Nothingness and the Meaning of Life: Philosophical Approaches to Ultimate Meaning Through Nothing and Reflexivity 9781472531810, 9781472594334, 9781472534569

Citation preview

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Also Available from Bloomsbury Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook The Existentialist’s Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness, Gary Cox

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life Philosophical Approaches to Ultimate Meaning Through Nothing and Reflexivity Nicholas Waghorn

LON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W YOR K • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 © Nicholas Waghorn, 2014 Nicholas Waghorn has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-47253-181-0 ePDF: 978-1-47253-456-9 ePub: 978-1-47252-985-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents Acknowledgements

vi

Introduction: A Crisis in Meaning

1

Part 1  Getting Us Nowhere – The Geography of Nothingness

1

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

2

Strange Bedfellows: Carnap and Derrida’s Critiques of the Heideggerian Nothing

9

29

Part 2  Think Nothing Of It – The Conceptuality of Nothingness

3

Nothing Under the Microscope

49

4

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

85

5

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

102

6

Arguing – Avoid!

125

Part 3  Nothing To Do With Me – The Application of Nothingness

7

The Quest for Meaning

161

8

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

193

Concluding Speculations

228

Notes Bibliography Index

233 287 297

Acknowledgements I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people whose help led to the completion of this book. I thank first Dudley Carr, Fiona Barker, Roger Kendall and Dave Leal, all of whom, in various ways, set me on the path of studying philosophy. For help in my early career and a great deal of support, first as tutors and then as colleagues, my heartfelt thanks go to Pamela Sue Anderson, Jordan Bell and Joseph Shaw. For substantial discussion of the issues written about here I am grateful to Max de Gaynesford, Simon Glendinning and Stephen Mulhall. John Cottingham deserves special thanks for his generosity with his time and his patience in talking with me about these matters. For their gracious responses to my queries regarding their work I thank Stanley Rosen, Michael Slote and William F. Vallicella, and for thought-provoking interactions I thank Mike Buick, Paul Fiddes, Jo Lovesey, Stephen Priest, Mark Salib and Tim Stanley. Liza Thompson has done a wonderful job of overseeing the production of this book for Bloomsbury, and has been encouraging and helpful every step of the way; I could not have asked for a better editor. I am also indebted to Rachel Norman, Jenna Steventon, Rachel Eisenhauer, Kim Muranyi, and Arun Mohan for their hard work and for making the process of production such a relaxed and pleasant one. Finally I would like to thank my friends and students, who have often been kind enough to show interest in my work, and my family, who have been a source of unending material, moral, emotional and spiritual support, and to whom this book is dedicated: Amy, Mum, Dad, Grandmother.

Introduction: A Crisis in Meaning

Death has always filled me with a peculiar horror. The idea that there will be a future filled with the beauty that life affords me now, but which I will not participate in, causes me great distress. And the idea that I will eventually die seems to rob my life of at least some of its meaning, namely those meaningful activities I could have engaged in had I lived longer. But this book is not primarily about death. For, in the face of death, I thought to myself: ‘Suppose you were immortal; would your life be meaningful then?’ And it seemed to me that the thought of an everlasting life of the kind I have now held a horror of its own. The horror of a tireless, restless, eternally striving existence, from which there was no respite. The revelation of this paradox was something of a surprise to me. I had been so obsessed with my fear of dying, that I had never considered the terrors of the alternative. It made me ask myself what I really wanted out of life. Was there any state of affairs that I might find myself in with which I could rest contented? It struck me that if I could find such a state of affairs, then I would have found the meaning of life. Not just a way to make my life more meaningful, for that might still leave me discontented with the amount of meaning in my life, but the meaning of life. Consequently, I set out to think through what state of affairs might make my life ultimately meaningful, disregarding any pragmatic concerns. This book is the account of what happened. I do not think my case is unique, or even uncommon. While I have perhaps spent more time developing my thoughts on this issue, which is one of the luxuries of pursuing a career in philosophy, the intuitions underlying my disquiet are, I hypothesize, frequently to be found in many people, explicitly or implicitly. Moreover, some social phenomena can be viewed as responding to these intuitions. It is notable, for example, that a sense of life’s meaninglessness, and the depression that often accompanies it, appears far more prevalent in parts of the world that are materially wealthy. It may be that the satisfaction of our most basic needs allows us the time and leisure to reflect on other needs

2

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

and desires, to move beyond the here and now. As Brecht says: ‘Grub first, then ethics’1 – and the wealthy are fortunate in having eaten their fill. Some take this to mean that worries about the meaning of life are in some way indicative of decadence, worries that result from having too much time on our hands, from having no real problems. While I believe (along with everyone else I am sure) that we should strive to meet the dire needs of the poor, I do not think we should dismiss the problems that arise once material needs are satisfied. After all, the more we are able to free the world from the pain of unfulfilled basic needs, the more these problems will reveal themselves, for they are part of the human condition. And the lack of meaning in one’s life, even though it may require some degree of leisure to see, is a serious problem for anyone – so serious as to prompt suicide in some. Furthermore, meaning may even help some of us to deal with our suffering. As Nietzsche notes: ‘If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.’2 Of course, this armchair sociology of mine is wholly speculative – just thoughts that happened to strike me. Let me return to safer ground, namely the theme of this book. I am engaged in a search for the meaning of life. Of course, I am not alone in this – especially in recent years. Not so long ago the question of life’s meaning was, in the academy of analytic philosophy, largely ignored or disparaged. True, there had been a constant undercurrent of work in issues surrounding the meaning of life, often resulting in an impact far beyond the amount of work produced (famous treatments by celebrated philosophers like Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick and David Wiggins are all examples of this), but it is only within the last decade or so that the area has begun to burst into vibrant bloom. The rate at which essays on the topic are published is steadily increasing, awareness and interest in the philosophical community at large is keeping pace, and books, a few technical and many popular, are being published to bring findings to the general public. Within Continental philosophy, the issue of life’s meaning has tended to be addressed more often, but a lot of this attention is oblique and wedded to a mass of complex literature. Often the reader will need to make sense of lengthy and involved discussions of ‘being’, ‘transcendence’, ‘the other’ and similar notions in order to extract what Continental philosophers have to say on the issue. I will be dealing with both analytic and Continental literature in this book, seeking to delineate relations and disagreements between these strands. This will involve some of the technical argumentation and use of linguistic resonance that are hallmarks of analytic and Continental philosophy, respectively; nevertheless,

Introduction: A Crisis in Meaning

3

I  have striven (perhaps not always successfully) to be as clear as possible in taking the reader through the arguments. Earlier, I noted that my interest was not in finding ways of making my life more meaningful, but in finding the meaning of life. I address these former issues of partial meaning implicitly, but my central focus is on whether it is possible to conceive or achieve an existence the meaningfulness of which cannot be improved upon – what I call ‘ultimate’ meaning. This notion seems to have been largely overlooked in the contemporary literature. It is my intuition that people worry far more about whether their lives have ultimate meaning than whether they have any meaning at all. The endeavour to achieve ultimate meaning can be rephrased to parallel epistemological discussions of our desire to eliminate doubt in order to arrive at knowledge claims that are certain. For, just as we have a tendency to ask how a claim drafted in to provide epistemological justification for a prior claim is itself justified, we have a tendency to ask by what further criteria a goal or purpose that is meant to bestow meaning is itself meaningful. For any end point or limit we reach, there seems the possibility of moving past it, which puts it into question. The meaning of life, then, is approached here not from a perspective of applied ethics, but rather from that of questions concerning conceptual limits. It is my hypothesis that the capacity to reiterate a request for justification for each new candidate that presents itself calls for a candidate to be presented which disrupts our ability to carry out such reiteration. My route into this search for such a candidate is by examination of the notion of ‘nothing’. To this end, an analysis of that notion is employed, useful insofar as it is the one of a breed of very general notions in philosophy (including ‘Being’ and ‘the absolute’), the examination of which tends to make issues concerning conceptual limits most manifest. The radicalness of the search for an understanding of ‘nothing’ also requires attention to the methodology of such an endeavour, and indeed to whether philosophy can adequately proceed without acknowledging the possibility of its other, faith. The argumentative strategy of the book can thus be expressed in this way: for anything that we might put forward as the ultimate meaning of our lives, as that which could not be more meaningful, we can always take its meaninggiving characteristics and wish that they be extended in some way. Given that we can do this, its meaningfulness can be improved upon, and it turns out not to have been the ultimate meaning of our lives. But the idea of nothing, which, taken seriously, cannot be defined (for to define something is always to predicate something of it), will not be susceptible to this problem, as it has no characteristics that might be further extended. So nothing, as long as it is not

4

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

construed in its more familiar, everyday, sense as an ‘absence’ or a ‘void’, is our best candidate for providing ultimate meaning. That is a rough summary of the book’s main thrust. What follows will be a précis of exactly how I go about developing it. The discussion is split into three parts. Part 1 introduces the reader to three different figures representative of discrete ways of accounting for the notion ‘nothing’. These figures are Martin Heidegger, representing (in some respects) phenomenology (in Chapter 1); Rudolf Carnap, representing analytic philosophy; and Jacques Derrida, representing poststructuralism (both in Chapter 2). Although the emphasis here is not on a slavish devotion to defend a specific interpretation of these figures, the accounts are nevertheless detailed. The aim is for a close but relatively uncritical reading that looks at the geography of the discussions of nothing over the course of the last century. By the end of Part 1, the reader should feel happy with the different methodologies of the three key players, and their relation to each other. This provides a particular launching point for later discussion. Armed with an understanding of the three sample figures, in Part 2 the reader is led through the conceptual territory in a more abstract fashion, less tied to specific texts or philosophers. The focus is solely ideas. Two chapters are devoted to the analytic tradition represented by Carnap: Chapter 3 dealing with classical logic, Chapter 4 with a paraconsistent variant. Chapter 5 treats the affective methodology of the Continental tradition drawn from Heideggerian roots. Chapter 6 deals with post-structuralism. Each position is assessed in terms of its ability to account for the concept of ‘nothing’ by its own lights, and each is judged no more or no less successful than the others, insofar as they beg the question against their alternatives. Finally, Part 3 takes the prior discussion of ‘nothing’, which suggests that no satisfactory account can be given of the concept without begging the question, and divests it of any misleading metaphorical connotations. The results are consequently applied to the question of life’s meaning. Following this, the role of religion is considered to see what, if anything, it can offer the debate – after examining examples of both Eastern and Western religion, the concepts of faith and grace are suggested as facilitating one interesting way of looking at the problem. The development of the argument in the main body of the book, then, is reversed from my summary above. ‘Nothing’ is the starting point, and, having taken a hard look at the notion, we then see how it can be applied to discussions about the possibility of life having ultimate meaning.

Introduction: A Crisis in Meaning

5

I would like to conclude by asking the reader to take this Introduction (which includes these very words!) with a pinch of salt. An introduction always does some degree of disservice to what is to come; if it did not, there would be no need for anything to come after it. I feel that this problem may be especially acute in this book. So what I am providing is a simplistic framework, a crude map really, to entice the reader. As we will discover, the situation is much more complicated, and as we travel further into the material we will find that, along with everything else, these prefatory comments must be thrown into question.

6

Part One

Getting Us Nowhere – The Geography of Nothingness

8

1

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

By homely gift and hindered Words, The human heart is told Of Nothing— ‘Nothing’ is the force That renovates the World. Emily Dickinson

1.1  Introduction Questions concerning nothingness and kindred notions such as nothing, negation and negativity have drawn constant interest throughout the history of philosophy, Eastern and Western. It is my initial intuition that the persistence of, yet lack of real progress on, these questions is due to much the same factors that Martin Heidegger felt explained why the question of Being ‘has today been forgotten’.1 That is, everyone takes it that they already understand the meaning of ‘nothing’, and regards anyone who inquires into it as exemplifying ‘an error of method’.2 The type of ‘error of method’ made in inquiring into nothingness is usually deemed to be a lack of understanding of how quantification works, or of reference failure. A paradigm case of the former accusation can be found in Rudolf Carnap’s criticism that Heidegger’s statement ‘The nothing itself noths’ is a pseudo-statement – a criticism that we will be looking at later. This is the story for a large part of past philosophy concerning nothingness. However, chiefly owing to Heidegger and his subsequent influence on a number of ‘Continental’ and postmodernist philosophers in the past half century, the area of fundamental ontology has garnered renewed interest. Heidegger is a helpful nexus of the strands of interest in nothingness, and so an interpretation of his work can be used as a key to access and lay out the notions in question when nothingness is examined.

10

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

An examination of paradigmatic analytic dismissals of ‘nothingness’ can be approached via the debate with Carnap. In addition, the subtleties of Wittgenstein’s philosophy (in both its early and late forms) can be linked to the nothingness debate via what Wittgenstein has to say on Heidegger’s notion of Angst, and indeed on ‘nothing’ explicitly. Eastern philosophy’s sustained focus on sunyata, ‘emptiness’, which has certain parallels with Western work on nothingness, is an interest that both Heidegger and his commentators have aligned themselves with. For these various reasons then, I choose Heidegger as a key for unlocking the debates concerning nothingness.

1.2  Heidegger: ‘Early’ and ‘late’ Selecting a single figure to access a conceptual area, a ‘key’, has both pros and cons. My main interest here is in the (for want of a better word) ‘conceptual’ aspects of the questions concerning nothingness, rather than the interpretative aspects. Heidegger is notoriously difficult to interpret in any case, so while I am anxious to outline a comprehensive account of the philosophical moves in the debates concerning nothingness, I will unavoidably have to make some contentious moves as regards interpretation. What I have been calling ‘nothingness’ thus far I wish to equate with Heidegger’s ‘the nothing’ (das Nichts); Heidegger’s major piece of explicit work on this topic is his lecture ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ Outside of this lecture, mentions of ‘the nothing’ are less frequent, especially as Heidegger’s thought progresses, but this is deceptive, insofar as Heidegger acknowledges in that lecture that ‘Being and the nothing do belong together’.3 As Heidegger’s philosophy was arguably totally dedicated to rediscovering the question of Being,4 his work bears much wider implicit relevance to debates concerning nothingness than explicit mentions suggest. So, although ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ is taken to be representative of the emphases characteristic of earlier Heideggerian thought, if we relate its content concerning Being and the nothing to the alteration of focus as regards Being in Heidegger’s later work, we should be able to reconstruct more comprehensively what the later Heidegger may have thought about the nothing also. Indeed, in the introduction to his translation of the lecture, Krell notes that ‘Heidegger’s preoccupation with the nothing becomes an important theme that bridges his early and later work’. Certainly ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, delivered in 1929, marks

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

11

a transitional time between Being and Time (1927), which belongs firmly with the early works, and the perceived change of focus in the early thirties that characterizes Heidegger’s later thought.5

1.3  ‘What Is Metaphysics?’: Context Heidegger had spoken of ‘nothing’ before 1929. It occurs in his work as early as 1921–22 to indicate aspects of ‘ruination’, a precursor to the more developed notion of ‘falling’ found in Being and Time.6 It then reappears, with a very different meaning, in Being and Time itself. There, ‘nothing’ and ‘nullity’ are associated with certain affective components of ‘Dasein’ – Heidegger’s term for a subject that is always already in the midst of interaction with the world in which it lives – that make Dasein’s life seem uncanny. In both of these cases, ‘nothing’ is interpreted as ‘the nothing of . . .’, whether that be, say, ‘the Nothing of hopelessness’ in 1921–22, or, say, ‘the nothing of the world’ in Being and Time. Only by the time of ‘What Is Metaphysics’ is ‘nothing’ explicitly thematized on its own terms, as ‘the nothing’, das Nichts, rather than ‘the nothing of . . .’. This is an entirely natural progression. Being and Time was left incomplete on its own terms,7 Divisions I and II dealing only with the task of investigating the Being of Dasein in relation to temporality. Dealing with the question of Being itself, in relation not directly to Dasein but to temporality, was the task of Division III, and this theme is elaborated in Heidegger’s The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, also of 1927. The planned remainder of Being and Time, a historical inquiry that would have revealed Kant’s presuppositions to see how he relied on Descartes, and Descartes’ to see how he relied on Aristotle, is spread over The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Aristotle, Descartes) and 1929’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (Kant). It is possible now to see ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ as sharing a similar focus with The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, insofar as both pursue their inquiries – into ‘nothing’ and ‘Being’, respectively – less through an investigation of Dasein and its analytic and more by thematizing these notions directly. So given that this was always the plan for Division III of Being and Time, my use of the term ‘progression’ at the beginning of this paragraph should be seen in that light. So this brief glance at context indicates both that ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ grows from the soil of Being and Time as it stands (Divisions I and II), and so an understanding of it will necessitate familiarity with the terms and ideas of

12

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Being and Time, but that equally ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ is no mere rehashing of ideas from Being and Time. Not only did Heidegger have more to say even while writing Being and Time, which excess will necessarily inflect our reading of the 1929 lecture, but even as he was circulating this further thought (in the texts cited above) his thinking was making genuine progress (as we will see in our discussion of certain terms below). Taking up the first of these hermeneutic caveats, let us define a few important terms and issues drawn from Being and Time that will be useful in following ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ I have already indicated that Heidegger’s central issue was the issue of Being and the meaning of Being. The literature usually discerns two discrete questions here. First, the ‘guiding question’: the question about what it means for beings to be, what characterizes beings ‘as such’ – this is a question concerning the Being of beings (‘das Sein des Seienden’). Secondly, the ‘basic question’, which Michael Inwood identifies with the ‘forgotten’ question that opens the Introduction to Being and Time. This is the question of the essence of Being, the fundamental happening ‘that first enables us to have access to the Being of beings and thus makes it possible for beings to display themselves as such’.8 To refer to this happening, Heidegger uses the archaic Seyn as opposed to the Sein of the Being of beings. To emphasize the distinction, I will translate Seyn as ‘Beyng’.9 I will use Being (Sein) for the Being of a specific entity (e.g. Dasein) or as an umbrella term for the issues concerning the ‘guiding’ and ‘basic’ questions. Such an umbrella term is important as in his early and middle work Heidegger frequently runs together issues concerning the ‘guiding’ and ‘basic’ questions, so a neutral term is needed. It is controversial to introduce this notion of Beyng (Seyn) into our interpretation of Being and Time and ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ It may be felt to be anachronistic, as the term Seyn was not introduced until the 1930s. But this does not mean that the idea of Beyng was not present earlier. We have seen that Inwood identifies the ‘forgotten’ question that opens Being and Time with the question of Beyng. Furthermore, even if we do not accept this, we must recognize that Being and Time as it stands is incomplete, and latter parts may have contained the seeds of what I am calling ‘the basic question’. Certainly Heidegger felt confident enough that ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ gelled with his later thought about Beyng that he could write both a Postscript (1943) and an Introduction (1949) to it, showing its continuity with that thought.10 More direct evidence comes when Heidegger considers the revelation that beings are beings – and not nothing – in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ The acknowledgement of nothing ‘makes possible in

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

13

advance the revelation of beings in general’, that is to say, the nothing ‘brings Da-sein for the first time before beings as such’.11 This seems to be a raising of the ‘basic question’ (via the ‘transitional question’, discussed below).12 My intention is not to suggest this as a definitive interpretation, but merely a plausible one. Finally, a fuller explanation of the term ‘Dasein’. It was Heidegger’s desire to move away from the myth of a disembodied subject, a ‘Cartesian ego’, to a view of the subject as necessarily being in the world, as a Being-in-the-world (his terminology: ‘Dasein’).13 The idea, in brief, is that human beings are never disinterested observers of the contents of the world, but always have something to do with the world and its contents: the world reveals itself to us as an array of objects that we can use and interact with. Objects are ‘ready-to-hand’ – items that we utilize (and always already do utilize), rather than merely ‘present-athand’ – items that just exist plainly, and which we can then focus on to speculate about philosophically.14 This should not be taken as saying that ‘readiness-tohand’ exhausts the level of human interactions in the world, but rather that even when we regard objects as ‘present-at-hand’, we are still enmeshed in a world of concerns15; hence the essential unity of Dasein’s Being as ‘care’ (Sorge).

