At the same time, the world we experience is one of tremendous multiplicity, where everything seems to be undergoing constant change. Yet for us to be able to “say anything true about anything,” there must be at least something that “stays the same” across this ceaseless change. Otherwise, our words would mean something different on each occasion, and whatever we referred to would constantly be passing out of being. If, as Heraclitus says, we “cannot step twice into the same river,” then it also seems we cannot speak of the same river twice either.1,i

I am reminded of Heidegger's time, which to me is a very strong case for "magic". Perhaps you know it. First, an ontology, like everything, is going to be conceived hermeneutically, meaning, if you will, the river stops for no theory. Anyway, he is following a historical example, from Augustine, onward: The past doesn't exist, nor does the future, and the present is a Heraclitean becoming, so how can we ever discover reality which is seems lost in time, so to speak?

Heidegger calls this "vulgar" time that is conceived as a linear sequence, the kind of thing in everyday use, but is ontologically irresponsible. We need to think of the three modalities of time as ecstatic, meaning, essentially, no one stands apart from the others. The "not yet" is the "having been" and this is realized in the "nothing" of the present. This is Section 64 and onward in division 2 of b and T.

Why is this magical? Because first, it is impossible to conceive. One would have step outside of "vulgar" time to do this and this is impossible; it would be like stepping outside of one's own ipseity (dasein). Second, YET: one has to admit that it must be right. Past as such never even began to make sense. As with future as such or the present as such. It must be a "unity" and sequential time just, as with many things, a manner of speaking and getting things done.

A settled issue? I suppose not. But, a compelling argument that says our very thoughts and feelings and moods and everything, belong to an impossible and unspeakable primordiality (this is me. Heidegger would never talk like this), well, far more magical than Kant's formal transcendentalism.

This is, though, a bare description not an explanation. We are left with no idea how the "one becomes the many". — Janus

One finds what is there that is not among the many, not "a" being. This being as such. Difficult to confront. It does take some of what you could call magic because being is not an empirical concept, nor is it merely analytical. It is apriori existential, meaning the meaning of being as such has to be discovered in a certain "yielding" (meditative thinking?) to the world as opposed to some aggressive analytic approach which forces things into categorical place, reducing the world to an deflating concept in a word game. Keeping in mind that Wittgenstein adored Kierkegaard as Tolstoy. He just thought philosophy cheapens everything it touches. I think he was right.

One finds what is there that is not among the many, not "a" being. — Astrophel

Seems to me that is just a general idea of existence. When it comes to what we encounter that we are able to talk about, it is only particulars.

There is a sense in which, as Markus Gabriel says the world does not exist. This is because 'world' signifies the totality, and this totality is never encountered—it is just an idea.

Seems to me that is just a general idea of existence. When it comes to what we encounter that we are able to talk about, it is only particulars.

There is a sense in which, as Markus Gabriel says the world does not exist. This is because 'world' signifies the totality, and this totality is never encountered—it is just an idea. — Janus

This totality is the totality of one's own past. Look around a classroom, e.g. and note how everything makes sense, the chalk/markers, desks, chairs, textbooks and so on.

Put it this way, when you have an object sitting there before you, what is it that singles it out as an object? Its singularity is a universal, like seeing a tree and knowing its a tree is an instantiation of the general idea. No general idea, no singularity. It has been argued that one never really acknowledges anything as it is because to acknowledge anything at all is a matter of bringing it into general comprehension, and so all one ever understands is this conceptual form that makes understanding what it is. Pull away from this, and the one is seized not by the singularity, but by what is their PRIOR to the sigularity, and this is being as such.

It is a reduction that makes this possible, a reduction down to the very existence that stands before you released from presumptions of contingent language affairs, from Kantian synthetic structures, if you like. The point is, it is possible to "liberate" the world from this usual way(vulgar way, says Heidegger, not to belittle, just to say it is prior to ontology) of perceiving things. Particulars yield to a very meaningful foundational primordiality. You know, the original "wonder" of things (says Kierkegaard).

Its singularity is a universal, like seeing a tree and knowing its a tree is an instantiation of the general idea. No general idea, no singularity. — Astrophel

I disagree. One can see a tree without thinking of it as a tree. Animals obviously do this.

I disagree. One can see a tree without thinking of it as a tree. Animals obviously do this. — Janus

But can an animal see a tree as animals see trees prior to some measure of history in which trees have been encountered. A bit like asking what an infant human knows of mother's milk prior to understanding, social and language modelling, and general experience that engenders familiarity. No familiarity and it is as William James called it, a world of blooming and buzzing, with no "seeing" at all.

So if it is admitted that an animal requires time and experience to "see" things as animals typically do, then analysis asks what this familiarity is about. It is memory, the "having been, having seen, having done" already that mediates the perceptual event when a cow, say, sees greener grass on the other side and sees this and knows this. I call this proto-linguistic regard for things, not taken up in language, but surely when the cow looks up, sees the greener grass and picks herself up to move over there, there is something of the conditional proposition in this, the "if...then" of the activity, as there is something of the affirmation when settling down to eat.

Not thinking, really, but mediated; and not language, but the proto linguistic recollection and repetition. For us, of course, memory language memory. You may not be thinking in the recognition of, say, everything in someone's kitchen as you wander through, but to be asked about anything and a moment's notice, and there is the language, always already there, ready to hand. This is implicit knowledge, and this kind of thing one's perceptions possess like a halo that surrounds any object that comes to view. There is never a completely novel experience, for it is language and familiarity that seize hold in the inquiry itself, that is, even if things are alien, even uncanny, the approach to this issues from a body of assumptions already in place.

On the conceptual end, these are universals.