Nietzsche suggested that one of the most fundamental questions is whether the world is genuinely susceptible to rational explanation. This question, unfortunately, is almost never asked; we take it on faith- after all, we need faith in something.

This is also expressed nicely by Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet.

“Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it’s still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there’s something understandable.”

I am baffled by the fact that there are those who believe AI could somehow be the equal of human intelligence. My objection is this: human intelligence clearly has an organic component, which makes it rooted in, and part of, time.

Marko Pajevic, in his book Poetic Thinking. Now, says something similar (by way of Nietzsche):


“Nietzsche’s Zarathustra speaks of the great reason of the body, which he contrasts with the small reason of the mind. In fact, the mind must be placed in the context of the greater reason of the body, in the sense that everything is rooted in living form and in the making of forms. The juxtaposition of mind and form is obsolete, a form without a mind is nothing and a mind without form is unthinkable.”

One might also add that the artificial amputation of the mind from living form has been part of Western myth since at least Plato, as has the annihilation of time.

Whenever philosophers, discussing some essential aspect of life, begin to enumerate- two paths to transcendence, three categories of substance- I think… why? Why exactly two, why exactly three; immediately, it all seems like nonsense, and I stop reading. Nothing real can be delineated, chopped up, assigned a number.