Within the framework of Meinongianism, nothingness turns out to have contradictory features—it seems to be an object and not. In this paper, we explore two different kinds of Meinongian accounts of nothingness. The first one is the consistent account, which rejects the contradiction of nothingness, while the second one is the inconsistent account, which accepts the contradiction of nothingness. First of all, after showing that the consistent account of nothingness defended by Jacquette fails, we express (...) some concerns on the general possibility of consistently characterizing nothingness. Secondly, starting from Priest’s inconsistent characterization of nothingness :146–158, 2014b), we will introduce our own inconsistent account. The key idea of our account is to take nothingness as the complement of the totality. Finally, we will make formal sense of it by constructing an inconsistent mereological system, which is the development of the paraconsistent mereology proposed by Weber and Cotnoir. (shrink)

The susceptible nothingness still fits within the definition of (nothingness, is not). All unrealized possibilities are that susceptibility. Susceptibility has no specific place or time. A set of behaviors or a sequence cannot be definitively determined for the occurrence of susceptibility. Susceptibility is always subject to probability and lies on the border between nothingness and existence. Susceptibility cannot be precisely defined, but it can be said: every manifestation and event has passed through the window of its susceptibility (...) and has moved from nothingness to existence. (shrink)

This article critically examines the concept of "Absolute Nothingness" from a rigorous logical-metaphysical perspective. It is argued that Nothingness, as a negation of Being, cannot subsist as a primary, autonomous or positively articulable concept without incurring in a performative contradiction. Based on the thesis that Being is a necessary metaphysical-ontological condition of every proposition (S((T)(φ))), it is demonstrated that every attempt to enunciate absolute Nothingness inevitably converts it into linguistic or conceptual positivity, betraying its own definition. The (...) text critically examines authors such as Heidegger, Hegel, Sartre, Graham Priest, and Alain Badiou, showing that any effort to positivize absolute Nothingness, whether ontologically, logically, or phenomenologically, collapses when it depends on Being itself for its formulation. It is concluded that absolute Nothingness is not ontologically thinkable, logically consistent, or linguistically referenceable, being only a negative limit that demarcates the impossibility of thought outside Being. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger has made uncovering the truth of being his life’s work. He ultimately came to locate this truth at the site of the clearing (lichtung), which allowed him to sweep away the traditional formulation of the question of being and begin anew with beyng. This second beginning, as Heidegger called it, stood apart from the original in that he saw fit to cloak beyng in nothingness. This paper explores Heidegger’s use of nothingness and his claim that in (...) order to overcome the divide between the two beginnings, we must leap into the abyss of the clearing. Given Heidegger’s interest in East Asian philosophy, his use of nothingness appears to resemble that of Daoism. Despite this outward similarity, however, this paper will argue that Heidegger’s doctrine of nothingness failed to grasp the cosmological significance of the clearing for he saw it only in terms of symbolizing the existential play of being. Thus while Heidegger argues that the clearing marks the unconcealement of beyng, Daoism uses the clearing to point us to the root of being in nothingness. (shrink)

This article explores Henri Maldiney’s engagement with Daoist thought and traditional Chinese aesthetics, focusing on his interpretation of the terms wu (nothingness) and xu (emptiness). The first part traces how Maldiney’s phenomenological analysis of aesthetic experience leads him to introduce the theme of nothingness, particularly through his notions of “transpassibility” and “transpossibility.” The second part investigates Maldiney’s reception of Daoism, arguing that it enables a radicalization of his concept of nothingness in terms of an open, phenomenalizing emptiness (...) rather than a negation of being. This reconfiguration provides the ground for rethinking what Maldiney takes to be the ontological significance of art in meontological terms, as an “opening of nothingness.” In order to illustrate this, special attention will be given to Maldiney’s interest in traditional Chinese landscape painting. (shrink)

This article presents a theory of fundamental physics that quantifies a growing network of elements and links. The first two linked elements in existence arise irreversibly from nothingness. The network subsequently keeps growing by one element at a time. It has no free parameters and only one global parameter, the total number of elements N. The network statistics produce energy conservation when each link corresponds to a quantum of action. For large N, the statistics produce an internally observable three-dimensional (...) space. Together with N, space forms a spacetime with a time dimension that follows the same statistics as each spatial dimension. Consequently, spacetime has a maximum internal speed, time reversibility, translation invariance, and it agrees with special relativity. Dense clusters of elements and links form particles, curving spacetime as in general relativity. In spacetime, particles can move and can appear as multiple instances. Observation of particles follows the rules of quantum physics, and the network agrees with the Feynman path integral. (An accessible overview of this work can be found at "Précis of the origins of reality" at philpapers VANPOT-28). (shrink)

