The Strangeness of the Ordinary

By nature, the philosopher is attuned to the strangeness of the ordinary.  By experience, he encounters the hostility of those who don't want to hear about it. "What's the problem?" they ask querulously.  I had a colleague who sneeringly dismissed Milton Munitz's The Mystery of Existence by its title alone.  He bristled at the word 'mystery.' 

There is a certain sort of prosaic, work-a-day mind that thinks that all is clear or can be made clear in short order.  Overreacting to the mystery-monger, he goes to the opposite extreme.  Recoiling from the portentousness of a Heidegger, he may adopt the silly stance of a Paul Edwards.

Being? Existence?  What's the big deal?  Existence is just a propositional function's being sometimes true!

For details and polemic, see Paul Edwards' Heidegger's Confusions: A Two-Fold Ripoff.