Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.B. 1. A genealogy of the philosophic enlightenment in classical Greece Appendix to Chapter 8 The Traditional "Metaphysical" Reading of Parmenides ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

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Now we shall examine: 1. how Parmenides' Being is understood in traditional metaphysics: the Being of traditional metaphysics; 2. the relationship of the thermodynamic meaning of Being with the traditional metaphysical notion of Being, and the true meaning of Nothingness as the truth of existence (the thermodynamic meaning of Being as Conservation of zero) in the light of traditional metaphysics; 3. Hegel's degenerate notion of Being as indicative of Western metaphysics as degeneration. We will also say a word or two about Heidegger's conception of Being as essentially Platonic and distortive of the Pre-Socratics' notion, and Marcel Conche's Heideggerian (and so radical) reading of Parmenides.

1. "The Immediate Articulation of Being" in Daniel Guerrière's An Advanced Philosophical Orientation (1970s) articulates Being in the traditional manner, which will allow for an understanding of the experience of Being of Parmenides and of all the major philosophers of the Western (and Eastern as well) tradition who are transcendental in a "traditional" manner. This is, how philosophy is done normally, not in our manner (bringing in thermodynamics). Hence this "immediate articulation of Being" is a second presentation of Parmenides, that in the manner of the tradition. Text cited abridgedly and in bold.

b. It is impossible to demonstrate this and any other ontological thesis. But that does not import that it is arbitrary. For there are no theses more fundamental than ontological theses that could serve as premises for them. What philosophy can and must do here is to monstrate, i.e. to show, the necessity of admitting the thesis or -- what comes to the same thing -- the impossibility of denying it... The greatest difficulty is that imagination would reduce Ising to a being, [referred to throughout this work as positivistic, fundamentalist, literal reading] an object; one must constantly remind himself that what is at issue here is the process-of-Is inclusive of all beings.

c. It is impossible that Be not-be. That Be would not-be imports that Be would not be exercising "be", i.e. itself, so that for anything to be it would have to not-be. But that is the very definition of contradiction, of nonsense, of impossibility.

...f. Again, just as "to be a table" is what a "table" properly does, so analogously "to be" is what "To be" properly does; were it not to do so, it would not-be To-be but would, rather, be Not-to-be. But that is the very definition of contradiction.

i. The necessity of Be, or the impossibility for Be to not-be, may be shown in a reverse way...

j. What must be admitted is this: that Non-be would be is impossible. It seems that if there were no Be, there would "be" only Not-be. But non-Be is, so to speak, precisely the total exclusion of Be. It cannot "be".

k. Again: That non-Being would be imports that non-Being would not be non-Being, for it would then be exercising "be". But that is contradictory...

m. Again: Absolute Nothingness would not be that which is if there were... no beings. If we imagine away every being, it is not the case that then Nothing would be left; for Nothing is not "something" that is so that it could be left. Nothingness does not do anything: it does not exercise "be".

n. It is necessary that "Not-be" should "not-be". The necessity of Being is the impossibility of Nothingness, and vice versa...

Guerrière would affirm that this necessity of Being is the articulation of the experience left inarticulated by Parmenides and behind the line h men opwV estin te kai wV ouk esti mh einai. The rest of the characteristics of Being articulated here all therefore explicate Parmenides' vision.

2. The status of beings and the new Being-question

a. Here a problem arises. For while the Being-process is necessary, beings themselves are not necessary. They are contingent. The Being in, of, and as beings cannot not-be; but it is not nonsensical that beings should not-be. Any one being and the totality of beings do not have to exist. It is not intrinsically impossible for them to not-be.

b. How to understand this? The necessity of Being together with the contingency of beings generate a problem. How to "reconcile" the necessity of the Being-process with the non-necessity of beings? How to think both sides together?...

d. The question of Being, therefore, receives a new precision: How to think together Being and beings, the Necessary and the contingent?

e. The great philosophers -- who begin with this question -- are those who have given an original response to it.

