Oct 22 2008
Philosophical Rumination of the Day
We can’t see complete darkness. Complete darkness is not seeing anything. Not seeing.
So the expression, “Man, it was complete darkness,” is not fully accurate. “Man, I experienced complete darkness,” is usually closer to the mark.
Alright, much of philosophizing smacks of linguistic gymnastics, the cleaving and teasing from words new meanings.
I once attempted to read Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. I slogged through 60 pages before giving up. I thought, “Man, 500 pages on nothingness. I’m glad he didn’t try to write about somethingness.”
In the case of complete darkness we are talking not about the being of a nothingness, but of the lack of something, namely light. Can the lack of something have being (i.e., “it was”)?