What did Heidegger learn and fail to learn from Laozi and Zhuangzi? This book reconstructs Heidegger's philosophy through its engagement with Daoist and Asian philosophy and offers a Daoist transformation of Heidegger on things, nothingness, and freedom. PDF includes the introduction, bibliography, and index.

Recent years have seen a heightened focus on the study of minimal forms of awareness during sleep to advance the study of consciousness and understand what makes a state conscious. This focus draws on an increased interest in anecdotical descriptions made by classic Indian philosophical traditions about unusual forms of awareness during sleep. For instance, in the so-called state of witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, one is said to reach a state that goes beyond ordinary dreaming and abide in a state (...) of just awareness, a state in which one is not aware of anything else other than one’s own awareness. Moreover, for these traditions, this state is taken to be the essence or background of consciousness. Reports on such a state opens the door to exciting new lines of research in the study of consciousness, such as inquiry into the so-called “objectless” awareness during sleep—states of awareness that lack an ordinary object of awareness. In this two-staged research project, we attempted to find the phenomenological blueprints of such forms of awareness during sleep in 18 participants by conducting phenomenological interviews, informed by a novel tool in qualitative research, the micro-phenomenological interview (MPI) method. Following a phenomenological analysis, we isolated a similar phase across 12 reported experiences labelled as ‘nothingness phase’ since it described what participants took to be an experience of ‘nothingness’. his common phase was characterised by minimal sense of self—a bodiless self, yet experienced as being ‘somewhere’—, the presence of non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, an absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and an awareness of the state as it unfolded. (shrink)

In this paper Priest argues that _everything_ (the totality of all objects) and _nothing_ (the absence of all objects) are perfectly good objects. Each can be defined as a certain mereological sum (fusion). He also argues that _nothing_ is a contradictory object, which is also not an object; and further, that this contradictory object is, in a certain sense, the ground of reality.

Nothingness addresses one of the most puzzling problems of physics and philosophy: Does empty space have an existence independent of the matter within it? Is "empty space" really empty, or is it an ocean seething with the creation and destruction of virtual matter? With crystal-clear prose and more than 100 cleverly rendered illustrations, physicist Henning Genz takes the reader from the metaphysical speculations of the ancient Greek philosophers, through the theories of Newton and the early experiments of his contemporaries, (...) right up to the current theories of quantum physics and cosmology to give us the story of one of the most fundamental and puzzling areas of modern physics and philosophy. (shrink)

In the field of philosophy, the common view of philosophy as an essentially Western discipline persists even today, while non-Western philosophy tends to be undervalued and not investigated seriously. In the field of Japanese studies, in turn, research on Japanese philosophy tends to be reduced to a matter of projecting existing stereotypes of alleged Japanese cultural uniqueness through the reading of texts. In Nothingness in the Heart of Empire: The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Kyoto School in Imperial (...) Japan, Harumi Osaki resists both these tendencies. She closely interprets the wartime discourses of the Kyoto School, a group of modern Japanese philosophers who drew upon East Asian traditions as well as Western philosophy. Her book lucidly delves into the non-Western forms of rationality articulated in such discourses, and reveals the problems inherent in them as the result of these philosophers' engagements in Japan's wartime situation, without cloaking these problems under the pretense of "Japanese cultural uniqueness." In addition, in a manner reminiscent of the controversy surrounding Martin Heidegger's involvement with Nazi Germany, the book elucidates the political implications of the morality upheld by the Kyoto School and its underlying metaphysics. As such, this book urges dialogue beyond the divide between Western and non-Western philosophies, and beyond the separation between "lofty" philosophy and "common" politics. (shrink)

Recently, realists have been relaxing their ontological commitments. Two such instances of this are Mark Balaguer’s modal nothingism and the relaxed realism of various philosophers, e.g., Derek Parfit, T. M. Scanlon, and Ronald Dworkin. In this paper, I do three things. First, I rearticulate modal nothingism and reconstruct Balaguer’s argument for it. Second, I outline relaxed realism and how normative nothingism, as I call it, is a kind of relaxed realism. Third, I show how the argument for modal nothingism can (...) easily be parodied by the normative nothingist in such a way that if one thinks that the modal nothingist has an argument, one should think the normative nothingist has an argument too. (shrink)

