/lit/ - Literature

>Being is what is immediate, and as a result it is empty. For Hegel, pure Being marks the beginning of the movement of the idea. Generally Being is approached as what is fundamental, or as that which is most important. But, for Hegel, it is addressed as mere Being because Being is an abstraction which instead of providing ‘absolute plenitude is but ‘absolute emptiness’.

>The problem with Being is that it cannot articulate itself, in the sense that it cannot be located. Any attempt at location requires a term of specification, a ‘concrete characterization’. In other words, Being to be located must become this or that being, but this means that Being to be Being has to become other than what it is. We must remember that Being is the most general of all, pure immediate self-identity. As Hegel says, ‘every additional and more concrete characterisation causes Being to lose that integrity and simplicity it has in the beginning’.

>Being, to be, must other itself. But the other of Being is Nothing. This means, it seems, that Being must become Nothing in order to be in a sense beyond its own emptiness (nothingness). Hegel asserts quite forcefully that Being is Nothing.