Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Topics in Education

Titel: Topics in Education

Stichwort: Scotus: being is 'not nothing'; Christian Wolff, Hegel

Kurzinhalt: For Scotus, being is 'not nothing.' It is not a totality that is the whole of reality.

Textausschnitt: 37/7 However, that movement that begins with Parmenides and passes through Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine to Aquinas is not the only answer to the question, What is being? For Scotus, being is 'not nothing.' It is not a totality that is the whole of reality. You do not need the beatific vision to answer the question, What is being? Being is the concept with the minimum connotation and the maximum denotation. The implications of the Scotist notion of being appear in the order of the philosophic sciences in Christian Wolff, for whom ontology is the study of possible being, and actual being is studied in other departments. Scotus's being is also the being presupposed by Hegel. The being that is not found in anything, that is just 'not nothing,' is the sort of being that never exists. Nothing is merely 'not nothing,' and consequently Hegel's dialectic of the concept goes from being to nothing, the 'not-nothing' being. 'Not nothing' is the minimum connotation with the maximum denotation, and there is nothing that exists corresponding to that; and if there is nothing that exists corresponding to the concept, the concept is a concept of nothing. And so Hegel goes from being to nothing and reconciles both in becoming. (172f; Fs)