It is always much easier to discuss non-being than being-itself, and he is not the first to remark about the mysterious character of the term, being.

And don't we have the very same problems when we discuss "non-being"---in fact don't we have even more?

Ah yes, I went to the bookstore, paged thru his book. No doubt, he's a sharp guy, but I had enough reservations to not put out the cash. Instead did some research online. (The communism gives me pause, as my own obsession with mathematics/ontology has obscured my interest in politics.. So it goes..)

Yes, the discussion of non-being is perhaps even more difficult. I think we can infer some source of conceptualization that is itself beyond/behind concept, but this inference is nakedly conceptual. And this is what I mean by nonism. To say that being is negative one is just a sort of negative ontology that tries to dodge mistaking any contingent concept for THE concept. The unification faculty at the root of logos and mathema. Inferred from self-consciousness, abstracted from abstractions.

The "infinite" (or the "transrational") is no more (or less) real than a round square. That's where I'm coming from.

Here's a quote. I think I forgot to save the link. Sorry.
This non-presented (presentable only as the negation of presentable?) source of presentation is symbolized in my avatar by the minus sign. To call it a "one" is to stress its inferred function as unification itself. It's as if the mind can only think in ones. Heidegger didn't ask, did he, what are the Beings of beings? It seems we can't help reducing, simplifying, moving towards unity. Essence and unity. How close they seem! I'm interested in the proto-logic that founds both discourse and mathematics. Seems like Cusanus (sic?) was here long before. The union of opposites. A polygon with an n number of sides, as n tends toward infinity...and this is man's knowledge of god. Something of that. :Glasses:

One of the more protracted and to my mind subtle discussions of non-being is found in Sartre, who writes that "The being of nothingness is the nothingness of being." The problem with many discussions of this topic is that it abandons rational discourse (for obvious reasons) and supplants that grounded discussion with mysticism.

That Sartre line has a certain charm, but it is ripe indeed for mystical assimilation.

Still, I don't think that all talk of being and nothingness is useless or indulgent. Kojeve's presentation of Hegel, for example, really brought the notion alive for me. Where in spatial being do we see concept, for instance? Where is the future in the present spatial being? And yet humans act according to desire and fear. I can only assume you know Heidegger much better than I do. Didn't he also talk of Being? And also of human time? Time for a creature that knows it must one day die?

For me a "nonbeing" would just be a nonspatial being. Doesn't Sartre examine this? Man is a nothingness because he can think what is not. He can think about the spatial present being other than it is, and therefore experience the spatial present as contingent...even if this contingency is a fiction.

But I will agree that its dark water.