1.4  ‘What Is Metaphysics?’: Content Having laid the ground, let us examine what Heidegger is trying to achieve in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ As I indicated before, this is an early example of the nothing being addressed as ‘the nothing’ rather than ‘the nothing of . . .’. It is important not to overplay the significance of this. After a review of the different aspects of ‘nothing’ and ‘nullity’ in Being and Time, Richard Polt claims that ‘[s]o far one might think Heidegger has invoked “Nothing” only for anthropological purposes’. He then goes on to suggest that ‘nothing’ in Being and Time characterizes the finitude of Dasein, whereas ‘nothing’ in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ characterizes the finitude of Beyng.16 The word ‘anthropological’ is unfortunate here, suggesting a Kantian flavour that Heidegger would wish to avoid, and the opposition of the projects of Being and Time and ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ is perhaps too marked. Nevertheless, I agree with the spirit of Polt’s remarks; Heidegger is approaching the question of Being more directly, rather than through an analytic of Dasein. In particular, he approaches these issues through a consideration that takes its departure from our ordinary ways of speaking about ‘nothing’, and this is where we join the lecture.

14

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

It was perhaps inevitable that Heidegger should go on to draw the ire of a member of the Vienna circle such as Carnap, given the alignment of many members of that group with a methodology for philosophy patterned on the sciences. Heidegger sets himself against this in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, first by claiming that science (in the broader German sense of ‘Wissenschaft’, which encompasses some of the humanities) ‘wants to know nothing of the nothing’.17 However, Heidegger maintains that despite this, science ‘has recourse to what it rejects’18 – and thus an investigation must be framed around the question ‘How is it with the nothing?’19 Why does Heidegger draw the conclusion that science has recourse to the nothing which it rejects? Heidegger’s reasons for claiming this are fairly simple – he asks: ‘But when we give up the nothing . . . do we not concede it?’20 – that is, when we say ‘Science deals with beings – and nothing else’ (emphasis added), we implicitly concede the nothing in the set-up for science, in securing the objects for scientific inquiry. Simple, yes, but perhaps not simplistic as Carnap was later to suggest. Before examining the positivistic reactions to the nothing and their offshoots, however, let us stay on track in exposing the sort of view Heidegger is pressing. So far, we seem to have a clash between science’s reluctance to rank the nothing among its objects for discussion, and the requirement to do so in order to so exclude it in the first place. Of course, it is open for the scientist to avoid talking about this nothing – after all, the question is a metaphysical one, not a scientific one (i.e. we are talking about the set-up for science, not the methodology of science itself). Nevertheless, Heidegger, for one, does not wish to avoid it. But does the question not bring with it a paradox, as ‘[i]n our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that “is” such and such; we posit it as a being’?21 That is, the nothing needs to be excluded from the set of beings that can be referred to, but any attempt to exclude it will involve referring to it, and thus including it as a being to which we can refer. Given this, the prospects of examining the notion of the nothing look bleak – as these will inevitably require some reference being made to the nothing, not only in giving an answer to what it might be, but in even raising the question of its ‘existence’. Heidegger at least is not put off by this. His reaction is to say that trying to give an analysis of the nothing using the rules of logic is to get one’s priorities wrong. If we take the rules of logic to have priority for us in deciding the nature of the nothing, as Carnap does, then we are left with the preceding paradox, at least at first glance. There may be ways of avoiding this paradox while hanging on to the traditional

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

15

logical laws, but we will examine this when we come to Carnap, and positivist reactions to the nothing. Heidegger would rather problematize the relationship between the nothing and the laws of logic, such as negation, into which the nothing will have to be parsed if we allow logic to remain the ‘taskmaster’ in this question. To wit: ‘Is the nothing given only because the “not”, i.e., negation, is given? Or is it the other way round?’22 Carnap picks the former; Heidegger, the latter. Of course, if anyone wants to choose to examine the nothing without the guidance of logical laws and the understanding that such laws provide us with concerning the relations of propositions, it will be necessary to produce some alternative methodology. Heidegger is aware of this issue, saying: ‘how should we who are essentially finite make the whole of beings totally penetrable in itself and also for us?’ This question could come out of any debate on religious language, in which the puzzle is trying to speak of an ineffable divine reality using our human terminology. So Heidegger decides that ‘the faculty of concepts, i.e. the understanding, is incapable of getting an originary grip on the nothing’23 without resulting in paradox, and thus pursues an elucidation of the notion on the basis of a quest for the ‘fundamental experience of the nothing’.24 We are only attuned to such an experience when we are in a particular mood, so Heidegger, in brief, wishes to pursue a more affective methodology. Heidegger identifies the experience of varying moods to be the differing ways in which beings are disclosed to us. Moods cannot be parsed in terms of the logical rules that hold sway over the everyday beings we interact with (they are anterior to these beings and these rules), but their affective component reveals beings in a certain way. To make a common distinction in analytic philosophy, this knowledge seems to be of a practical rather than a propositional nature (although arguably moods do not give us any insight into how to do something). In addition, some moods, which I will call ‘basic’ moods, reveal ‘beings as a whole’ (‘das Seiende im Ganzen’) in some way. So for example, the basic mood of boredom, that is profound boredom, rather than the experience of boredom with this or that thing, ‘removes all things and human beings and oneself along with them into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole’.25 From this identification of moods that gives us some pre-logical affective apprehension of beings as a whole, Heidegger focuses on a specific mood, that of dread or Angst, in which we feel ill at ease with nothing in particular – ‘All things and we ourselves sink into indifference . . . not in the sense of mere disappearance . . . [r]ather, in this very receding things turn toward us’.26

16

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

What Heidegger seems to be getting at is a sort of extreme disengagement from beings as a whole, the uncanny feeling of the whole universe (not construed merely as the totality of beings, but as an interpretative whole) seeming somehow artificial or ungrounded. If Heidegger is on the right lines here, there is little point in trying to express what this mood discloses in standard language, as his decision to pursue a methodology that lays stress on the affective component is an attempt to avoid ‘effing’ this ineffable revelation by using literal language of it. Note that Heidegger is not rejecting logic, as some have interpreted him as doing. What he is saying is that we cannot allow logic to legislate in advance the subject matter of metaphysics; logic is not the ‘taskmaster’ in this question of the nothing. However, once we express our disclosed ontological truths, the assertions that we express them in will be subject to logical laws, like all thinking.27 So, where do we encounter the nothing in this mood of Angst? To understand this, we must dissect what is disclosed in this mood more carefully. In Angst, beings as a whole, including oneself, slip away; they are not disclosed, as in other basic moods. But what are beings as a whole? This is a difficult interpretative question, as there is no doubt that mention of ‘beings as a whole’ marks a terminological change between Being and Time and ‘What Is Metaphysics?’28 In the former, Heidegger analysed Angst and nothing in terms of the ‘world’ (Welt) and there was only one disparaging mention of ‘beings as a whole’, in an unrelated passage. Equally, in the latter, ‘world’ is left unmentioned in any relevant context but ‘beings as a whole’ take centre stage.29 Clearly the term ‘beings as a whole’ in the 1929 lecture is doing some of the work of the term ‘world’ in Being and Time, but what specifically? Heidegger outlines four definitions of ‘world’ in Being and Time30: (1) world as the totality of entities that can be present-at-hand within the world; (2) world as the Being of such entities; (3) world as the ‘wherein’ a given Dasein may be said to exist, such as a domestic or working environment; (4) world as that which makes possible a world in the third definition. This last definition Heidegger dubs ‘worldhood’. Throughout Being and Time, Heidegger focuses on definition (3) of ‘world’ (hereafter: ‘world (3)’), which we can gloss as ‘a web of . . . assignments within which entities can appear as the particular types of objects that they are, and which must therefore always be laid out [“disclosed”] in advance of any particular encounter with an object’.31 We can chart the evolution of this definition of ‘world’ by looking at Heidegger’s essay ‘On the Essence of Ground’, which is a sister piece to ‘What Is Metaphysics?’32 and a valuable aid to

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

17

understanding it. There, Heidegger begins by identifying ‘world’ with ‘beings as a whole’,33 the two sharing the sense of world (3) as it occurs in Being and Time. Inwood sees this as a preliminary step in elucidating a more developed notion of world than that found in Being and Time. (Heidegger’s identification arguably alters the scope of ‘world’; whereas in Being and Time the scope of ‘world’ was left undefined, here ‘beings as a whole’ encompasses ‘the remote as well as the nearby’.)34 Inwood goes on to say that world (3) from Being and Time is now used as a preliminary way of introducing the world in the sense of ‘men in relation to beings as a whole’.35 This interpretation seems problematic. First, Inwood interprets world (3) in Being and Time as being concerned only with the referential totality of utility, contra Polt and also Heidegger’s own retrospective interpretation, which seem to allow for other types of referential totality.36 Whether this is correct, that is, whether Heidegger is reading back his later thoughts into Being and Time, is of exegetical interest only. The important point, which I do not think Inwood would disagree with, is that Heidegger now wishes to understand world (3) as it appears in ‘On the Essence of Ground’ rather than as it may appear in Being and Time, that is, he wishes to understand it as covering referential totalities not necessarily governed by utility. Secondly and more significantly, Inwood describes Heidegger’s ‘most satisfactory’ sense of ‘world’ in ‘On the Essence of Ground’ as being ‘men in relation to beings as a whole’, presumably on the basis of Heidegger’s claim that ‘what is metaphysically essential in the . . . meaning of . . . world, lies in the fact that it is directed toward an interpretation of human existence [Dasein] in its relation to beings as a whole’.37 But this claim does not necessarily seem to be a definition of ‘world’, and within a couple of paragraphs Heidegger is talking about ‘Dasein’s relation to world’,38 which would seem to indicate world as being understood as world (3) as it occurs in ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (and Heidegger’s ‘retrospective’ interpretation of Being and Time). Inwood’s interpretation would duplicate the subject in such a case: ‘Dasein’s relation to men in relation to . . .’. So the identification of world with beings as a whole is not a preliminary step towards an interpretation of world as men in relation to beings as a whole; it just is the definition of ‘world’.39 The talk of Dasein’s relation to world or beings as a whole is better interpreted in terms of Heidegger’s interest in Dasein’s transcendence as Being-in-the-world, which is the ‘leading goal’40 of the analysis of ‘world’, issues concerning which can be more readily identified with world in sense (4) of Being and Time.41 My conclusion then is to interpret ‘beings as a whole’ in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ as world (3) as it

18

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

appears in ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (and as Heidegger would like it to appear in Being and Time).42 So in the basic mood of Angst beings as a whole slip away. We are brought before ourselves as Being-in-the-world. However, the ‘slipping away’ of beings as a whole in Angst is different from the disclosing of beings as a whole. Basic moods such as profound boredom reveal beings as a whole, but they do not reveal the nothing in the slipping away of beings as a whole. In disclosing beings as a whole, a basic mood discloses the structure of significations that comprises that whole, but in Angst beings as a whole slip away into insignificance.43 Thus Angst in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ cannot really be said to disclose beings as a whole.44 Heidegger makes this clear when he says of the basic moods of joy and boredom: ‘just when moods of this sort bring us face to face with beings as a whole they conceal from us the nothing’.45 Stephen Mulhall marks this distinction well in saying that, in Being and Time’s Angst, ‘what oppresses us is not any specific totality of ready-to-hand objects but rather, the possibility of such a totality: we are oppressed by the world as such’ (emphasis added).46 Note the similarity with ‘What Is Metaphysics?’: Angst reveals ‘beings in general’, brings us before ‘beings as such’,47 rather than beings as a whole. So in Angst beings as a whole slip away rather than being disclosed. What does this mean? I gave some indication in the last paragraph. Beings as a whole slip away insofar as the relations of significance that constitute a wholeness of beings disappear, leaving beings ‘in their full but heretofore concealed strangeness’.48 As Käufer says: ‘In anxiety nothing matters, there is no significance, no wholeness of relevance or equipment, so in a sense the world is not there’.49 It is in this sense of the world as being divested of significance that the nothing (das Nichts) manifests itself.50 The nothing then is not an annihilation of beings (as we would ordinarily think), but rather is manifested in the slipping away of beings: ‘Beings are not annihilated by anxiety so that nothing is left . . . [r]ather, the nothing makes itself known with beings and in beings expressly as a slipping away of the whole’.51 This happening of becoming insignificant in Angst is what Heidegger terms ‘nihilation’ or ‘noth-ing’; the ‘action’ of nothing ‘as the repelling gesture towards the retreating whole of beings, [which] discloses these beings in their full but heretofore concealed strangeness’.52 So this is the part that nothing plays (at least in ‘early’ Heidegger). What does this mean for us? Going back to the Mulhall quotation, we can see that it is ourselves that we are anxious with when we feel Angst; that is, Beingin-the-world as understood from the transcendent standpoint of bare Dasein

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

19

facing a bare world. From this standpoint we become painfully aware of the finitude that characterizes Dasein’s relation to Beyng. For although confrontation with the nothing makes us aware of the Being of beings (‘In the Being of beings the nihilation of the nothing occurs’),53 that is, aware of what it means for beings to be (at a certain historical moment), it also makes us aware that this Being of beings is finite, that is, not grounded in anything necessarily.54 Awareness of the possibility of a totality is a double burden; it is awareness that the totality is only a possibility (not necessary) and it is awareness that the totality is only one possibility. There can be others, other manifestations of the Being of beings. So the revelation of the Being of beings in a certain manner will indicate the concealment of the Being of beings in other manners, indicating the finitude of Beyng as the fundamental happening that allows us access to the Being of beings. ‘[Beyng] is finite in that it cannot be founded on the presence of some particular entity that serves as a ground for it; this means that it is constantly limited by the possibility of dissolution’.55 So it is possible, even at this very early stage in Heideggerian thought on the nothing, to see the nothing as an important aspect of Beyng, which must be finite (i.e. subject to dissolution in the nothing) in order to allow Dasein to encounter beings as beings: ‘Being and nothing do belong together, not because both . . . agree in their indeterminateness and immediacy, but rather because Being itself [Beyng] is essentially finite and reveals itself only in the transcendence of Dasein which is held out into the nothing’.56

1.5  Developments in Heidegger’s understanding of nothing As indicated earlier, a distinction is often marked in Heidegger scholarship between an ‘early’ and a ‘later’ Heidegger. Whether this distinction marks a genuine change of thought or rather a shift of emphasis is a matter of considerable contention in the literature.57 In many ways, the interpretation of ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ above lends itself to the ‘shift in emphasis’ interpretation better, but I am not interested in taking too strong a stand on the issue. I would hope that the points I make in the remainder of the chapter could be acceptably read in such a way as to interest proponents of alternative interpretations. Although nothingness is not explicitly addressed very often in Heidegger’s later works (which may be part of the shift of emphasis/change of thought in itself), an account can be reconstructed by following what implications this turn had for Heidegger’s conception of what ‘belong[s] together’ with nothingness – Being.

