The Nihilsum Concept
The "Nihilsum" represents a state that defies conventional logic by existing in a realm between what we establish as being and non-being. It cannot be fully categorized as something or nothing; it is also the absence of either. So, it challenges the binary system of categorization of being. The entities (' ') concept calls for a new term to describe this state, one that isn't captured by traditional notions of existence or non. This Nihilsum, is a construct that transcends the conventional limits of thought. This post explores the this "Nihilsum" which can be more easily referred to as (' '), not as an entity or a state, but as a meta-logical construct that defies traditional logic and ontological frameworks. This post aims to establish the premises for this concept and provide a further investigation into how ' ' (which we can refer to as its more accessible name of the Nihilsum for the rest of the post interacts with existing philosophical ways of thinking and/or thought, particularly in the realm of postmodernism and ontology.
With the Nihilsum comes a familiar comparison, the concept of the 'void', which implies a complete absence, but the Nihilsum resists being labeled as merely a lack of existence. It is a state that both is and is not simultaneously, without fully asserting either/or, so it cannot be comparable to the void. You could say this Nihilsum wills itself to be an ontological rejection of clear definitions of being and the lack of. It's rhizomatic.
The Nihilsum is somewhat metalogical, as you can see from the introduction. One of the 'defining' features of the Nihilsum is its resistance to being captured by formal logic. Notably, the principle of non-contradiction dictates that something cannot be both true and false, or both existent and non-existent. However, the Nihilsum operates outside these two boundaries(thus asserting it as meta logical). It cannot be fully explained or categorized by traditional logical systems. In a world where logical systems are fundamental to understanding truth and existence, the Nihilsum is to logic an anomaly that forces us to reconsider the limits of reason and the possibility of paradoxical truths.
The Nihilsum aligns with postmodern thought by rejecting fixed categories of identity, existence, and meaning. Where traditional philosophies sought to define the nature of being, the Nihilsum undermines these efforts by introducing a noncategorical existence. Differance and the endless play of meanings within language suggest that truth is never fixed, and meaning is always deferred. The Nihilsum could operatee in a similar manner, defying any final or stable definitions by its 'infinite' nature of attempting to categorize it to a set of words. Each attempt to define the Nihilsum leads to further complications. We try to say what it is but only expose more contradictions.
The Nihilsum can be interpreted as an extension of existential ambiguity by the absence of a fixed identity and a space of potentiality. The Nihilsum embodies the paradox of freedom, where we confront both the possibility of existence and its inherent nonsense. The Nihilsum can represent a state where existence cannot be fully categorized. It does not negate existence; instead, it can transcend the need to categorize what existence is. If existence is not defined in conventional terms, how can we apply fixed ethical frameworks to human life? In this given world where existence is to be fluid, these ethical frameworks must be contextual and open to interpretation, resisting the imposition of universal standards.
So, through this examination, I'm trying to offer a paradoxical space where being and non-being are not opposites but co-exist in a tension that cannot be resolved within traditional frameworks. Through exploring postmodern thought, existentialism, and ontological speculation, the Nihilsum provides a lens through which we can reconsider existence and the limits of logic. I think it potentially lacks practical application, and I am also having trouble articulating this well, so my apologies for anything unclear, but I am most interested in speculation about this or just a complete rejection of this concept.
With the Nihilsum comes a familiar comparison, the concept of the 'void', which implies a complete absence, but the Nihilsum resists being labeled as merely a lack of existence. It is a state that both is and is not simultaneously, without fully asserting either/or, so it cannot be comparable to the void. You could say this Nihilsum wills itself to be an ontological rejection of clear definitions of being and the lack of. It's rhizomatic.
