NEBŪTIES PROBLEMA
The Non-Being Problem

Summary/Abstract: The paper is dedicated to the problem of non-being. The metaphysical category of non-being is rather indefinite because it was practically not studied by scholars and philosophers. The situation springs from specific features of European culture emphasizing existence and life, unlike Egyptian and Tibetan cultures. To define the non-being category means to set its place within the context "God - being", i.e. to find out the relations between mentioned concepts. Second, we need to clarify the implication of nothing that underlies being and non-being. For the Christian religion, God created the Universe from nothing that separates Him from it. In a sense He is transcendent, beyond space and time. Before the Creation, just God existed. It signifies even nothing was created by the Lord. In turn created nothing must be understood as absolute absence. Transcendence of God implies that He is not present in our world. In other words, God is not identical to nothing as absolute absence. He is nothing in the sense of substance, i.e. He is Nothing producing nothing (absolute absence) and the world. Divine Nothing exists in the sense pointed to by the Holy Bible: "I am that I am" (other translations of the Hebrew text: "I am the Being", "I am the Existing One", "I am who I am", etc). The Antique world identifies non-being with absence. E.g. for Democritus, non-being is emptiness in the physical sense - cavity (unfilled space). For Plato, non-being is a part of becoming - our empirical world. Chinese philosophers introduced even a gradation of non-being. Aristotle transforms the nonbeing concept into a notion of possibility existing in the empirical world. I think non-being is primarily concerning being, like Aristotle's possibility dominates reality (being). Analogically motion conditions rest. In the psychological realm, non-being may be identified with unconsciousness.

• Details
• Contents