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Full Idea
We may be unfamiliar with the question 'What is being?' because there appear to be no contrastive questions of the form: how do beings differ from things that are not beings?
Gist of Idea
Maybe 'What is being? is confusing because we can't ask what non-being is like
Source
Vassilis Politis (Aristotle and the Metaphysics [2004], 4.1)
Book Ref
Politis,Vasilis: 'Aristotle and the Metaphysics' [Routledge 2004], p.93
A Reaction
We can, of course, contrast actual beings with possible beings, or imaginary beings, or even logically impossible beings, but in those cases 'being' strikes me as an entirely inappropriate word.
| 1643 | If statements about non-existence are logically puzzling, so are statements about existence [Plato] |
| 1706 | Non-existent things aren't made to exist by thought, because their non-existence is part of the thought [Aristotle] |
| 16587 | Prime matter is halfway between non-existence and existence [Averroes] |
| 11195 | If affirmative propositions express being, we affirm about what is absent [Aquinas] |
| 21760 | Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| 18317 | The 'real being' of things is a nothingness constructed from contradictions in the actual world [Nietzsche] |
| 11277 | Maybe 'What is being? is confusing because we can't ask what non-being is like [Politis] |
| 22914 | An equally good question would be why there was nothing instead of something [Bardon] |