20

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

After Being and Time was charged with being just a new move in transcendental philosophy, and thus as being anthropocentric in its treatment of Dasein as casting significance and utility in order to constitute a world of beings that were pragmatic, ‘ready-to-hand’, Heidegger radicalized his methodology still further. Guignon claims one part of Heidegger’s turn to be ‘the shift away from fundamental ontology, with its focus on Dasein as the source of intelligibility of things, to the project of thinking the “history of being” where humans and their modes of understanding are themselves treated as offshoots of a wider historical unfolding’.58 In short, Heidegger wanted increasingly to think Beyng in its own terms.59 Accordingly, we can see how the treatment of ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ contains the seeds of this development in Heidegger’s thought. He objects to the perceived anthropocentricism of using laws of logic to uncover the essence of the nothing, and instead marks the more passive apprehension of the nothing that occurs in the mood of Angst.60 Claims like ‘the nothing nihilates’ are meant to counteract the possible reading of Heidegger’s claims in Kantian terms of transcendental subjectivity. However, this is just a step on the road. By 1935, and Heidegger’s lecture series Introduction to Metaphysics (to be published in 1953 as what Fried and Polt term a ‘rightful heir’61 to Being and Time), his thinking has altered even further towards an attempt to more rigorously effect the overcoming of anthropocentricism – and part of this seems to include dropping the discussion of the moods of individuals. Whereas in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ the discussion of moods took up the whole of the lecture until the last page, at which point the ‘transitional’ question ‘Why are there beings at all, rather than nothing?’ is asked, this is reversed in Introduction to Metaphysics, where talk of moods is disposed of in the first page, and much of the remainder of the book deals with the ‘transitional’ question. This questioning is supposed to unfold the question of Being (and here ‘questioning’ is more closely allied with the originary ‘thinking’ that begins to gain currency in Heidegger’s later methodology), and to some extent seems to replace talk of moods in doing so.62 Why would the desire to escape charges of anthropocentricism lead to a decision to play down the terminology of moods when elucidating the question of the nothing? Perhaps because the notion of a mood is too individualistic, too associated with the particular manifestation of Dasein. Whether Heidegger wanted it to or not, his earlier work such as Being and Time and ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ can give the impression that inauthenticity is the result of action on the part of Dasein. It certainly did to Sartre, hence the corrective nature of Heidegger’s 1947 ‘Letter

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

21

on Humanism’. In his later work, it is important to Heidegger to replace this individualistic interpretation of inauthenticity promulgated from the human perspective with an understanding of inauthenticity as ‘a widespread social phenomenon resulting from the self-concealment of [B]eing’.63 This is perhaps better effected by the notion of a questioning that unfolds Being for a whole people, rather than the moods of individuals.64 The notion in the last quotation is key – the self-concealment of Being. The emphasis on the revelation (or lack thereof) of the nothing which brings us faceto-face with beings as a whole transfers from the individual’s encounter with the nothing in the mood of anxiety to the unconcealment of Being in its essence that occurs, presumably, as part of a dialectic with the nothing. Or does it? Perhaps we are no longer entitled to such a presumption now that Heidegger’s thought has moved on. Heidegger’s methodology will eventually alter further as the impetus to speak in a poetic or originary way about Beyng65 (to ‘say’ Beyng) asserts itself ever more strongly (he first becomes dissatisfied with terms like ‘metaphysics’ for his investigations into fundamental ontology, preferring ‘philosophy’, and then simply ‘thinking’). Although this has not happened by Introduction to Metaphysics, there do seem to be indications regarding how Heidegger wants to treat the relation between Being and the nothing that will serve to strengthen that impetus. Two quotations are germane here. First, Heidegger remarks that ‘Being . . . can be compared to nothing else. Its only other is Nothing. And here there is nothing to be compared’.66 Later, he goes on to suggest that in some way Being which ‘finds its limit only at Nothing’ subsumes the Nothing: ‘Everything that is not simply nothing, is – and for us, even Nothing “belongs” to “Being”’.67 Polt interprets the first quotation as directing us to the unique nature of Beyng qua historical happening, that is, ‘a dispensation of the Being of beings allotted to a unique people at a unique moment’.68 Its incomparable uniqueness is understood in relation to the nihilation of nothing that makes it possible to be aware of the granting of Being.69 Note the wider emphasis on a ‘people’ rather than an individual Dasein. The second quotation indicates that in nothing being Being’s other, the question of nothing is included in the question of Being. That is, ‘what is crucial is recognising the intrinsic finitude of [Beyng] – that is, its contingency and susceptibility to an event of nihilation, an event that would collapse the boundary between what is and what is not’.70 So we can see that by the time of Introduction to Metaphysics the role of nothing  as somehow distinct from Being is played down, and more focus is

22

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

directed on the notion of the movement of unconcealment and concealment of beings in their Being. Heidegger appears to reach a middle point in which nothing is still not identified with the operations of Beyng, but is neither discussed in such a discursive way that we might fall prey to anthropocentric misreadings of Dasein’s relation to it. His later work, in seeking to further align thought with Being, will see the nothing as a separate issue from Being all but disappear from his thought.71

1.6  ‘Later’ Heidegger’s motivation? Heidegger’s later writings continue to indicate his desire to move away from being associated with anthropocentric reasoning. Heidegger was condemnatory about the sort of extrapolations that might result from misreadings due to this former focus: ‘. . . the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct’.72 Hence his reproof to humanist interpreters in the ‘Letter on Humanism’ that, as Krell puts it, ‘Humanism underestimates man’s unique position in the clearing of Being’73 due to the humanist tendency to elevate subjectivity and ignore the role of Being. This humanist misreading is exemplified in Sartre’s insistence that ‘. . . one must take subjectivity as one’s point of departure’.74 Obviously such a stress on human subjectivity was very much what Heidegger was trying to avoid with the notion of Dasein. His dealings with the nothing, and the requirement for human existence to hold itself out into the nothing, were a strong element of this notion that Sartre ignored. As a result, Heidegger clearly feels the need to emphasize precisely these non-anthropocentric elements in future to prevent other readers following suit in their interpretations. So Heidegger is not rejecting the material in Being and Time wholesale; rather, he is arguably reinterpreting it utilizing different terminology to present it in a new light. Not that this should lead us to think that it is only the packaging that has changed in his later philosophy. Heidegger, along with those two other landmark figures from the past century, Wittgenstein and Derrida, is acutely aware of how the ‘answers’ we obtain from philosophy depend on the manner in which the questions are approached, on what the focus is.75 Heidegger’s reaction to overly anthropocentric misconstruals is interesting – mainly interesting in its force. I have no intention of seeking the historiographical motivation for Heidegger’s altering his philosophy in the manner he did, but

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

23

it strikes me that one way into the conceptual issues of nothingness is to tell a certain kind of story regarding Heidegger’s reactions to his readers’ misconstruals of what he has to say on those issues. This story is as follows: Heidegger sets out his early philosophy as previously expounded, and sees that his readers have missed his use of affective methodology with regard to describing the nothing, and so are producing aberrant systems based on his work. It would seem the answer is simply to restate his philosophy, drawing attention to the importance of certain passages. To an extent this happens (e.g. Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 31, ‘Introduction to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, pp. 282–3), but elements of Heidegger’s earlier philosophy are dropped or altered, and new elements included, as part of the recapitulation of his philosophy (and its consequences) that forms a significant part of his later work. The impetus behind this could be that, in correcting the misleading impressions that his work conveys, Heidegger either considers that elements of his methodology were inappropriate and need reassessment, or he perceives substantive problems with his philosophy that he wants to fix; or possibly both – the former leading him to the latter. To see how this works in practice, it will be helpful to expand on the rather generalized exegesis given of Heidegger’s later philosophy hitherto. In essence, the later work is really an extension of the metamorphosis that was seen to begin in Introduction to Metaphysics.

1.7  The role of the nothing in Heidegger’s later philosophy A complex quotation to analyse: ‘In enframing, the unconcealment [ap]propriates in conformity with which the work of modern technology reveals the actual as standing-reserve. This work is therefore neither only a human activity nor a mere means within such activity’.76 Heidegger spends much of the initial stages of his late essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ defining terms. At first, the term ‘technology’ seems out of place in the context of our discussion thus far. However, Heidegger is explicit that by this he means not just apparatus like the ‘power plant’, the ‘jet aircraft’ and the ‘radar station’, nor even a definition of technology that would include ‘older handicraft technology’ such as ‘a means and a human activity’.77 This type of ‘instrumental and anthropological’ definition, Heidegger maintains, would be ‘correct’ but not ‘true’ – it would not get at the ‘essence’ of technology.78

24

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

The essence of technology, Heidegger thinks, is that it ‘reveals’ to the technologically minded the actual (which seems to be provisionally identifiable with ‘world’ in sense (1) of Being and Time)79 as ‘standing-reserve’, that is, as material on hand ready solely for practical use by humans to achieve their specific ends. This pragmatic attitude which constitutes how we deal with reality is taken to be the work of modern technology, but this work is not, as Heidegger cautions us, ‘only a human activity’. ‘Does such revealing [of the actual as standing-reserve] happen somewhere beyond all human doing? No. But neither does it happen exclusively in man, or definitively through man’.80 This is really the substance of Heidegger’s attempt to avoid anthropocentricism, as brought out in his statement that in ‘enframing, the unconcealment [ap]propriates in conformity with which the work of modern technology reveals the actual’. ‘Enframing’ is Heidegger’s perspective-neutral term for the type of revealing of the actual (the actual can be revealed in a number of mutually exclusive ways) that is associated with revealing the actual as standing-reserve.81 Anthropocentrically, we would see this revealing of the actual in accordance with our throwing pragmatic categories over the raw matter of the actual, but this is just the picture82 that Heidegger wants us to avoid, as it suggests somehow that human beings can detect actuality before they categorize it, and then, once detected, their experience of actuality is categorized, in accordance with the human conceptual scheme. This picture leads to just the sort of trouble that Kant faced in wanting to talk about the noumenal realm. In reaction to this problem Heidegger speaks of ‘unconcealment’ appropriating ‘in conformity’ with the revealing of the actual as standing reserve, in his attempt to think Beyng in its own terms. A major danger of enframing is that it ‘not only conceals a former way of revealing (bringing-forth) but also conceals revealing itself and with it that wherein unconcealment, i.e., truth, [ap]propriates’.83 That is, anthropocentric enframing forces the aforementioned erroneous view on us – that we somehow detect the actual before categorizing it – because we are approaching the very question of how we categorize experience from an anthropocentrically enframing point of view. As a curative, we are meant to see how, thinking in terms of another kind of revealing, that of poiesis84 (‘bringing forth’), our pragmatic conceptualization does not reveal actuality in a certain way, but rather the enframing perspective is produced by Beyng revealing actuality to us, unconcealing itself in conformity with the pragmatic view of the actual.85 Beyng can unconceal actuality in at least one other way (where such ways are mutually exclusive), that of poiesis. Nevertheless, the point is made

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

25

(contra the humanist misconstrual) that there is no implication of a mysteriously pre-detected actuality that is then pragmatically conceptualized according to a human conceptual scheme. Rather, Heidegger takes himself to have established that the variety of unconcealment of actuality in enframing is identical with the solely pragmatic conceptualization, and to understand it in this way, with an eye to the essence of technology, is to close the seeming gap between the noumenal and phenomenal realms.86 As a wider issue, the notion of ‘appropriation’ is central here, as a translation of the Heideggerian term Ereignis. Krell, in his introduction to Heidegger’s ‘The Way to Language’, draws attention to the ambiguous nature of ‘appropriation’ and owning. ‘Because [ap]propriation smacks of property . . . we can easily misunderstand it . . . as an element of the aggrandising essence of technology. To be sure, [ap]propriation does bear a special relation to the essence of technology. Yet [ap]propriation is . . . what is sent as the historical destiny of mortals . . . the owning is not ours, except perhaps in one sense’.87 He goes on to flag up the double meaning of ‘own’ as both ‘appropriation’ and ‘recognition of an other’. Taking Heidegger’s advice to think his philosophy ‘from its end’88 (emphasis added), there are a number of points here to which we have to pay attention. First, Krell’s elucidation of the notion vacillates somewhat: ‘except perhaps in one sense’. This is unsurprising, given that to try to explicate it in precise logical terms would be to reveal it in accordance with enframing, and so conceal its essence. In fact, as any attempt at revealing is also a concealing, it is arguable that no attempt to talk about Ereignis will be wholly adequate. What Krell is attempting is to evoke a sense of what Heidegger means, while recognizing the problems of translating it into logical terms. What he evokes is clearly congruent with what was said earlier about Beyng revealing actuality to us in conformity with Dasein’s pragmatic view of actuality that occurs in enframing – this is the special relation that appropriating bears to the essence of technology, and the duality of this conformity (i.e. between Beyng and Dasein) mirrors the dual connotations of the word ‘own’. However, this does not exhaust Beyng’s appropriation: there is still its capacity as what is sent as the historical destiny of mortals. This should not be considered to exclude enframing, which is also a destining of sorts,89 but rather should be understood as highlighting poiesis, the revealing of ‘bringing forth’. This ‘bringing forth’ revealing allows Beyng to appropriate without being concealed in its essence by enframing. It is this kind of appropriation that seizes us when we engage in originary thinking about Beyng.90 In fact, in enframing, there is a

26

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

double concealment going on here. In the revelation of actuality in accordance with enframing, other ways of unconcealment, such as poiesis, are concealed. But further, enframing prevents us from seeing other ways of unconcealment as live possibilities; hence, it makes the ‘violence of modern technology doubly inevitable’.91 There may be some ambiguity in Heidegger’s presentation of revealing as to whether Beyng is revealed in its essence by poiesis or whether poiesis conceals the truth of Beyng in some way just as enframing does – leaving the truth of Beyng a ‘mystery’.92 I am inclined to think that Heidegger finds it implausible that Beyng will ever fully unconceal itself, as every revealing is also a concealing – any perspective excludes other perspectives. However, by understanding the essence of technology we are made attentive to the granting93 of this species of revealing called ‘enframing’ by the unconcealing of Beyng (‘It is precisely in enframing . . . that the innermost indestructible belongingness of man within granting may come to light, provided that we . . . begin to pay heed to the essence of technology’).94 Thus any revealing, such as enframing, that threatens to eclipse other types of revealing, such as poiesis, carries that seed of a saving power in its recognizable nature as a granting from the unconcealing of Beyng95 (although, worryingly, it might be claimed that the only way we can understand such an essence of technology is through revealing as poiesis, which enframing can eclipse). Because Ereignis is so central a term in Heidegger’s later work, I think it is worth recapitulating the points made above. The question about enframing’s tendency to occlude its own origin, and poiesis’ curative response to that is not essential for my purposes and can be bracketed. What is important is to indicate how this material relates to the earlier discussion of Heidegger. Let us recall our earlier description of the ‘basic’ question as trying to identify the fundamental happening that first enables us to have access to the Being of beings: the question of Beyng. In Contributions to Philosophy (composed in the mid- to late 1930s), Heidegger claims that ‘[Beyng] essentially happens as Ereignis’.96 Polt summarizes Ereignis as: ‘the way in which the givenness of given beings (the Being of beings) . . . comes into question for us . . . [t]his event requires Dasein just as much as Dasein requires it’.97 This fits fairly well with the interpretation given to the operation of Beyng in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ in the above sections dealing with that lecture.98 We have all the familiar elements: we are made aware of the Being of beings by a happening, an Ereignis that requires Dasein in order to happen, but also is not reducible to anthropocentric categories; Ereignis is the happening of a mysterious source, Beyng, which is responsible for the granting

Heidegger and the Evolution of das Nichts

27

of the Being of beings in a certain historical epoch. This dual nature of Ereignis as an event that appropriates and is appropriated falls in line with Heidegger’s stronger emphasis on the self-revelation of Beyng as being responsible for the unconcealment of the Being of beings (as opposed to language of ‘transcendence’ or an emphasis on Dasein which could be misinterpreted) that we discerned as his work progressed. Still, the finitude of that happening is also emphasized, in the notion that every unconcealing that occurs in Ereignis is also a concealing, leaving Beyng ultimately as the mysterious source, never to be grasped in a single epoch or moment of thought.99 It is this aspect of finitude that characterizes the place, or lack thereof, of nothing in Heidegger’s later work. I have noted that the nothing receives much less emphasis as Heidegger’s thought progresses.100 This is because Beyng and nothing are identified ever more closely in Heidegger’s later statements, such as: ‘Being: Nothing: same’ and ‘[Beyng] is Nothing’.101 I would not say that this identification reduces Beyng to nothing or vice-versa.102 It is perhaps more plausible to suggest that Heidegger, in trying to think Beyng ‘in its own terms’, finds it less helpful to distinguish between different ‘categories’ in ‘fundamental ontology’ as this threatens to make the mysterious source of Being more amenable to discursive interpretations or anthropocentric readings. Hence, in later Heidegger, we have characteristics initially attached to nothing now attached to Beyng: ‘Being nihilates – as Being . . . [t]he nihilating in Being is the essence of what I call the nothing’.103 So Beyng here takes over the process of nihilation (or perhaps: ‘nothing is subsumed as an aspect of Beyng known as nihilation’). Similarly, although this was always an idea in Heidegger’s dealings with Being and nothing, Beyng is nothing insofar as it is not a thing, not a being. It takes on the hue of ungraspability that pertains to discussions of nothingness. Vincent Vycinas links Heidegger’s subsequent tactic of writing Being ‘under erasure’ (i.e. writing ‘Being’ and then crossing it out) as indicating that Beyng ‘does not exclude nothingness; it implies it in itself ’.104 Heidegger’s terminological convulsions in using various names to refer to Beyng, such as ‘Being’ written under erasure, or ‘it’, or ‘that-which-regions’ can be seen as attempts to avoid hypostasizing or misleading terms for Beyng (and hence my use of the term ‘Beyng’ here is not wholly satisfactory). So the early idea of nothing’s nihilation is later drawn into the idea of Beyng as part of Beyng’s finitude (which we examined earlier). This is what Heidegger means when he claims that nothing is ‘the essential trembling of [Beyng] itself ’.105 This idea of nihilation can be squared with Heidegger’s later Ereignis-centred

28

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

thought by noting the twofold action of Beyng as both a granting of the Being of beings and a withdrawing, that is, withdrawing ‘in the sense that [the event of Beyng, Ereignis] cannot be . . . founded metaphysically on some absolute entity or certainty’.106 This was the lesson we learnt from the experience of the nothing nihilating. So nihilation is the possibility for Beyng to withdraw as well as grant in the history of Being, to make possible the revealing of the Being of beings to and with Dasein; a revealing which is always also a concealing. I avoid associating nihilation directly with concealing on the basis of Heidegger’s words: ‘[Beyng] is Nothing. The Nothing nihilates. Nihilation refuses every explanation of beings on the basis of beings. But refusal provides the clearing within which beings can go in and out, can be revealed and concealed as beings’.107 This nihilation is Beyng’s general capacity for withdrawal, its remaining as mysterious, which marks any appropriative happening (Ereignis) as finite, corresponding to Dasein’s own finitude in ‘owning’ (in the dual sense of ‘own’) the Being of beings in a particular historical epoch. Because this unifying of Beyng and nothing in Heidegger’s later work is not a reduction of one to the other, the resultant notion (hereafter labelled ‘Beyng/ nothing’) is allegedly more fundamental then our common-sense notions of a ‘negative nothing’108 or of being, yet still contains what interests us in those concepts (Beyng/nothing is what we ‘properly’ call ‘nothing’), and so Heidegger’s later work is still germane to an understanding of nothing. We can thus take what is characterized in Heidegger’s account of ‘Beyng/nothing’ (insofar as ‘it’ is characterized), or whatever name it wishes to travel under – such as ‘Being’ under erasure, ‘it’, ‘Beyng’ – as an account of nothing; provided we understand ‘nothing’ here in Heidegger’s ambiguous terms. As we shall see, the question as to what terminology we can use to speak of or say Beyng/nothing will become a contentious issue; already Heidegger’s disinclination to use ontic language (i.e. the language we use of beings) to refer directly to it has arguably elided an earlier intuitive distinction between Being and nothing. As he continues with his attempt to say Beyng/nothing in its own terms, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how we can use any language to speak Beyng/nothing (or, to be more Heideggerian: how Beyng/nothing can speak to us and with us through language at all).

2

Strange Bedfellows: Carnap and Derrida’s Critiques of the Heideggerian Nothing

Nothing is but what is not. Macbeth (Act I, Scene III)

2.1  Introducing Carnap One of the earliest and most well-known reactions to Heidegger’s remarks in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ is Rudolf Carnap’s, in his 1932 paper ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language’. Notwithstanding the difficulty of marking exact distinctions to allow the (arguably dubious) division of philosophy into ‘Continental’ and ‘analytic’ schools, Heidegger’s philosophy seems to fall squarely into the former school, and Carnap’s into the latter. So much so, in fact, that the disagreements over the nothing between Carnap and Heidegger have been used as a paradigm of the disputes between ‘analytic’ and ‘Continental’ styles of philosophy.1 An unsurprising but neglected corollary of this is that the evolution of assessments of the Carnap/Heidegger dispute is paradigmatic of the evolution of assessments of the disputes between those two styles of philosophy. For some years after Carnap first published his paper, philosophers allied to the methodology of the Vienna Circle (of which Carnap was a leading member) readily accepted his clean, ruthless rejection of seemingly obscurantist Heideggerian claims. As with this single case, so for many others – in general ‘Continental’ philosophy, including phenomenology and German idealism, was considered irrelevant by analytic philosophers of a Carnapian bent. But when the positivistic methodology espoused by the Vienna Circle began to founder, so too did the view that Carnap had got the upper hand of Heidegger in their more specific disagreement – a point that many ‘Continental’ philosophers had been trying to press for some time. Gradually a revision of the efficacy of Carnap’s

30

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

criticisms came in – helped on its way by Wittgenstein scholars interested in why the latter had rejected the former’s positivism. This revisionism has also been aided by the comparatively recent increased willingness of ‘analytic’ philosophers to countenance ‘Continental’ thought, including the work of postmodernists. This trend has continued right up to the present day, when the inevitable backlash against postmodernism and the burgeoning interest in the historiography of ‘analytic’ philosophy has led to the first hints of a remounted defence of Carnap’s position.

