That which contains everything, and holds everything together, in the holding process, must hold itself !

Nothingness cannot be understood if you mean it to be devoid of space and time, as they are a priori intuitions; it would make no sense for us. That there is no thing there we can very well understand if we remove all the sensations and intelligible qualities from a representation; but we are still left with time and space, that is, with the representation gone we are still left with pure space and time. Thats my take on it (along with Kant and Schopenhauer).

I agree with what you are saying here. There are different ways to work with it, but it's a significant point.

---------- Post added 05-27-2010 at 02:28 PM ----------



Excellent point. We can imagine empty space. We might be able to ignore time, and imagine a static nothingness. But it seems difficult if not impossible to ignore the intuition of space. Hegel wrote that indeterminate or completely abstract being was the same concept, really, as nothingness. I think he has a point. Once we have the concept of nothingness in mind, we don't have nothing in mind, but this minimal sense of being. This minimal unity devoid of all properties but this unity in empty space.

But even then we still cant get our minds around nothingness; we can only get our minds around the barest intuitions, space (outer sense) being the lowest of the low.

Right, I agree with you completely. We can't really think nothingness any more than we can really think infinity, or of a round square. But we make use of the these words in our games, right? I think it's great that we are investigating such concepts.

By the way, do you agree that we also automatically see this nothingness as unified, as a singular entity? Of course our grammar already suggests that. But I want to see if anyone sees why I assert this.

Wouldnt that just be zero?

On the topic of nothingness, a concept so great, that it seems almost impossible for us to ever really understand, I've come up with a theory/quote, that I thought I'd share.

"To truly understand nothingness, is to understand everything."

What do you think?

Even if we could come to understand everything that is, would we be able to comprehend nothingness?

But you talk as it nothingness were a thing to be comprehended, but that it could not be comprehended. But is the word, "nothing" the name of anything, comprehensible or not? If I say that there is nothing in that drawer, am I really saying that there is something in the drawer, and its name is, "nothing"? If, in the words of the song from the musical, South Pacific, "there is nothing like a dame", does that mean that there is something, and that that something is like a dame?

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language". Wittgenstein.