[lit-ideas] Re: the Nothing noths
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 16:15:40 -0700
This is *real scholarly information* about nothing, from the *Encyclopedia
of Philosophy*, not to be confused with the *Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy*, or the *Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.* Clicking on the
link...
http://www.nothing.com/Heath.html
...will lead to further information on nothing.
The friends of nothing may be divided into two distinct though not
exclusive classes: the know-nothings, who claim a phenomenological
acquaintance with nothing in particular, and the fear-nothings, who,
believing, with Macbeth, that "nothing is but what is not," are thereby
launched into dialectical encounter with nullity in general. For the first,
nothing, so far from being a mere grammatical illusion, is a genuine, even
positive, feature of experience. We are all familiar with, and have a
vocabulary for, holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absenses, silences,
impalpabilities, insipidities, and the like. Voids and vacancies of one
sort or another are sought after, dealt in and advertised in the
newspapers. And what are these, it is asked, but perceived fragments of
nothingness, experiential blanks, which command, nonetheless, their share
of attention and therefore deserve recognition? Sartre, for one, has given
currency to such arguments, and so, in effect, have the upholders of
"negative facts"--an improvident sect, whose refrigerators are full of
nonexistent butter and cheese, absentee elephants and so on, which they
claim to detect therein. If existence indeed precedes essence, there is
certainly reason of a sort for maintaining that nonexistence is also
anterior to, and not a mere product of, the essentially parasitic activity
of negation; that the nothing precedes the not. But, verbal refutations
apart, the short answer to this view, as given, for instance, by Bergson,
is that these are but petty and partial nothings, themselves parasitic on
what already exists. Absence is a mere privation, and a privation of
something at that. A hole is always a hole in something: take away the
thing, and the hole goes too; more precisely, it is replaced by a bigger if
not better hole, itself relative to its surroundings, and so tributary to
something else. Nothing, in short, is given only in relation to what is,
and even the idea of nothing requires a thinker to sustain it. If we want
to encounter it *an sich*, we have to try harder that that.
------------------------
Robert Paul
Secretary
The Meinong Society
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