Not-Being, denial of

Not-Being, denial of

      in Eleatic philosophy, the assertion of the monistic philosopher Parmenides of Elea that only Being exists and that Not-Being is not, and can never be. Being is necessarily described as one, unique, unborn and indestructible, and immovable.

      The opposite of Being is Not-Being (to mē eon), which for the Eleatics meant absolute nothingness, the total negation of Being; hence, Not-Being can never be. Parmenides knew that the assertion that Not-Being also exists must be wrong, although no formal logic existed that would enable him to say precisely what was wrong with it. But he was nonetheless certain about his position: “For you cannot know Not-Being (to mē eon), nor even say it.”

      The problem of the existence of total nothingness, or “the void” (Greek: kenon), was important in the theoretical foundations of Greek atomism, which asserted, despite the seemingly rigorous logic of the Eleatics, that nothingness must in fact exist. See also Eleatic One.

      The Eleatic denial of the void is sometimes seen as a direct refutation of an earlier Pythagorean view, a pre-Parmenidean atomism asserting that a kind of Not-Being, understood as a cosmic air, exists. No documentary evidence for such a view has survived, however.

      In the 20th century the question was treated in a revolutionary way by the German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger (Heidegger, Martin), who summarized the function of Not-Being in the neologistic words das Nichts nichtet (“Not-Being, or Nothingness, Denied”).

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Being and Nothingness — Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L Être et le néant : Essai d ontologie phénoménologique ), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 philosophical treatise by Jean Paul Sartre that… …   Wikipedia

  • Denial of the Armenian Genocide — is the assertion that the Armenian Genocide did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship. The Armenian Genocide is widely acknowledged outside Turkey to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocides, [Ferguson,… …   Wikipedia

  • denial — de·ni·al /di nī əl/ n 1: refusal to grant or allow something denial of due process denial of a motion 2 a: an assertion that an allegation is false b: a defense asserting that an opposing party s allegations are false compare …   Law dictionary

  • Denial, Anger, Acceptance — The Sopranos episode Episode no. Season 1 Episode 3 Directed by Nick Gomez …   Wikipedia

  • Not Evil Just Wrong — Promotional poster for Not Evil Just Wrong Directed by Phelim McAleer Ann McElhinney Produced by Phelim McAleer Ann McElhinney …   Wikipedia

  • Not Necessarily the News — Format Satire Country of origin  United States Production …   Wikipedia

  • Not My Kid — Directed by Michael Tuchner Produced by Patricia Finnegan Sheldon Pinchuk Written by Christopher …   Wikipedia

  • Denial-of-service attack — DoS redirects here. For other uses, see DOS (disambiguation). DDoS Stacheldraht Attack diagram. A denial of service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial of service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to …   Wikipedia

  • Denial of the Holodomor — Holodomor topics Historical background Famines in Russia and USSR · Soviet famine of 1932–1933 Soviet government Institutions: All Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) · Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine · …   Wikipedia

  • Denial — For the politics of science/history and public policy, see Denialism. For other uses, see Denial (disambiguation). Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”