@jgweed,
jgweed;153558 wrote: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.
Quote:
The question is not simply "how does one think non-being?" but also (and Parmenides also recognized this) "how does one name non-being?" The proper name, as Badiou points out in a passage immediately following the above, is not the transcendent God or the promise of the One or presence but the "un-presentation and the un-being of the one" (cf. Derrida's comments on the possibility of a negative theology).
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: