On Dec 3, 2009, at 12:17:21 AM, "Ham Priday" <[email protected]> wrote: I do not attempt to "describe" Essence or its "motivation", for the obvious reason that such knowledge is denied to us. It is self-evident, however, that existence is fundamentally divided into subjects and objects, that subjects are aware, and that objects are finite, diverse, and relational. Logically, whatever exists conditionally must have an ultimate, unconditional cause or source. (To deny a primary source leads to the paradoxical infinite regression of prior causes.)
In the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa [aka Cusanus] developed a theory based on the "not-other" as a symbolic connotation for God. He argued that, although God is indefinable, it can be stated that the world is not God but is not anything other than God. God is "not other", he asserts, because God is not other than any [particular] other, even though "not-other" and "other" [once derived] are opposed. This theory has had a profound influence on me. Not only is it a paradigm for relating "otherness" to the primary source, it offers a non-descriptive connotation for this source whose attributive nature is otherwise ineffable. Using Cusa's concept of "actualized contrariety", whereby an existent can be defined both positively (in terms of what it is) and negatively (in terms of what it is not), and defining Essence as "all that is" (which is the equivalent of "nothing that is not"), I concluded that Essence can be conceived as both absolute potentiality and absolute actuality without contradiction. And, since negation does not alter the Absolute Source, its manifestation as a 'dichotomy' of nothingness and being is the appearance of differentiated existence. Hi Ham, I do not have much knowledge of Cusa, so take this with a grain of salt. It appears you have a semantic abstraction of Essense. Negation can have a lot of connotations as far as I can tell. If it is simply used as a term to describe the "appearance of", then there are better terms. I am trying to think what the negation of zero is. I guess that is a number other than zero. The negation of nothing is therefore something. Well that seems pretty simple semantically. What is the negation of an ocean? What is the negation of beauty? I can't see how the term of negation explains anything except to perhaps say the "opposite of". If I were to say that existence is nothingness turned inside out, I wouldn't be explaining anything. Metaphysics rests on real things, it is more than playing with a language. While it is an abstraction, it must be explained in terms that relate (at least for me). It is possible that Essence cannot be rationalized, and perhaps that is not the right question to ask how it is negated. But to simply say that it just is, leaves me no wiser. However, if I were to ascribe to this notion, I would have to assume that all of existence has sensibility, more than just the chemicals that make up a human body. Does your philosophy explain why it is that a composite entity which is confluent with the (so called) outside can sense value only if it is in a certain configuration? Thanks, Mark Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