The Nihilsum is somewhat metalogical, as you can see from the introduction. One of the 'defining' features of the Nihilsum is its resistance to being captured by formal logic. Notably, the principle of non-contradiction dictates that something cannot be both true and false, or both existent and non-existent. However, the Nihilsum operates outside these two boundaries(thus asserting it as meta logical). It cannot be fully explained or categorized by traditional logical systems. In a world where logical systems are fundamental to understanding truth and existence, the Nihilsum is to logic an anomaly that forces us to reconsider the limits of reason and the possibility of paradoxical truths.
The Nihilsum aligns with postmodern thought by rejecting fixed categories of identity, existence, and meaning. Where traditional philosophies sought to define the nature of being, the Nihilsum undermines these efforts by introducing a noncategorical existence. Differance and the endless play of meanings within language suggest that truth is never fixed, and meaning is always deferred. The Nihilsum could operatee in a similar manner, defying any final or stable definitions by its 'infinite' nature of attempting to categorize it to a set of words. Each attempt to define the Nihilsum leads to further complications. We try to say what it is but only expose more contradictions.
The Nihilsum can be interpreted as an extension of existential ambiguity by the absence of a fixed identity and a space of potentiality. The Nihilsum embodies the paradox of freedom, where we confront both the possibility of existence and its inherent nonsense. The Nihilsum can represent a state where existence cannot be fully categorized. It does not negate existence; instead, it can transcend the need to categorize what existence is. If existence is not defined in conventional terms, how can we apply fixed ethical frameworks to human life? In this given world where existence is to be fluid, these ethical frameworks must be contextual and open to interpretation, resisting the imposition of universal standards.
So, through this examination, I'm trying to offer a paradoxical space where being and non-being are not opposites but co-exist in a tension that cannot be resolved within traditional frameworks. Through exploring postmodern thought, existentialism, and ontological speculation, the Nihilsum provides a lens through which we can reconsider existence and the limits of logic. I think it potentially lacks practical application, and I am also having trouble articulating this well, so my apologies for anything unclear, but I am most interested in speculation about this or just a complete rejection of this concept.
Comments (58)
Welcome to The forum.
Im sure Im not the only one who was confused when I started reading your post. I thought you were talking about nihilism but misspelled it, but after reading the first paragraph, it became clear you were talking about something different. But you never really described what it was, what the word meant, where it came from. You talk about Nihilsum but you never define it. Even after reading the entire post, Im not sure exactly what youre talking about. Is this a word you made up?
From what I can tell from your description, it sounds like something similar to Lao Tzus Tao or other non-dualistic philosophies. You should provide more information.
Thank you.
The Nihilsum attempts a neologism combining the Latin nihil and sum. I can now see I sort of just dived in straight from the start. The Nihilsum would be a concept that exists(or of existence) between the categories of something and nothing by being neither fully one nor the other but instead exists as a paradox that resists clear categorization. I'm trying to say it is itself which creates this paradox of clear definition. It's not definite.
This does accord with poststructuralist accounts putting difference before identity , and Heideggers attempt to think being and nothingness together. Heidegger constantly struggled to come up with an adequate way of articulating a notion of transit, othering and difference that the grammatical structure of language mitigates against, an essencing which is neither simply present nor absent, neither something nor nothing, neither future, now nor past, being nor becoming, good nor evil.
Glad to see you on the forum. Self-proclaimed postmodernists are very rare on this site, unfortunately. Do you think your notion of Nihilsum provides a way to critique empirical realism?
Quoting Joshs
The Nihilsum would reveal how empirical realism obscures what exists outside of clear definitions and also resists being stapled as something or nothing and, in doing so, critiques the very attempt to reduce the richness of reality to resolved notions.
Postmodern fear of knowledge.
What does existence and being mean under the Nihilsum?
Quoting mlles
What does the Nihilsum propose the solution for the problem?
Quoting jkop
Realist fear of postmodernism.
Are you speaking of a category? Or are you speaking of things that fall within this category?
As @Patterner has noted, you haven't even told us what kind of thing this is. Is it a category, a philosophy, a process, a system, a characteristic, an entity?
