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Some Old Scribbling
May. 3rd, 2015 01:04 pmNo Idea What Year, I would say at least 5-9 years ago:
"I live because I can not know what it is like to not live, and because I can not know if I can live again."
Rather,
"I am being because I can not be not-being"
I am because I can not be not-being
In Plato's Sophist, the idea of "non-being" or "no-being" is heavily discussed. It is considered "Unspeakable" by the stranger, "Unknowable." This is because non-being is a "false" idea, or an invalid idea. Because our ability to have ideas is contingent on being, and if we were to know non-being that would mean we were in fact being (a logical impossibility), we can not therefore know if whatever we think our understanding of non-being is, is true, let alone can be true. Therefore, /any/ idea of non-being is false - indeed it could be argued that even having the very /idea/ of non-being at all is false, as there are no grounds, no experience, no evidence that can be provided for the existence of it.
Even mortality, the death of one near to us, does not provide us with evidence of not-being; except in the sense of that person ceasing to exist /for us/.
Furthermore, there can not even be an experience of non-being for the person in question, because if they were capable of observing their own non-being, they could not be not-being.
Added Today:
Rather than considering the death of someone else to be proof of the existence of non-being, we should rather consider it to be a state of former being ending? It does not prove non-existence to us...it only provides a sense of the impermanent nature of states. I think I might be safe to argue that impermanence is the only permanence we have in ultimate reality.
"I live because I can not know what it is like to not live, and because I can not know if I can live again."
Rather,
"I am being because I can not be not-being"
I am because I can not be not-being
In Plato's Sophist, the idea of "non-being" or "no-being" is heavily discussed. It is considered "Unspeakable" by the stranger, "Unknowable." This is because non-being is a "false" idea, or an invalid idea. Because our ability to have ideas is contingent on being, and if we were to know non-being that would mean we were in fact being (a logical impossibility), we can not therefore know if whatever we think our understanding of non-being is, is true, let alone can be true. Therefore, /any/ idea of non-being is false - indeed it could be argued that even having the very /idea/ of non-being at all is false, as there are no grounds, no experience, no evidence that can be provided for the existence of it.
Even mortality, the death of one near to us, does not provide us with evidence of not-being; except in the sense of that person ceasing to exist /for us/.
Furthermore, there can not even be an experience of non-being for the person in question, because if they were capable of observing their own non-being, they could not be not-being.
Added Today:
Rather than considering the death of someone else to be proof of the existence of non-being, we should rather consider it to be a state of former being ending? It does not prove non-existence to us...it only provides a sense of the impermanent nature of states. I think I might be safe to argue that impermanence is the only permanence we have in ultimate reality.
