Nothing

Nothingness

Not aware of the dullness between now and then
Oblivious of my existence I
Treasure the conundrums of your thoughts and
Hold on to the never-changing monotony voices of identicalness, stepping
In the dryness of an exciting
Nowhere watching the sluggishness of time
Grabbing the stillness of the wind moving soundlessly through the flatness of my thoughts
Nobody that cares, only the sameness and the harmony of my mind that
Engulfs the unanimity and wholeness of my being
Sometimes my imagination drifts in the minds of angels, then
Stumbles upon the singleness of life!
—©Nikita—18th October 2008

Image: belgers.com

What is Nothing, anyway?

It’s not anything, and it’s not something, yet it isn’t the negation of something, either. Traditional logic is no help, since it merely regards all negation as derivative from something positive. So, Heidegger proposed, we must abandon logic in order to explore the character of Nothing as the background out of which everything emerges.

Carefully contemplating Nothing in itself, we begin to notice the importance and vitality of our own moods. Above all else, Nothing is what produces in us a feeling of dread {Ger. Angst}. This deep feeling of dread, Heidegger held, is the most fundamental human clue to the nature and reality of Nothing.
Human Life as Being-There Human beings truly exist, yet our “being-there” {Ger. Dasein} is subject to a systematic, radical uncertainty. Because we know that we will die, concern withour annihilation is an ever-present feature of human experience: Death is the key to Life. The only genuine question is why we are at all. Once we experience the joy[!?!] of dread, we recognize that our lives are limited—and therefore shaped—by death.

In just the same way, Heidegger argued, so Nothing is what shapes Being generally. This reveals the most fundamental, transcendent reality, beyond all notions of what-is slipping over into what-is-not. Even in the historical tradition, according to Heidegger, Nothing is shown to be the concomitant rather than the opposite of Being. The only genuine philosophical question is why there is something rather than nothing.
Source here

Parts of this book deserve 5 stars. Much of what Sartre has to say in it is cuttingly insightful, indeed life-changing. His writing is lucid (perhaps too lucid for philosophy – this was Merleau-Ponty’s opinion) and the book is a great read. But underlying everything, with huge passages directed exclusively to it, is Sartre’s own ontology, mish-mash of Descartes (via Husserl), Hegel and Heidegger, which falls well short of Heidegger’s own subtlety. This has led to a certain contempt among serious continental philosophers for Sartre’s work. Ironically, for all that, he has had an obvious powerful influence on many of them. This is not a book to be ignored by ANYONE….amazon.co.uk….reader-review

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980), commonly known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced [ʒɑ̃ pol saʁtʁə]), was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was the leading figure in 20th century French philosophy.

In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but he declined it[1] stating that “It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.Read more about Sartre on this link which will open in a new window.

Advertisements