This chapter offers an outline of how the Yijing 易經 informed interpretations of nothingness and perfection in Chinese and early modern European discourses. Part one briefly traces the priority of nothingness in the Yijing commentaries of Wang Bi 王弼 and the later Neo-Confucian dyadic dynamic of limitless nothingness (wuji 無極) and the supreme ultimate (taiji 太極). Following Song-Ming era compilations, early modern European missionaries and intellectuals interpreted the Yijing in relation to their own cosmological, metaphysical, and theological (...) models. Part two reexamines Leibniz's growing engagement with the Yijing and Chinese philosophy as a discourse on nothingness and perfection and its theological, ontological, and mathematical significance. Although Chinese influences in the formation of Leibniz's binary mathematics and first metaphysical principles of God and nothingness should not be exaggerated, they became interculturally entangled. Leibniz determined that ancient Chinese wisdom was closest to the truths of natural philosophy and theology because it conceived of the world not through matter but through the fundamental principles and dynamics of perfection and nothingness, expressed by 1 and 0. Leibniz identified his binary arithmetic, and specifically his metaphysical-theological interpretation of its meaning, with the dyadic progression of the Yijing’s hexagrams. Leibniz remained committed to a Christianizing interpretation. Since nothingness could not be generative by itself, it required a transcendent and active principle of perfection that he construed as the hidden truth of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on the experience of wonder at the existence of the world. According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's feeling of wonder stems from perceiving the existence of the world as an absolute miracle, that is, as a fact that is in principle beyond explanation. Based on this analysis, I will suggest that Wittgenstein's experience is akin to what has been described by other authors such as Coleridge, Pessoa, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, and Hadot, (...) among many others. Through a comparison between Wittgenstein and Coleridge on the experience of existence, I shall highlight some core features of this experience, chief among them the use of the notion of nothingness in clarifying what is understood in the experience, the role of intuition, and the presence of a specific pathos. As a whole, this paper aims to provide a contribution to the project of a phenomenology of the experience of existence and intends to create a bridge for a dialogue between Wittgenstein and the phenomenological tradition on the enigma of existence. (shrink)

Contemporary critical theory and black studies have witnessed a surge in theoretical accounts of “blackness” as “nothingness”. Drawing on the work of the poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten, this article offers a reading of this recent postulation of blackness as “nothingness” in light of some of the similar theoretical endeavors in post-Kantian European philosophy. By comparing Moten’s “paraontological” conception of nothingness to Heidegger’s self-nihilating nothing, Sartre’s relative nothingness, as well as Schelling’s notion of absolute (...) class='Hi'>nothingness, this article argues that Moten’s paraontology presents a more robust and systematic conception of nothingness than those of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling. By way of this comparison with these “canonical” accounts from European philosophy, this article highlights not only the unique features of Moten’s sophisticated formulation of nothingness, but also some of unacknowledged presumptions and prejudices of traditional metaphysics which Moten’s work calls into question. (shrink)

SummaryThe hiddenness of God in relation to opus alienum reflects, in Luther, a particular theological anthropology: one based on the limits of humanity and the futility of human action; and one that ascribes a certain role to suffering. One aspect of this account of the hiddenness of God is a figure whose terror remains unmitigated even by the light of salvation. In their discussions of the hiddenness of God, Karl Barth and Eberhard Jüngel reject this particular hiddenness of God. However, (...) their theologies draw on the opus alienum, and in doing so, they examine and analyse the despair and anxiety that characterise it in their own discussions of evil as nothingness. These accounts of nothingness engage with philosophical accounts of nothingness as being that which prompts self-assertion and actualisation as authentic existence. However, this use of the opus alienum opens their theologies up to the figure that they rejected in their prior accounts of hiddenness: the hidden, alien, and terrifying God. (shrink)

