Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

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Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 6:59 pm

anaxarchos
02-06-2007, 01:07 AM
.
(Somewhere else, I said that I thought “Plato was a jerk”. Raphaelle asked me why I thought so. I said I would find a thing I had written on the subject. Of course, I couldn’t find it so I had to explain below… serves me right for being so disorganized but since there seems to be interest on this board on “Idealism versus Materialism”, it’s probably worth doing. Maybe this time, I won’t lose it…)


Image

The holy trinity of Greek philosophy is Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Historically, they arrive in that order and, according to legend, each was the student of the former. While this is figuratively true, it is not entirely clear that it was actually true. Of the three, little is known about Socrates except through stories. He left nothing written behind and actually claimed to mistrust that medium. Socrates was also credited with being "playful". He continuously argued for the non-intuitive and non-obvious. It's not clear that Socrates' real gift wasn't in simply formulating the questions and a way to discuss them. The great "schools" of Greek philosophy, Sophism and Skepticism, actually did no more than that.

Plato, who came next, claimed little for himself but, instead, appeared as the chronicler of Socrates' Dialogues. That Plato was much more than a simple scribe and that both Socrates and he appear in is writings, and often in obvious opposition, is fairly clear. More than that, among the Greeks there was the idea of "Theseus' Paradox". Theseus was the semi-mythical founder-hero of ancient Athens and in his honor the Greeks preserved his ship. According to Plutarch, “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." That debate, notwithstanding, it is entirely clear to me that Plato replaced the planks of Socrates' ship.

Finally, came Aristotle, who arguably was the most important of the three, the starting point of Western Logic, and the father of the classical tradition. Aristotle was, in nearly every way, the anti-Plato.

The question on which Plato and Aristotle diverged, fittingly enough, was on the nature of knowledge. Did knowledge come from within or without, before or after experience, “a priori” or “a posteriori”? Do we know, therefore we see, or do we see, therefore we know? What I have just said is a significant crudification but I am not ashamed. It is useful to see Plato as the father of all Religion, the King of the Static, a prisoner of human nature, and the mere receptacle of innate knowledge revealed according to a drama written independently of humans and unaffected by their efforts. In turn, Aristotle becomes the father of Science, an organic human that interacts with the remainder of the natural world not only to eat, and drink, and stay warm but also to think, and to understand, and to grow. To him nothing is innate, and the drama must be lived and understood first, to be written later.

While I readily admit that it ain’t really that simple, it’s close enough a starting point to get to Idealism versus Materialism, once again…

The quickest and most efficient way of coming to understand Idealist ontology is to go directly to the forefather of all Idealists - Plato. In The Republic, his major treatise on the ideal state, Plato has given us the famous Allegory of the Cave.l Imagine, he suggests, a group of people sitting in a dark cave chained down in such a way that they can look in only one direction, toward the expanse of wall on one side of the cave. Several yards behind them is an open fire providing light, and between the fire and where they are sitting is a raised runway along which figures move, casting their shadows upon the wall. The individuals, chained so that they face the wall, cannot see the fire or the figures, but only the shadows. Now, if we imagine them confined to this position for their entire lives, we must expect them to consider the shadows as real, genuinely existent beings. Not knowing anything else, having no three-dimensional beings to use for comparison, these prisoners in the cave would come to believe that what they saw before them represented true reality.

Now imagine that they are unchained and can turn around to see the fire and the figures which have occasioned the shadows. Certainly, says Plato, they would readjust their conception of reality, altering it to fit the new perceptual data that their eyes are now able to collect. Moving about the cave, they begin to get a sense of the three-dimensional character of their environment; and they conclude by thinking that they had been fooled all along, and that now they truly know what reality is.

But then imagine that they are led from the cave into the blinding brilliance of a noonday sun outside. Wouldn’t they, asks Plato, be struck dumb by the complete impossibility of it? Wouldn’t they turn away in complete bewilderment, not wishing to see the real truth of their world? Wouldn’t they gradually retreat to their cave, preferring its more manageable environment to the fantastically incredible world of space and sunlight?

Well, then, suggests the allegory, here we humans are in our own cave - the world as we see it with our five senses. It looks real enough - rocks and trees and birds and men. But it is actually only a world of images, three-dimensional “shadows” of another, more genuinely real world - a world of pure ideas - standing “behind” this world we see and hear and touch. And this realm of pure ideas or “pure mind” is so absolute in its perfection, so superlatively complete in every way, as to possess an intensity beyond the reach of the human mind. Like the sun that blinds our eyes, the “Absolute Mind” completely overwhelms our feeble intellects; and we turn away from it, as we turn our eyes from the sun, bedazzled and “injured” by our attempt to perceive it. And so, preferring a more manageable and comfortable existence, even if less genuinely real, we retreat to our “cave,” the world of sense perception, permitting our intellects only occasional and fleeting glimpses of ultimate reality.