Note that Conche's reading of Parmenides radically differs from Guerrière's, although they start from the same: "L'être... est, simplement, ce qui me 'fait' être là avec ce qui est là..." But Conche saves the connection, absent from Guerrière's traditional conception of Being, between Being and beings by immanentizing Being as only the be-ing of beings: "Mais le il y a n'a aucune réalité à moins qu'il y ait... ce qu'il y a. L'être (l'estre) est ce qui fait que les étants sont, mais, sans les étants, l'être, n'étant l'être de rien, n'a aucune signification... [I]l faut qu'il y ait ce qui est présent pour que le il y a, pour que la Présence ait un sens." Conche's reading of Parmenides' Being is Heideggerian, the immanent Being, Being as Emergence in Guerrière's words... It is a notion of Being that is immanent and combines the showing of things as what they are with their materiality. This will become clearer after the exposition of Plato. But his also improves on Heidegger, since Heidegger's notion of Being as Presence (coming down at last to "showing" only) does not lead to Eternity as its essence, and on the Milesian as well, since the immanent Being of Anaximander and Heraclitus is eternal only in the undifferentiated sense of lasting forever, not in the differentiated, Parmenidean sense of non-temporal. Hence the notion of Being from the most immanent to the most transcendental: (1) Heidegger's, (2) the Milesian, (3) Conche's Parmenidean, then (4) the traditional (Guerrière). (2) and (3) are closest to the thermodynamic sense of Being as Conservation of existence.

It is to be seen that this is where the answer lies as to the mystery of the affirmation of non-Being as the truth of existence as appears in some Eastern traditions (or the Chinese Buddhist affirmation that beings are neither existent nor non-existent), and the meaning as to the truth of existence as non-existence in the thermodynamic reflection.

e. The Being-question may be posed with a new precision: How to think together the Absolute and the finite, Being and beings?

c. Opposite eternal is temporal. To be temporal means to be oneself but not all at once, to be oneself in a less than total manner, to be such that one also lacks oneself. Whatever is temporal lacks the fullness of itself. But Being lacks nothing. It is non-temporal. We have pointed out that the motivation for human pursuit of salvation is to conquer that which cannot be conquered, i.e. the limitations of temporal and spatial existence, that one cannot be oneself all-at-once nor any others. In the thermodynamic parlance, this limitation is referred to as the condition of existence due to the second law of thermodynamics. In myth it is lamented over as the human loss of immortality. Salvation is the quest to be Being simply: union with the Source.

d. It is not the case that Being "always was and always will be". That is merely an indefinite temporal extension.

e. Being is eternal; it is the Eternal.

2. The status of beings and the new Being-question

a. While Being is eternal, beings are temporal. They have a past and a future and in some way begin and end. They are each themselves but not all at once; they also lack themselves.

b. The problem again arises. Every being is nothing else than the Being-process, but none of them are eternal. The process of Being in, of, and as beings is eternal, but they themselves are temporal. How could that be?

c. Here, then, is a new precision for the Being-question: How to think together the Eternal and the temporal?

How to think together Being and beings? This question cannot arise until ontology has attained to an immediate articulation of Being. The fundamental question is the question of Being; and this question takes on a precise form in the question as to how Being and beings are to be conceived such that the immediate data are saved. [emphasis added] How must Being "be" if beings are to arise, and how must beings be if they are nothing else than the Being-process yet are not necessary, absolute, one, ungenerable and imperishable, eternal, and self-identical? This is the question that animates the history of philosophy. The great philosophers are those who gave an original response to it. An original ontology is a new vision of the "togetherness" of Being and beings. [emphasis added] But any response to the Being-question in the precise form generates other questions. All of them -- the one concerning Being and beings and the ones subsequent to it -- may be collected under the title "basic questions.".. The chapter will fall into 5 parts: the togetherness of Being and beings; the hierarchy of beings; the sense of negativity; the senses of be-ing; and the status of ontology itself.

b. Strictly speaking, there is no "relationship" between Being and beings. For beings are not other than Being; and Being, though always more than beings, happens in and as them. How to formulate their togetherness so as to protect the data? [Emphasis added]

c. Insofar as beings are, they are Ising. Reversely, they are only insofar as Being "is", does itself, presences.

d. But since Ising is inexhaustible, one being or any number of them does not constitute the full intensity of Being. This imports, reversely, that Being in its fullness, in its full intensity, is absent from and in beings.

e. Hence beings are only in that Being "is present" and at once "is absent". In other words, beings come-to-pass only as Ising "is", does itself, or presences but not-all-at-once. The presencing-and-absencing of Being constitutes beings.

f. The total absence of Being is impossible: that would be, so to speak, absolute Nothingness. The total presence of Being would not be beings: that would be only Being. But Being in its less than total presencing constitutes beings.

g. Every being, insofar as it is, is (Is), but not (simply Is). Hence it may be said that beings both are and at once are not. To-be-absolutely (doing itself) as less then itself: beings.