This article is based on my mereological reconstruction of the Daoist metaphysical sys- tem, as presented in the Daodejing. I conceptualize the Dao and you relationship as a relationship between Unrestricted Composition (for any entities, there is a composition that they make) and Restricted Composition (what is an entity is determined by finite composition rules) respectively. This conceptualization, among other things, makes it possible to address the way in which Dao is described as wu—nothingness or non-be- ing. In this (...) article, I will show that Dao as the ultimate reality in Daoist metaphysics is not an ontological nothingness and discuss how this “nothingness characteristic” can be mereologically reconstructed and explained. I will discuss the interpretation of Dao in terms of Mereological Nihilism (according to which there are only mereological simples that do not have parts and are not parts of any complex entities), Unrestricted Composition, and consider an option in which mereology is confined exclusively to relationships between parts. I will also discuss how the nothingness aspect of Dao can be viewed from a stuff ontology perspective, which questions the ontological standing of parts. (shrink)

This paper contrasts the conceptions of "Nothigness" and "nihility" in Western continental philosophy and Japanese philosophy. The experience of the Self, and the experiences of the transcendent, are constructed upon the prevalent assumptions of the culture that the individual finds herself in. The question of the relationship between the "I" and the "World" is differently solved (or stabilized, fixed) in different cultures. I seek to defend and interrogate the claim that Japan's core metaphysical stance is that of non-dualistic non-essentialism. In (...) Takeuchi Yoshimi's words, "Japan is nothing." By contrast, Europe is "something" - e.g., history, space, structure, being. The European metaphysics of self-understanding, at least in some aspects of Continental thought, is based on the primacy of being over nothingness, whereas Japanese metaphysics is based on the non-duality of substance and insubstantiality. Japanese metaphysics, Japanese self-identity, is "zero." Japanese metaphysics, including Buddhism, is based on the idea of nonsubstantiality, i.e. groundlessness of Being. We could say that in Japan "the transcendental center that consolidates the system is absent" (Karatani 1990: 70). This analysis illuminates how differently, and still productively, the experience of nihilism can appear in Japan and in the West. (shrink)

A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions—including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of "nothingness" must play a primary role. This collection of essays brings together the (...) work of twenty of the world’s prominent scholars of Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, Neo-Confucian, Japanese and Korean thought to illuminate fascinating philosophical conceptualizations of "nothingness" in both classical and modern Asian traditions. The unique collection offers new work from accomplished scholars and provides a coherent, panoramic view of the most significant ways that "nothingness" plays crucial roles in Asian philosophy. It includes both traditional and contemporary formulations, sometimes putting Asian traditions into dialogue with one another and sometimes with classical and modern Western thought. The result is a book of immense value for students and researchers in Asian and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

Being and Nothingness is without doubt one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The central work by one of the world's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture and literature was immediate and was felt worldwide, from the absurd drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat (...) poets. Being and Nothingness is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mind-set of subsequent generations. Sixty years after its first publication, its message remains as potent as ever - challenging the reader to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, responsibility and action. (shrink)

Nothingness has become a prominent research topic in recent intercultural philosophy. An Eastern concern for nothingness is frequently juxtaposed to a Western philosophy of being. Rather than adopting a contrastive approach, this chapter proposes a critical conception of nothingness in a twofold sense. First, nothingness is related to human experience and action. Secondly, a transcultural conception of nothingness highlights the incongruity between distinctive domains of human experience between and within cultures. Departing from Roland Barthes’ aesthetic (...) approach to nothingness in terms of “the neutral,” the chapter argues for a practice of inter-cultural philosophy that reveals the in-between spaces, the interstices, and voids in modern societies. (shrink)

Why does something exist rather than nothing—could there ever have been literally nothing at all? This paper argues that absolute nothingness—a state with no things, no properties, no laws, not even modal facts—is metaphysically impossible. Three converging lines of reasoning challenge the coherence of an empty world: a logical puzzle, a language-based paradox, and a modal thought-experiment. Together they yield a concise argument that something must exist in every possible scenario. Along the way I chart five grades of ‘nothing’, (...) address nine familiar objections, and sketch what this result means for metaphysics, cosmology, and theology. (shrink)

Pure zero is also not the same as the concept of nothing. Nothing is a level of existence where not even one desired item exists. But fundamentally, nothing is part of existence. Mathematics, in its most basic application, deals with counting entities. That is, counting what has been accepted as existing. But nothing is the manifestation of the absence of being. It is the beginning of existence and its foundation, but it is not nothingness.