Plato, The Republic, Book VII

But is this really the way human beings act? How long is it before they stop looking at shadows and start to compare textures, to calculate depths, and to think by virtue of their experience? And, since humans are quintessentially social, how long before they compare and test that experience? And though, Plato wouldn’t think of it, how long before they sense their chains and their cave and begin to plot their escape? Finally, to turn away from the sun may be the first reaction, but how long does it really take them to acclimatize, to “internalize” the new reality, to accept “upgraded” perception, and to take their recent “revelation” for granted… and to entirely forget the shock? And hasn’t this question been practically resolved through the actual history of knowledge (“creationism” and Darwinaphobia, notwithstanding)?

In another discussion, Plato asks whether a perfect mathematic description, once it achieves its "perfection" could not suddenly become "real" by virtue of its ideal realization?

Ummm... No... It couldn't.

For me, Plato is also the “father” of pompous, disconnected, disembodied ideas, a born apologist and historical speech-writer for a thousand William F. Buckleys to come. He hits me as a “jerk”.

To butcher Aristotle, ”Inimicus Plato sed magis amica veritas”…

I like Plato, but I like the truth more.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:01 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-06-2007, 02:13 PM

No offense but you are lost in your simplifications here.

There is obviously something to Plato's allegory of the cave, even modern science bears witness to that. Consider the divide between the microscopic and the macroscopic. Consider the divide between us and the Universe as a whole. And that is just divisions by size.

I get your point that any crackpot can claim that we are in The Matrix and conclude that no one can prove him wrong but, THAT was Plato's point too. You might be getting wrapped up in the Platonic school of thought, just like how Adam Smith is a 'hero of capitalism" because he's worshiped by today's psuedo-libertarian (keep your government out of my affairs!) venture capitalists. It really does matter what the man himself said (in context of course).

Plus, I think you are more pissed at Plato's contention that everyone will retreat back to the cave, than his Allegory. Rather than make a long, drawn out exposition here's a Lovecraft quote that sums it up:


The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality... That we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Not to mention you've named dropped Hegel quite frequently who was more of an Idealist than Plato (IMO). His stuff was pure philosophical speculation..

EDIT: and before you come back with Hegel laying the groundwork for the Marxist view of history as class struggle I view that as after-the-fact-revisionism. I mean if you stretch it far enough, you can claim ANYTHING lays the groundwork for history as class struggle.

EDIT #2: and if you claim Newton as the ideological heir to Aristotle then I think you are once again confused.

Hypotheses non fingo
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:06 pm

anaxarchos
02-06-2007, 03:03 PM

Good. A debate. Plato and Hegel too... My lucky day. Before I start, I thought you were on the road? Why're you still around? This is going to take a while so don't start my engine and disappear on me.

In reverse order, here goes:

1) Adam Smith IS a 'hero of capitalism", and for good reason. He is the basis of modern economics. What the man said himself is not in the least inconsistent with that heroism. You gotta be blind to miss it (that means you). I had intended to do this one later, as you know, but I'll go here if we get through the other 2.

2) It's Plato himself that bugs me... and my simplification is not relevent. You are "bluffing" as the English say.

3) Name drop Hegel, huh? OK. Since you slapped my face with the glove, I choose this one to begin with. Of course Hegel is an idealist (Absolute Mind/Absolute Spirit). So what? That ain't the premise and no revisionism is needed. The interest is in his "dialectic", or between us friends, his theory of "motion". It isn't just Marx who claimed to stand Hegel on his feet. Yes Hegel is an idealist (as was Kant)... but Hegel is also the one who makes his own idealism irrelevent. That is the premise.

If you really want to do this and are not just "blowing off steam", I am happy to take first shot. I'll stick to Phenomonology of Mind (the preface is short enough to give us a common reference) unless you want to go somewhere else.

How about it? Are you game?

Or is this just a "parting shot" before you hit the road?

On Edit: the "theory of motion" was just for you (De motu corporum). Despite what you may think, I'm not the least interested in abstract shit. If we debate, we do it De mundi systemate.

