready for consumption. He challenges the environment to give up all of that she has in order to provide reaching to a point even when it is no longer necessary, but because of man’s disorientation, that in turn made him selfish, he could no longer resist and just keeps going. These resulted to the natural resources now running dry and that sooner it could no longer provide. Man endangers his world and himself, of this situation he is blind. Global warming and other environmental calamities are results of these abuses. If man is to save himself, he must find a way to retrieve his original understanding of being, that is, of himself and others. An effort towards a re-establishing of the fundamental relation must be attempted. The researcher gives a proposal as to how a retrieve is to be accomplished, and that is through the asking of the fundamental question, that is, of “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?”
This question is no ordinary question, and the researcher makes the contention that the asking of the question develops to a pragmatic resolution of the problem where from the forgetfulness of being, even before making the attempt that it be recalled, the question is first to be asked in order to ground any other future questioning, and in order to establish a solid basis for declaring the retrieve of being as necessary and critical for man’s survival. Here the researcher inquires if there be still a possibility for a retrieve, and if there is, how will man proceed with such a possibility.