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute nothingness (...) as the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

In this review essay of Harumi Osaki’s book, Nothingness in the Heart of the Empire, about the Kyoto School’s wartime political philosophy, I examine the arguments and claims behind Osaki’s thesis that the Kyoto School tends to align itself with nationalist and imperialist formations that lead to political concerns. I focus on some of the concrete problems with her arguments, including the book’s lack of examination of the sociopolitical context behind and surrounding the philosophers’ wartime discourse. These problems result (...) in a one-sided or unbalanced image of the Kyoto School, lacking nuance and painting complex grey areas in black and white. (shrink)

"Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being like a worm."The John Donne of "A Valediction: Of Weeping" prefers the picture to the real. For Donne and for Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom he is aligned in this essay, the preference principally involves issues of control. As Sartre writes, "It's not enough that a certain picture which I have in mind should exist; it is necessary as well that it exist through me."1 While the more conventional predilection for the virtual (...) over the actual assumes the durability of art, Donne's sequential portraits in the poem confirm, as Sartre puts it, that "man's relation with being is that he can modify it". The vanishing... (shrink)

In the second half of the twentieth century, a tendency among English language scholars of comparative theology and philosophy emerged in portraying Buddhist philosophy, and Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy. In The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Dogen develops what some of the Kyoto school philosophers will later call a philosophy of nothingness based on his examination of the records of the Chinese Chan masters and other Buddhist texts. The philosophy of emptiness emerged around two thousand years ago in (...) the Prajnaparamita literature. Two of the sunyatavada texts that are important to the current discussion are nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakarika, and the Diamond Sutra. The sixth case of the Gateless Barrier introduces the rhetoric of silence in a narrative from. This rhetoric of silence is most visible in the four principles of Chan and the so-called flower sermon. Dogen argues that kyamuni's speech qua mitsugo comprises the non-dualism of individual and universal, form and formlessness. (shrink)

When we hear the term "Japanese philosophy" we think of Zen Buddhism or the Shinto scriptures. Yet one of the great 20th century interpreters of Western philosophy, Nishida Kitaro, lived and wrote in the Japanese islands all his life, laboring at an ultimate synthesis of oriental thought and Western hermeneutics. To be sure, Nishida's aim was to understand his own cultural influences in relation to the Western world. What distinguished him, however, was his passion for rendering oriental metaphysics understandable in (...) the language of Western philosophy, and his attempts to contrast the paradoxicality of Buddhist logic with the logical strategies of Aristotle, Kant, or Hegel. Featured in this book is an interpretation of Nishida's writings. Professor Carter focuses on the Japanese thinker's notion of "basho," a concept of nothingness as field, place or topos as borrowed from Plato's Tim'us. Expounding on the logical foundations and archaic elements in Nishida's work, and carefully explaining Nishida's critical approach to the questions of God, religion and morality, and pure existence, this discerning book offers students of Western philosophy and oriental thought alike a highly readable introduction to the teachings of a true world philosopher. (shrink)

Shiva means nothing; nothing from which everything was created; created and manifested to be adorned and respected. Observers cannot exist when the whole world is in non-duality because all is one; no distinction between observers and observed would be possible. Therefore to satisfy the urge for an observer, Shakti or energy manifests itself as consciousness. Consciousness, the manifested gives us the ability to perceive and experience. Religion originates from our perception as a medium to bring in morality and humanity and (...) helps us experience reality. We emerge from nothingness and go back to nothingness. (shrink)

Abstract:Daoist thought often takes nothingness as a foundational source of generation that can also be harnessed to good government. This study re-interprets the Daodejing's original discourse on nothingness in terms of an original condition, which it connects to the variety of philosophically significant wu-compounds found throughout the text. It examines two early articulations of this discourse by drawing a contrast between the thought of Laozi and the thought of Heshang Gong.

The guiding fictions -- Desire and its objects -- Desire without a proper object -- Nothingness and being -- The nothingness of desire and the desire for nothingness -- Defining self through no-self -- Getting over one's self -- The mind of nothingness -- The self with its desires -- No-self with its desire -- No-self and self-transcendence -- God and death -- From God to nothingness -- God and life -- Displacing the personal God (...) -- Towards an impersonal God -- The absolute of relatedness -- The god of nothingness -- The place of morality -- Convivial harmony -- Customs, habits, decisions -- Morality and religion -- The moral subject in love -- The experience of happiness -- Giving and receiving -- The body as property -- Detachment -- Orthoaesthesis -- Consumption -- Sufficiency -- An elusive horizon -- Rewriting the history of philosophy -- Philosophical antiphony -- Cultural disarmament -- Philosophy beyond the divide. (shrink)

The two words nothing and nothingness are often used interchangeably. And both are often used to refer to non-existence and to mean the absence of something. Although in conversations there may not be a noticeable difference between them or what they refer to, these two words refer to different concepts. And there is a fundamental difference between them.

