CREATION EX NIHILO
CREATION EX NIHILO
Creation: The production by a thing of another (which cannot but be analogous to it, since cause and effect are off the same nature).
Reply: What of my creation of a poem? of a work of art?
Counter-r[eply]: That work of art is myself when I produced it. (??)
Manifestation: The becoming of a thing entirely other than it is, the one becoming multiple and immobility, motion.
Alteration: The becoming of a thing other than itself by degrees, the passing of one thing to another, and from this to another. Alt[erati]on, unlike manifestation, is infinite, sans end. In Manifestation reality and appearance; in Alteration appearance purely, or, rather, appearances. Manifestation not in time, alteration in time, necessarily. In manifestation there are only 2 things; in alteration an infinite number.
Being and Not-Being.
B[eing] created world e nihilo i.e. out of N[ot] B [eing] (?)
Creation e nihilo is the only thing not anthropomorphic in the philosophy of the christian religion. The idea of something produced from nothing is not human, not to be found in experience. If the world became, then it must have been thus.
Proof of God’s Existence by First Motor. Answer to Renouvier as to impulse of actual infinite:
If the first impulse given be out of time, how could it be communicated to matter? To the world?
If in time, the one, who gives it is in time also and God is therefore either the world or, at the least, a composed thing, as being interior to duration (...)
Is it not an error to consider time in itself?
Being, first error in considering: The saying that B[eing] is perfect, or is perfection, because B[eing] is that beyond which nothing can be conceived. If this be not sufficiently refuted by our proof of the identity of B[eing] and Not-B[eing] we can yet disprove it otherwise. We say plenitude of B[eing], but what is this plenitude? It is the positive term of which nothingness is the negative.
1. Fallacy of Negativity (Parmenides).
2. [Fallacy of] Plenitude (Th. Aquinas).
Textos Filosóficos . Vol. II. Fernando Pessoa. (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho.) Lisboa: Ática, 1968.
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