Life: Matter or Spirit? A Philosophical Investigation into the Whatness of Life.

Abstract: Life is what we have in abundance but live in so much scarcity of it. It is a phenomenon we are most intimate with yet never fully owning it. We never have enough life neither do we ever live fully. Life is the essence of our being, yet we are perennially perplexed about what life is, what it is all about and what source it comes from. We do not even know the limits of life. Life is what we have while spending it. In fact, the only way we can have life is by spending it. The moment we are born, we start dying. Our biological clock kicks off, ticking by the seconds towards our death. We are a priori, programmed to die. Yet, it is by running this biological clock that we actually live. It is in that process that life actually manifests. What is life? What is the nature of life? Is life a physical or spiritual phenomenon? Is it a third force, a sort of energy that is neither spiritual nor physical but in a class of its own? What is the essence of life? That is the focus of this research. It is about philosophically probing life as it manifests with the purpose of giving meaning to its manifestations and establishing common denominators that could point to the essence of life. The approaches adopted in this research are phenomenological and analytic.