5645
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The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton]
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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.
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From:
report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
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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'.
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7565
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Leibniz proposes monads, since there must be basic things, which are immaterial in order to have unity [Leibniz, by Jolley]
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Full Idea:
Leibniz believes in monads because it would be contrary to reason or divine wisdom if everything was compounds, down to infinity; there must be ultimate unified building-blocks; they cannot be material, for material things lack genuine unity.
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From:
report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.3
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A reaction:
It is hard to discern the basis for the claim that only immaterial things can have unity. The Greeks proposed atoms, and we have no reason to think that electrons lack unity.
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21754
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Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
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Full Idea:
For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter.
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From:
report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
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A reaction:
This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts.
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