2. The new questions

a. If beings are constituted by the presencing and absencing of Being, may not some beings be "higher" than others in that the Being-process is "more" present in and as them? Does Being presence more intensely, or absence itself less, in and as some beings in comparison to others? Is there, again, a hierarchy of beings?

b. Not-ness in the sense of absolute Nothingness is impossible. But in the course of ontololgy other senses of not-ness have arisen, e.g. the "relative" absence of Being so that beings both are and are-not. How many senses of negativity must be admitted? What senses of non can ontology distinguish?

c. The Ising-process "is" and a being "is"; the Necessary "is" and the contingent "is". In the two cases, the term "is" has a meaning which is double yet single, which is the same yet different. The "is-ing" of beings is Is-ing itself, and the latter "is" itself. How many senses of is are there? How must ontology characterize them?

d. ...Ontology may become self-conscious and articulate its own inner structure and the condition for its own possibility...

... c... a being is somewhat self-identical and somewhat self-different, somewhat interior and somewhat exterior... Everything has some degree of within-ness, otherwise it would not be. The more a being is interior to itself, the more it is; the less it is, the more it is exterior to itself. Now there are two kinds of self-exteriority: space and time. To be spatial and temporal is to be oneself in such a way that one is exterior to oneself; my past and my future are me, but they differ from each other; my right and my left are me, but they differ from each other. To be spatial and temporal is to be self-identical, to be oneself, but incompletely so. Thus space and time are modes of the absence of Being. The more spatial and temporal a being is, the less it is. This, as the basis for salvational pursuit, is related to the implication of modern physics that space and time are negative existence canceling out the positive existence of something.

d. Some beings are higher than others in the sense that they are more self-identical than others and, oppositely, less spatial and temporal than others. We human beings are so interior that we can even determine ourselves to be more or less...

b. Pure Negativity is a purely negative idea: the complete absence of Be cannot be, thus cannot be conceived [goddess' third way to Parmenides]... we cannot think Nothingness, but can only think Being in a reverse way.

2. The Not-a-being.

...b. The Being-process is more than beings... They are it, but it is not they. It is the Not-a-being.

c. Even before philosophical reflection, from the standpoint of the work-a-day preoccupation with beings, To-be itself appears as the No-thing. Ising is-not for the pre-philosophical consciousness.

d. A few philosophers have thematized Being in this way and have often been misunderstood. [Emphasis added.] We often refer to this as the meaning of Nothingness as the undifferentiatedness of Being or its not-a-being-ness, e.g. with Laozi and the Veda.

3. Otherness

...b. In contrast to the Being-process, there are many beings. Each of them differs from every other one; each is other than the others; one being is not another... Hence not-ness imports otherness or difference.

c. This negativity comes-to-pass only as beings come-to-pass. Were the Being-process not to have presenced in such a way as to be also absent, then otherness would not have come-to-pass.

4. Naughting

a. The final sense of negativity appeared with the conception of beings as the presence-and-absence of the Being-process. That is to say, non imports the "relative" absence (of Being) which is, as it were, the co-constituent of beings. This absencing together with the presencing of Be makes up beings.

b. This not-ness, which "belongs to" beings insofar as they are not the full intensity of Being, may be called naughting. A being both is and is-not; a being both is and noughts.

c. The noughting which co-constitutes beings comes-to-pass, as otherness does, only because and only as beings emerge. The impossible non-Being never comes-to-pass. Any being is only as it noughts.

d.... beings in their "positivity" are the Being-process presencing itself, and beings in their "negativity" are the Being-process absencing itself...

e. It is extremely difficult to circumscribe this sense of negativity well. For to understand it is to understand the very mystery of the emergence of beings....

a. The Being-process is necessary, absolute, and so on... To-be-absolutely, or Being-as-the-Absolute, is the first and primordial sense of "be-ing". [Emphasis addded]

b. The Absolute presences and at once absenses, and this process is the fact of beings.