2.2  Carnap the positivist Carnap’s views are most instructive if we consider them as a straightforward expression of his positivist philosophy, which is how they were first perceived, in contrast to later interpretations. The initial understanding of his 1932 criticisms is that Heidegger’s claims about the nothing in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ are pseudostatements: neither true nor false, but rather meaningless. Pseudo-statements fall into two classes – those that contain a word for which ‘no criterion of application . . . is stipulated’,2 and those that ‘consist of meaningful words, but the words are put together in such a way that nevertheless no meaning results’.3 In this latter category, Carnap is careful to note that often pseudo-statements that violate logical syntax may seem meaningful due to their agreement with grammatical syntax – which merely indicates that ‘grammatical syntax is, from a logical point of view, inadequate’.4 ‘Caesar is a prime number’ conforms to the rules of grammatical syntax, and so seems meaningful, but it is actually a pseudo-statement because ‘being a prime number’ cannot be sensibly predicated of humans. Carnap sees Heidegger’s statements about the nothing as pseudo-statements in the style of ‘Caesar is a prime number’.5 That is, while a statement like ‘Anxiety reveals the nothing’ or ‘Indeed: the nothing itself – as such – was there’ may make grammatical sense, it does not make logical sense.6 Specifically it is ‘based on the mistake of employing the word “nothing” as a noun, because it is customary in ordinary language to use it in this form in order to construct a negative existential statement’.7 Carnap notes that when constructing such a statement in a correct language, ‘it is not a particular name [i.e. a noun], but a certain logical form of the sentence that serves this purpose’. Let us use examples to chart Heidegger’s perceived mistake here. Carnap is claiming that although in ordinary language we might be expected to answer

Strange Bedfellows

31

the question ‘What is outside?’ with ‘Nothing is outside’, this reply, although grammatically correct, is logically misleading, as it makes ‘nothing’ look like a noun. The logically correct reply is: ‘It is not the case that there is something which is outside’. So where P is the predicate ‘is outside’, the formula ¬∃x Px is the logically correct form of the reply: there does not exist a thing ‘x’ such that ‘x’ has the property of being outside. Heidegger’s statements make no sense then because he appears to be misled about how we construct negative existential statements – ordinary language has convinced him that they are produced using nouns, whereas analysis shows that they are produced using merely the sentence form.

2.3  Reassessing Carnap’s positivism This was how Carnap’s argument against Heidegger was construed for a long time, and how it is often construed still. But it is clear that such an interpretation of Carnap’s views is an inappropriately limited one, which leaves his argument open to fairly simple refutations. A sample list can be found in Simon Critchley’s Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction in which Critchley tries to read between the lines of Heidegger’s work to discern how he would have answered Carnap. Critchley discerns four putative Heideggerian replies8 – which can be roughly synthesized into a single rebuttal that runs as follows. Keeping in mind Heidegger’s criticism of a certain type of revealing, that is, enframing, it could be argued that Carnap’s advocacy of the formalization of ordinary language into logical syntax is a manifestation of enframing. Language becomes a piece of technology, an instrument.9 If we use such a technological language to do philosophy, as Carnap suggests we should, then it is inevitable that we will be precluded from talking about Being and the nothing, both of which fall outside the world as technologically conceived and, more pertinently with regard to this discussion, described.10 It is to be noted that Heidegger is not directly criticizing how Carnap wants to understand, for example, negative existentials. Rather, it is a wider criticism about what Carnap is willing to understand at all; Heidegger is claiming that Carnap is needlessly limiting the possibilities of valid thought. As objections go, there is nothing wrong with this. It is a fairly obvious corollary of Heidegger’s views as expressed elsewhere,11 but the way it is advanced is misleading. First, it is typically advanced in a way that makes Carnap look ignorant of Heidegger’s work, which some philosophers have striven to prove is an unjust presentation. Secondly, it is advanced in a way that makes it look as

32

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

though the Heideggerian’s repudiation of the positivist’s view is purely logical or intellectual – which, as we will shortly see, does not represent Heidegger’s own opinions in certain important respects.

2.4  Two misrepresentations Often the Heideggerian objection is presented in a way that implies that Carnap was completely ignorant of Heidegger’s views on the formalization of language. But many recent defenders of Carnap have taken pains to point out that he was far more familiar with Heidegger’s work than the traditional cursory glance at his 1932 essay suggests. Both Michael Friedman and Abraham Stone point to a common background (the former to neo-Kantianism and the latter to Husserl’s phenomenology), and the former adduces a large amount of evidence to suggest that Carnap had a close interest in Heidegger’s work. Even without all this biographical data though, a reading of Carnap’s text reveals that he does refer to, and so on some level engage with, Heidegger’s attitude towards formal logic: [T]he author of the treatise [‘What Is Metaphysics?’] is clearly aware of the conflict between his questions and statements, and logic . . . a metaphysician himself here states that his questions and answers are irreconcilable with logic and the scientific way of thinking.12

The reason why Carnap’s recognition of these aspects of Heidegger’s thought has itself gone apparently unrecognized is linked to the second misrepresentation mentioned above, and to the importance of Carnap as a representative of ‘analytic’ philosophy for our discussion of nothingness and its relationship to ideas of meaningfulness. The above quotation seems irrelevant as a defence of Carnap to his critics just because it does not appear to advance an argument, but rather consists of a cursory dismissal, the assumption of a dismissal. Let us approach this thought via the second misrepresentation mentioned earlier – that the Heideggerian criticism of the formalizing of language is meant as an intellectual repudiation. To be sure, Heideggerians may mean it in this spirit, but what Heidegger himself says (on the two occasions he mentions Carnap) does not support this. First, he speaks of: The still hidden centre of those endeavours towards which the ‘philosophy’ of our day, from its most extreme counter-positions (Carnap → Heidegger), tends. One calls these positions today: the technical-scientistic view of language and the speculative-hermeneutic experience of language.13

Strange Bedfellows

33

And elsewhere: Here [in ‘Elimination’] the last consequences of a mode of thinking . . . are brought to a conclusion . . . according to which truth is no longer disclosedness of what is . . . but . . . is rather diverted into certainty . . . the securing of mathematical thought against all that is not thinkable by it. The conception of truth as the securing of thought led to the definitive profaning of the world.14

Heidegger’s objection in the latter comment is clearly not meant to carry logical force; it is ethical, religious (Wittgenstein had similar criticisms to make about Carnap’s positivism).15 For Heidegger, Carnap’s position may ‘profane’ the world by drawing humanity into an etiolated mindset that occludes certain possibilities, but it is not made impossible by that world – that is to say, it is not contradicted by any facts in the world. It is the ‘extreme’ opposite, the ‘counter-position’, of Heidegger’s own position. It seems a reasonable assumption to suggest that Heidegger’s refusal to attempt a logical (or at least an intellectual)16 refutation of Carnap’s view in these quotations is the result of a desire to retain awareness of ‘that seed of a saving power’.17 For if he were to try to occlude Carnap’s position, he would be concealing the origins of the variety of revealing peculiar to his own philosophy. But Carnap is left with a similar problem. He cannot defend his view by objecting logically to Heidegger’s conception of the place of logic, because Heidegger’s conception of logic does not make sense on his view. In taking Heidegger to task, he has been dutifully following the advice of proposition 6.53 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – trying to demonstrate that Heidegger has not given any meaning to certain signs he uses, or has made related mistakes. But Heidegger, in espousing his different conception of the role of logic in philosophical inquiry, just refuses to accept such demonstrations. At this point, there is an impasse. The most Carnap can do is repeat his demonstrations of why Heidegger is merely making pseudo-statements. This is why his dismissal seems to a critic to be cursory – if he were to give it substance, he would be conceding a coherence to Heidegger’s theory that he does not believe it has.18 So, when we dispel some of the myths surrounding the Heidegger/Carnap debate, the conclusion seems to be that Heidegger rejects Carnap’s argument on moral grounds, whereas Carnap cannot even see how Heidegger can advance his counter-argument – and it is certainly tempting to suggest that Carnap would feel that the only way one could advance the argument in the face of his demonstrations is through wilful self-delusion, making his objection a moral

34

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

one also. We will have cause to examine this impasse of differing attitudes to logic in Part 2 of our discussion. But for now let us turn to a very different reaction to Heidegger’s work: the deconstruction of Jacques Derrida.

2.5  Derrida – always already destabilized Heidegger has been identified as a key figure for philosophy concerning the nothing, and discussion of his work often leads naturally to discussion of Derrida’s, who draws on many aspects of his thought. This is useful, as Derrida does not discuss nothingness himself in any extended fashion (something that may be significant), and so by examining the relationship between Heidegger’s and Derrida’s philosophy, we may hope to trace out a specifically Derridian approach to our central theme. One paragraph into my exposition, and I have a feeling that Derrida might already find cause for concern – seizing on my use of the word ‘hope’, as an attitude ill-fitting an account of his philosophy. For what he calls ‘Heideggerian hope’ is in Derrida’s view related to ‘the quest for the proper word and the unique name’19; for example the unique name of Being,20 the ‘metaphysical’ element that Derrida sees in Heidegger’s philosophy and wishes to critique with his own. Derrida is keen to avoid the idea that there might be some fundamental way of understanding anything which is not subject to the possibility of reinterpretation or misinterpretation. Thus, the attempt to provide a neat summary exposition of Derrida’s thought indicates that the lessons that such thought provides are not well taken. These accusations of metaphysics regarding aspects of Heidegger’s work apply a fortiori to ‘analytic’ philosophy, a situation which exacerbates the divide that we saw between Carnap (‘analytic’) and Heidegger (‘Continental’), insofar as Derrida is keen to jettison those elements of Heidegger’s work that are conducive to a more ‘analytic’ reading. This widened gap has led to commensurately more evident controversies – the most famous being the disputes between Derrida and John Searle, and the disputation of Derrida’s entitlement to an honorary degree from Cambridge University. So this leaves us in a difficult, if unsurprising, position. Do we take Derrida on his own terms and risk being dragged into a mire with no ‘accepted standards of clarity and rigour’ as some ‘analytic’ philosophers would have it? Or do we dismiss Derrida and by doing so adhere to a ‘metaphysical’ manner of thinking

Strange Bedfellows

35

that Derrida believes will trap us in dangerously ossified modes of thought? In essence this is not a new problem. The same would have applied to the question of whether to dismiss Heidegger, or to dismiss Carnap, depending on the position from which one is assessing these views. The problem is simply foregrounded in Derrida as methodology is one of his primary concerns and so we are forced to ask the question of engagement early on – or rather simultaneously, as we decide whether or not to engage,21 Derrida’s methodology being arguably inextricable from his argument. As I have decided to give both Carnap and Heidegger a fair hearing on their own terms, as far as I can, I undertake then a provisional and tentative tracing of Derrida’s moves in relation to Heidegger.

2.6  Derrida as a critic of Heidegger One piece of Heideggerian terminology that was excised for simplicity’s sake from the earlier treatment of Heidegger’s work was the ‘ontological difference’ (sometimes ‘ontico-ontological difference’). Put simply, this is the difference between Being (i.e. the Being of beings) and (discrete) beings. The ontological difference, an important component of Heidegger’s early thought, has an uncertain fate in his later thinking – inevitable given that Heidegger’s thought concerning Being alters.22 Nevertheless, it is central to Derrida’s introduction of his critique of the alleged metaphysics of Heideggerian ‘hope’. Difference is a dominant motif in Derrida’s thought, and his considerations of the ontological difference and how it might relate to his idiosyncratic notion of différance are a useful starting point for us. Derrida’s différance is said to be ‘[i]n a certain aspect of itself . . . but the historical and epochal unfolding of Being or of the ontological difference’ yet also ‘in a certain and very strange way . . . “older” than the ontological difference or than the truth of Being’.23 Derrida’s use of ‘certain aspect’ and ‘strange way’ indicates that this may not be the straightforward paradox it appears – so let us see if what Derrida says concerning différance will shed any light on how to understand its odd relation to the ontological difference.

2.7  Différance Derrida invents the word différance partly to avoid the simple definition of his work mentioned earlier – a definition that might involve translating his terms

36

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

into other, allegedly synonymous, terms. This kind of fixed definition is exactly what Derrida wants to criticize with both the form and content of différence. Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of a systematic play of differences. Such a play, différance, is thus no longer simply a concept, but rather the possibility of conceptuality, of a conceptual process and system in general. For the same reason, différance, which is not a concept, is not simply a word, that is, what is generally represented as the calm, present, and selfreferential unity of concept and phonic material.24

Thus the word différance exemplifies itself, although as it is always ‘non-full’ this exemplification will always be a qualified one, subject to further differing and deferral within the aforementioned system. So our attention is being drawn to several features of différance – the systematic play of differences being central. This play is ambiguous, and this ambiguity is preserved in the neologism as Bass notes in his translation of ‘Différance’: ‘. . . the noun différance suspends itself between the two senses of différant [the present participle of the verb différer] – deferring, differing’.25 Thus, we have ‘Différance as temporization, différance as spacing’. The play of différance in the former sense is to ‘take recourse, consciously or unconsciously, in the temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or fulfilment of “desire” or “will”’, in the latter sense it is ‘to be not identical, to be other, discernible’.26 To give us a more concrete example of the workings of these aspects of différance Derrida elucidates them in the arena of semiology. He takes his cue here from the structuralism of Saussure, who contributes the idea of the essential and lawful inscription of every concept in a chain, the consequence of which is that ‘the signified concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer only to itself ’.27 The surrounding signs are essential for a comprehension of any one sign. But this is not all for Derrida, who notes the requirement not to negate the ‘economic signification of the detour, the temporizing delay, “deferral”’.28 Derrida is anxious that différance should be taken in an active sense, as having more in common with the idea of a differentiating relation, rather than a ‘static’ differentiation: ‘Differences, thus are “produced” – deferred – by différance’.29

2.8  The unoriginality of différance Having drawn our attention to several aspects of différance, there is a desire that Derrida should gather these notions together and allow us a more definite

Strange Bedfellows

37

idea of the nature of différance. But Derrida wishes to distance himself from the Heideggerian idea of gathering aspects of thinking together (i.e. in a mode of revealing)30 which would result in an ‘“originary” différance’,31 the notion of which runs contrary to what he is continually trying to capture in his meditations on différance. Again in Derrida we note a reflexivity in his trying to convey différance without thereby contradicting it. To the questions such as ‘What is différance?’, he replies: ‘If we answered these questions before . . . suspecting their very form . . . we would immediately fall back into what we have just disengaged ourselves from . . .’.32 Thus, ‘we would have to conclude that différance . . . is to be mastered and governed on the basis of the point of a present being, which itself could be some thing, . . . a what’.33 But différance is itself subject to différance and as such it is the ‘non-full [i.e. temporized in an economy of deferral], non-simple [i.e. reliant on the surrounding complex of concepts that comprise our system of understanding], structured and differentiating origin of differences’.34 The fact that Derrida immediately stresses that the name ‘origin’ is no longer appropriate as a result of these qualified aspects of différance indicates the aforementioned reflexivity. Perhaps an intuitive way of understanding the point Derrida is driving at here is to consider a definition of différance, which is then qualified in accordance with the recognition of its place in a system that invites a recognition of the deferral and differentiation of meaning. But this recognition itself is qualified in turn, and so on. Even to try to claim that the qualifications continue ad infinitum will be understood inside this system, which allows for temporizing and holism of meaning. For Derrida, there is no safe place to stand outside of theory to create a theory (a delusion to which he considers many philosophers fall prey) – and of course, even this sentence is subject to différance. This is one of the most important parts of Derrida’s contribution. Having written this text, I may consider that it encompasses all of the (parts of) texts of others with which it deals. For Derrida, however, this is a delusion based on the idea that there is a unique meaning present behind each text I cover, and that I can express that meaning exactly. Given that each text is understood within a chain or system, such a fixed grasp of the texts cannot be claimed, and my own text, which claims this, can in fact itself be reinterpreted in the light of différance. In fact, Derrida wants to push even further than this and claim that not just written language but also speech and intention are subject to différance: The practice of a language . . . supposing a play of forms without a determined and invariable [i.e. present] substance, and also supposing in the practice of

38

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life this play . . . a spacing and a temporization, a play of traces – all this must be a kind of writing before the letter . . . without a present origin. . . . [The effects of t]his . . . execut[e] a critical labour on everything within semiology, including the central concept of the sign, that maintained metaphysical presuppositions incompatible with the motif of différance.35

Thus, Derrida seeks to posit consciousness, one of these ‘metaphysical presuppositions’ which he deems a specific type of presence, as actually a ‘determination or an effect within a system which is no longer that of presence but of différance’.36 This brief excursion into the effects of différance on consciousness indicates the radically pervasive way in which Derrida wishes to trace différance; due to its movements, we cannot even claim that a given intention is wholly present to ourselves as we have it. We cannot confine différance to what we traditionally think of as ‘texts’ – as far as différance is concerned, the whole world is textual, and thus is created in its meaningfulness by the tracing movements of différance.

