Friday, January 18, 2008

Deep Thoughts IV

What was will never not have been.

(One might think that a simpler variant would do: "What was will always be." However, it could be argued (I do not know how successfully) that the simpler variant has the substantive entailment that now is not the last moment of time, and perhaps even the entailment that time has no end, thereby making the thought far from tautologous. These kinds of departures from tautology are easy to fail to notice but can be important in some philosophical contexts. Deep Thinking requires care.)

1 comment:

Schimpfinator said...

Very nice! Some other variations that I can think of are:

What is will never not have been.

or

All that is, and all that was, will never not have been.

That is difficult to phrase!