No.  I have explained this before.

If being and nothing express the same empty thought then are they not simply two names for one thought?

Pippin raises this problem in his discussion of being and nothing in Hegel's Idealism. He is unable to solve it.

- Alan

On Sep 30, 2014 3:52 PM, "thejackjam@... [hegel]" <hegel@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

[Alan]

> You also do not seem to recognize  the problem of two names for one empty thought.

Actually this "problem of two names for one empty thought" is something that meshes well with my recent work concerning Faith and Knowledge. But you have never positioned yourself to understand it. 

Presumably, when you say "two names for one empty thought" you are speaking of Hegel's reference to (1) "pure intuiting" and (2) "empty thinking".

Hegel writes:

"It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting:..(SL p. 83)"

In Hegel's many explanations of Kant's terminology, the term "intuition" refers to the faculty of intuitions that had usually been represented as isolated from the faculty of concepts.  Additionally, the intuitions were usually characterized as only receptive.  Here is the key point concerning the phrase...

- "There is nothing to be intuited in it.." 

This part goes directly against your idea of conceiving being as a given.  A given would indicate that being is received, and the faculty of reception is intuition.   But, Hegel suggest "there is nothing to be intuited in it".

Or, in other words Hegel is saying that in pure being, there is nothing to be received by intuition. Hegel then follows…"if one can speak here of intuiting", indicating that there is something suspicious about even speaking in such terms of intuiting.

He then clarifies that it would be better to say…"it is only this pure intuiting itself"

So, here is the part where Hegel's reformulation of the "original synthetic unity of apperception" comes into play.  As it was exhibited especially in his early writings, for Hegel the intuitions and concept were in an original unity in "the true ego".  

When this original unity is initially "sundered", it is first "blindly immersed in its difference", for Hegel this blind immersion is intuition prior to the intellect's detachment from its difference.  Only when there is a detachment (i.e. negation of the negation) is there explicitly "the subject" (or a restoration of the relation with self) that is in opposition to an other (see p. 115-116) 

So, "this pure intuiting itself" that Hegel mentions could easily be interpreted as the "blind immersion" of pure thought thinking itself, in fact this thinking seems to remain "blind" throughout the Doctrine of Being, and possibly through the Doctrine of Essence.

R