"Why not Nothing?" (Timothy O'Connor)

[Magical Realist]

Hegel says Being is the same as Nothing because it is indeterminate like Nothing. And yet when I think of Being, it certainly feels different from Nothing. Being is in fact what makes all beings determinate and themselves, and so is not determinate itself. IOW, if cannot in itself be known or defined. It is the underlying fundamental unity of everything that exists as held in common by one substance, one essence, one manifestedness. It is the "is" presupposed by the being of something in particular. It's hard not to get spiritual/mystical about this as it slip slides into the realm of a transcendent entity holding everything together. But if that's where the logic takes us then so be it. It is why Heidegger said that Being is only revealed by thinking. And why Kierkkegaard said "the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think".

[C C]

Hegel says Being is the same as Nothing because it is indeterminate like Nothing. And yet when I think of Being, it certainly feels different from Nothing. Being is in fact what makes all beings determinate and themselves, and so is not determinate itself. IOW, if cannot in itself be known or defined. It is the underlying fundamental unity of everything that exists as held in common by one substance, one essence, one manifestedness. It is the "is" presupposed by the being of something in particular. It's hard not to get spiritual/mystical about this as it slip slides into the realm of a transcendent entity holding everything together. But if that's where the logic takes us then so be it. It is why Heidegger said that Being is only revealed by thinking. And why Kierkkegaard said "the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think".

One might regard Hegel's Nothing as static, "general being" (Platonism) that contains everything that could possibly exist through space and time, but appears blank or uniform due to that very general character. Nothing lacks the biases or preferences and apprehension of particulars (discrimination) that cognition or consciousness possesses. It treats none of its indistinct, entangled content as "special"-- ergo, the bland homogeneity of "nothing".

Whereas Being is the opposite of that indifferent generality -- it has preferences. When it interacts with Nothing, it does zero in on a specific state for the concept of "world" contained or encoded in Nothing -- and just as cognition has memory, it retains information about that last state but then seeks something similar to it, but slightly different -- with time or change thus unfolding from that unholy intercourse between the two. An evolving, sequential existence of distinct things that have been disentangled from the generic ambiguity of Nothing.

Nothing (the abstract level) versus Being (the concrete level).

"Plato's counterpart to the sensible world is the intelligible world, which consists of the perfect, unchanging Forms or Ideas that represent the true essence of things. While the sensible world is characterized by imperfection and change, the intelligible world contains the eternal and ideal standards against which the particulars of the sensible world are measured."

[Syne]

Hegel says Being is the same as Nothing because it is indeterminate like Nothing. And yet when I think of Being, it certainly feels different from Nothing. Being is in fact what makes all beings determinate and themselves, and so is not determinate itself. IOW, if cannot in itself be known or defined.

The indeterminacy of both being and nothing have slightly different qualities. Nothing is indistinct, while being is indeterminate. If being were determined, it would just be another part of the deterministic world, a la reductive materialism. But that doesn't mean that being is wholly undetermined. It can be thought of as "nothing" being the body and "being" being the mind. Nothing happens without their interaction... becoming. But being is the driver, acting upon nothing... and taking feedback from nothing.