But, yes, you got the germ of it. I think Lovecraft is totally full of it, at least to the extent that you have quoted him.

.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:07 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-06-2007, 07:04 PM
Well the tornadoes that hit down here kinda changed my plans. Gotta wait for the FEMA check anyway and help with the clean-up a little bit. I rode out the tornado in a mobile home so thats definitely playing with fire. Tried to rush out, got smacked in the chest with a BBQ grill.

So anyway

1) Adam Smith IS a 'hero of capitalism", and for good reason. He is the basis of modern economics. What the man said himself is not in the least inconsistent with that heroism. You gotta be blind to miss it (that means you). I had intended to do this one later, as you know, but I'll go here if we get through the other 2.

I actually don't know, or care really. This is Maidread's argument, not mine. I only wanted to draw the (possible) parallel.

2) It's Plato himself that bugs me... and my simplification is not relevent. You are "bluffing" as the English say.

OK, I'm not sure I see the distinction you are drawing, but all I really care to defend is a. the allegory of the cave and b. the fact that science and 'materialism' have not been grounded in Aristotelian 'understanding' or immanence since Newton at least. Some people actually trace it back to the Cartesian coordinate system instead, but, well, "I put forth no hypothesis"


Kurt Gödel, who worked with Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, has proven that you cannot trust views from SUBSET reference frames no matter how good they look to you from within that SUBSET reference frame.

3) Name drop Hegel, huh? OK. Since you slapped my face with the glove, I choose this one to begin with. Of course Hegel is an idealist (Absolute Mind/Absolute Spirit). So what? That ain't the premise and no revisionism is needed. The interest is in his "dialectic", or between us friends, his theory of "motion". It isn't just Marx who claimed to stand Hegel on his feet. Yes Hegel is an idealist (as was Kant)... but Hegel is also the one who makes his own idealism irrelevent. That is the premise.

OK, maybe we should slow down a little bit, because what you are calling Motion I've traditionally seen expressed as Spirit with at least some of the attendant religious implications. Maybe we also need to go back and hammer out what Marxism really says (even in the abstract) about religion.

If you really want to do this and are not just "blowing off steam", I am happy to take first shot. I'll stick to Phenomonology of Mind (the preface is short enough to give us a common reference) unless you want to go somewhere else.

How about it? Are you game?

Or is this just a "parting shot" before you hit the road?

No, see above for an explanation of that, I'm definitely game and its entirely possible I've got it all backwards here.

But, yes, you got the germ of it. I think Lovecraft is totally full of it, at least to the extent that you have quoted him.

Maybe you've never heard of it but I would love to hear your ideas on The Singularity by Ray Kurzweil. I personally think its a self-indulgent dork-fest but I'm not sure its totally untrue either.

Oh and lastly, a certain R Bucmkinster Fuller would probably shit himself if he heard your talk

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PlatonicSolid.html

And incidentally Bucky was pretty good at turning out some headscratcher works himself especially Synergetics.

I should also add upfront that I don't subscribe to causality in the cause-->effect sense. I am far more inclined to consider things as ongoing feedback loops. I will put up some links that explain the general idea in more detail if you want. It ties back into synergetics even.

EDIT: OK I am carefully re-reading the introduction What Is Mind, although I have to admit never finishing it (I sort of dabbled at it which was (obv) a mistake). This thing is intense.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:11 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 01:35 AM

OK... Lemme slow down, as you suggest, if you are around. There are only a few of us here so let’s talk casually (but with bullet points... Hah!):

1. My References - When I said, "The interest is in his "dialectic", or between us friends, his theory of "motion"", I was making reference in an obscure way to something you had said. Open up your copy of Principia Mathematica. The first book (in 2 volumes) is “On the motion of bodies” (De motu corporum), the second is “On the system of the world” (De mundi systemate). I was fucking with you and your reference to Newton (I always talk under my breath – like Popeye). Lemme say it in English: it’s Hegel’s method we care about and nothing more.

2. My riff on Plato was meant to pick a fight (but not with anyone here). It was the equivilant of buttoning up the top button of my shirt and drinking Florida mixed drinks in a biker bar. Since the biker bar is deserted at the moment, I was merely playin’ by myself. For some reason, insulting Plato brings philistines like shit and flies. Personally, although I meant every word I said, Plato and Aristotle don’t matter except as the origins of a whole swarm of others. They are the Cain and Abel of a near biblical list of “begats”. We can do the cave or the ship or any of the other paradoxes at your leisure. It was really “truth” that I was after (don’t laugh). How do we decide? There is not even any basis in the current culture… no way to even debate the question. I’m playin’ with the classics because I’m tryin’ to understand “right now”. I wrote on PI that it was impossible to debate philosophy on the web, and you commented on it. I haven’t changed my mind. It isn’t “philosophy” I’m after.