Quoting mlles
Seems we must conclude it's a representation of a state.
A state of what?
It sounds like a qubit.
Whatever you can get away with. :snicker:
Jokes on you!
I'm stealing that phrase.
Quoting mlles
There are already well-developed systems of nonclassical logic that have at least a third value, so nothing new in that.
Quoting GrahamJ
About as weak as reference as could be imagined... What the fuck is "|??=?|nonexistence?+?|existence?"?
The Nihilsum attempts to challenge the understanding of existence and being by occupying a space that is neither fully something or nothing. It resists the either/or of categories that we people have used to define existence. Rather than being a specific state of being, it exists as a construct, that of which is meta-logical and transcends these boundaries. Its existence lies not in what we can categorize, but in its inherent ability to defy those categories. By existing in this paradoxical state, the Nihilsum forces us to rethink ontological frameworks, where opposites are often required to be mutually exclusive.
Quoting Corvus
The Nihilsum suggests the law of noncontradiction is insufficient to account for existence. This Nihilsum doesnt offer a direct and definitive answer to existence but rather presents a space where contradictions and ambiguities can exist simultaneously. This opens a realm where truth is not fixed, and meaning cannot be contained by traditional categories.
The Nihilsum would operate outside the boundaries of nonclassical logic though, including systems with a third value as well. It resists these fixed logical frameworks and exists in a possible space(not perhaps a physical one, but a place where new understandings can form(lacking logical struturd at all)) where paradoxes can occur without relying on true or false values. This meta logical space transcends established logic, allowing for the coexistence of contradictions.
Illogical, then. Fine.
Seems to me that you are not saying much at all. Nihilsum doesn't do anything.
Last night I saw, upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away!
neither, the nihilsum is to be beyond categorization, rather than being a 'something' or a 'nothing' it occupies a space between these, directly challenging either/or thought. The paradoxical nature is its most crucial 'attribute.'
Could you give some real life examples of such existences in the real world?
This is the only part of your post that made sense to me. You've identified a supposedly new category and freedom is the only example you've provided that goes into this category.
Libertarian freedom is a complicated notion in that it asserts an uncaused cause and it attributes moral responsibility on that agent that originated the uncaused cause. How such a cause can arise without a cause has no good answer.
But there are many unanswerable philosophical questions, so I'm not sure what distinguishes this one.
For clarity, what other examples other than freedom fall into this category?
Dumbed-down quantum theory. I guess this quote is more your level: its very hard to talk quantum using a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is.'
Then set out the full version.
Please do. Would some aspects of thought or ideas fall into this category? Spacetime?
At some universities postmodernism has become as scary as The Spanish Inquisition.
Quoting mlles
A rejection is that you haven't described anything to speculate about but a neologism that alludes to something evasive, beyond logic etc. As curious readers we may take it as a promise of insight, but apparently it's just a word game with invisible or moving goal posts.
Were mathematics more a kind of philosophy, he might have received his degree even if he proved much about nothing.
Aristotle beat you to it.
[quote=Quantum Mysteries Dissolve if Possibilities are Realities; https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/quantum-mysteries-dissolve-if-possibilities-are-realities]Quantum math is notorious for incorporating multiple possibilities for the outcomes of measurements. So you shouldnt expect physicists to stick to only one explanation for what that math means. ... One of the latest interpretatations appeared recently (September 13 2017) online at arXiv.org...
In the new paper, three scientists argue that including potential things on the list of real things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. It is perhaps less of a full-blown interpretation than a new philosophical framework for contemplating those quantum mysteries. At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of reality is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantums mysteries disappear. In particular, real should not be restricted to actual objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or potential realities, that have not yet become actual. These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are ontological that is, real components of existence.
This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of what is real to include an extra-spatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility, write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.
Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isnt new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a probability wave, describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotles potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.[/quote]
If you think about it, the same general logic applies to the 'domain of possibility'. At any given time, in any situation, there is a finite but incalculable number of possible outcomes. All of those are real in one sense, but not existent, by definition, and ultimately only one of them becomes actual. Which is pretty well the same thing that happens in observations in quantum physics.
I see but the Nihilsum would resist teleology entirely if I recall, because it is without resolution or trajectory. The Nihilsum is not about what could 'become' but about ehat exists as an in between and this in between being unresolvable. It wouldn't be moving towards any sort of resolution.
The Nihilsum is without movement or an end goal but also full of movement and the end goal teleologically. This makes it not fit into the traditionals of Aristotle.
Congrats. You've just posited "Beyond being and nothingness" in a narrowly interpretive sense.
Do you "see" Nihilsum as being dependent upon something to enter the world of logic in order to gain recognition as a distinction between being and notbeing?
inquisitive and curious smile
Also, can it be "seen" as more than one such distinction,or is it "all else"?
extra smile
1. Is this a hoax?
2. Is it a real hoax, or a bot-generated one?
3. What or who is nihilsum.com?
"I am nihilsum, you are nihilsum they are nihilsum as we are all together;
See how they fly like pigs in the sky See how they run."
To consciousness, whatever is projected as the world is negated as self. Nihilsum is the god of the godless, that always says "Thou shalt(not) ..." and always after the event, because before the event, how could one know? One is, like Winnie-the-Pooh, always being dragged up the hill of awareness by one leg, one's head going 'bump, bump, bump' up the stairs.
You need the concrete logical arguments with evidence based on the rational reasoning to put forward your ideas. But if you deny the logic and reasoning, then you have no feet to stand on to make your ideas and claim objective and acceptable.
Quoting jkop
No, at some universities, the rhetoric and actions of some students and faculty have become repressive. Can you locate anything intrinsic to postmodernist philosophies taken as a whole (whatever that would be) that would necessitate such repressive behavior?
One of my favorite topics. We have had similar discussions before (see: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/905552).
is right that Aristotle looks at this quite a bit. One area would be the idea of prime matter as sheer, indeterminate potency with no actuality, no eidos (form), and thus absolutely lacking in any intelligible whatness (quiddity). Aristotle thought that being involved contradictory opposition. Something is either man or not-man, fish or not-fish. Contradictory opposition cannot serve to unify any thing and make it anything at all. But the "transcedental properties of being" in the medieval philosophy that grew out of Aristotle (the Good, the Beautiful, the True, and the One(Unity) all involve contrary opposition. For example, something can be more or less good, more or less unified (for Aristotle too). So the move from being to beings involves this sort of shift in opposition.
Plato's "Chora" in the Timaeus another example. Actually, you can think of the entire philosophical problem of the "One and the Many," which defined ancient Greek thought up to Aristotle, as being very much related to this same sort of interplay between being and nothingness, and the way it collapses our distinctions and ability to say anything about any thing.
Sugrue's lectures on the Parmenides capture this really well. He shows how what Plato is grappling with through the Forms is the slide towards a silent unity in Parmenides (who denies all becoming, all change and motion, and thus must deny all the evidence of the sensesspeech collapsing into the one continuous "ohm" of Eastern thought) and the inchoate chaos of Heraclitus' world of ceaseless change, where we cannot say anything true about anything because our words always have different meanings each time we speak them and the things we refer to are constantly slipping into non-being. Obviously, there is overlap with a lot of post-modern and post-structuralist thought here.
There is an analogy to information theory here too. Parmenides unchanging being is like an endless bit string of just 1s (or just the same 1 measured over and over). Lacking any variance, it can hold no information. There is no "difference that can make a difference). By contrast, Heraclitus' inchoate change is more like an entirely random bit string. There is variance, but none of it ever tells us anything about what we can expect in the future, it carries no information (except about its own randomness). Of course, Heraclitus' arguably overcomes this slide into the nothing of unlimited multiplicity and difference with his concept of the Logos. However, in what remains of his work, this Logos concept is not very well developed. What Plato and Aristotle have to do is figure out how to develop this into an actual explanation of how being can be both many and one, to chart a sort of via media through the Syclla of a single, unchanging sound, and the Charybdis of inchoate noise.
