It can question what "exists" means though

Our reality is largely subjective. Why there is something translates to "why do I have meaning", which translates straight into math: one is greater than 0. You are 1

Maybe something IS nothing (shunyata)

Hegel says in his Encyclopedia that the idea of God and even the proofs brought forward for his existence are of great value in the dialectical movement of the Idea

I think the human mind is capable of making some kind of sense out of any sentence. I am reminded of when Paul first sang "The movement you need is on your shoulder" and added "I'll have to change that". John responded "You won't. That's the best line." It made perfect sense to him, and does for many listeners : )

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Hi. Gilson was a strict traditional Catholic, while Heidegger had rejected that faith. Heidegger was an apostate in Gilson's eyes. "There is no salvation outside the Church" Catholics use to say

1) cite a Heidegger passage that is mystical please

2) why isn't Hegel's belief that every thing is really an Idea suspended in nothingness less mystical

From what ive learned about Heidegger, he doesn't seem to believe in or put much respect towards the Law of the Excluded Middle. The style he writes even speaks of this. This alleged law seems to come to us from knowledge of the world. If I said someone had "unbridled restraint", that's almost a violation of the LEM. Internal things can be themselves and their opposites at the same time. Maybe not so with the external world. Quantum physics on this question seems, to me, ambiguous. Maybe someday we will make something that is both entirely white and entirely black. Who is to say for sure? Hippies in the 60's said they saw round triangles on LSD

Is a stop sign one thing, one being? The sign itself is merely screwed into the pole. Yet we think of it as one thing. Turns out my arguments against Aristotle end up supporting Hegel

Ok. Thanks for the post

To be fair, he was talking about the world. For him it has actuality mixed with potency (and a host of other things). He believes in God as prime mover, who would be identical to himself with no movement or negativity. So ye, remember he is speaking only of the universe in his posts

Let me try this. Suppose, for WHATEVER reason, that a pen glued to a table means something to an aboriginal culture. To you it is two things, or three if you include the glue. But to them it's one. So how many forms does it objectively have???

Infinite worlds are a tempting theory for many physicists these days because they hold my theory. Or rather, I hold theirs'

It's relevant because form becomes dependent on how cohesive "two" things are to each other. All we did was cut an apple. You say a metaphysical "spook" (not to be derogatory) was replaced by something else. Was the prime matter replaced too? This line of questioning tends to show that there is something arbitrary about Aristotle's system

I've actually seen your argument many times, having read a lot of Edward Feser after studying Thomas Aquinas. If the avenue is infinite, any possibility can fly thru it in any way. The one we came up with is random. I believe most physicists hold this position. They call pure potentiality "nothing", but they are not philosophers, and there is hardly a difference anyway. Is an infinitesimal something or nothing?

Relaxed thinking is hardly Hegelian. "With a quickness". Hegelian thoughts on movement are coded in Hegelian's empirical thinking. They take these matters seriously. To us, you are just sitting around speculating. If I cut an apple ( ) in half, is it now two forms or still one? I do want an answer to this MU. And how many forms are in a pool?

Heraclitus allegedly thought his "fire" moves by some kind of rule. But I don't see why pure chaos would be pure absolute nothing however.

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Great Hegel quote, but MU does seem to really understand Aristotle and i'd also say he won't be moved by such a quote from Hegel. Hegelians and Aristotelians are in different camps. They can learn a little from each other and I encourage study of both sides to people. But fundamentally they have different brain waves. An Aristotelian tutor of mine in college said you have to have a twisted psychology to enjoy Hegel. I enjoy Hegel and enjoy being "twisted". I'd like to ask an Aristotelian: when you are welding two pieces of metal together, at what point does it stop being two forms and starts being one form?

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My understanding of pure potentiality as the prime first reality of our universe is very physical in nature. It's like Sean Carroll's ideas of the universe coming from a contingent wave form. You might say that, since it's physical, it is substance based. But this is a mistake. Aristotle's men just don't have a good grasp of what the universe is because Aristotle himself tripped them up

Plato talks about the One in Parmenides but as far as I know never says what is most prior of all. I wrote what I thought the Platonic tradition was aiming at in ancient times. No interpretation of ancient documents is dogma

Hegel was not always the best interpreter of others works, but I want to read his early piece comparing Schelling and Fitche. To my knowledge, Schelling is best understood as a panentheist. Fitche was a simple idealist, either a subjective or objective idealist. I don't know which. Hegel gave clear lip service to God in order not to be attacked, but he implies all over the place that he is an objective idealist (we are God and create the world). Very Hindu of him. With a German slant to it. I have nostalgia for Germany of that period

"Who created the world?" asks young Heidegger .

