[MD] "It's Nothing, Really...Nothing at All."

[Kevin Perez]

I stumbled onto this at EBSCOhost.  Enjoy.
 

Kevin
 

Ref.: copula, ontology, nihilism, existentialism, Aristotle, Eliaticism,
Sophists, Parmenides
 
Re: Paper presented at the Annual Penn State Conference on Rhetoric
and Composition (14th, University Park, PA, July 12-15, 1995).
 
Author: Pullman, George L.
 
Abstract:
 
     Philosophy was created by accident out of nothing. The verb "to be"
     can be confused with "to exist." The accidents of the fact that the
     "copula" is both a transitive and an intransitive verb are sometimes
     thought to have plagued ancient Greek thinking until Aristotle
     discovered logic and thus saved the world from thoughtless
     "copulation." From this perspective, dividing "logos" from "ontos"
     makes language reliable, and thus real thinking becomes possible.
     Conversely, if "to be" cannot be distinguished from "to exist," then
     thinking clearly or speaking in a straightforward fashion is not
     possible. The accident of the copula made philosophy possible
     because its effects made the creation of nothing possible; further, if
     nothing is possible, then anything is possible--a prospect that
     disturbed the Eleatics and the sophists as much as it did Aristotle.
     Investigation allows two claims to be made: (1) the Eleatics and the
     sophists appear to have been grappling with the effects of the copula
     even if they did not manage to fully or explicitly distinguish between
     existence and predication; in other words, the Eleatics and the
     sophists were trying to deal with the copula's ability to create
     nothing and render all descriptions uncontrollably metaphorical; and
     (2) philosophy did not succeed where the Eleatics and the sophists
     failed because if it had succeeded, then ontology would have
     disappeared.
 
Full text: http://kjp123.alturl.com (mirror)
 

 
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