HEGEL, CANTOR, BADIOU

There is not very much consensus on whether there is or is not an absolute - a totality of all things.  If we take set theory as our structure for enumeration, we run up against the famous paradoxes involving self-membership and so on.   It would appear that, if the "all" exists, it is self-contradictory.  Alternately, it could not exist, and then there would be no contradiction.  Russell, Badiou, Priest all posit slightly different views on this topic.  

It seems to me, however, that they key insight about the All is that it cannot either exist or not exist in the way that ordinary local things do.  It is not something that is either present or absent.  Rather, or on the contrary, it has a sort of dynamic quasi-existence (insistence, virtuality, whatever).  Importantly, this quasi-existence of the All is what generates temporality.   Therefore, debates about whether it exists or not are not terribly meaningful.  Lacan had it right:  the not-All exists.