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Hegel on "Being" and "Nothing"

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archi...lbeing.htm

"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.

§ 131

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

§ 132

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

§ 133

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

§ 134

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 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."

Eastern philosophy seems to concur on this equivalence between Being and Nothing, the meditative union of the conscious self with the All at once establishing "everywhereness" yet "nowhereness". The dissolution of the self into pure unqualifiable Being/Nothing or presence/absence.


[Image: DigitalSpiritualLife11.jpg]
[Image: DigitalSpiritualLife11.jpg]

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#2
Magical Realist Offline
To think nothingness is to not think. To feel nothingness is to not feel. To remember nothingness is to forget.

To think being is to think. To feel being is to feel. To remember being is to remember.

Nothingness is not anything. Being is not anything. But nothingness is the opposite of being. How can this be?

I am to the extent that I am not just anything. I am not to the extent that I am just not anything. But I am is the opposite of I am not. How can this be?

What I am is defined by not being what I am not. What I am not is defined by being what I am. To be what I am not, and to not be what I am, that is becoming.
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