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Full Idea
"I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people."
Gist of Idea
I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people.
Source
Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
Book Ref
Moore,A.W.: 'The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics' [CUP 2013], p.182
A Reaction
[Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork.
| 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] |