| 229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) |
| 9862 | To become rational, philosophers must rise from becoming into being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers must rise up out of becoming and grasp being, if they are ever to become rational. | |
| From: Plato (The Republic [c.374 BCE], 525b) | |
| A reaction: I am never quite sure what 'being' means in such contexts, and it seems suffused with mysticism. In Plato's case, it is obviously related to what is unchanging, but why would something lack 'being', just because it underwent change? |
| 20364 | The apprehensions of reason remain unchanging, but reasonless sensation shows mere becoming [Plato] |
| Full Idea: That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing, and never really is. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 28a) | |
| A reaction: Lots of problems with this, of which I take the main one to be the idea that sensation is 'without reason', as if there were a sharp dichotomy in our ways of evaluating reality. Laws of nature seem to be laws of change, not of stasis. |
| 324 | Before the existence of the world there must have been being, space and becoming [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There were, before the world came into existence, being, space, and becoming, three distinct realities. | |
| From: Plato (Timaeus [c.349 BCE], 52d) |
| 5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'. |
| 22076 | Being is only perceptible to itself as becoming [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: Being is only perceptible to itself in the state of becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.403), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.90 | |
| A reaction: Is the Enlightenment the era of Being, and the Romantic era that of Becoming? They like process, fluidity, even chaos. |
| 7079 | Nietzsche resists nihilism through new values, for a world of becoming, without worship [Nietzsche, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Nietzsche's work is a resistance to nihilism. This is why he insists that new categories and values are required that would permit us to endure this world of becoming without either falling into despair or inventing some new god and bowing before it. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil [1886]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro | |
| A reaction: The trouble is that all Nietzsche offers is the invention of values out of nothing by some wretched Germanic übermensch who is obsessed with militarism and dominance. If values don't grow out of human nature, then 'all is permitted'. |
| 20360 | We Germans value becoming and development more highly than mere being of what 'is' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We Germans are Hegelians insofar as we instinctively attribute a deeper sense and richer value to becoming and development than to what 'is'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay (Joyful) Science [1882], §357) | |
| A reaction: I always doubt Nietzsche's claims about 'we Germans' or 'we philosophers'. They say that, intellectually, everyone is either French or German, and my immediate response was to embrace being German. So becoming is where it's at. |
| 20359 | The nature of being, of things, is much easier to understand than is becoming [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of being, of things, of all sorts of fixed unities is a hundred times easier than the doctrine of becoming, of development. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §238) | |
| A reaction: I don't know if he intended it, but this is a fierce shaft hurled at Aristotle, who gives a wonderful essentialist account of the nature of things, but can offer nothing more on becoming than the doctrine of potentiality and actuality. |
| 21846 | Bergson was a rallying point, because he emphasised becomings and multiplicities [Bergson, by Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Bergson was a rallying point for all the opposition, not so much because of the theme of duration, as of the theory and practice of becoming of all kinds, of coexistent multiplicities. | |
| From: report of Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory [1896]) by Gilles Deleuze - A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? I | |
| A reaction: The three heroes of Deleuze are Spinoza, Nietzsche and Bergson. All philosophers are either of Being, or of Becoming, I suggest. |
| 21899 | There is no being beyond becoming [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There is no being beyond becoming, nothing beyond multiplicity. ...Becoming is the affirmation of being. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962], p.23), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 2.09 | |
| A reaction: This places Deleuze in what I think of as the Heraclitus tradition. Parmenides does Being, Heraclitus does Becoming, Aristotle does Beings. |