Abstract
This essay in the comparative metaphysic of nothingness begins by pondering why Leibniz thought of the converse question as the preeminent one. In Eastern philosophical thought, like the numeral ‘zero’ (śūnya) that Indian mathematicians first discovered, nothingness as non-being looms large and serves as the first quiver on the imponderables they seem to have encountered (e.g., ‘In the beginning was neither non-being what nor being: what was there, bottomless deep?’ ṚgVeda X.129). The concept of non-being and its permutations of nothing, negation, nullity, etc., receive more sophisticated treatment in the works of grammarians, ritual hermeneuticians, logicians, and their dialectical adversaries variously across Jaina and Buddhist schools. The present analysis follows the function of negation/the negative copula, nãn, and dialetheia in grammar and logic, then moves onto ontologies of non-existence and extinction and further suggestive tropes that tend to arrest rather than affirm the inexorable being-there of something. (This chapter is to be read in tandem with two aligned papers that have appeared since the first publication of this chapter (see above), namely, ‘Thinking Negation in Early Hinduism and Classical Indian Philosophy’ (Bilimoria 2017); and ‘Negation (Abhāva), Non-existents, and a Distinctive Pramāṇa in the Nyāya-Mīmāṃsā’ (Bilimoria 2016)).
After a discussion of interests in being (existence), non-being and nothingness in contemporary metaphysics, the article examines Heidegger’s extensive treatment of nothingness in his 1929 inaugural Freiburg lecture, ‘Was ist Metaphysik?’, published later as ‘What is Metaphysics?’ The essay however distances itself from any pretensions toward a doctrine of ‘Metaphysical’ at ‘Nihilism’.
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Notes
- 1.
D.P. Chattopadhyaya (2006, 190) cites Jacob Needham as saying that the symbol of zero (0) was well established in India and Indo-China (via Buddhism) during the seventh to ninth century CE; while many principles of numerations were known in ancient Mesopotamia, the sexagesimal place-value order was mixed up with other principles for values below 60. The place value in China was decimal, not sexagesimal. The decimal place value was extensively used in the mathematics developed by Āryabhaṭṭa (b. 476CE), the author of Āryabhaṭīya; p. 190.
- 2.
For a critical discussion, see David Grimes (2010): http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/ compostional-nihilism-41359.html
- 3.
See, R. Dawkins (1988) p. 5; Dawkins elaborates: ‘The basic idea of The Blind Watchmaker is that we don’t need to postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else in the universe’ (147; italics added); really his ‘basic idea’ is nothing more than just shameless assertion.
- 4.
This debate will be treated of in more detail in a subsequent paper; the 2011 paper merely gives an outline.
- 5.
On Indian Panentheism, and possibilities of Nothingness within that framing theology, see Bilimoria and Stansell (2010), ‘Suturing the Body Corporate (Divine and Human) in the Brāhmaṇic Traditions,’ Special Issue on Panentheism and Panpsychism, Sophia, (Springer) vol 49 No 2, pp. 237–259; see also Levine (1994).
- 6.
Quite a few of the ‘start-ups’ were initiated by expatriate Indian trained IT engineers. Could it be that the Indian mind has grown used to thinking in multiple terms of null spaces and multiplications that involve zeros more than any other digit? (Bilimoria 2012b)
- 7.
See Bilimoria (2011b) ‘Grief and Mourning: for Renuka’, lecture for Existentialist Society, Melbourne, September 2011, updated pdf at www.pbilimo.com; also under slightly different title in Bilimoria 2012a, p. 172.
- 8.
Jorge Luis Borges (2000) Labyrinths (Penguin Books), trans. J.E. Irby (I am thankful to Amelia Barili from UC Berkeley for drawing my attention to this forgotten exquisite storyline!)
- 9.
I was in personal correspondence with Richard Routley (later Sylvan) during that seminal period even as he ventured out into non-Western, particularly Jaina logic. Correspondence in Sylvan Archives (Griffin and Priest).
- 10.
‘Was ist Metaphysik?’, inaugural lecture to the Freiburg University faculties, July 24, 1929, in the University Auditorium (succeeding his teacher, Husserl). I have used translation in places from the earlier one included by R.F.C. Hull and Alan Crick in Existence and Being (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1949, re- issued 1979), but mainly from D.F. Krell, ‘What is Metaphysics?’ in Basic Writings, revised edn., San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993. Heidegger meets Stefan Schimanski, June 1946, and again a year later. On their meeting see Schimanski’s essay, ‘On Meeting a Philosopher,’ Partisan Review 15, 1948, 506–09. The Sheehan translation (2001) was cited.
- 11.
In the discussion that ensues Heidegger has taken the adage ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’ rather too literally and hence finds a certain ambiguity in it. As Prof. John Bishop (of Auckland University) pointed out to me (after an APRA plenary presentation of the larger version, 2010, in Melbourne), there are many different and variant interpretations of ‘ex nihilo nihil fit,’ and not all scholars or theologians draw the implications that Heidegger does; some may find ‘Nothing’ here quite compatible with God’s nature, and so a positive rather than a negative reading might be apposite. Hence something – at least conceivably capable – does come out of nothing. And this may resonate with the Hindu cosmogenic accounts discussed under Part III. I am grateful to John Bishop and Patrick Hutchings for their comments on this section of the discussion. Though it could equally be ‘After Gods’ in deference to now recognized transcendental pluralism in cross- cultural philosophy of religion, the re-kindled interests in Pantheism (Spinoza; Michael Levine (1994); Forrest), Panpsychism (Schopenhauer; Freya Matthews), Panentheism (Plato[?] via Dirk Baltzly; Hegel; de Chardin; Phil Clayton). More recently, Mark Johnston’s (2009) plea for rationally reconsidering some version of poly-heneno-theisms, rather than saving the historically late monotheistic deity of Western origin; and subverting Heidegger’s adage: ‘Too late for the gods, too early for God’: kasmai devāya haviṣā vidhema – to which God shall we offer our sacrifice: of West/North or East/South? [echoing Ṛgved a X.82.6]). Some of these alternatives are examined in Special Issue on Panentheism and Panpsychism, Sophia Volume 49 Number 2, 24 March 2011.
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Bilimoria, P. (2019). Why Is There Nothing Rather Than Something? An Essay in the Comparative Metaphysic of Nonbeing. In: Wong, P., Bloor, S., Hutchings, P., Bilimoria, P. (eds) Considering Religions, Rights and Bioethics: For Max Charlesworth. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18148-2_13
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