Andy Blunden

“ Pure Being is the world an instant before you see it, it is the world through the eyes of a new born baby. Like the Zen teaching that demands of the devotee absolute awareness, absolute "thoughtlessness", it is, for consciousness, an unattainable moment - even though it is equally the beginning of all consciousness!
In the words of Jean Piaget:
"at first the universe consists in mobile and plastic perceptual images centred about personal activity. ”

“ The development of Being however, is just the passing of one aspect after another, one fact or statistic or mental picture after another without mutual contact or effect; Being is like a diary as compared to a real autobiography, like things appear when you have no idea about what's going on. Each moment passes away and is replaced by another. But in its development, Being accumulates the "factual material" which is to form the basis of reflection and the formation of conceptual knowledge. ”

“ In the beginning, any concept, social movement, etc., is indistinguishable from its whole social and historical context. The germ of a movement lies in the very conditions of its birth.
This stage of a social entity when it exists only in the most abstract sense of being a category of individuals is called "Being". It's first act will be precisely the recognition that it exists but it is Nothing. ”

“ Instead Hegel identifies the real beginning of the science: in Being, in Being in which subject and object are indissolubly immersed together, from which reflection emerges from the realisation that Being is Nothing, from absolute awareness which is also absolute unconsciousness. ”

“ Being in Natural and Social Movements A social movement exists (in Hegelian language) "in-itself" before it finds any kind of voice, let alone becomes conscious of itself and organised under its own banner and program. Before there is a working class, there are many thousands of wage workers. Using the methods of bourgeois sociologists we can identify wage workers or any other category that is subject to measurement as a "category", but this utterly abstract procedure in no way demonstrates the existence of a "thing". ”

“ In other words, Being becomes only because we are also not of the world, because we have separated ourselves from the world and are its Other.
The Notion is the concept we have of the world - the Other of the world. It is abstract in the sense that each Notion corresponds to but one aspect of the world, just as each moment of Being, each event, passing impression or statistic, is abstract, meaningless and disconnected. ”

“ Sociologists can dream up any category they like and count its numbers and measure the attitudes and behaviour of its members but such quantitative and qualitative measurement means very little. Only when a social group begins to speak and organise does it come into existence in any meaningful way. ”

“ Being is the immediate, that is, un-mediated, given in itself and not by means of something else, in a round about way. But right from the outset, Hegel makes it clear that "neither in Heaven nor on Earth" is there anything that is not equally mediated as immediate. "Being is immediate" is not an absolute, but a relative truth. To elevate it into an absolute (like the ancients and like the gurus of "awareness") is one relative moment or stage of the Absolute Idea. ”

“ The first determination of Pure Being comes we when notice some property of the thing which is relatively persistent or stable, a quality; we also notice other qualities, and Being comes to us as a series of properties passing one after another. Further determination shows that a certain quality is in greater or lesser quantity; our representation is deepened by quality differentiated quantitatively within itself. ”

“ The first premise of human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. ”

“ Being - Notion - Idea The philosophy of Being is first of all "awareness". In this century it is the point of view expressed by, for example, Krishnamurti, and is strongly present in the martial arts; among the popular applied psychologists "active listening" closely expresses the standpoint of Being. ”

“ Of course, we cannot here go into either the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself geological, orohydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history always sets out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of people. [First Premises of Materialist Method, Marx]
Here Hegel demonstrates this method in relation to his subject, Logic. The logical category of Being cannot be further determined or it is no longer "Being", but something else, some determination of Being. ”

“ As Hegel says, there is absolutely nothing you can say about being without in doing so "further determining" it, without putting in place of pure Being some particular, some finite, an example. Being is absolutely featureless, or rather does not yet show any feature. ”

“ During the stage of Being, there may be momentary "showings" which however lead to nothing, and each coming together happens in isolation out of the conditions which exists at a particular place and time. They just come and go, without exerting any influence of what follows or what happens elsewhere. ”

“ In its development the Notion becomes more and more concrete, like the theory of chemistry which, once having established the Notion of a molecule as the smallest unit of chemical substance, builds up a more and more concrete picture of the molecule, with its atomic composition, its asymmetrical structure, is weak and strong bonds, associations, hydrogen radicals, carbon rings, ability to dissociate, etc., etc.. ”