2. Emergence

a. The emergence of beings when the Absolute both presences and absences itself is the second sense of "be-ing". The process of beings emerging may be called Being-as-Emergence. In other words, Emergence is the Absolute beingizing.

b. The Being-process in the sense of Emergence is the fact of beings be-ing beings. The process of beings be-ing beings is the process of the Absolute doing itself but not-all-at-once; beings-emerging is nothing other than the Absolute presencing but not to its full intensity.

c. Being-as-Emergence is, of course, the Absolute emerging -- but at once remaining back. It is Being-as-the-Absolute revealing and yet concealing itself.

d. The Emergence-process has been thought and named from the beginning of philosophy. However, gradually it comes to be thought as if it were autonomous, as if it were not the Absolute emerging. During the past hundred years, some philosophers have conceived Emergence in abstraction from the Absolute. They think only the process of beings be-ing beings as if that process were not the Absolute in its less-than-total self-doing...

2. This is the crucial point. Here Guerrière principally has Heidegger in mind. However, the Milesian, or their most representative Anaximandrean, and the Heraclitean Being (apeiron and the fiery flux) are also the be-ing of beings, Emergence. So is Dao of the Daoist (Laozi and Zhuangzi), as Conche has attested to. Being-as-Emergence is in fact the historically primordial experience of being, the first to be articulated, and it is the eternally conserved substrate of the thermodynamic reading. Human experience is at first of the thermodynamic structure of the Universe, change with the underlying remaining the same: Heraclitus' panta rei. Carrying this experience of the flux -- originally the experience of Conservation -- to its logical conclusion Parmenides is led to the articulation of Absolute Being as in this Advanced Philosophical Orientation. The thermodynamic reading can reproduce this Absolute Being as Conservation pure and simple, without the second law, and both can be said to correspond, among physical concepts, to that before the Big Bang.

But absolute Being as the logical conclusion of Being-as-Emergence means that the thermodynamic Conservation articulated as Being in the latter, limited sense is logically derivative of the first, non-limited sense, which, Guerrière emphasizes, is the source of the logical tautology A = A or the law of non-contradiction which is the foundation of the principle of Conservation.

As said, Heidegger's notion of Being, beginning with Being and Time, is derived from an attempt to first fight the deformation of Western metaphysics of Being from articulation of experience into merely conceptual categories of some "philosophical system" without mystical spirituality (the enlightened state of mind) as the backbone, as is so evident with Hegel; and secondly, to make reflexive metaphysics, i.e. one containing also the reason why we know Being in the first place rather than just articulating it. But since Heidegger conceives of Being as the be-ing of beings only, within the reflexive tendency his metaphysics eventually becomes just Weltlichkeit, explaining why things are the way they are. When re-reading the Milesians in light of this he distorts their Being into "presence", the showing-forth, which, as it stands, is the most deficient sense of Being, no way eternal. The thermodynamic reading of the Milesian Being as the substrate necessarily conserved eternally because of Conservation is therefore more accurate. Heidegger's project in Being and Time essentially comes down to a "modernization" of Plato's project of forms, explaining how things appear as what they are through humans' activities of self-interpretation without reference to where they (their material) have come from in the first place. A contemporary such as Marcel Conche who continues the Heideggerian project therefore also distorts the ancients, as he does Parmenides, whose sense of Being is really that of the Absolute: Guerrière has read it correctly. We will explore these issues in connection with the meaning of Dao in Laozi and with the constitution of modern Western philosophy.

Conche's Heideggerian reading of Parmenides of course has the advantage of saving the phenomenon, i.e. beings. For why should Being absence itself somewhat to get beings? Guerrière has provided the answer of Plotinus: Generosity, which he said is the only reasonable answer.