2.9  The closure of metaphysics? A little earlier we noted that Derrida called différance an origin, and then immediately cancelled this by claiming that the context in which he speaks of it makes the word ‘origin’ no longer appropriate. Similarly, he picks up the notion of writing under erasure from Heidegger, in which a word is inscribed and then cancelled by crossing over it, although as the word can be seen under the strokes of its erasure, the ‘trace’ of the word remains. Given this, it is tempting to want to criticize Derrida’s thought on the basis that différance should cancel itself, and thus leave us where we started before Derrida – the idea that deconstruction (the practice of tracing différance in a text) deconstructs itself. Derrida, though, is aware of the need to differ and defer in tracing our notion of différance (‘[T]he enterprise of deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work’)37; it is for this very reason that he is so disinclined to give anything like an exact definition of it. Nevertheless, surely it is part of différance’s operations on its ‘self ’ (and it begs the question to query the notion of selfhood at this point) that the door be opened to the possibility of metaphysical language, the possibility of the language of presence? Again, Derrida accepts this: ‘There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics . . . we can pronounce not a

Strange Bedfellows

39

single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest’.38 It is here that Derrida finds the ‘point of greatest obscurity, the very enigma of différance’ in how we are to think simultaneously ‘on the one hand, différance as the economic detour which, in the element of the same, always aims at coming back to . . . the presence . . . deferred by (conscious or unconscious) calculation, and, on the other hand, différance as the relation to an impossible presence, . . . as the irreparable loss of presence, . . . and as the entirely other relationship that apparently interrupts every economy’.39 His response is to claim that the same and the entirely other ‘cannot be thought together’40 – that the structure of delay prevents us from making of temporization ‘a simple dialectical complication of the living present as an originary and unceasing synthesis’.41 Derrida is making quite a complicated move here, one that Sheppard  has outlined as to be ‘conceived in terms neither of a “rejection” nor of an “acceptance” of metaphysics . . . but as involving both a moment of rejection and a moment of acceptance’42 – what Derrida terms a ‘double gesture’. The motivation for this is ‘to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, thereby confirming it’.43

2.10  Derrida’s double gesture Derrida’s move here can be seen as travelling in the same orbit as Heidegger’s preference for an affective methodology in evoking the ineffable, and the early Wittgenstein’s methodology in the Tractatus – a reaction to running up against the limits of thought. This is not how Derrida would phrase the problem though, as the notion of running up against the limits of thought would be to reside within the closed field of metaphysical binary oppositions – between what is thinkable in philosophy and what is not.44 Yet to reject these oppositions altogether, neutralizing them, would be to countenance a metaphysical opposition between the rejected oppositions of metaphysics and the (purported) nonbinary nature of Derrida’s thought. For this reason, Derrida is eager to accept the necessity of thinking metaphysically, as rejecting it outright would make his thought metaphysical, but also eager to reject this metaphysical thinking, as to countenance it would also make his thought metaphysical.

40

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Once again, Derrida makes this move plausible by trying to demonstrate the reflexivity of différance.45 The acceptance and the rejection of metaphysics clearly ‘cannot be thought together’,46 but considering these as signs in a system of differing and deferring, each can be captured within that system and, equally, they can exemplify that system in which their seemingly paradoxical relation is defused (although, again, this will self-complicate in accordance with différance).

2.11  Différance and ontological difference Having made the attempt to better understand what Derrida means by différance, let us now examine how it relates to Heidegger’s notion of the ontological difference. We remember Derrida’s ambiguity in regarding différance as both the ‘unfolding’ of the ontological difference, yet also as being in some sense ‘older’ than that difference. We also remember Derrida’s claim that there is a metaphysical aspect to Heidegger’s thought, and his desire to critique this. Given these notes as a starting point, we can see how Derrida’s ambivalent critique of elements of Heidegger’s thought can be fitted into the framework of Derrida’s critique of metaphysics in general – with the need to make a double gesture in both inscribing and effacing the moves that Heidegger makes, in accordance with différance. Again we are bound up in a complicated movement. The ontological difference necessarily involves the notion of Being as distinct from beings, and, according to Derrida, in the ontology of beings and beingness, ‘it is the determination of Being as presence or as beingness that is interrogated by the thought of différance’.47 Earlier, in discussing Heidegger’s turn that led to his later work (however we want to interpret that), Guignon was quoted as indicating an anti-individualistic shift in emphasis to thinking of Beyng as revealing and concealing actuality in different ways in the ‘history of Being’. For example, one such way, the mode of poiesis, Heidegger associated particularly with the worldview of the Ancient Greeks. It is a mark of Derrida’s desire for fidelity to Heidegger’s thought in inscribing it that he allows that différance in a certain aspect of itself ‘is certainly but the historical and epochal unfolding of Being or of the ontological difference’48 – it is subsumable under the terms of Heideggerian thought. However, Derrida, still continuing with the reflexive tracing of différance, goes on to efface the metaphysical principles governing Heidegger’s work. He

Strange Bedfellows

41

claims that the thought of the truth of Beyng, and the determination of différance as ontological difference in the manner just outlined, ‘difference thought within the horizon of the question of Being’, are still ‘intrametaphysical effects of différance’49 – that is to say, of the ‘interrogation’ mentioned above. In making this move, Derrida is not interested in reversing the priority relation between the ontological difference and différance; as we have seen from our earlier dealing with metaphysics, this would reinscribe metaphysical binary oppositions that Derrida, at least in this part of the tracing movement, is anxious to efface. As such, he is careful to subject the idea that différance might govern the ontological difference as being ‘older’, or as being that in which the ontological difference itself is an ‘epoch’, to différance once again. He effaces these connotations by denying the epochal/non-epochal and ‘older’/‘younger’ binarisms once they have been inscribed. In this sense, ‘[t]here is no maintaining, and no depth to, this bottomless chessboard [différance] on which Being is put into play’.50 Derrida’s interrogation of the ontological difference seems to be associated with the requirement to trace différance with regard to the presence of Being, insofar as Beyng is considered by Heidegger to unconceal actuality in a certain way, that is, to reveal the Being of beings, whether wholly or in part. Derrida is keen ‘not in any way to dispense with the passage through the truth of Being’51; as we have seen, this metaphysical aspect is considered necessary in the tracing of différance. But Derrida is also keen to destabilize any notion that the difference between Being and beings is somehow a ‘ground’ of the idea of difference, or a final notion of difference; différance is, as Gasché puts it, ‘indifferent to the primacy and excellence of the ontological difference’.52 Différance ranges over many types of differing and deferring, without wanting to reduce them to some master concept of ‘difference’, and its own reflexivity prevents it from ever fully becoming (i.e. becoming present as) such a master concept. As such, it preserves that heterogeneity of the differences it ranges over – although, of course, such a preservation is always provisional.

2.12  Switching to being So far, we have traced Derrida’s interrogation of Heidegger’s thought through the idea of the ontological difference, but, in order to do justice to the depth of Derrida’s engagement with Heidegger, we must take into account the switch Derrida makes in the last few pages of ‘Différance’ from dealing with the ontological difference to dealing with presence and Beyng itself. We saw this

42

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

occur in the previous two paragraphs as Beyng made its appearance, and we anticipated Derrida’s criticism by noting his suspicion of the ‘passage through the truth of Being’ as necessary but metaphysical. This change in Derrida’s approach mirrors in some ways the ‘change in focus’ that marks the distinction between Heidegger’s earlier and later work mentioned previously – and retains the ambiguity as to whether or not there really is a substantive change here. So the focus of Derrida’s interrogation changes in the last few pages; he is no longer adopting the perhaps ‘anthropocentric’ or ‘sideways-on’ view by questioning the ontological difference. He seems to indicate that such an understanding of Heidegger would be ‘foolishly precipitate’, and that we must return to Heidegger’s propositions their ‘power to provoke’.53 That is to say, we cannot understand Heidegger’s work here as logical propositions (and Heidegger’s change from the early to the later focus in his work perhaps indicates that he himself thought that his earlier style, more easy to parse into logical propositions, was too liable to anthropocentric readings) but must see them as trying to attune us to thinking the present in its presence, however that may be. Derrida’s purpose in this clarification is to get his target properly in his sights. For his interrogation of the ontological difference returns, but with commensurate alterations in focus, when we attempt to think the present in its presence, in accordance with how he interprets Heidegger’s later thought. To some extent it is hard to separate Derrida from Heidegger in this interrogation as he agrees with Heidegger that, in the occlusion of Being (and thus the occlusion of the ontological difference) characterized by metaphysical thinking, a trace is left of this occlusion. This is the salvific power of Beyng that we encountered earlier in examining Heidegger’s later work. Where Derrida parts company with Heidegger, however, is in seeing this trace not as in some way attuning us to the essence of Being (i.e. Beyng) but as referring us ‘beyond the history of Being, and also beyond our language, and everything that can be named in it’.54 I earlier drew certain parallels between Derrida, Heidegger and Wittgenstein concerning their interest with a problem that is expressed in some circles as ‘running up against the limits of thought’. Part of Derrida’s approach to this problem involves the question: ‘How to conceive what is outside the text?’,55 and this forms an element of his criticism of the metaphysical aspect he sees in Heidegger’s thought. For the trace, in Derrida’s eyes, ‘escapes . . . every name it might receive in the metaphysical text’56; it does not appear in them as the trace ‘itself ’ because it could never appear itself as some present entity – that is the point that Derrida’s vacillations have been painstakingly trying to make.

Strange Bedfellows

43

So  there is no definable essence of différance, this tracing movement, which implies that ‘there is neither a Being nor truth of the play of writing such as it engages différance’.57 Derrida sees the metaphysical aspect of Heidegger’s thought, ‘the quest for the proper word and the unique name’,58 as containing the fallacy of thinking that the inability to speak about what is outside metaphysical language is only provisional, and that as such we can attune ourselves to what is beyond metaphysical propositions and venture to address it. Or, to put it into terms more conducive to Heidegger’s later thought, Beyng will speak through language – ‘the alliance of speech and Being in the unique word’.59 This is anathema to Derrida, who asserts that ‘there will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being’60 as such a thing would be metaphysical. Even différance ‘remains a metaphysical name’ despite our knowing that ‘if it is unnameable, it is not provisionally so’.61 Derrida is keen to highlight that what we have provisionally titled différance is not unnameable because our language has not yet found its name, or must seek it in some language beyond our ordinary one, but because ‘there is no name for it at all . . . not even that of “différance,” which is not a name . . . and unceasingly dislocates itself in the chain of differing and deferring substitutions’. It is this view that may prompt Derrida to say that ‘the efficacity of the thematic of différance may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded . . . enmeshing itself in a chain of truth it never will have governed’.62 We might look to Charles Spinosa to put the point slightly differently: Derrida claims that Heidegger’s gathering, [i.e.] collecting in a newly intensified way the meaning of the bestowal or shift [to a different way of revealing], ought not to count as a genuine part of authentic temporalizing. For that gathering could only disguise the radical unexperiencable quality of the shift.63

2.13  ‘There is nothing outside of the text’ Having traced some of Derrida’s interactions with Heidegger, we now can see how the idea of nothingness relates to Derrida’s work, even though he does not discuss it at length. This eschewing of nothing as a contentful notion is interesting as it is something we observed in Heidegger’s later work, and as we have seen, Derrida is willing to accept the ‘non-metaphysical’ aspects of later Heidegger’s thought. Where Derrida parts company with Heidegger, as Spinosa has it, is when Heidegger’s gathering disguises the radically unexperiencable

44

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

quality of the shift to a different way of revealing. Hesitancy about the word ‘quality’ here aside, we might want to claim that this shift is not only radically unexperiencable, but also radically unintelligible; Derrida takes as a starting point of one of his exemplifications of différance the fact that ‘The difference which establishes phonemes and lets them be heard remains in and of itself inaudible, in every sense of the word’ (emphasis added).64 We have already traced the salient moves in Derrida’s argumentation to the effect that ‘sensibility and understanding . . . have been the terms through which human cognition has been interpreted, and both are interpreted in terms of the apprehension of something present’.65 It is from his desire to displace this presence that Derrida can say that ‘différance is not’ in each individual case such as the one just recorded (i.e. of a given phoneme). Différance is neither this nor that present thing, but rather that which allows things to show up in the structuring play of differences. It is tempting at this point to extrapolate from concrete examples of différance and claim that différance is thus the conjunction of all these ‘nots’. But this would be to try to reduce différance to the master concept that Derrida is keen to avoid, and which he criticized Heidegger for trying to achieve with the notion of the primacy of the ontological difference. Thus the negativity by which différance is understood is similarly irreducible (and so highlights the need to understand it as positivity as well). It is for this reason that Derrida is anxious to say ‘Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness to the other’.66 Moreover, Derrida would doubtless – in a move which inversely parallels his assertion that différance is itself a metaphysical name – wish to claim that this statement is itself subject to the trace of its own other. Earlier I postulated that Heidegger’s attempt to free himself from anthro­ pocentricism, and the attendant all-too-human paradox of trying to refer to nothing, took place via an openness to letting Beyng appropriate, with each way of revealing also being a way of concealing. Thus Beyng/nothing constantly evades us in the history of concealing and revealing. So far Derrida might agree with Heidegger; that is to say, in the non-metaphysical aspect of the later Heideggerian thought. However, by venturing words by which to talk of Beyng – something which in explaining Heidegger’s position I have had to do – we can see (mirrored in talk of nothingness) why Derrida wants to criticize Heidegger on that point. For by speaking of Heidegger’s position in these ventured words, the notions of Being and correspondingly nothingness have arguably reappeared as delusional self-present entities. Indeed, it seems obvious that nothing is back as an object of thought.

Strange Bedfellows

45

Significantly, in referring to différance as that which ‘makes possible the presentation of the being-present’ Derrida claims that différance itself is never ‘offered to the present’ – for in ‘every exposition it would be exposed to disappearing as disappearance. It would risk appearing: disappearing’.67 The obvious Derridian reaction to this would be to avoid associations with nothingness, but, interestingly, such a position would be unlikely to be advanced overtly or explicitly by Derrida, as this would make nothingness an object of thought, hence its absence from his work, even as a denial. This would seem to pose insurmountable problems for any attempt to educe a standpoint on nothing from Derrida’s work that might accurately be associated with him. But this may not be the case – we note that Derrida says that he does not want ‘in any way to dispense with the passage through the truth of Being’, and we saw earlier that part of Derrida’s double gesture was to accept the necessity of the inscription of metaphysical thought. By denying the possibility of a unique self-present naming of Beyng, Derrida simultaneously cancels the understanding of nothing that this could provide and which occurred in my explanation, two paragraphs earlier, of the aspect of Heidegger’s later thought that Derrida would accept. For now any attempt to explain how nothing might figure in that thought will be seen to fall foul of that naming – and indeed this sentence now has brought nothingness into awareness as an object of thought and so must be displaced.68 As such, the previous sentence exemplifies Derrida’s own confession of the metaphysical nature of the name différance (in those moments of his tracings that associate it with the properly named Beyng) and also a movement in his dealings with nothingness. By tying us up in ‘nots’, Derrida makes sure we are unable to delusively seek the presence of nothing. To be fair to his thought, I  should continue the process of negation on this conclusion, but space does not permit me, so I leave this open to the reader . . .

46

Part Two

Think Nothing Of It – The Conceptuality of Nothingness

3

Nothing Under the Microscope

‘But a problem occurs regarding this term ‘nothing’. St Anselm of Canterbury (Monologion, Chapter 8)

3.1  Introduction In Part 1 we traversed some of the complex topography of the historical and contemporary debates concerning nothingness. The aim of this part will be to ascertain whether we have found a suitable place for a settlement, that is, whether we can come to some sort of fixed view concerning the ‘nature’ or otherwise of nothingness. To change the metaphor from land to sea, now that the ideas that we are to examine in this part are anchored in the readings of the texts in Part 1, it is my hope that we can drift more freely in the conceptual territory. I noted at the beginning of Part 1 that my use of key texts would be as routes into aspects of this debate, to aid the reader, but now the discussion must become more general, and while I will refer back to the texts I mentioned earlier, it will be necessary for the reader to consider the wider applications of the discussion in this part.

3.2  Analytic attitudes towards nothingness This chapter will be drawing on the ideas of Carnap we have previously looked at, but the discussion will be relevant to a number of philosophers working in what I have dubbed the ‘analytic’ tradition. However, what I have called ‘analytic’ attitudes to nothingness, or simply ‘nothing’ as might be preferred here, is more generally the use of logical or linguistic analysis to understand the issues that ‘nothing’ presents.

50

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

The current dominant analytic theory concerning ‘nothing’ (the one that Carnap represents) is a comparatively recent development and relies upon specific ways of interpreting statements about existence or non-existence. The development begins with Frege and extends through Russell and Quine (the last coming after Carnap). Very briefly, Frege claimed that ‘exists’ is a second-level predicate, which tells us something about first-level predicates, such as ‘wise’, namely that the properties those predicates pertain to are instantiated. Firstlevel predicates tell us something about individuals (e.g. that Socrates is wise); second-level predicates tell us something about first-level predicates. Russell applied this to proper names, regarding these as disguised descriptions (which involve a cluster of predicates), but for those who dislike this controversial view, the Quinean method of reinterpreting proper names as predicates (e.g. understanding ‘Socrates’ as ‘Socratizes’, where the latter refers to the attribute of being Socrates) can be used. The upshot of this is that a statement like ‘There is nothing outside’ can be understood as denying that the property indicated by the predicate ‘is outside’ is instantiated (i.e. withholding the predicate ‘exists’ from the property indicated by the predicate ‘is outside’). Other statements about nothing are to be analysed in the same way. So the statement ‘There is nothing outside’ will be understood in Carnap’s way, as: ‘It is not the case that there is something that is outside’, where, once we understand the correct logical form of the sentence, we will see that ‘nothing’ should not be taken as a troubling substantive term. Not all philosophers falling within the analytic tradition have wanted to understand existence in this way, however. Some take ‘exists’ to be a first-level predicate. This is not now the mainstream view, so I will not go into detail, but I would like to sketch two recent such accounts and briefly discuss how they would understand statements concerning ‘nothing’. The first is Barry Miller’s ‘two-sense’ view1; the second draws on neo-Meinongian theories. Miller suggests that ‘exists’ has two related senses. He goes along with the second-level use of ‘exists’ outlined above as regards properties, but argues that ‘exists’ also has a first-level use when applied to individuals (such as Socrates), based on the observation that individuals are not the sort of things that can be instantiated, rather they are what things are instantiated in. In the process of defending his account, Miller distinguishes between taking existence to be a first-level property and taking non-existence as a first-level property, maintaining that he is only arguing for the former. More importantly, if ‘exists’ only has a first-level use with regard to individuals, it seems as though it will not be useful

Nothing Under the Microscope

51

in providing a different way of talking about nothing, which does not appear to be an individual. So ultimately, ‘nothing’ for Miller will be understood in the same terms as the mainstream second-level view. Certain neo-Meinongians also take ‘exists’, in some cases, to be first level. Usually they will make a distinction between ‘is’ and ‘exists’,2 and claim that while all things are, only a certain subsection of things exist. So while unicorns, round squares, horses and triangles all are, only the latter two exist. The former are non-existent objects – non-existent, but objects all the same. Hence, ‘exists’ becomes a first-level predicate, and ‘is’ may be first or second level depending on the account given. Now, how would a neo-Meinongian render ‘There is nothing outside’? Perhaps as ‘Nothing exists outside’, where ‘exists’ is a first-level predicate. Or perhaps as ‘Nothing is outside’, where ‘is’ is a first-level predicate. Unfortunately, and as I am sure most neo-Meinongians would agree, both of these suggestions are fairly obviously problematic. Part of the attraction of Meinongian theories is their ability to deal with cases of apparent reference failure. When we say ‘Pegasus does not exist’ it looks as though we are trying to say something about Pegasus, but, if Pegasus does not exist, how can we be talking about him? If the term ‘Pegasus’ is meaningful, it has to refer to something, and here there is nothing to which it refers. But the (neo-)Meinongian can say that Pegasus is, and so we can refer to him, and say that he does not exist. However, as philosophers going back to Parmenides have claimed, nothing poses special problems, problems that cannot be dealt with in this fashion. For intuitively nothing has no properties whatsoever, and, although there may be a non-existent or existent object corresponding to each property or each set of properties, the consequence of this is that there is no non-existent object that has no properties, and so nothing cannot be.3 A fortiori, nothing cannot have the first-level property of existence. These special problems indicate that, no matter how useful neo-Meinongian theories might be in dealing with non-existent objects, either a more mainstream second-level account will have to be given of nothing, or we will have to heed Parmenides’ instruction not to think nothing (and I suspect most neo-Meinongians would assume this).4 Given these unpromising prospects, let us explore further what is perhaps the mostly widely accepted of analytic theories regarding ‘nothing’, the idea that any natural language sentence containing the word ‘nothing’ (or its non-English synonyms) can be transformed into logical syntax. Upon completion of this transformation, the duty that the word ‘nothing’ performs in the natural language sentence will be performed by the logical form of the sentence; specifically

52

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

by the negation of the existential quantifier: ¬∃x. So understanding the term ‘nothing’ reduces to understanding certain logical operations of quantification and negation. At first blush, this seems plausible enough. We have seen that natural language sentences like: ‘There is nothing outside’ can be analysed into the logical form: ‘¬∃x Px’. And we have seen that there is a resultant impasse between this form of analysis and the Heideggerian approach to ‘nothing’. The Heideggerian claims that ‘nothing’ is in some situations not reducible to logical form and that such an analytic framework is arbitrarily (and misguidedly) restrictive. The logical analyst will claim that any putative situation in which ‘nothing’ is said not to be reducible to logical form cannot be spoken of in any meaningful way. Thus, they cannot make sense of any such objection to their theory – it is at best confusion, at worst deceit. Is there any way of solving or elucidating this impasse? As we are examining the debate from the point of view of analytic attitudes to ‘nothing’, maybe we can find some way internal to that framework that will reveal deficiencies in analytic accounts of ‘nothing’ (in the interests of parity, the Heideggerian position will get the same treatment in Chapter 5).