Hegel's Logic famously deals with this too (and Hegel is quite the Aristotelian in many ways). The Logic is a bear, but Houlgate's commentary is a bit easier. The Being/Nothing chapter is available here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://phil880.colinmclear.net/materials/readings/houlgate-being-commentary.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwividrY65yGAxUSJTQIHcJcDJkQFnoECCwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0NPBNROaaCut1CwliwJj6N
Spencer Brown's Laws of Form interesting here too.
To quote from the other thread re information:
So, we have the "pregnant" silence of the infinite wave and the silence of absence where there is no wave at all. This is essentially how Eriugena distinguishes between "nothing on account of privation" and the "nothing on account of excellence" that is God.
Anyhow, a key difficulty that seems to pop up for post-modern thought is the "slide into multiplicity" (as opposed to the slide into the silence of total unity). IMHO, this can be traced back to modern notions of freedom being grounded in potency as opposed to actthe "freedom to do otherwise," or, at the limit, "the freedom to choose anything." This itself grows out of Reformation Era voluntarist theology and the renewal of concerns over the Euthyphro Dilemma (brought on by the univocity of being and the fear that "if God only does what is good" then goodness has become a limit of divine sovereignty). What do largely atheist 20th century philosophers have to do with 15th-17th century theologians? I actually think quite a bit; we inherit our ideas. Hegel is interesting here because he is one of the great rearguard defenders of the classical/medieval view of freedom as "the self-determining/self-organizing capacity to actualize the Good."
This represents in a strong desire to tear down anything definite and actual as a limit to expression and freedom. We can think about the "body without organs" in Antonin Artaud's original sense. There is an important sense in which we aren't free to do anything without our organs. We aren't even free to be an organism, a unity unified by its goals. Without act, there is only the slide into multiplicity, just like language collapses without grammar, syntax, proper spelling, etc. We could consider here how even a 2,000 character short post using a few alphabets and basic mathematical and logical notation has something like 2,000^400+ possible configurations (vastly more than the number of protons in the visible universe by many, many orders of magnitude). Borges' short story "The Library of Babel" illustrates this really well. In the set of all possible 500 page books, almost everything is gibberish (and yet books that decide the gibberish into many different meanings must also exist).
Is this not a "no true Scotsman" or "'real communism/capitalism' has never been tried," situation? No doubt someone could argue something similar about "real Christian nationalism," being grounded in love and "what is best for everyone," or "real Marxism" freeing the university system.
I suppose I would say this sort of notion works best for me, without pseudo-philosophical trappings, when I enjoy a work of art. In the last couple of weeks for instance I've seen Laurie Anderson do a live show (Let x=x), read a startling novel by Olga Tokarckuk, and been to an exhibition about Florence in 1504. All of these, one way or another, offered me marvellous lenses through which I (re)considered existence, and, sometimes, the limits of logic. Raphael picking up artistic tricks from Leonardo or Michaelangelo - it's pretty insightful, at least for me.
:rofl: Same.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What do Christian nationalism and Marxism have in common? Both of them are grounded in forms of emancipatory humanism, which means that both posit a path of righteousness, on the basis of which it is possible to oppose and identify injustice and ethical depravity. The vast majority of the woke community shares in this moralistic thinking, and justifies their repressive , language-policing tactics on its behalf. By contrast, the post-humanist work of writers such as Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida rejects the idea of a righteous path of emancipation and the moralizing that goes along with it. They work not from grand narratives of emancipation, but within particular discursive systems to reveal openings for re-invention and alternative forms of interchange.