This book addresses nothingness as not only the untangible presence of an emotional, cultural, social, or even political void that is felt on an existential level, but has some solid foundations in reality. The death of a loved one, the social isolation of an individual, or the culture shock one may experience in another country are examples of situations in which an external sense of absence mirrors an internal psychological and philosophical sense of nothingness. Not much has been (...) explicitly written on nothingness in the history of psychology. On the other hand, nothingness seems to be implicitly embedded in many scholars' work. This duality of explicitly and implicitly expressed ideas about nothingness reveals how psychology finds inspiration in philosophy, and vice versa. The book aims to illustrate how the concept of the presence of absence--nothingness--fills a void in contemporary psychological theorizing. (shrink)

On the Genealogy of Morality is Nietzsche's most influential book but it continues to puzzle, not least in its central claim: the invention of Christian morality is an act of revenge, and it is as such that it should arouse critical suspicion. In The Will to Nothingness, Bernard Reginster makes a fresh attempt at understanding this claim and its significance, inspired by Nietzsche's claim that moralities are 'signs' or 'symptoms' of the affective states of moral agents. The relation between (...) morality and affects is envisioned as functional, rather than expressive: the genealogy of Christian morality aims to reveal how it is well suited to serve certain emotional needs. One particular emotional need, manifested in the affect of ressentiment, plays a prominent role in the analysis of Christian morality. This is the need to have the world reflect one's will, which is rooted in a special drive toward power, or toward bending the world to one's will. Revenge is plausibly understood as aiming to bolster or restore power, and the invention of new values is a particular way to do so: by altering the agent's will, it alters what counts as power for her. By revealing how it is well suited to play such a functional role in the emotional economy of moral agents, the genealogical inquiries arouse critical suspicion toward Christian morality. The use of this moral outlook as an instrument of revenge is problematic not because it is immoral, but because it is functionally self-undermining. (shrink)

Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856) declared Russia to be a non-place in both space and time, a singular nothingness without history, topos, or footing, without relation or attachment to the world-historical tradition culminating in Christian-European modernity. This paper recovers Chaadaev’s conception of nothingness as that which, unbound by tradition, constitutes a total, even revolutionary ungrounding of the world-whole. Working with and through Chaadaev’s key writings, we trace his articulation of immanent nothingness or the void of the Real (...) as completely emptying out the mechanisms of history and tradition, thereby putting also into question the basic conceptual machinery of modernity. Chaadaev’s position appears, as a result, not only as a neglected genealogical element to contemporary critiques of modernity and its logic of reproduction through tradition and futurity but also as a contribution to the ongoing critical rethinking of this logic in contemporary theory. (shrink)

The words quoted above distill the common secular conception of death. If we decline the traditional religious reassurances of an afterlife, or their fuzzy new age equivalents, and instead take the hard-boiled and thoroughly modern materialist view of death, then we likely end up with Gonzalez-Cruzzi. Rejecting visions of reunions with loved ones or of crossing over into the light, we anticipate the opposite: darkness, silence, an engulfing emptiness. But we would be wrong.

Being exposed to the Nominalist expansion in early modernity, Petrarch and Shakespeare are highly preoccupied with a Nominalist dimension of language and representation. Against this background, the study shows how these Renaissance poets advanced a special notion of subjectivity and identity as rooted in negativity, otherness, and representation. The book thus argues for a new understanding of negative modes of subjectivity in Petrarch and Shakespeare. A new and sharpened understanding emerging from an interpretation of Francesco Petrarch's notion of exile and (...) of love in his great poetical cycle Rerum vulgarium fragmenta as well as a meticulous examination of the concept of nothingness in William Shakespeare's works. Petrarch and Shakespeare poetically show how identity is alien and decentred - yet also free and expanding. In other words, these poets illustrate how subjectivity is constituted by heterogeneity. Moreover, pointing to other examples of this negative subjectivity in Renaissance philosophy and poetry, the study suggests that these models for subjectivity could be extended to other early modern writers. (shrink)