3.3  Negation and context To begin with, let us note that when dealing with sentences containing the word ‘nothing’ that are not purported pseudo-statements, these can be seen to be familiar and not contentious: ‘There is nothing outside’, ‘I will have nothing to do with it’, ‘I knew nothing about this incident’. In cases like these, I suspect that Heidegger would be amenable to the parsing of these statements into logical syntax involving negation and quantification. Based on the use of ‘nothing’ in these statements, I am not sure that analytic attitudes to ‘nothing’ face any problems that would not occur for the Heideggerian, or anyone else. This is not, of course, to say that such universal problems may not exist, but to get at what is distinctive in the analytic attitudes to ‘nothing’ will require consideration of the more contentious statements: what have been called ‘pseudo-statements’. The class of pseudo-statements contains the sort of statements that Heidegger makes in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, like ‘We seek the nothing’ or ‘What about this nothing?’ Carnap wanted to say that because ‘nothing’ is used as a substantive in non-contentious statements, we are fooled into using it as a substantive

Nothing Under the Microscope

53

in statements where it cannot be reduced to the operations of negation and quantification – fooled, that is, because such statements look superficially well formed. In particular, he wants to say that Heidegger erroneously moves from the allegedly acceptable statement:

(1) ‘Analysis5 examines beings only, and besides that – nothing’ to the pseudo-question:

(2) ‘What about this nothing?’6  ow one understands (1) here is essential. The analyst will doubtless parse H (1) as:

(3) ‘It is not the case that there exists a thing, such that analysis does not examine that thing’. But an analogous question to (2) can then still be asked:

(4) ‘What about this case, this thing, part of which purports to show us what does or does not exist beyond analysis?’ Trying to explain to the Heideggerian what this part of a case, this thing, is via various theories of how to treat negative existentials and referential failure is unlikely to cut much ice here (I will return to this in Section 3.8). This is because ‘nothing’ in (1) is not the doing the same work as ‘nothing’ in statements like ‘There is nothing outside’.7 They could be made to do the same work if we altered the latter statement to: ‘There is nothing outside of analytic inquiry’, which would make it equivalent to (1). (‘Nothing’ is used similarly in certain interpretations of such sentences as ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and ‘If the universe did not exist, nothing would exist.’) What is the distinction here? Well, the intuitive reading of the acceptable statement ‘There is nothing outside’ is that ‘nothing’ here is relevant to a specific class – for example, ‘threats’, if the statement is used to establish that it is safe to go outside. Of putative things that are outside, some will fall under the concept ‘threat’ and some will not. If none of the objects that are outside falls under that concept, then we can say that ‘There is nothing outside’, albeit colloquially. Alternatively we could refine the statement to the more formal: ‘There is no threat outside’ (‘It is not the case that there exists such a thing, such that that thing is a threat and that thing is outside’) and treat any referential problems associated with it according to a certain theory of negative existentials. However,

54

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

a distinction needs to be drawn, as this methodology will not work for a statement like (1). The difference here is that ‘nothing’ in (1) is not relevant to a specific class – it is not a hidden negation. We are not saying that of putative things that fall outside the reach of analysis, some will fall under a given concept and others will not. The problem for the analyst now is to explain how we do use ‘nothing’ in (1). The reason why the early Heidegger advances his seeming pseudo-question ‘What about this nothing?’ is that he believes that the explanation required is not one that can be given through analysis, and thus an affective methodology must take over at this stage to discuss these questions. Our awareness of the nothing through this affective methodology licenses this superficially self-contradictory question, provided one understands this question as also being part of that affective methodology.8 The move is similar to Wittgenstein’s contention in his early work that analysis cannot provide us with understanding of logical forms, rather we must be ‘shown’ them in a way that cannot be successfully analysed.9

3.4  Analysis and nothing It appears that the reason why the analyst cannot seem to give an explanation of ‘nothing’ in (1) is because (1) explicitly states that ‘nothing’ is beyond analysis. What this means in the context of the preceding distinction between ‘nothing’ as a hidden negation and ‘nothing’ in (1) is as follows. ‘Nothing’ in (1), in contrast to ‘nothing’ in non-contentious statements, cannot be understood as generalized negation10 resulting from a concept that applies to certain of the objects falling outside of analysis, and that does not apply to certain others (as it is clear that ‘nothing’ is meant to apply to all such putative objects that fall outside analysis). What we have here is a specific instance of a problem that arises when a given methodology tries to understand its own limits, but proceeds to do so by utilizing the methodology under examination. Such self-examination is contradictory as it involves the methodology attempting to specify what it cannot understand, in its own terms,11 – and thus claiming understanding of that which it cannot, by definition, understand. This analytic case is a particularly stark example, as it concerns allegations regarding the methodology of thought and the exclusion is ‘nothing’. Of course, the analytic response to this problem is likely to be that the statement of such a problem for the analyst just begs the question in favour

Nothing Under the Microscope

55

of the Heideggerian. It assumes that ‘nothing’ here is some thing that requires explanation, whereas the analyst will say that it is impossible to say anything about it that makes sense. A particularly strong form of this objection would be to claim that the Heideggerian makes an illicit move in postulating nothing as some sort of subject which bears no predicates, as to claim it as a subject at all involves some minimal level of description, and thus predication. Hence, the Heideggerian position is self-contradictory. In some ways, this is a good objection to the Heideggerian point of view, but it reveals a critical problem for the analyst. In order to reject the Heideggerian position (or indeed, any position that is not traditionally analytic), the analyst is going to have to assess whether that position offers an account of ‘nothing’ as it appears in (1) that is satisfactory. Yet there seems to be no way of establishing that any account of ‘nothing’ in (1) is unsatisfactory without having a prior notion, however vague, of what a satisfactory account might be. In effect, the analyst is negating the Heideggerian’s account to provide a certain alternate account of ‘nothing’ in (1). But this would seem to indicate that ‘nothing’ in (1) is a hidden negation, and we have seen that an account in these terms will not work. Let us work through this problem to see it more clearly. The most viable option that the analyst has for rejecting the Heideggerian position is to try and reject it on the analyst’s own terms. The analyst has to prove that Heidegger’s position comes out senseless by, for example, reducing it to a contradiction. But Heidegger could happily agree with this, claiming (as he does in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’) that when his statements concerning ‘nothing’ are put into analytic propositions they do come out as superficially contradictory.12 However, in fact, ‘nothing’ in Heidegger’s statements is not ‘nothing’ in our ordinary sense of the word; rather it attunes us to something that is not a being. Now, though, the analyst can claim that Heidegger’s statements are still contradictory by using the following argument: we can only assert things of beings, Heidegger asserts things about the nothing, but the nothing is not a being, and so Heidegger’s assertions about the nothing involve a contradiction.13 Heidegger’s reply to this charge will be that this merely indicates that his statements about the nothing are not functioning as propositions that refer; rather they are ways of attuning us to certain affective states which reveal to us the status of the nothing. That is to say, Heidegger does not use an ‘ontic-reference’ theory of meaning, as Stone suggests,14 but rather uses ‘ontological assertions’, that is, assertions which ‘aim to articulate explicitly [the] preconditions of ordinary assertions and thus to speak about being [and nothing]’.15 Such assertions require an adjustment of understanding; they need

56

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

to be summoned forth from a particular philosophical stance, such as that of the mood of Angst.16 This was the point of introducing the affective methodology in the first place.

3.5  The analytic counter There are two replies open to the analyst at this stage. The first is to claim that the statements that Heidegger uses in defence of his alleged pseudo-statements are themselves pseudo-statements – they would be senseless if parsed into logical syntax. This sort of move is going to lead to impasse, as the Heideggerian can just repeat his original counter at this more fundamental level, so leaving us with two sealed forms of discourse, each unwilling to allow itself to be translated in terms of the other. This seems to be the position that Carnap is left in at the end of his engagement with Heidegger, if we ascribe to the analyst a touch of incredulity towards the Heideggerian’s persistence with his or her pseudo-statements. The second reply recognizes the likelihood of this impasse, and appeals to an underlying mode of discourse common to both to mediate between the two with regard to this problem. Now, given that the two forms of discourse (a term that I am using very loosely) in question are the classical logic of the analyst and the attuning, metaphorical speech of Heidegger, it might initially seem difficult to find a candidate for this role of underlying discourse. However, an evasion of caricatures of either of the positions uncovers the prospect of common ground. It is obvious from the construction of non-classical logics such as intuitionistic logic and paraconsistent logics, and also the extension of classical logic by, say, modal logic, that logicians of all creeds are willing to engage in discussion over whether certain formal systems of logic are in error. Formalizations are systems that attempt to meet all our intuitions concerning logic; a classical logician may feel that classical logic provides the best attempt to formalize these intuitions, but in order to engage with the arguments of a non-classical logician for the benefits of a non-classical formalization, he must be willing to appeal to these intuitions that lie at the root of his formalization, rather than his formalization itself, to establish common ground. This appeal can be difficult in the face of those who just have conflicting intuitions, such as proponents of dialetheism (see Chapter 4). But Heidegger, despite the ostensibly contradictory nature of his alleged pseudo-statements, does not espouse this. He too countenances a distinction between ‘on the one hand,

Nothing Under the Microscope

57

the principles belonging to the “essence of thought as such” and, on the other hand, the formal discipline that attempts to . . . systematise a set of principles which are taken to faithfully represent the essence of thought’.17 Furthermore, there is evidence to suppose that this ‘essence of thinking as such’, qua set of intuitions concerning logic, is not all that far from the classical logician’s set of intuitions. First, Heidegger acknowledges that ‘[u]sing the rules of thought in the thinking process is uncircumventable’, although this uncircumventability ‘does not in itself immediately imply the uncircumventability of logic [qua formalised system]’.18 Secondly, Heidegger isolates certain traditional rules of thought which he takes to be the grounds that make thinking possible: the principles of identity, non-contradiction, sufficient reason and the law of the excluded middle. Heidegger wants his affective methodology to still count as thought, meaning only to contrast it with analytic thought, not thought in general; in which case, he must accept that although his affective methodology need not obey the formalized laws of a given logical system, it cannot run contrary to our deeper logical intuitions. One possible confusion should be cleared up here: in Chapter 1, I indicated that moods are anterior to logical rules, and Heidegger notes that we discover entities by ‘finding ourselves amidst them and dealing with them in articulated, purposive practices’,19 which discovering he calls ‘pre-logical manifestness’. Such manifestness is guided by Dasein’s understanding of the Being of beings as inaugurated by our encounter with nothing (what Heidegger terms ‘ontological truth’), where that encounter is also prior to logic. Being pre-logical, ‘[t]hese ways of making entities manifest are neither logical nor illogical, because originary disclosure is not predicative’.20 This can make it look as though Heidegger is sanctioning a kind of thought that is not susceptible to criticism using logic. This is not accurate, however. All that Heidegger is saying is that these pre-logical aspects, ‘ways of making manifest’, form the conditions of logical thought, and, as anterior to logic, have no logical structure themselves; the question he is dealing with here is one of ‘ground’. However, attempts to articulate (and, indeed, think about)21 them do have logical structure: ‘[s]entences that articulate such a philosophy are subject to the rules of grammar and logic, but the phenomena they analyze are neither logical nor illogical; they constitute the possibility of logic’.22 So all of Heidegger’s talk about the nothing is subject to the laws of thought, and he must concede their authority. How far this concession vitiates Heidegger’s thought, and how far his later work is a reaction to that possibility, will be discussed in due course. For now, the

58

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

objection of the analyst is easily traceable. They can accept that the Heideggerian wants to suspend a given formalization of logical intuitions, and thus avoid accusations of contradictions that issue from understanding his position in terms of that formalization. But these contradictions merely reappear at the level of the logical intuitions that are common both to the Heideggerian and the analyst; and so the problem first advanced is not avoided. Of course the difficulty now is to find an adequate way of phrasing the objection, given that to phrase it in the analyst’s terms or the Heideggerian’s terms is going to involve an ascension from this deeper level of logical intuitions back up to a contentious framework derived from them. I do not think this is a particularly intractable problem. Terms like ‘contradiction’ are utilized by both parties; as long as we avoid terminology specific to either (such as the notation for classical logic or specifically Heideggerian usages), the problem is capable of a neutral statement. Given this, the analyst is likely to allege that the Heideggerian’s statements like ‘We seek the nothing’ involve a contradiction insofar as they purport to articulate a certain subject, yet the subject in question cannot have anything articulated about it according to our intuitive understanding of it.

3.6  Neutrality and nothing Unfortunately for the analyst, this leads us back to the critical problem mentioned earlier, but rephrased in non-specific terminology. The criticism may still stand up against the Heideggerian (subject to our later discussion), but it also still involves the analyst making a claim that is contradictory – contradictory at this deeper, intuitive level. This is for exactly the same reason: in order to deny that the subject in question can have anything articulated about it, an ‘intuitive understanding’ of the subject has to be invoked; but this understanding articulates (or leads us to articulate) certain things about this subject and so is self-contradictory in just the same way.23 A prior but illicit understanding of ‘nothing’ is utilized in order that the allegedly contradictory notion of ‘nothing’ advanced by the Heideggerian can be compared with it, and thus affirmed as indeed contradictory. Note that at this stage, the analyst cannot claim to be simply assessing the Heideggerian’s statement, isolating a contradiction, and thus ruling the statement senseless. This might seem more plausible phrased in the analyst’s terminology, but at the level of logical intuition, this plausibility is shown to be

Nothing Under the Microscope

59

solely superficial. In order to isolate ‘nothing’ to bring it into a contradictory relation, the analyst must either concede some minimal understanding of it (in order to articulate the relation), which would be to make the same error as that imputed to the Heideggerian, or attempt to reject the notion of ‘nothing’ itself as self-contradictory (and thus avoid accusations of understanding it in some illicit way). Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that any elucidation of the selfcontradiction involved by positing ‘nothing’ is just going to repeat the critical problem. The inevitability of this critical problem repeating itself indicates that one cannot just paraphrase the problems associated with ‘nothing’ out of existence. If we have a problem with a certain aspect of a given statement, we cannot try to avoid this aspect by providing a paraphrase of that statement. For in order for that statement to be an acceptable paraphrase (i.e. to capture the meaning of the initial statement), it will have to retain the problematic aspect. As the troubling aspects can include concession of ontological notions that one would rather do without (in the case of statement (1): ‘nothing’), and the critical problem hinges on just such a concession, it seems impossible to solve the problem through different attempts at paraphrase. The analyst cannot avoid the problem by denying the sense of ‘nothing’ in certain sentences and then replace it by something that does the same job, as the problem will just reoccur with different terminology. Often, very simple problems like this are the most persistent as they appear for each theory in a different guise; this is unsurprising enough, given that all such theories are dealing with the same issue.

