By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Either "nothing" is used in its ordinary relative sense of designating something that is not to one's present purpose-as in "There's nothing in the refrigerator" or "There's nothing in this room"-or, if it's not used in this ordinary relative sense but in an absolute sense, then either language is idling and "nothing" simply has no objective designation, or else it designates the realm of pure possibility, which is itself not possible but real. This realm, including the necessary as the least common denominator of all possibilities, has a certain structure: God-as-such correlated with world-as-such. This structure is not nothing in the sense that it is nothing objectively real, because it is an objective abstract aspect of any possible and thus every actual God-world.
"Nonbeing" (me on) in Berdyaev's sense seems to be "the process of actualizing, rendering the determinable determinate," and so "self-creativity and the essence of all becoming." But, then, if"nonbeing" is understood to be synonymous with "nothing" used absolutely and yet still having an objective designation, the "objective abstract aspect" that it designates would presumably be better characterized as "creativity as such," or, even better, "creativity as such with its two essential aspects of divine and nondivine becoming" (10: 270).
3 October 2004