3. Let’s put the Philosophiae Naturalis aside for the time being as well as the Principia Mathematica. So too, let’s put aside the philosophy of science, and the rest (I know you really care about them… we can come back later, if you like). Take a little ride with me… Florida, nice weather, put down the top, turn up the music…no stars (light pollution) but the ‘78 Buick sounds good. Let’s think about thinkin’.

4. The intro to Phenomenology is a sucker’s offer (sorry). It’s not that it isn’t “intense”. It is, as is the rest of the book. The problem is that it is obscure and also the only thing of Hegel’s that most people ever read (it’s “short” at 90 pages… Shit, it’s easier for me to read War and Peace). You read the intro, and I’ll see if I can dig up an electronic Science of Logic, which is not obscure and which directly answers most of the issues unresolved in the intro. Let’s start with the question we had above. Is it relevent that Hegel is an “idealist”? Start with Absolute Being and Absolute Nothing… and then, Becoming. Wadda ya see? Forget about what you think and I think and what somebody else said. Forget about “the thing in itself”, which we will come dangerously close to answering (but why would we put all those philosophy professors out of work?). Stick to the three above. Is it simply true?

5. We are headed for politics and Marx, although that is well past Orlando. But let’s also go past whether it is “speculative”, and whether Marx is just revisionism, and whether Hegel discovers “class struggle” (he doesn’t… he has nothing to do with that).

I can start by putting up the quotes from the intro, if you like.

What else ya got to do while you wait for your check?
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:13 pm

Kid of the Black Hole
02-07-2007, 05:08 AM

OK, I'' take that trip with you. I'm thinking it would be better in a 68 VW Microbus (the damn thing would have about 25 windows lol) but a 78 Buick'll do it. My Dad tells this story about how some hippie was driving along and his speedometer broke. And he says it was the best thing that happened to him because all the sudden he was "free". Is it possible to acknowledge that as a truism while simultaneously wanting to puke?

Anyway, I see what you were aiming for here, which actually is kind of funny. Reverse "red-baiting" in a sense (by drawing the modern associations to Plato that you do..William F Buckley? c'mon that was a low-blow).

In response to your points since otherwise I'll get things too jumbled up

1. OK, gotcha I was thinking by motion you meant his idea that some Spirit force shaped the course of history. That was a real stretch for an allusion though :D

2. Marx's quote about history repeating itself directly applies to biker's and especially biker's in bars. Have you ever heard them wax philosophical "It's 5 o'clock somewhere?". Only about every two minutes. One time I looked down at my watch and I was like 'Yeah its 5 o'clock here dumbass' (not that a mild-mannered man of culture and sophistication like myself would SAY that of course..kinda like making fun of a Green Beret for his girly hat) If I ever own a Harley it will be for the pussy (midlife crisis here I come)

Anyway, more and more the distinction between hard fact and philosophy are blurring though. For instance the tenets of quantum physics are slowly being recognized as near parallels of the I-Ching. I'm not up much of Eastern philosophy, but I think its safe to say they've been ahead of the West for a long while - like millenium long.

Is there a difference between debating philosophy and epistemology? (seriously, I don't know)

4. The intro to Phenomenology is a sucker’s offer (sorry). It’s not that it isn’t “intense”. It is, as is the rest of the book. The problem is that it is obscure and also the only thing of Hegel’s that most people ever read (it’s “short” at 90 pages… Shit, it’s easier for me to read War and Peace).

QFT = Quoted for truth

4. I really see your question of 'Is it true' as questioning a priori postulates so to speak. I don't think its true, I don't even think its sensical but I am getting stuck in the 'thing within thing' mode of thinking.

Did I link to the article talking about Symmetry mathematics on here? I can't remember and won't hunt up the link but the idea is that for the integers = {..-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3..} you can alternately show that they sum to positive infinity, negative infinity, or zero. Zero is the interesting one there, although it also makes the most sense given that for every non-zero element there exists an additive inverse

Mathematically they don't define the sum of the integers Q but it would be perfectly legitimate to define that sum as 0. Anyway, its kind of an involved development of a different way of counting, and the link explains it better than I can.

That sort of goes to the idea of something contained in nothing.