3.7  Nothing as a hidden negation 1: Everything So far, it may be felt that I have overlooked an obvious objection that the analyst can make. For why can we not indeed understand ‘nothing’ as a hidden negation, namely as a specific negation resulting from negating a concept that applies to all objects falling under analysis? The obvious candidate for such a concept would be ‘everything’ – after all, every thing falls under the concept ‘part of everything’. The hopes for using the concept of ‘everything’ in this regard hang on what sense we can make of quantification, not relative to a restricted domain like ‘things that are outside of my house’, but over the unrestricted domain of everything. In recent years the question of absolutely unrestricted quantification has received a lot of attention. Much of the debate is complex, utilizing a significant amount of

60

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

logical machinery, but I hope that it will be enough to sketch some of the main lines of the debate to get the point across. At first blush, it might seem obvious that we can quantify over everything. Why ever not? If we can quantify successfully over restricted domains, then what is the problem with simply removing those restrictions? The burden of proof seems to weigh upon the opponent of quantification over everything. One way of justifying the opponent’s position is to draw upon certain paradoxes we find in set theory, such as Russell’s paradox, as one moral of these paradoxes seems to be that we cannot quantify over everything. Let us look at Russell’s paradox as an example: Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. Is R a member of itself? If it is, it fails to satisfy its membership criterion and hence is not a member of itself. If it is not, then R does satisfy its membership criterion and hence is a member of itself. Thus, R is a member of itself if and only if R is not a member of itself. This paradox seems to indicate that common-sense set theory leads to contradiction. Obviously this is unattractive, especially given set theory’s utility. So we must find a way of neutralizing the paradox. One way of doing this has been to reject common-sense (or naïve) set theory and its axiomatic foundations that lead to contradiction, and replace it with a set theory using different axioms that disallows the formation of certain paradox-creating sets. The preferred set theory for this purpose is Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory (with or without the Axiom of Choice). Now, while this sort of move is fine to preserve set theory as a useful device to aid in the solution of certain technical problems, it seems a somewhat ad hoc way of dealing with philosophical problems. There needs to be some motivation for discarding certain axioms (such as Comprehension) and replacing them with new ones, beyond that it fixes our paradox problems. The other traditional solution to the set-theoretic paradoxes based on a different axiomatic set theory (von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory) has similar pros and cons. John von Neumann suggested that collections of a certain size or larger do not form sets, but rather ‘proper classes’, and proper classes, unlike sets, cannot be a member of anything. So rather than blocking the existence of paradox-creating sets, von Neumann’s system allows them, but provides a solution to the paradox. In the case of Russell’s paradox, we can have a set of all sets that do not belong to themselves, but such a set cannot be a member of itself as it is a proper class. Once again, this is a solution that is acceptable for technical purposes, but looks philosophically ad hoc in the absence of independent reasons

Nothing Under the Microscope

61

why, at a certain size, collections should change from being sets to being proper classes. The last couple of paragraphs have been quick and informal, and a much fuller discussion would be necessary to do justice to the debate; nevertheless, I hope we now have a platform to work from. I should like to discuss two arguments used by opponents of quantification over everything. First, consider what has been called variously in the literature the domain principle24 or the All-in-One principle.25 In general, the domain principle states that if our quantification over objects is to have a determinate sense, then those objects that we are quantifying over need to form a determinate totality. More simply, whenever we quantify over things, there is a totality of those things. Although the principle has drawn criticism,26 to many it seems eminently plausible. The problem comes when we combine the domain principle with what we take from Russell’s paradox. Suppose we want to quantify over everything. If this is so, then according to the domain principle, everything must form a determinate totality if we want our quantification to have a determinate sense. This would mean that there is a set (or something like a set), with all objects as members. However, such a set would have to include the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, and as we have seen this leads to paradox. So the moral of the domain principle coupled with Russell’s paradox is that quantification over everything will not have any determinate sense. That is the first argument. The second is possibly even more troublesome, and it arises from the idea that some concepts are ‘indefinitely extensible’.27 This notion results from an attempt to find a more satisfactory response to Russell’s paradox (and other associated paradoxes). This is how it works: Suppose one wishes to specify an extension (roughly, the things to which a term applies) for the concept ‘set’. We have seen that Russell’s paradox indicates that if we attempt to produce a set of all sets by defining an extension for the concept ‘set’, we will have a problem, as this will contain the set of all sets that are not a member of themselves. The proponent of indefinite extensibility blocks the paradox by claiming that what we learn from Russell’s invocation of the set of all sets that are not members of themselves is that there is a set that falls outside of the set of all sets (viz. the set of all sets that are not members of themselves), and that this shows that our initial definition of the extension of the concept ‘set’ needs to be extended. But each subsequent attempt to define the extension of ‘set’ will cause the considerations that lead to Russell’s paradox to be applied again, and so we must keep extending our definition of the extension of ‘set’ indefinitely.

62

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

How does this affect quantification over everything? Well, it seems to indicate that whenever we try to quantify over everything, the fact that some concepts like ‘set’ (and ‘ordinal’) are indefinitely extensible will indicate that we have not succeeded in quantifying over everything, as there will be things outside the range of our initial quantification. If we then try to quantify over these things too, the indefinitely extensible concepts will outrun our attempt again, and so on. There are other arguments against quantifying over everything, such as those based on the purported conceptual relativity of quantification, or an appeal to the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem to argue that we cannot distinguish between quantification that is unrestricted and quantification that is restricted. But these arguments seem to me to be in a different category from the two I have just advanced; they rely on undermining quantification over everything by complicating our notion of what it is to be something, or an individual thing, whereas the arguments we have looked at target the notion of ‘everything’ more directly. That is not to say that these arguments are not linked. It seems plausible to suppose that there will be some level of interdefinability between the notions of ‘everything’ and ‘something’ (or just ‘thing’). But for now I will concentrate on the former and leave discussion of the latter for the next section. So we have seen why we might be suspicious of quantification over everything. But, as an opponent of such quantification, one does not have it all one’s own way as even stating one’s opposition to quantification over everything can seem to be self-defeating. Saying that we cannot quantify over everything seems just as much to quantify over everything as saying we can – we are saying that for everything, it is not the case that we can quantify over it. This opposing problem is much simpler to grasp, but seems equally as paradoxical, and thus difficult to solve, as the problems attending universal quantification. And so we reach a familiar situation, an impasse, whereby partisans of either of the opposing views find their opposite number’s position incoherent. A number of philosophers working in this area have suggested that we seem to have here an antinomy, or something like one. The sheer fact that we have a deadlock is significant. Remember that on Carnap’s original presentation of the analytic account of the nothing, there was no dispute, at least not on the surface. We had to bring it out by means of dialectic with the Heideggerian. But here the dispute is out in the open for all to see, and to come down on one side rather than another is just to beg the question, as with the Carnap/Heidegger dispute. The fact that in one situation the

Nothing Under the Microscope

63

dispute is masked is unsurprising. Carnap assimilated Heidegger’s extraordinary use of language (the absolute use of ‘nothing’) to ordinary cases (the relative use of ‘nothing’), whereas ‘everything’ in the sense under discussion now is extraordinary – it is not relative to anything (as in ‘everything that is outside’, say). Now, when we brought out the dispute between Carnap and Heidegger, we explicitly invoked an extraordinary use of the word ‘nothing’. That made any answer controversial. ‘Everything’ in our current impasse is controversial in the same way. But the idea of a specified thing to which our notion of nothing or everything is relative is not controversial; this is what made Carnap’s position appealing until we looked more closely at it.28 Then we realized that for Carnap’s position to do its job properly (i.e. in the face of Heidegger’s questioning), it could not just trade on the uncontroversial nature of contextual uses of nothing, rather it had to say something about the non-contextual case. Now we see the same thing happening in this new attempt at an analytic account – in order for it to be effective where the last one is thought not to be, it must invoke a concept, ‘everything’, which looks useful, because it is not relative, but the very thing that makes that concept useful also makes it controversial. I will return to this theme before long, as part of an attempt to show how what we have been looking at in this section relates to nothing. But for now, we might ask: Is there not a via media? Can we not break the deadlock between those who wish to quantify over everything, and those who do not? There does seem to be another approach. Rather than taking the line of trying to come up with a general argument that shows that quantification over everything is incoherent, where this word ‘general’ will be a problem, as it looks like a candidate for universal quantification, we could restrict ourselves to evaluating each attempt to show how such quantification might work in a piecemeal fashion. Such evaluation might well draw on aspects of the arguments against quantification over everything that we have just looked at. So, for example, in the face of an attempt to define such quantification, we might use considerations of indefinite extensibility to show how this attempt fails. Such a view would be neither for nor against quantification over everything. Quantification over everything would not arise as an issue for it until someone presented an argument for or against such quantification, and then this argument would be assessed.29 Note that we cannot set this up as a view denying that such quantification is possible, but dealing with each attempt to show its coherence on a case-by-case basis, as such an overarching denial would involve such quantification itself – we are back to the self-defeating problem. The efficacy of the piecemeal view is that

64

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

we do not mention or think of quantification over everything to either affirm or deny it (although obviously we cannot say this!). That is what stops it being self-defeating, but at the same time makes any assertion that quantification over everything is impossible illicit – the position is too guarded and provisional to countenance that. Given this, I think Kit Fine is right to link the view with a philosophical methodology associated with the later Wittgenstein.30 And with that in mind, I will postpone discussion of this third way until I talk about Wittgenstein in Chapter 7 (I will not be explicitly recalling this material there, but the application can be made). Let us now tie things up by relating the foregoing discussion more obviously to the notion of nothing. The simple point to be made is that we cannot understand ‘nothing’ by means of the notion of ‘everything’, as the latter seems to be equally opaque. We have seen that, just as with ‘nothing’, attempts to understand ‘everything’ appear to lead to stalemate. I do not think that this is surprising. For it could be claimed that the attempt to use the notion of ‘everything’ to elucidate that of ‘nothing’ was doomed from the start, as the two must ultimately be defined in terms of one another. If this is the case, then we cannot understand ‘everything’ apart from ‘nothing’, and so cannot use the former to shed light on the latter. That the two notions are interdependent seems clear. If I ask what someone means by everything, it seems inevitable at some point that the fact that nothing is excluded from it will need to be invoked (unless we are merely giving a relative definition of ‘everything’, which, as we saw earlier, is of no help here). Or, relatedly, we might ask whether, when we say ‘everything’, we mean it to include ‘nothing’ as well – is ‘nothing’ a thing? We cannot answer this without some understanding or other of nothing.31 Such general problems would seem to be supported by our foregoing discussion of quantification over everything. Let us start with Russell’s paradox. What the paradox says is that when we try to define a certain class of things (viz. ‘sets’), it will be possible to find a certain thing in that class which by definition cannot belong to the class of all such things. We can understand the relation to issues concerning nothing when we generalize this formula. Nothing is a ‘thing’ (in the most general sense of that word), which, however we try to think of it, will conform to some very general criterion for ‘thinghood’, and which by definition cannot belong to the class of ‘things’ (again where ‘thing’ is to be understood in its most general sense), that is to say ‘everything’. How this applies to the moves in the debate concerning quantification over everything is now clear. The above generalization of the mechanism of

Nothing Under the Microscope

65

Russell’s paradox leads fairly obviously to the domain principle objection to quantification over everything. Quantification over everything, to have determinate sense, needs a totality, which here is ‘everything’; however there will be a ‘thing’ (in the most general sense) not in the totality, namely nothing. We also get our problem for the opponent of quantification over everything, insofar as expression of their position seems self-defeating. If one says ‘We cannot quantify over everything’, or ‘We cannot talk about everything’, then one has just done so and so contradicted oneself. Finally we can find a parallel to considerations of indefinite extensibility. Take any given attempt to define an extension for ‘everything’. There will always be a thing that by definition is outside this extension – nothing.32 Suppose we then try to include nothing in the extension of everything. Now we can ask: ‘What is not included in everything?’ And our answer will again be: nothing! So nothing always displaces out of the extension of everything. (Note that we cannot parse ‘nothing’ here as ‘There is no thing such that it is not included in everything’, as that would be to help ourselves illicitly to a well-defined notion of everything, and this is part of the point at issue.)33

3.8  Nothing as a hidden negation 2: Something The other possibility for seeing nothing as a hidden negation would be to see it as a negation of ‘thing’. But this is likely to return us to a problem analogous to that which we found occurred for ‘everything’; that, unless we understand ‘thing’ as tacitly restricted in some way, we will have as hard a time making sense of ‘thing’ as we do ‘nothing’. Take the sentence ‘There is something outside’ or ‘There is some thing outside’. Typically we will understand ‘thing’ in a restricted sense, as, say, falling under some sortal or other. So just as ‘There is nothing outside’ might be understood as ‘There is no threat outside’, so ‘Yes, there is something outside’ might be understood as ‘Yes, there is a threat outside’. Given this, we can see why the reworked Heideggerian sentence ‘Analysis examines beings only, and besides that – nothing’ serves to bring in nothing in a sense different to ‘There is nothing outside’. The word ‘beings’ does the duty of ‘things’ in the Heideggerian sentence, and the sense of ‘thing’ here is unrestricted, unlike its sense in ‘Is there any thing outside?’, which will be tacitly restricted to some class, say, the class of threats. Note also that in the sentences in Section 3.3 in which I said ‘nothing’ was similarly used, we also find uses of an unrestricted

66

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

term: ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, and ‘If the universe did not exist, nothing would exist’, where ‘the universe’ is understood as ‘everything’. It is hard to see how we can make sense of ‘thing’ as unrestricted, given its interdependence with the unrestricted notions of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’, of which it is also hard to make sense. Two views appear to be popular in attempts to give a definition of ‘thing’ when unrestricted: first, that a thing is anything to which we can refer (more formally, anything that can be a value of a bound variable), or secondly, that a thing is anything that falls under a sortal which supplies determinate identity-conditions.34 I will also consider definitions of ‘thing’ as ‘anything which has the property of self-identity’. If we can define ‘thing’ in one of these ways, this will provide clear help in giving a definition of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’. However, it seems that, although definitions such as these might be of use in defining ‘thing’ for purely formal purposes, they are inadequate for our philosophical purposes here. This is because to ensure that the relevant conditions that are supposed to tell us whether we have a thing on our hands apply to every thing, we have to use the word ‘thing’ in the definition, as it is the only word general enough to play the part. So in sketching the definitions above, I had to resort to the word ‘anything’, which we cannot understand without a prior understanding of ‘thing’. Worse still, in claiming (as we must) that an adequate definition of thing must invoke conditions that cover everything, such that nothing is left out, we use the problematic notions of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’. One way of showing up the problems is to consider the way these definitions of ‘thing’ would cope with nothing (and, indeed, everything). Let us take the referential criterion first. Note first that this criterion involves a modal claim: a thing is anything to which it is possible for us to refer. This avoids enmeshing us in problems about whether there are things to which we simply have not referred yet. But what about nothing? It would seem that nothing is not a thing, by definition, and yet we can refer to it – indeed, I just have done. But then this would show that at best the condition of being susceptible to reference is only a necessary condition of being a thing, and not a sufficient one. There are two responses the analyst can make here. The first would be to say that this objection makes something out of nothing, and nothing cannot be a something – there is just nothing there to be referenced. But that response will return us to the problem raised in Sections 3.4–3.6; it requires a prior conception of what nothing is to say that nothing cannot be referenced. Note that it will beg the question to say that nothing must be a thing if we refer to it because anything that can be referenced is a thing by

Nothing Under the Microscope

67

definition. If we instead complain that nothing has been made a thing based on it meeting some other criterion, then it will be this other criterion that is doing the work in defining ‘thing’. Finally, if we say that we have made nothing a thing, it can then be stated that nothing has been left out after all, to which the response will be that this new nothing that has been left out can be referenced, yet is not a thing, and so on.35 This may remind us of the indefinite extensibility of certain concepts referred to in previous section. The second response will be that all uses of nothing are paraphraseable, and so it is just an error to assume that ‘nothing’ is a term that refers. Now we can afford to go into more detail regarding the analyst’s claim in Section 3.3 that ‘Analysis deals with beings only – and nothing else’ can be re-phrased as ‘It is not the case that there is a being which is outside analysis’, or, to modalize and standardize this claim for use in this section: ‘It is not possibly the case that there is a thing which is outside analysis’. Here ‘analysable’ would join general concepts like ‘susceptible to reference’ or ‘thinkable’ as a predicate that applies to everything, and so can be used as a criterion of being a thing. Now, as we saw earlier, predicates that apply to only a subset of things can appear in sentences with ‘nothing’ where a paraphrase of the latter is perfectly acceptable. So ‘There is nothing outside’, where there is an implicit restriction to threats and which is therefore a colloquial rendering of ‘There is nothing outside such that it is a threat’, can be understood as ‘It is not the case that there is a threat outside’. Here we take all the things outside to exemplify properties that are incompatible with being a threat. Such a paraphrase will be more problematic in cases where predicates that apply to everything are involved. Let us take ‘is analysable’ as our example. There is no implicit restriction here, so we have ‘There is nothing such that it is not analysable’, and the paraphrase will presumably be something along the lines of: ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is not analysable’. If such a paraphrase is possible, then we can get rid of this troublesome notion of nothing completely, not just in cases of restricted predicates, and so it will not provide problems for a definition of ‘thing’. Unfortunately the paraphrase ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is outside analysis’ seems unworkable. For this new sentence refers to a certain case, the case that actually obtains (at least on the assumption that it states something true), and it says of this case that it does not have certain properties, that is, being in part constituted by a thing whereby that thing is outside of analysis. But in order to say this, this case must encompass both what is the case inside and outside of analysis, in order to say that what is the case

68

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

outside analysis excludes any thing from existing, or is free from any existents. This will indicate that there is a thing, namely that portion of the case outside analysis, which is beyond analysis. This contradicts what we are seeking to say in the paraphrase, and so the paraphrase fails. One response here might be that because we have talked about what is the case outside analysis in analytic sentences, this thing (i.e. the relevant part of the case) will be within analysis after all (indeed, we have been calling it a thing). But if we take this route and claim that in talking about a realm beyond analysis we bring that realm into analysis, we cannot say that there is no thing beyond analysis. (Unless we go down the route of indefinite extensibility in the manner mentioned above.) Remember, though, that our claim is supposed to represent a necessary condition. So the paraphrase, rather than being ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is outside analysis’, should be ‘It is not possible that it is the case that there is a thing such that that thing is outside analysis’. It is unclear how helpful this consideration is. It might be true that we cannot make the claim that there are things outside analysis, as that claim will be a statement of our analysis. But the concept ‘a thing outside of our analysis’ or ‘unanalysable thing’ does not seem self-contradictory, even if using it would involve us in a performative contradiction.36 Of course, there could be a criterion which is such that a thing that fails to meet that criterion is self-contradictory, such as being self-identical, or being such that it is red or not red. I will consider such a criterion below. It may be tempting to think that we can avoid such problems by reformulating the paraphrase. The notion of being ‘outside’ or ‘beyond’ analysis might be thought to be dispensable, in favour of a paraphrase such as: ‘It is not (possibly) the case that there is a thing such that that thing cannot be analysed’, or, to avoid the problematic word ‘there’ which is a dummy pronoun (but might be misinterpreted as a deictic adverb referring to a place, a realm outside analysis) and can safely be deleted, ‘It is not (possibly) the case that a thing exists such that that thing cannot be analysed’. But this merely makes the reference to a realm outside analysis implicit, as we are still referring to a case that must encompass both the case within and without analysis in order to claim that this latter (portion of the) case excludes things (or else how can we make this claim?). We might try to do away with case talk altogether: ‘There is not (possibly) a thing which is unanalysable’, or, if we still want to get away from this word ‘there’, ‘A thing which is unanalysable does not (possibly) exist’ might seem better. However,