In the treatise “Suprematism. The World as Objectlessness or Eternal Peace” (1922), Kazimir Malevich positions himself as a “bookless philosopher” who did not consider theories of other philosophers. In fact, the treatise contains a large number of references to philosophers belonging to different traditions. A careful reading shows the extent to which Malevich’s theory is linked to the Russian religious philosophy of the early twentieth century. In my view, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky—philosophers of “Religious Renaissance,” as well as (...) some other intellectuals—acquaint avant-gardists with Neoplatonic conceptions of apophasis. Malevich had access to ideas of fourteenth-century theologian Meister Eckhart, and I will refer to two sources to demonstrate this, including Margarita Sabashnikova’s translation of Eckhart and works of Sergei Bulgakov. Without any reference, Malevich retells the concepts of Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, and Gregory Palamas. I will demonstrate parallels between the treatise on Suprematism and Meister Eckhart’s Sermons concerning the concepts of apophaticism, Platonism, and Nothingness. I will also touch on the theme of Divine Light in the theology of Palamas (fourteenth century) to show the diversity of the avant-garde’s sources of inspiration. (shrink)

The Dialectics of Absolute Nothingness examines the influence of German philosophical traditions on the development of the Kyoto School. Contributors explore the Kyoto School's engagement with Western thought, highlighting the centrality of German philosophy while also showing the many ways the Kyoto School critiques the philosophical traditions it incorporates.

This essay raises some questions concerning the method and conceptual structure of Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Three substantially different types of interpretation of this text have been put forward. One of the main issues separating the three interpretative strategies is the relationship that they each establish between Sartre's three fundamental concepts: consciousness, nothingness and freedom—each of which can be seen to play the fundamental role in the argument. It therefore seems crucial for any interpretation of Being and (...) class='Hi'>Nothingness to determine the exact relationship between these terms. However, Being and Nothingness presents a hybrid argument that interweaves metaphysical deduction, phenomenological description and moral-existential argument in a way that makes it almost impossible to decide which of the strands of the argument should be seen to dominate the others. It is therefore perhaps equally difficult to ascertain which of its principal concepts has the most central place in the system. One could therefore argue that a reading of Being and Nothingness should aim to account for (rather than dismiss) the hybridity of the argument and then seek to assign relative functions to its different strands. The following remarks are intended as a step in that direction. (shrink)

The article examines the “philosophy of anxiety” of early Heidegger. The influence of Niet­zsche on the young philosopher is noted, as well as the traumatic experience of World War I, which very strongly influenced the worldview of the author of Being and Time, making him reconsider, among other things, his attitude to the “system of Catholicism”. The article examines Heidegger’s description of the situation where one is seized by anxiety, where one would not expect it at all, where one normally (...) feels at home. Normally, being fallen, that is, being in the world and bustling with daily chores, one feels secure in the midst of beings, at home. However, something happens to him that robs him of his tranquility. This occurs because the existent (Dasein) is disturbed im Grunde seines Seins, at the core of his being; one is aware of his own mortality and the finitude of being, which constitutes a threat, opening the possibility of anxiety (immortal beings, such as angels, treat being dif­ferently, for them the analysis of Dasein is irrelevant). Fear belongs to the ontic, it relates to the fallen state. When one ascends to the Nothingness, which is revealed as Being, that is, when one rises above being in some respect, one surpasses fear as well. In the course of the article, the question of translating some of Heidegger’s concepts into Russian is dis­cussed, which is an urgent task for the Heideggerian studies. (shrink)

: This essay analyzes the relation between nothingness and the work of art, where negation appears as a fundamental element of art. Starting at a discussion of the concept of nothingness in existential phenomenology, it points to the limitations of Heidegger’s notion of nullity and negation, which spring from the denial of the dimension of consciousness to his Dasein. Although Sartre recovers that dimension in his portrayal of the pour-soi, now the idea of nothingness is not taken (...) to its ultimate consequence, where art would appear as a product of consciousness that is entrenched in nothingness. Only through an enlarged notion of consciousness, one that allows the perception of negative experience as intrinsically related to poiesis, will the work of art appear ontologically grounded in a form of Being that searches for its own contradiction. Such an enlarged notion of consciousness appears in the thought of Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō , where concepts such as ‘‘the place of nothingness’’ and ‘‘pure experience’’ can serve as ground to an analysis of the relation between nothingness and the work of art. (shrink)

