קאווע שטיבל

מי אני האט געשריבן:אין דעם שמועס איז מערקווידיג צוצוצייכענען דאס וואס אלכסנדר הערזען און ישעיה בּערלין האבן געהאלטן. ״דאס ציל/תכלית פון לעבן איז לעבן אליינס.״

גאלד האט געשריבן:סתם געהאקט

[left]The answer to the ancient question "Why is there something rath­er than nothing?" would then be that "nothing" is unstable[/left]

[left]The universe may
be as great as they say
But it wouldn't be missed
if it didn't exist[/left]

[left]Why should nonbeing, no matter how defined, be the default state of existence rather than being? Why is some creative act needed to convert nonbeing to being? Perhaps such an act is needed to convert being into nonbeing[/left]

To those who consider the question Why is there something rather than nothing? hopelessly elusive or downright incoherent, it might be pointed out that intellectual progress often consists in the refinement of precisely such questions, in ways unforeseeable to those who first ask them. Take another question, posed twenty-five hundred years ago by Thales and his fellow pre-Socratics: What are things made of? Asking a question of such all-encompassing generality might sound naive, even childish. But, as the Oxford philosopher Timothy Williamson observed, the pre-Socratic philosophers "were asking one of the best questions ever to have been asked, a question that has painfully led to much of modern science." To have dismissed it from the outset as unanswerable would have been "a feeble and unnecessary surrender to despair, philistinism, cowardice or indolence."

. . .

Ignoring this question is a symptom of mental deficiency - so, at least, claimed the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. "The lower a man is in an intellectual respect, the less puzzling and mysterious existence itself is to him," Schopenhauer wrote. What raises man above other creatures is that he is conscious of his finitude; the prospect of death brings with it the conceivability of nothingness, the shock of nonbeing. If my own self, the microcosm, is ontologically precarious, so perhaps is the macrocosm, the universe as a whole. Conceptually, the question Why does the world exist? rhymes with the question Why do I exist? These are, as John Updike observed, the two great existential mysteries. And if you happen to be a
solipsist
- that is, if you believe, as did the early Wittgenstein, "I am my world" - the two mysteries fuse into one

. . .

It has been said that the question Why is there something rather than nothing? is so profound that it would occur only to a metaphysician, yet so simple that it would occur only to a child

מי אני האט געשריבן:דער פיזיקער דר. וויקטאר סטענגער טענה׳ט אויף די עצם שאלה:

Why should nonbeing, no matter how defined, be the default state of existence rather than being? Why is some creative act needed to convert nonbeing to being? Perhaps such an act is needed to convert being into nonbeing

Someone who proposes a non-strange answer [to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”] shows he didn’t understand the question

מתבודד האט געשריבן:דאס שטימט יא מאטעמאטיש און לאגיש?...

What is nothing? Macbeth answered this question with admirable concinnity: "Nothing is, but what is not." My dictionary puts it somewhat more paradoxically - "nothing (n.): a thing that does not exist." Although Parmenides, the ancient Eleatic sage, declared that it was impossible to speak of what is not - thereby violating his own precept - the plain man knows better. Nothing is popularly held to be better than a dry martini, but worse than sand in the bedsheets. A poor man has it, a rich man needs it, and if you eat it for a long time, it'll kill you. On occasion, nothing could be further from the truth, but it is not clear how much further. It can be both black and white all over at the same time. Nothing is impossible for God, yet it is a cinch for the rankest incompetent. No matter what pair of contradictory properties you choose, nothing seems capable of embodying them. From this it might be concluded that nothing is mysterious. But that would only mean that everything is obvious - including, presumably, nothing

מי אני האט געשריבן:דזשים האָלט שרייבט דארט לגבי מגדיר זיין ״אַיִן/nothing״ מיט הומאר:

What is nothing? Macbeth answered this question with admirable concinnity: "Nothing is, but what is not." My dictionary puts it somewhat more paradoxically - "nothing (n.): a thing that does not exist." Although Parmenides, the ancient Eleatic sage, declared that it was impossible to speak of what is not - thereby violating his own precept - the plain man knows better. Nothing is popularly held to be better than a dry martini, but worse than sand in the bedsheets. A poor man has it, a rich man needs it, and if you eat it for a long time, it'll kill you. On occasion, nothing could be further from the truth, but it is not clear how much further. It can be both black and white all over at the same time. Nothing is impossible for God, yet it is a cinch for the rankest incompetent. No matter what pair of contradictory properties you choose, nothing seems capable of embodying them. From this it might be concluded that nothing is mysterious. But that would only mean that everything is obvious - including, presumably, nothing

***

דר. ראבערט נאזיק האט געהאלטן אז עפ״י דר. מארטין היידעגער וואס האט געזאגט אז מ׳קען בכלל נישט זאגן ״איז״ אויף ״אַיִן״; זיין לשון איז געווען ״דאס נישט נישטעט״ [אנשטאטס ״דאס נישט איז״]. ועפי״ז האט דר. נאזיק געזאגט אז דאס ״אַיִן״ טוהט זיך אליינס ״נישטען״ און מבטל זיין.

מי אני האט געשריבן:

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so

Alan Watts

‏דאס געבט אולי א ווייטערדיגע דימענציע אז טאמער איז תכלית הבריאה עצמותו ית׳ וואס מ׳קען נישט משיג זיין, איז טאקע די סטעיטמענט אליין א חלק פון דאס נאן-קאגניטיוויזם ונכלל בתוך די אלגעמיינע פראבלעם פון רעליגיעזע שפראך.

ושיטתו של דר. וויקטאר פרענקל ידוע.