24 October 2011

Logic: Motion requires that an object is both "here and not-here"

Even our ordinary conception of Becoming implies that somewhat comes out of it, and that Becoming therefore has a result. But this conception gives rise to the question, how Becoming does not remain mere Becoming, but has a result? 
The answer to this question follows from what Becoming has already shown itself to be. Becoming always contains Being and Nothing in such a way, that these two are always changing into each other, and reciprocally cancelling each other. Thus Becoming stands before us in utter restlessness — unable however to maintain itself in this abstract restlessness: for, since Being and Nothing vanish in Becoming (and that is the very notion of Becoming), the latter must vanish also. Becoming is as it were a fire, which dies out in itself, when it consumes its material. The result of this process however is not empty Nothing, but Being identical with the negation — what we call Being Determinate (being then and there): the primary import of which evidently is that it has become.

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