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Full Idea
When the question was put to us as to the name of 'that which is not', to whatever one must apply it, we got stuck in every kind of perplexity. Are we now in any less perplexity about 'that which is'?
Gist of Idea
If statements about non-existence are logically puzzling, so are statements about existence
Source
Plato (The Sophist [c.359 BCE], 250d)
Book Ref
Plato: 'The Sophist', ed/tr. Bernadete,Seth [University of Chicago 1986], p.45
A Reaction
Nice. This precapitulates the whole story of modern philosophy of language. What started as a nagging doubt about reference to non-existents ends as bewilderment about everything we say.
| 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] |