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Full Idea
Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking. Thought that suspends all its presuppositions and so ends up thinking of nothing determinate still remains thought, albeit utterly indeterminate and inchoate thought.
Gist of Idea
Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking
Source
report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate'
Book Ref
Houlgate,Stephen: 'An Introduction to Hegel' [Blackwell 2005], p.32
A Reaction
This is the very starting point of Hegel's dialectical inferences in his 'Logic'. It is hard to entirely disagree, though I wonder whether the exercise is actually possible. What are you aware of if you have a thought with no content?
Related Idea
Idea 21761 If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate]
| 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] |