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Single Idea 20901

[filed under theme 7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / a. Nature of Being ]

Full Idea

In response to defenders of the One, Democritus says that what is, in the proper sense, is being that is completely full, but that such a being is not one, but that they are unlimited in number and invisible because of the smallness of their masses.

Gist of Idea

True Being only occurs when it is completely full, with atoms and no void

Source

report of Democritus (fragments/reports [c.431 BCE], A007) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a28

Book Ref

Democritus: 'Early Greek Phil VII: Democritus', ed/tr. Laks,A/Most,G [Harvard Loeb 2016], p.91

A Reaction

Democritus is in a tangle here. He says proper being has no void, having apparently conceded that motion needs void (which he admits is non-existent). So true being only occurs when everything grinds to a halt, which is not now. But Idea 20902.

Related Ideas

Idea 20900 Defenders of the One say motion needs the void - but that is not part of Being [Parmenides, by Aristotle]

Idea 20902 Being does not exist more than non-being [Democritus, by Aristotle]

The 28 ideas with the same theme [the nature of pure being]:

448 No necessity could produce Being either later or earlier, so it must exist absolutely or not at all [Parmenides]
447 Being must be eternal and uncreated, and hence it is timeless [Parmenides]
449 Being is not divisible, since it is all alike [Parmenides]
12270 Being is one [Melissus, by Aristotle]
20901 True Being only occurs when it is completely full, with atoms and no void [Democritus, by Aristotle]
12348 There are four kinds of being: incidental, per se, potential and actual, and being as truth [Aristotle, by Wedin]
11194 Being is either what falls in the categories, or what makes propositions true [Aristotle, by Aquinas]
11288 Things are predicated of the basic thing, which isn't predicated of anything else [Aristotle]
15776 There is only being in a certain way, and without that way there is no being [Aristotle]
611 Being, taken simply as being, is the domain of philosophy [Aristotle]
22121 The concept of being has only one meaning, whether talking of universals or of God [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
22122 Being (not sensation or God) is the primary object of the intellect [Duns Scotus, by Dumont]
16789 Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes]
6919 Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach]
19457 Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach]
22209 Our goal is to reveal a new hidden region of Being [Husserl]
11010 Being is what belongs to every possible object of thought [Russell]
21897 Reducing being to the study of beings too readily accepts the modern scientific view [Heidegger, by May]
15573 For us, Being is constituted by awareness of other sorts of Being [Heidegger]
22333 Only language is understandable Being [Gadamer]
21908 Ontology can be continual creation, not to know being, but to probe the unknowable [Deleuze]
21902 'Being' is univocal, but its subject matter is actually 'difference' [Deleuze]
14664 Necessary beings (numbers, properties, sets, propositions, states of affairs, God) exist in all possible worlds [Plantinga]
12340 There is no Being as a whole, because there is no set of all sets [Badiou]
9809 Mathematics inscribes being as such [Badiou]
14401 Every proposition is entirely about being [Lewis]
7707 To grasp being, we must say why something exists, and why there is one world [Jacquette]
12254 Being is substantial/accidental, complete/incomplete, necessary/contingent, possible, relative, intrinsic.. [Oderberg]