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Full Idea
If being is what makes propositions true, then anything we can express in an affirmative proposition, however unreal, is said to be; so lacks and absences are, since we say that absences are opposed to presences, and blindness exists in an eye.
Gist of Idea
If affirmative propositions express being, we affirm about what is absent
Source
Thomas Aquinas (De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) [1267], p.92)
Book Ref
Aquinas,Thomas: 'Selected Philosophical Writings', ed/tr. McDermott,Timothy [OUP 1993], p.92
A Reaction
See Idea 11194 for the alternative Aristotelian approach to being, according to categories. Do absences and lacks have real essences, or causal properties? The absence of the sentry may cause the loss of the city.
Related Idea
Idea 11194 Being is either what falls in the categories, or what makes propositions true [Aristotle, by Aquinas]
| 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] |