Knowing and Unknowing as Cardinal Virtues of the Creative Attitude

Perhaps the single most essential foundation for a healthy and satisfying existence is a reliable sense that one is, that one has the right to be, the power and authority to be, just as long as one is. Indeed, so foundational is the sense of being and belonging that we take it for granted like the air we breathe and the ground on which we walk. However, when this primordial relation to one's own being is missing or disturbed, the consequence can be an intractable and profoundly disruptive sense of ontological doubt and insecurity. Although the struggle for a sense of ontological security and existential sovereignty takes place largely in the realm of prereflective everyday (ontic) existence, Heidegger's phenomenological hermeneutic analysis of human existence (Daseinsanalytik) can provide a fruitful philosophical ground in the search for self-understanding, albeit after the fact. Such Heideggerian concepts as Being-as-such (Sein als solche or Seyn), Being-in-the-world (Dasein), and the gathering-of-letting-be-ness (Gelassenheit), among others, are discussed with reference to the problems of human identity, alienation, and the struggle for a sense of being and authentic selfhood.