My Head Asplode

First of all, you gotta hand it to Gorgias. After reading Gorgias,Westley's words to Vezzini never ranger truer:



But I'm getting ahead of myself. Allow me to illustrate what I mean.

Here follows a part of something I'm reading for class tomorrow. It's an excerpt from a  "fragment" of a Greek text explaining Gorgias' views "On Not Being." Basically Gorgias is out to prove that nothing exists. Yes, you read that right.

Check it out:

"Now he (Gorgias) concludes in the following way that nothing exists: If [anything] exists, either the existent exists or the nonexistent or both the existent exists and the nonexistent. But, as he will establish, neither does the existent exist nor the nonexistent, as he will make clear, nor the existent and [the]  nonexistent, as he will also teach. It is not the case then that anything exists.

"More specifically, the nonexistent does not exist; for if the nonexistent exists, it will both exist and not exist at the same time, for insofar as it is nonexistent it will, on the other hand, exist. It would, however, be entirely absurd for something to exist and at the same time not exist. The nonexistent, therefore, does not exist. And to state another argument, if the nonexistent exists, the existent will not exist, for these are opposites to each other, and if existence is an attribute of the nonexistent, nonexistence will be an attribute of the existent. But it is not, in fact, true that the existent does not exist.  [Accordingly], neither will the nonexistent exist..." 

And it continues on in this vein for some time.

Just go ahead and mull that one over for a little while. As you do, you will likely come to the same conclusion I have:




Somebody should set up a fake Gorgias twitter account and post incomprehensible philosophical tweets. I'd definitely follow that.




(10 points for my second blog post in two weeks with a homestarrunner reference.)
...
(yes, I just awarded myself 10 points.)