A great modern philosopher (and he's here- actually here - on substack!), Prof Carlos Garrido recently revived (unintentionally of course) some of my old demons from college days. It was a particular bugbear of mine that I could not understand the reverence afforded to Aristotle, or rather, his philosophy. As far as I could tell, Aristotelianism was simply a very primitive take on natural science. I just didn't get anything (probably shouldn't have been expecting it) nourishing from Aristotle. So the enthusiasm for his philosophy has long been both a source of bemusement and irritation for me.
See. I'm not an enlightened being (yet)!
What I found in the Buddhist philosophy of Emptiness (Sunyata) was a well developed, persuasive, and spiritually nourishing refutation of Aristotelianism which (and I don't want to deny others any benefit they get from it) left me as cold as stone. The following essay is a brief hack effort at articulating my grasp of the contrast between the Greek (primarily Aristotelian) and East Asian (specifically Madhyamaka Buddhist) understandings of ‘being'.
Nothing is Real
Actual existence has the aspects of being and non-being, or to put it more concretely, being and extinction. It is not merely (though it is relatively) that there is a pattern of causation (becoming) from one form of being, through qualitative change to another, or from an old thing to a new thing, but that there is also the absolute contradiction of being; what is now does indeed cease in the process of continuity from the old to the new. It is a continuity of discontinuity.
Whether the enduring substratum proposed in Greek, in Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy be taken as a static ens or dynamic esse, it is still privileging one aspect of actual existence – being, and passing over as illusory non-being. Far from presenting a full picture of actually existing reality, this is taking one explicit aspect of the Heraclitean dialectic (the identity of opposites) as characterising the totality. In other words, positive being is- even when developed as a dynamic concept by Aristotle – given an absolute priority to the effect that it’s negation (non-being) is merely a derivative, and the reality of nothing as forming the mutually dependent relation to something is lost as a valid category of human thought.
By doing such, we lose the reality of extinction as the necessary correlative of existence and reality is divested of its negative aspect. Reality, or the totality of actual existence must include both existence and extinction. Becoming belongs to the existence side of Reality. This is understandable if we remember that human beings are naturally going to be seeking to persevere and avoid death and extinction (naturally, though by most appearances today, that sensible attitude is fading fast). But we should acknowledge the bias which favours the kind of thinking that seeks to preserve, extend life, and when that hits an impossibility, to appeal to a higher mode of being for continuing rather than accepting the dissolution of life into a greater reality which includes death.
The concept of a self-identity enduring through accidental change is a useful one, as long as it is understood as a purely relative or convenient way of explaining phenomena abstracted from experience
But examination of this concept of a self-identity (form) reveals nothing apart from interrelationships, dependencies, abstractions, endless conditions. We might say that there are regularities of phenomena, but any one thing or process is actually inseparable from dependence on everything else, or, the totality of the phenomenal world. And that totality in turn, depends on it’s parts. To use the example of an elephant remaining self-identical (as a particular form) through accidental change; the elephant does not exist apart from the totality of the universe, the elephant as a part of the universe means that without the elephant, the universe is not. Dependence means no independent self-nature. Here we might see a distinction between the intuitive grasp of existence and the intellectual activity of breaking down experience into analysable elements (or processes). As far as the experience of phenomena goes, what appears does disappear. That change can be seen at all necessities both appearance and disappearance. If an appearance depends on another, it is empty of self existence. Form - or what is designated as a process - is actually inseparable from all forms and processes, and therefore identical to Emptiness.
If one aspect of Reality is taken as priority, the result is not illusion, but delusion. However, if it is recognised that the subject-predicate way of understanding reality is itself contingent and dependent (therefore empty of all but relative truth,) then the duality between real being and unreal non-being is reduced to relativity, and thus is ultimately illusory
Life and death, being and non-being, continuity and discontinuity, existence and extinction. These are all mutually implicating and mutually dependent concepts beneath which is the activity of a thinking being, a human subject. The strategies and emphases in the construction of thought systems and worldviews naturally are shaped by the interests of the thinking subject. But a fuller picture of actual existence can be only honestly sought by acknowledging the biases and attempting to transcend the dualities, not towards merely being, but towards Reality that expresses itself in aspects as both being/non-being, and being/becoming.
Nothing is real. As real as is something.
Reality is the contradictory identity of being and nothingness.
Here's a link to Prof Garrido’s publication;