Relativism of the postmodern kind does not work at university level, where people are expected to live up to certain standards and produce work that can be assigned monetary value.
Universities are, essentially, capitalist endeavors, with competition, standardization, normativization. And as long the people there, faculty and students, are business-minded, conservative, things work.
What projection, and so authoritarian!
Other people feel whatever you say that they feel ...
But where do such alternative forms of interchange actually work?
Certainly not at university, nor any level or form of formal education, not in most businesses.
I suppose a freelancer in some fancy abstract
mostly artistic type of work-livelihood could practice those alternative forms of interchange. But for everyone else, I can't see how they could be anything other than socioeconomic suicide.
This actually very much resembles Buddhist ideas of nirvana and what an "enlightened being" is.
Quoting baker
Groups of people form the kinds of social, economic and political structures that they understand. There are only a tiny handful of poststructuralists in academia or the workforce, so until which time that they emerge in larger numbers, these institutions will continue to operate the way they have. That doesnt mean that individuals cant apply poststructuralist ideas in their interactions with others within these institutions.
You're so optimistic!
Perhaps thats a precursor for what was to become the ding an sich of Kant (I dont know if thats a recognised theory.) The many arguments Im having about idealism revolve around the idea that in the absence of the order which an observing mind brings to bear, nothing exists as such. Not that it doesnt exist, but there is no it which either exists or doesnt exist. The delineation of forms and the differentiation of things and features one from another is what existence means, it is the order that brings things into existence, so to speak. (For which the observer problem is an exact analogy.)
Quoting baker
Thats what everybody tells me
This is a helpful formulation of the idea.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Where does relevance fit in here? Contradictory opposition defines the being of a thing, but never simply in opposition to everything else in the world that it is not. The contrast pole to a meaning establishes the criterion of sense on the basis of which the thing differs from what it is
not, the particular way in which it is like some things and differs from others.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But in poststructuralist thinking there is no freedom to do just anything. Freedom is always constrained by its history. It is always a relative freedom, a freedom that is at the same time a break with respect to a prior discursive system and a move which is dependent on that system. Multiplicities are organized diagrammatically, consistently, as perspectival points of view. Deleuze says:
The Spanish Inquisitors, like witch hunters, used a mix of secular law and religious scripture so that the basis for judgement appeared lawful yet depended entirely on the interpretation of some alleged witness, expert, or priest. Thus the judges could get away with accusing, punishing and executing anyone that someone didn't like, and by such terror maintain political and religious orthodoxy in an entire population. It served the interests of power.
Not unlike how some of today's political activists use postmodern "theory" (or theories). Granted that these activists are not the ones who think and write the theories, but if the theories have anything in common, it's their diagnosing and revelatory character which makes them intellectually intriguing, yet they are written in a style which is obscure enough to remain dependent on the authority of expert interpreters. Thus, any critic can be dismissed for misunderstanding the theory. Furthermore, when the theory attacks our intuitive and common sense views and rejects the existence of a shared basis for judgement (e.g. realism), it serves the interests of power.
Of course, any philosophy, theory, or science can be misused for repressive rhetoric and actions. Imperial colonialists misused Enlightenment principles, nazis misused biology, communists misused psychiatry as political means. But they could at lest be accused for being wrong. Some postmodernists, however, don't even admit that there is such a thing as being wrong, which is arguably more pernicious.
Quoting jkop
I have read Deleuze, Foucault, Heidegger and Derrida and dont find any of them obscure. I find their ideas new and therefore difficult to grasp at first, which leads many to blame the messenger for the challenging nature of the message. If you need to rely on the authority of expert interpreters, then you arent actually understanding a philosophy. How can you use any set of ideas if you remain dependent on some other authority? And how would relying on what they say help matters if you are not able to understand what they are telling you?