Our opinion is that beings are simply unsaveable. It is no less illogical to claim that Being in the absolute sense should be even slightly less than itself, i.e. than be simply, in order to get beings than to maintain that Being should ever not be or that non-Being should ever be. And this is the meaning of Nothingness as the real truth of being in the articulations of some Easterners, i.e. the "Emptiness" or sunyata of the Buddhists -- that there are really no beings at all, all just illusions, because it is simply illogical that any beings should be. Non-Being there refers to the non-existence of beings, not of Being, of course. These philosophers are oriented toward the mystery of beings, not Being, which is no mystery, but just logical necessity. This is also the meaning of Nothingness as the truth of existence in the thermodynamic reading. For the memory of Conservation -- always the first to be articulated, by the Milesians, the Upanishads, and the Daoist: Being as Emergence -- is with regard to beings: it is beings whose existence is eternally conserved (though Being too, since Be = Be eternally, but that's not the content of the memory). And the logical reasoning with this memory eventually shows that the conservation of the existence of everything is in fact conservation of zero, of nothing, for nothing can come out of nothing. This conservational principle that nothing can come out of nothing means reversely that nothing can disappear from something, i.e. Absolute Being cannot absence itself, however slightly, to get beings. The equivalent for the physical principle of Conservation -- that the total amount of existence has always to remain constant and that finally this constant amount has to be zero -- in traditional metaphysics is therefore the utter impossibility of the slightest absence of Absolute Being to get beings -- that non-Being, however slight, cannot be (within Being), as required for beings. This is why the tricky part of the Big Bang theory had always been to explain where Big Bang (all the energy of the Universe) came from -- until it is realized that the energy level of the Universe is really just zero: it doesn't really exist. No matter which way to take -- the traditional metaphysics of Absolute Being, the thermodynamic reading, or modern cosmology -- the answer is the same: there are no beings, the world is just an illusion. The phenomenon of beings cannot be saved; there can be no relationship between Being and beings; and "Generosity" is an illusion. This is Nibbana (Nirvana), Emptiness.

And so Guerrière writes in concluding "4. Naughting" in the "Four senses of negativity": f. Indeed, how is it that beings emerge? Why should absolute-Being, sufficient unto itself, have "done itself" in such wise as to not be fully itself? Why should it have let beings come-to-be in the first place? With this question we have reached the ultimate form of the Being-question. Why are there beings rather than only Being-simply? In this way, the Buddhists have achieved the highest form of enlightenment, the truest truth of existence: there are no beings.

3. Here is the occasion to give an indication of how modern Western philosophy is a matter of degeneration. The most illustrative case of this degeneration is undoubtedly the philosophy of Hegel.

For a short summary of Hegel's philosophy, see the Epilogue of A Thermodynamic Interpretation of History. That the central theme of Hegel's philosophy, the Absolute, is precisely the Parmenidean Is or Being in the absolute sense of traditional metaphysics as presented above, i.e. the conserved substrate of all beings in our thermodynamic reading, but differentiated from all becoming, can be gathered from Hegel's attribution of eternity to it: "Was wahr ist, ist ewig an und für sich, nicht gestern und nicht morgen, sondern schlechthin gegenwärtig, 'itzt' in Sinne der absoluten Gegenwart" ("What is true [i.e. the Absolute], is eternally in and for itself, not yesterday and not tomorrow, but strictly present, the 'now' in the sense of absolute present"; Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister, p. 182). That is, the moment of singularity, as we have analyzed for Parmenides' Is. "Die Idee ist präsent, der Geist unsterblich; es gibt kein Einst, wo er nicht gewesen wäre oder nicht sein würde, er ist nicht vorbei und ist nicht noch nicht, sondern er ist schlechterdings itzt" (ibid.; "The Idea is present, the Spirit immortal; there is no moment when it has not been or will not be, it is not past and is not not-yet, but it is strictly 'now'"). The Absolute is described in the same way as is Parmenides' Being.

Guerrière has demonstrated that Hegel's Absolute is none other than Being in the absolute sense as he has presented above in his "With What Does The Hegelian Science Begin?" in Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XXX, No. 3, March 1977.

Now the different manner in which Hegel conceives of his philosophy of Being constitutes the essence of his degeneration. This different manner is made manifest in his criticism of the philosophies of the East as "primitive" because they conceive of Being only in "abstraction".

