WHAT IS THINKING

Hammad Raza He who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors (Martin Heidegger) Human beings can think. It is their being, science of their consciousness, which makes them to think about their past, present and future. Our retrospection in the past and projection into the future is the sole process of thinking. The life of ours is an extension. We think because we think that we are thinking. It is quite possible that we do not think, but we do. Most of us tend to be what we are by the way of thinking, speaking in existentialistic terms. We think about those things about which can think only. We do not try to give meanings to those things which are outside our thinking-domain or which are not our business as usual. But why? Because we think that we cannot think about those things or those things do not attract us to think about them. It is quite possible for us to think in a certain phase of life about those things that we take for granted, but they pose a different set of problems in an uncertain, coming phase of life. The relevancy of time is not as much relevant as it is in the process of thinking. Thinking in its process is easy to do than understanding philosophy or metaphysics but difficult to understand as a process of mind. It connects mind with body, outside with inside and meaninglessness with meaningfulness. Philosophy

deals with soul of human beings. Every philosophy grows in a certain type of culture, but thinking is a prerogative of space and time. The task of thinking that confronts thinking today is, in fact, unprecedented. An entirely new mode of thought is now called for. This new thought is easier than conventional philosophy but harder too, because it demands more careful use of language. Problematicization of thinking poses contradictions when we tend to think about something or something of something. Thinking about something gives us superficial, surface meanings of the being about which thing as something. But thinking about something is also harmless due to superficial way of thinking about something. But it is an exercise in futility as this sort of thinking does not project human beings into the future or relegate them into the past. Thinking about something of something is a thinking about the being of beingsthe essence of beings. This thinking leads us into deconstructive techniques of viewing the world, reading a text, analyzing a problem, criticizing an argument etc. It gives numerous meanings to a single phenomenon, occurrence, object, method, science or situation. It tries to find out discontinuities in the linear progression of historyahistorical account of history in postmodern sense.

Thinking about something of something is utilitarian way of thinkingwe think about something because of something. The problem of thinking in modern times is that we think only about those things which concerns us or about which we aim at. Narcissism is an ultimate result of this kind of thinking. We can think in a better way, if we start thinking beyond our interests or in good things.