5. OK, lets make a pit stop along I-Drive though, I know this girl who lives in a trailer park and she's pretty wild.

Oh and here is a handy link from Marxist.org

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... elp/eh.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... elp/eh.htm)

Are all marxists.org articles that meandering?


Being a communist Marx was interested in how people could lead a genuinely human life, and for that reason he was concerned with the real relations created by people in their lives, that is to say the relation of person to person, not that of being an appendage or an attribute of a thing.

Instead of doing like the philosopher Hegel, and overcoming abstraction, alienation, within alienation, within abstraction, he was concerned with real human relations;

But in bourgeois society, these relations are presented as if they were external things, and in the so-called science of political economy, we see in clear, universal form these real relations, much more clearly than if we were to approach them as an positivist social scientist who takes opinion polls, counts people into income groups, statistics, mathematical models and so on, and generally takes a different theoretically barren set of abstractions and deals with them as if they were material, natural given things. But it remains to strip these insights from their mystical shell.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:14 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 09:43 AM

Not just "meandering"... also "tiresome", but a lot of them, "mean well"...;-)
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:16 pm

PPLE
02-07-2007, 10:56 AM

Yes. it's most helpful to have you cut to the chase. You're kinda like a human still, dripping out the important parts for our consumption.

-hic-
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:16 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 03:05 PM
This is from the Preface ("The ascent into this is the Phenomenology of Spirit"), but be careful. He doesn't exactly mean what you mean by "science", etc.


The task of conducting the individual mind from its unscientific standpoint to that of science had to be taken in its general sense; we had to contemplate the formative development (Bildung) of the universal [or general] individual, of self-conscious spirit. As to the relation between these two [the particular and general individual], every moment, as it gains concrete form and its own proper shape and appearance, finds a place in the life of the universal individual. The particular individual is incomplete mind, a concrete shape in whose existence, taken as a whole, one determinate characteristic predominates, while the others are found only in blurred outline. In that mind which stands higher than another the lower concrete form of existence has sunk into an obscure moment; what was formerly an objective fact (die Sache selbst) is now only a single trace: its definite shape has been veiled, and become simply a piece of shading. The individual, whose substance is mind at the higher level, passes through these past forms, much in the way that one who takes up a higher science goes through those preparatory forms of knowledge, which he has long made his own, in order to call up their content before him; he brings back the recollection of them without stopping to fix his interest upon them. The particular individual, so far as content is concerned, has also to go through the stages through which the general mind has passed, but as shapes once assumed by mind and now laid aside, as stages of a road which has been worked over and levelled out. Hence it is that, in the case of various kinds of knowledge, we find that what in former days occupied the energies of men of mature mental ability sinks to the level of information, [90] exercises, and even pastimes, for children; and in this educational progress we can see the history of the world's culture delineated in faint outline. This bygone mode of existence has already become an acquired possession of the general mind, which constitutes the substance of the individual, and, by thus appearing externally to him, furnishes his inorganic nature. In this respect culture or development of mind (Bildung), regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what lies at his hand ready for him, in making its inorganic nature organic to himself, and taking possession of it for himself. Looked at, however, from the side of universal mind qua general spiritual substance, culture means nothing else than that this substance gives itself its own self-consciousness, brings about its own inherent process and its own reflection into self.
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Re: Philosophy Request Line: Why, "Plato was a jerk"

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 02, 2020 7:17 pm

anaxarchos
02-07-2007, 03:15 PM
Science of Logic
Volume One: The Objective Logic
Book One: The Doctrine of Being

available here:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... conten.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archi ... conten.htm)

Begin at the beginning...



Being is the indeterminate immediate; it is free from determinateness in relation to essence and also from any which it can possess within itself. This reflectionless being is being as it is immediately in its own self alone.

Because it is indeterminate being, it lacks all quality; but in itself, the character of indeterminateness attaches to it only in contrast to what is determinate or qualitative. But determinate being stands in contrast to being in general, so that the very indeterminateness of the latter constitutes its quality. It will therefore be shown that the first being is in itself determinate, and therefore, secondly, that it passes over into determinate being — is determinate being — but that this latter as finite being sublates itself and passes over into the infinite relation of being to its own self, that is, thirdly, into being-for-self.

Chapter 1 - Being

A. Being

Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.

B. Nothing

Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.

C. Becoming

1. Unity of Being and Nothing

Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being — does not pass over but has passed over — into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself.

Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.

To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.

Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same.

What do you think? Is it true?
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