Gleicherweise kann chinesische, indische Philosophie und eleatische, pythagoreische, ferner spinozistische oder sogar alle moderne Metaphysik parallelisiert werden, insofern allerdings alle das Eine oder die Einheit, das ganz abstrakt Allgemeine zugrundelegen; aber solche Vergleichung oder gar Gleichstellung ist höchst oberflächlich. In ihr wird gerade das übersehen, worauf es allein ankommt, auf die Bestimmtheit solcher Einheit; und den wesentlichen Unterschied macht gerade dies aus, ob jene Einheit abstrakt oder aber konkret... gefaßt wird. Jenes Gleichstellen aber beweist eben, daß es nur die abstrakte Einheit kennt... (ibid., p. 175)

"In the same way Chinese, Indian, Eleatic, Pythagorean, and furthermore Spinozean and even all the modern metaphysics can be seen as paralleled, insofar as they all take as foundation the One or Oneness, the all abstract Universal; but such comparison or even equation is superficial in the highest sense. In it is overlooked that which alone matters, the determination of such Oneness; and this constitutes the essential distinction, whether the Oneness is abstractly or concretely grasped. That equation itself shows that it only understands abstract Oneness..." What he means by the "more concrete" conception of Being is his system in Enzyklopädie, and by "determinations" (Bestimmtheiten), all these categories which the Absolute acquires in its path of actualization from "Logik" through nature (geosphere and biosphere) to the human noosphere (Spirit) -- categories as can be had through a look at the Table of Contents of the Enzyklopädie: Sein, Wesen, and Idee with their subdivisions (categories, determinations) in Wissenschaft der Logik, Mechanik, Physik, organische Physik with their subdivisions in Wissenschaft der Natur, subjektiver Geist, objektiver Geist, and absoluter Geist with their subdivisions from anthropology through ethics to art, religion and philosophy in Wissenschaft des Geistes. The whole system is a sort of a Platonic project of forms, explicating how things appear and appear as what they are in the process of Spirit's self-actualization. It is an intellectual exercise of the grandest sort but with little of the sentiment of transcendence and salvation which we see in Parmenides' vision, in Laozi's articulation, or in the Upanishadic search for Brahman. What has happened with Hegel is precisely the replacement of the original experience of transcendence in which Being or Conservation is intuited, with an intellectual exercise via the symbolism used for the expression of this original experience. (Compare Spengler's observation of the transition from Culture to Civilization, when mechanical rationality replaces organic living experience and expression.) The symbolism of the Absolute and Eternal has with Hegel not retained its original meaning which expresses the experience of the transcendent source of order, but is "used only as speculative topoi for purposes widely differing from the Platonic love of the divine Measure" (Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, p. 279), here a theory of everything that serves Hegel's egophany. Curiously, the pristineness of the experience of transcendence of the old masters is precisely the reason why Hegel regards them as "primitive" and the formalistic, propositional degenerateness of his system is precisely the reason why he thinks it superior. We have in A Thermodynamic Interpretation of History analyzed the same degeneration which Western art has undergone: one at first invents categories or symbols or utilizes analytic tools to help express the inexpressible mystic experience of Being and Union in which salvation, the transcendence of one's mortal nature, is glimpsed; but afterwards these categories or symbols become dissociated from the original experience, are played with as if they constituted a reality by themselves, and are finally used to construct a philosophical system as we see here. The next step in the degeneration would be S. Marc Cohen's "interpretation" of Parmenides we saw earlier in which the symbols and categories are treated as logical propositions or premises and conclusions, or Robert C. Solomon's "interpretation" of Hegel ("Hegel's Concept of Geist" in From Hegel to Existentialism) in which the "Spirit" is "derived" as the logically necessary universalization of Kant's transcendental ego. In both "interpretation" not even the memory of Being -- let alone the original experience thereof -- is retained: while Continental philosophy deforms ancient philosophy, analytic philosophy destroys ancient philosophy and Continental philosophy in its turn.

As we shall, this "downward movement" of the differentiation of consciousness did not start only with modern Western philosophy, but had already occurred in the times of Hellas immediately after the outburst of the mystic experience, with the Sophists. When a philosopher appears to articulate his enlightenment, others always follow attempting to destroy this enlightenment.