Ethics normally proceeds by establishing some kind of ground from which norms can be derived for human action. However, no such terra firma is found in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, which instead lays down a sedimentary soil consisting of a blend of nothingness and contingency. This paper aims to show how Sartre is able to build an ethical theory from this seemingly groundless mixture, and it proceeds in three sections. Section one aims to disentangle the relation between (...) the for-itself (pour-soi) and the in-itself (en-soi) from antithetical characterizations by placing them in a state of supervenience. Section two works to explain how both the in-itself and the for-itself are not divided ontologically, but are both in the same ontological state, namely, contingency. And in section three, it is argued that Sartre’s ethics reveals that because human beings share the same thrownness with Others in a world, they have to take title for such a world. Within a Sartrean ethics of nothingness, one’s nothingness leads one to the shared nothingness of Others, of which one must take responsibility. (shrink)

In this chapter, I reexamine how the interpretation of nothingness and negativity in Schopenhauer—within the wider nineteenth-century philosophical context, particularly in reference to his perceived rival Hegel and his heir and critic Nietzsche—informed his encounter with “oriental thought,” his reception of Buddhism as a philosophical and religious system centering on negativity, and trace how he construed the central Buddhist concept of emptiness in the context of Western ideas of nothingness. Nineteenth-century German philosophers are inadequately aware of the changing (...) senses and complex argumentative discourses concerning the Sanskrit expression śūnyatā and the Chinese term kong 空 and the problem of translating Buddhist emptiness as nothing or void. Relying on the same range of historical sources that were then becoming available in the German speaking world, Schopenhauer and other thinkers such as Hegel perceived similar philosophical questions in these sources, while arriving at conflicting diagnoses of their philosophical and practical significance. We consequently can trace how the reception of Buddhist emptiness becomes interculturally entangled with and a source in argumentation concerning the nature of being and nothingness in modern German philosophy. (shrink)

This sustained and distinctively Buddhist challenge to the ontology of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness resolves the incoherence implicit in the Sartrean conception of nothingness by opening to a Buddhist vision of emptiness. Rooted in the insights of Madhyamika dialectic and an articulated meditative (zen) phenomenology, Nothingness and Emptiness uncovers and examines the assumptions that sustain Sartre's early phenomenological ontology and questions his theoretical elaboration of consciousness as "nothingness." Laycock demonstrates that, in addition to a "relative" (...) nothingness (the for-itself) defined against the positivity and plenitude of the in-itself, Sartre's ontology requires, but also repudiates, a conception of "absolute" nothingness (the Buddhist "emptiness"), and is thus, as it stands, logically unstable, perhaps incoherent. The author is not simply critical; he reveals the junctures at which Sartrean ontology appeals for a Buddhist conception of emptiness and offers the needed supplement. (shrink)

In this article, we intend to see if the emergence of basic existence, or nothingness, from nothingness has occurred. So a contact boundary between existence and nothingness finds an existential necessity. Which we are trying to understand. This boundary between being and nothingness must have the characteristics of being composed of its before and after to the extent that it is compatible with both sides. That is, it must not be so much, that is, it must (...) be accepted as being, that it cannot be placed on the boundary of nothingness and be in conflict with it. Nor must it be so much included as not being that it is unstable on the side of being, cannot last, and in fact cannot be. So it needs a balance between being and nothingness that can be maintained in a state of flux between the two. (shrink)

This source/framework preprint develops the nullity and paradox layer of a larger τ-Logic program in progress. Its central claim is not that zero is unreal, but that zero-readouts and structured absences are regime-bound and do not by themselves license inference to absolute ontological nullity. The paper uses a two-coordinate diagnostic to show how paradox pressure can arise when a visible one-dimensional readout is detached from the relational structure that makes it meaningful. Appendix D provides completed local demonstrations for selected zero/projection (...) cases, and Appendix F gives bounded readout-collapse blocking results for Russell, Liar, and Yablo under declared regimes. Broader reconstructions, including Gödel, probability, entropy, and physics-facing calibration, remain companion or future theorem-level work rather than claims completed here. (shrink)