The Third Mountain: A Meditation on Chaos and Order

Abstract

Thinking is a way of being that isalways in danger of clinging to merelyconceptual distinctions. The oppositionbetween Chaos and Order bounds all modesof Western thought, and this means that italways manages to impose Order at some level orother: for example, the kind of Order thatdivides Chaos from Order, or my project fromyour project, or silence from speech. This wayof thinking is not necessarily regrettable,but it is or can become an impediment. Thispaper interprets the relation between Chaos andOrder in Western thought, using the work ofSartre, Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida, Heidegger,and Wittgenstein as its principal examples. Italso speculates on the possibility of a way ofbeing that does not reject dualism, but doesnot cling to it either.