Quoting jkop
No, journalists who spread cliches about Foucault, Derrida and Deleuze on Youtube claim that they say there is no such thing as being wrong. Now thats what I call pernicious. Heres what Derrida says about not being wrong:
You could try the Wikipedia page on qubits. It explains things better than I could. If Wikipedia does not meet your standards, well, qubits are a hot topic and there's plenty of other accounts.
In a another thread, you cited https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.08775v1:
Quoting Banno
Did you read it? Did you understand it? Did you feel an urge to ask the authors what the fuck they meant by equation (2)?
As Ricoeur puts it, Aristotle is primarily a "philosopher of quiddity." Aristotle does not have the clear distinction between a thing's essence (what it is) and its existence (that it is). This would be developed by his Islamic commentators and later scholasticism. He also thinks the world is eternal, without begining or end, and it seems, that Parmenides has a very good point about the idea that one cannot speak of or think non-being.
Being is most properly said of substance (things and thing-hood). One can have red light or a red ball, but never a red "nothing at all." Dogs can run or be blind, but one never has just "running" or "blindness." So the subject of predication, under essentialism (the idea that things are particular sorts of things).
Any thing is something. The contrary opposition is between being a particular sort of thing or not. Aristotle lays this out most clearly in Book IV of the Metaphysics when speaking on the principle of non-contradiction.
Husserl gets at something similar in his thought experiments on how much we can change the noema without making it cease to be what it is. Change a triangle's color or dimensions and it remains. Add a side and the "triangle" vanishes.
Sure, I am speaking to the earlier move to define freedom primarily in terms of potency, which is very wide reaching, beginning in late medieval nominalism and Reformation theology and then appearing in Locke, Spinoza, Kant, etc,. becoming philosophically mainstream. Part of what makes Hegel unique is how much he reverts back to the older model.
Acknowledging constraint isn't a limit of defining freedom as potency. Nietzsche is a fatalist, but he certainly inherited this tradition (the end of Twilight of the Idols is a particularly strong example). You can see it in moral realists like Sam Harris, who are also fatalists, or Sapolsky's new, popular "scientific" rejection of freedom. Incompatibalist fatalists, as much as libertarians, can think of freedom in these terms.
Whereas it's possible to view language, historicism, etc. as posing no real challenge to freedom, in the sense that what the free person ultimately chooses is always what is best, unless they are in some sense unfree due to ignorance or weakness of will. The free person has, ultimately, one unifying path, the unfree very many. The free person is free to walk this path for the same reason that being unable to crash is not a limit on one's ability to fly.
It is important to note that such a view need not wash away the particularity of the individual. Goodness, being a principle, might be more or less fully realized in different ways by different people, in different contexts. Authenticity can still remain a core element of human flourishing. Indeed, authenticity might be considered key to achieving a state of virtuei.e., a state where one enjoys doing what is best. However, such a view does require a certain sort of moral realism, one that mirrors the epistemic conviction that, although there may be many ways to be equally correct, there are always very many more ways to be wrong. Additionally, that all true descriptions of the world will share something in common. Such a sentiment is in line with Leo Tolstoys famous observation at the opening of Anna Karenina that: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Youre ignoring the rich normatively constituted relations that are unified through subjective (noetic) idealizations. The noematic content hides within itself these normative intentional shapings coming from the noetic side of the noetic-noematic synthesis. From the noematic perspective we see only a self-same object with its necessary attributes and properties, but from the noetic side we see the plumbing undergirding such idealizations. Seen from the noetic perspective, there is no self-same object, but rather a constantly changing flow of synthetic senses , united moment to moment on the basis of similarities. Thus , the oppositional relation between an object and what it is not is subtended by an underlying normative sense making intelligible both object and its negation.
See, apparently one must read his numerous texts again until one gets it "right", which exemplifies my point about postmodernists thinking that there is no such thing as being wrong (in this case only their critics are "wrong").
Or perhaps you just ignored the part of the quote that denies your claim that postmodernists think there is no such thing as being wrong.