"Who? Huh? The potential to be does that" responds Hegel

"Then the world is inferior to potentiality!" says Heidegger

"Potential is the slave of the actual. " Hegel

"That sounds backwards." Heidegger

" Because you need to see mind as superior to world. " Hegel

"Then potential is subservient to mind!!" Heidegger

" No. Mind is in a different place" responds Hegel

"Then, so what is real?" Gasps Heidegger

"The world!" Hegel

"How?" Heidegger

" Because this sentence is true" chimes in Banno

How can someone enter eternity you might ask in that case.

Well when I read the two paradoxes you presented, my mind did something infinite each time. One positive, the other negative. Btw, is "This sentence is true" your personal creation or did you read it somewhere?

Searle asked if you could tell by looking at hardware whether a computer was doing addition or "quaddition". I don't know. Software does seem to have a life of its own. Although it seems dependent on hardware, it might have the degree of conscious a black widow spider has

I believe it's a an infinite thought that is not spurious.

I'm thinking that "This sentence is true" is correct relativism, while "This sentence is false" is improper relativism

If someone wins a race by an infinitesimal, she has won by potentiality. Hegel said Being and Nothing sublate themselves AND each other to make the world. This all happens in the mind for him. Thought is prior to matter for him. He thought Aristotle got it backwards. I want to see the forest for the trees though, not the trees for the forest. Before (in all ways) being or nothing is pure potentiality

I see potentiality as first, prior to every thing Hegel wrote of. It's pure yang (with a small y) passing through yin (with a small y) to make the world of actuality, which is Yang\Yin

So are you saying Heidegger was wrong to posit being as most prior? And are you saying that identity (self-sameness) comes before being in Hegel's works?

I've been trying to reconcile those thinkers actually..

You apparently have a substance-based metaphysics. So is pure actuality for you the perfect Platonic form, God, or the Trinity? I don't see what else it could be but one of those three. I could be wrong. I could be wrong about all of this

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I see your argument. Now my response is that there are two "things", pure potentiality and the avenue for it to become actual. You might want to think of it as if pure potentiality was the Confucian "Heaven" and the avenue is the Daost "Way". I almost think of it in physical terms. Potentiality flows or maybe even falls into actuality. Or maybe I've read too much Heidegger :) lol

Dichotomy means division. Difference thru division would be making one wooden board into two. For me, Aristotle gets into too much trouble defining what a thing is. Is a pond one thing? Questions like this lead me to Hegelianism. I know a lot of Aristotelians though. My younger brother is one

Fair enough. I don't see how Hegel is THE answer though. He's cool, and maybe you are too idk. I've read the Phenomenology twice, his Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Mind. Now I am in the middle of the lesser Logic. So I can speak on this. You proposed that Aristotle was wrong because he brought idealist thoughts to nature. I agree. I also agree Hegel's super-idealism is better. But when you say "to speak of Identity you have too pressupose Identity is not Difference" you are stating a tataulogy, NOT an argument of any kind. To be successful of this forum you need to be kinder, clearer, and. more thoroughal

Let me get this straight, you had to "try very hard" not to throw insults at someone who knows more Aristotle than you and simply explicated the issue reasonably? You got major issues. And, your right: Marxists are outnumbered. And you're wrong: you are going to lose

It's an empirical fact that most strict Hegelians are egoists

Are you speaking of meaningless (or empty) categories? I'm not sure what a trope is

1) his post was good, yours was not

2) pride is a mortal sin

3) you are a newbie here. Speak tentatively

4) you remind me of a Christian fanatic I know named Robert Wood and threatened to kill me

Aristotle (in his book on the heavens?) said 3 was a special number, and not in an aesthetic sense, but objectively. Hegel answered him: "We may, of course, be prompted at first to connect the most general determinations of thought with the first numbers, and say therefore that 1 is what is simple and immediate, two a distinction and mediation, and three the unity of both. But these combinations are completely external, and there is nothing in these numbers as such to make them the expression of precisely these determinate thoughts."

Good thoughts. But can perfection finally happen in the universe?

I see the Intellect as the "evil genius" of modern philosophy