Nothing Under the Microscope

69

this will only lead to us questioning then whether the notion of existence (or instantiation, or whatever) carries with it the same problems that apply to case talk (or even whether it can be defined without reference to ‘thing’, ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’).37 A more vivid way of demonstrating some of the remarks in the last few paragraphs is to consider how we would render ‘Nothing exists’ using them. The proponent of paraphrase wants to eliminate nothing talk altogether, to avoid nothing falling under the criterion for thinghood. At the same time, though, he or she wants to say that we can define things in terms of a common property they all have, that is, we can understand ‘thing’ unrestrictedly. The upshot will be that the statement ‘nothing exists’ understood in an unrestricted sense can be rendered by a paraphrase in which we deny that this property is instantiated. Where we can understand ‘thing’ unrestrictedly, there we can also understand ‘nothing’ unrestrictedly. So we can paraphrase ‘Nothing exists’ thus: ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is analysable’ or ‘It is not the case that the property “analysable” is instantiated’. Here the temptation may be to say in response to these paraphrases: ‘What is not the case? What is this “it” to which you refer? If this “it” is not such-and-such a case, what case is “it”? If “it” is not a case at all (and will you say then that “It is not the case that it is a case”?), what is “it”?’ This would be a mistake, however, for the ‘it’ in these paraphrases is another dummy pronoun, known as the extraposition ‘it’, and can be deleted from the paraphrase with no loss thus: ‘That there is a thing such that that thing is unanalysable is not the case’. Provided we still want to get rid of the ‘there’, we can then further paraphrase this as: ‘That a thing, such that that thing is unanalysable, exists is not the case’ or ‘That the property “unanalysable” is instantiated is not the case’. The inadequacy of such paraphrases is now clear: they say that a certain proposition does not depict the case that actually obtains. Some other case than that described by the proposition obtains, but such a case will be a thing (according to whichever criterion we are dealing with here), and so the paraphrase will be inadequate. Furthermore, if we try to eliminate case talk by appealing to the ‘better’ paraphrase (above): ‘A thing which is unanalysable does not (possibly) exist’, this not only reintroduces the problems concerning how we understand ‘exists’ (or ‘instantiates’) but appears to lead us into new, if familiar, problems insofar as it posits as a subject for the paraphrase something that does not exist. The analyst’s standard method of avoiding this problem, retranslating the paraphrase to ‘The property “unanalysable” is not instantiated’, asserts the existence of a certain property, and so fails to acceptably paraphrase

70

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

‘Nothing exists’. (A Meinongian solution making a distinction between ‘is’ and ‘exists’ cannot help here, as our interest will then be in paraphrasing ‘Nothing is’ rather than ‘Nothing exists’.) What about the other criterion, that a thing is anything that falls under a sortal which supplies determinate identity-conditions? Many of the same comments will apply. The claim can be made that nothing falls under a sortal which supplies determinate identity-conditions, but that this will then indicate that the criterion cannot provide a sufficient condition for thinghood. The flat counterclaim that nothing does not fall under such a sortal will involve illicit conceptualization of nothing. An alternative response might be that ‘nothing’ is more appropriately seen as a mass noun than a count noun, and thus the criterion can be sufficient insofar as it will not apply to nothing any more than it will apply to that which is denoted by similar mass noun terms. Obviously this will necessitate that talk of mass nouns cannot be somehow reconstrued as talk of count nouns, but even if this is possible, two problems arise. The first is that we can generate a new, broader conception of ‘thing’ which covers both mass and count nouns; indeed we must, otherwise the claim ‘nothing exists’ would be true if the universe was composed only of stuff (e.g. a universe consisting only of water). Presumably we do not want to say that. The second is that the claim that nothing is closer to things designated by count nouns rather than mass nouns will rely on nothing being characterized in certain ways, and this will again involve illicit conceptualization of nothing. Finally, if we do want to say that the sortal criterion provides a sufficient condition for thinghood we once again run into problems concerning paraphrase. So claims like ‘It is not the case that there exists a thing such that that thing does not fall under some sortal’, or, to use the more vivid example of paraphrasing ‘nothing exists’ above, ‘It is not the case that there exists a thing such that that thing falls under a sortal’ (with any of the appropriate tweaks to eliminate dummy pronouns and the like) will be susceptible to analogous problems as those outlined for the alternative criteria above (provided we realize that an appeal to the distinction between mass and count nouns to solve such problems will result in fresh difficulties like the water universe posited above). What if it is claimed that we can give a definition of a thing using some trivial property that everything has necessarily, such as self-identity? We could say that something is a thing if it is self-identical. If it is replied that this is not a sufficient condition for thinghood, as nothing is not a thing, and yet is presumably selfidentical, then, assuming we skip the problematic reply that this makes nothing

Nothing Under the Microscope

71

into something, we might opt for the other reply, that ‘nothing’ is never a term of reference, and so we can eliminate it in all statements using logical form. How would this work if we are hoping to define a thing using the property of self-identity? Take a sentence analogous to the analyst’s ‘Analysis examines things only – and nothing else’: ‘Self-identity is a property of things only – and nothing else’. Because ‘thing’ purports here to be unrestricted, so nothing is also unrestricted. So it is necessary to produce a paraphrase of this statement to avoid ‘nothing’ appearing as a term with reference. ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is not self-identical’ seems susceptible to the problems outlined above: such a case must cover states of affairs both inside and outside the extension of the predicate, and so it produces, contra our hypothesis, something (namely a portion of what is the case) which is not self-identical. A related problem (which applies equally to the previous two criteria we have looked at) is the following: when we talk of what is the case in such paraphrases, ‘the case’ here means ‘everything’, and thus excludes nothing. If this so, then ‘nothing’ returns as a term with reference. Moreover, it looks as though ‘the case’ has to mean ‘everything’ and exclude nothing in such paraphrases, as if it means just a portion of everything, then the claim ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is not self-identical’ will not rule out non-self-identical things constituting part of the wider case that the portion of it to which we are restricting the paraphrase does not cover. There may be some room for manoeuvre, however, when we consider that selfidentity is a necessary property of things in a stronger sense than ‘is analysable’ or similar: while there does not seem to be any problem with saying that there might be a thing that is not analysable, there does seem to be a problem with saying that there might be a thing that is not self-identical. The paraphrase ‘It is not possibly the case that there is a thing such that that thing is not self-identical’ may be better. Why? Because it might be claimed that we need not talk about the case, where this covers everything, in order to say that a non-self-identical thing does not exist. We need not, as it were, scour the whole of all that is the case (i.e. everything) to see that each portion of it excludes a non-self-identical thing, in order to see that a non-self-identical thing is not part of that whole. We can just see that a non-self-identical being is self-contradictory. Equally, we need not say that there is nothing beyond or besides self-identical things; we can just say that the question ‘What is there besides self-identical things?’ makes no sense. This manoeuvre is not as much help as it first appears. It is asserted that we can just see that a non-self-identical thing is self-contradictory. How? Let us take

72

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

an account of modal epistemology based on Stephen Yablo’s.38 Yablo is mainly concerned with whether conceivability is a guide to possibility, but we can use resources from his account to indicate how inconceivability might be a guide to impossibility. He takes the inconceivability of a proposition p for me to amount to my being unable to imagine any world that I do not take to falsify p. Suppose ‘p’ is the proposition that there exists a non-self-identical thing. It seems fairly clear that I can only imagine worlds in which every thing is self-identical, in which case these worlds falsify p. So p is inconceivable, and assuming (perhaps controversially) that inconceivability is a guide to impossibility,39 p is impossible. Given this account, we can see why our manoeuvre is not much help. For in appealing to the imagining or failing to imagine worlds in our explanation of modal knowledge, we must construe ‘world’ as ‘everything’, that is, as leaving nothing out. But this means that the paraphrase will not eliminate ‘nothing’ as a term of reference.40 What about the claim that ‘What is there besides self-identical beings?’ makes no sense? Once again, we must ask how we know that this question makes no sense. The question relies on the idea that there might somehow be a realm outside of all self-identical things such that it is either empty or has some things in it. But on this assumption there will be a portion of the actual case (i.e. that realm) such that this portion will not be in the extension of the predicate ‘is self-identical’. That is to say, there will be a thing such that that thing is not selfidentical, which is a contradiction. But this reply just returns us to the problem that arose before, as to how we know that this is a contradiction.41 What about trying another tack? Suppose we say that we can know that a non-self-identical thing cannot possibly exist in the actual world as the laws of logic that govern the actual world forbid it. This will just lead us back to the issue of how we know that a putative case is impossible. For we need some test to see if the laws of logic do indeed forbid the idea of a non-self-identical thing existing, and attempting to conceive of such a case seems to be that test. To put the same point a different way, we need to know that the laws of logic outline all the possible configurations of everything, where ‘everything’ here excludes nothing. Attempting to paraphrase away this use of nothing by saying instead that ‘It is not the case that there exists a thing such that that thing is not governed by the laws of logic’ will once again rely on us taking this case as representing ‘everything’, or, if we take the alternative route of saying that the idea of such a thing is contradictory, will rely on us explaining how we know this, which is problematic for the reasons outlined above.

Nothing Under the Microscope

73

The problems for the self-identity account do not end there, however. For, given that such an account purports to give a definition of an unrestricted thing, it must be possible to paraphrase other statements in which ‘thing’ occurs unrestrictedly. If this is not possible, then ‘nothing’ is sometimes a term of reference, and so this will vitiate our definition of ‘thing’ in terms of self-identity, as it will be claimed that nothing is self-identical, but is not a thing, and so selfidentity is not a sufficient condition for a thing. Now, take ‘There might have been nothing’, or ‘If the universe did not exist, nothing would exist’. If we suppose that it is possible to talk of things unrestrictedly, then we can talk of the absence of all of them (unless for some reason some of them exist necessarily – see Sections 3.9 and 7.2 below); equally if we can talk of the universe as the collection of all things, understood unrestrictedly, that actually exist, we can talk of its absence. But now we need an adequate paraphrase of these statements. Such statements rely on the possibility of statements like ‘Nothing exists’ being true, and so these must be paraphraseable in their turn, lest we fail to eliminate all apparently referential uses of ‘nothing’. (For those who, for some reason, do not think these statements rely on the possibility of other such statements, just consider those other statements in their own right: ‘Nothing exists’ and ‘If the universe does not exist, nothing exists’ seem perfectly comprehensible, if empirically false, statements, given the supposition that ‘thing’ can be used unrestrictedly.)42 How to paraphrase ‘Nothing exists’ on the self-identity account? The obvious paraphrase will be: ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is self-identical’ or, better, ‘That a thing, such that that thing is self-identical, exists is not the case’. This clearly is inadequate. For the paraphrase here clearly refers to a certain case and characterizes it. But then this case will either be self-identical, in which case the paraphrased statement ‘That a thing, such that that thing is selfidentical, exists is not the case’ will mean that something exists (by our proposed definition of ‘thing’), and so will not paraphrase ‘Nothing exists’, or it will not be self-identical, in which case there will be a thing which is not self-identical, and the self-identity criterion for thinghood will not be a necessary one. Moreover, in referring to a case, this case will need to cover everything, and exclude nothing, and so the paraphrase will not eliminate ‘nothing’. I will talk more about the modal aspects of attempts to capture ‘nothing’ in the next section. It is unsurprising, given the above, that many have wanted to see ‘thing’ as primitive or indefinable. So Roger Teichmann glosses a passage from A. N. Prior that begins ‘I do not think that any formal definition of “something” is

74

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

either necessary or possible’ as suggesting that ordinary language quantifiers are primitives.43 Although Timothy Williamson is willing to suggest both the susceptibility to reference and the capacity to be brought under a sortal as ways of elucidating the notion of ‘thing’, he prefaces these suggestions with the caution that they ‘constitute no attempt to define . . . “thing” in terms that are somehow more basic, because I doubt very much that any terms are more basic. Definitions must come to an end somewhere.’44 In some ways, this is perfectly sensible. But given the deep philosophical problems we seem to encounter in trying to understand nothing, where we seem to have no settled intuitions, such an act of faith is unlikely to be dialectically useful, even in an internal dialogue with oneself, in solving such problems, even if it might lead to fruitful technical results or methods. Perhaps if it is the case that the ideas of ‘nothing’, ‘thing’ and ‘everything’ are interdependent and we find it difficult to make sense of any of them, we should just reject these unrestricted notions. We might reject statements such as ‘Analysis deals with beings only – and nothing else’ as nonsensical. Some may be unenthused by this approach – such statements express propositions that many find attractive – but we must also consider whether having difficulty in making sense of something is sufficient indication that such a thing is nonsensical. The analyst or the Heideggerian or whoever may feel that they can make perfect sense of these terms, and that their critics (including myself) are simply being obtuse.

3.9  A modal account of nothing To support my earlier claim as regards nothing being a constantly reappearing problem, I would like to sketch an alternative account that an analyst might want to give; a modal account that draws on the language of possible worlds. A ‘possible world’ here just means a way the universe might be (the ontological status of possible worlds is contentious). Such a modal attempt to understand ‘nothing’ suggests that there is a possible world w such that w is empty; it contains ‘nothing’. So nothing would be understood in terms of possible world w. To be more specific (and more technical), we need to understand the sentence ‘Nothing exists’ in terms of possible world semantics. ‘Nothing exists’ is a sentence expressing the proposition that nothing exists, and the proposition expressed by a sentence is that sentence’s intension (i.e. its meaning).45 Now a

Nothing Under the Microscope

75

proposition, according to possible world semantics, is a function from worlds to truth values. What does this mean? Well, it means that the proposition is just that function that returns the truth value ‘true’ for every world with respect to which that sentence is true, and ‘false’ otherwise. So, given that we have identified the intension of our sentence ‘Nothing exists’ with a function, this function will be the rule that tells you that the sentence is true at worlds in which nothing exists, and false at those worlds in which it is not the case that nothing exists. (Classical logic does not allow for a non-empty domain, so this would have to be orchestrated within the variety of free logic known as ‘inclusive logic’, which does allow for these.) But what does it mean to say that a possible world is empty? One version is what E. J. Lowe refers to as ‘metaphysical nihilism’, the doctrine that it ‘could have been the case that there were no concrete objects at all’.46 Just a moment ago, I noted that the ontological status of possible worlds is contentious. There are a number of competing theories regarding that status, and some of them are more conducive to the possibility of metaphysical nihilism than others.47 For example, on a possibilist view like David Lewis’s modal realism, worlds are maximal mereological sums of spatio-temporally related objects. If a world is thus composed, then if one subtracts all the objects that compose it, the world disappears also.48 So what are we left with? Nothing! One might think that this is a particularly good way for the analyst to characterize ‘nothing’, but it will not be much use for the purposes of possible worlds semantics, as there will just be no world that returns the truth value ‘true’ for ‘Nothing exists’ on a possible world semantics that adheres to modal realism. My own intuition is that the analyst may be best off adopting what has been called ‘strict actualism’,49 but we shall not pursue this issue further here; instead, I will try to talk in general terms. Some have argued against metaphysical nihilism, most notably proponents of some kind of ontological argument for the existence of God (provided that the God thus construed is indeed a concrete and not an abstract object), and those who believe that the existence of some concrete object or other, if not a specific one, is necessary. If such arguments work, then it looks as though the analyst’s strategy founders; however, I propose to just grant metaphysical nihilism, for argument’s sake. Can the resultant possibility of an empty world w offer an adequate account of nothing? One problem is that such a world still contains abstract objects. Peter Van Inwagen may say that if every thing was an abstract object ‘there is an obviously and perfectly good sense in which there would be

76

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

nothing at all’,50 but it is not clear that this sense is what we want for a definition of nothing, or at least one that meets our intuitions.51 What sort of things are these abstract objects? Lowe defines them as ‘subjects only of tenselessly true predications’,52 and most philosophers regard some abstract objects (although not all, as some are contingent on concrete objects) as existent even in an empty world. Candidates include: ‘bare possibilities’,53 ‘numbers’,54 and a Platonic ‘Receptacle’.55 It looks a much tougher proposition to argue against necessary abstract objects, although that has not prevented discussion of the possibility in the literature. One route might be to claim that all abstract objects are dependent on concrete objects, and thus in a world with no concrete objects, there would be no abstract objects. But this runs up against the problem that it looks more plausible to reject the notion that there might be nothing abstract or concrete than to reject the existence of necessary truths. A better option might be to take up a fictionalist account of mathematical truths or other apparently necessary truths. But the most interesting possibility has been defended by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, who suggests that if we claim that, say, mathematical truths are necessarily true insofar as they could not be false in virtue of a mathematical falsity being true, this leaves open the possibility that there exists a world in which there are just no mathematical truths at all.56 Hence there are no necessarily true mathematical propositions to act as truthbearers and numbers do not need to exist necessarily to act as truthmakers for those propositions, and so neither of these are necessary abstract objects. Lowe has replied to this that he wants to say that truths obtain in every possible world, and that mathematical truths just are truthbearers.57 He accepts that if mathematical propositions are the (abstract and necessary) truthbearers then he has begged the question, but contends that he is merely interested in truths obtaining.58 He also has an argument to the effect that a world in which no truths obtain is ‘absurd’: if we suppose that statements are the only possible truthbearers, then the truth of this supposition would obtain in worlds which had no truthbearers, as it is a putatively necessary truth (he then moves to the conclusion that as truths obtain in every possible world, even ones without truthbearers, so do the abstract objects that act as truthmakers for them, in this case, numbers). But to me it still seems as if this reply begs the question. Why can we not say that this supposition is not true (or, indeed, false) in a world with no truthbearers, by point of fact that truths do not obtain in these worlds as there are no truthmakers in such worlds? To point, as Lowe does, to his supposition as

Nothing Under the Microscope

77

betokening a necessary truth imputes an intention to it that may not be present, and furthermore is question-begging, and the same problem occurs for claims that truths do obtain in all possible worlds – this is the very question at issue! Much the same point would serve as a response to the argument put forward by Efird and Stoneham59 where they suggest that if there were nothing, it would be true that there were nothing, but then there would be no truthmaker for that truth (for a truthmaker is something). Aside from any issues about why nothing cannot just be a truthmaker (the counters to which statement are almost certainly going to involve illicit conceptualization of nothing), the blunt reply is that if nothing exists, there are no truths, not even the truth that nothing exists, nor would there be the fact that nothing exists, as a fact has definite content, as it is a state of affairs, and where nothing exists there is no state of affairs (not even that one!).60 Would there be a truth that there would be no truths? No – for there are no truths! William Vallicella takes from this that if no determinate possibility would be actual were nothing to exist, then the thought of there being nothing at all lacks determinate content (and so much the worse for our application of possible world semantics). It would then follow that the thought of nothing is unthinkable.61 This is an interesting argument, and our response to it will depend on how we understand ‘unthinkable’ here. For the claim that no determinate possibility would be actual were nothing to exist itself determines nothing, and so illicitly conceptualizes it, so we cannot understand ‘unthinkable’ as growing from that sort of ground. However, we could understand ‘unthinkable’ as deriving from the fact that any attempt to specify a determinate possibility involving nothing will illicitly conceptualize it – I will return to this thought in Chapter 7. Just as I granted the weaker metaphysical nihilism concerning concrete objects, I propose we simply grant this strong metaphysical nihilism concerning both abstract and concrete objects. Can we educe an analytic account of nothing as empty world w construed according to strong metaphysical nihilism? I am still not sure. In talking about our feeling that an empty world might be more probable than any non-empty one, Van Inwagen suggests that this depends on a confused notion that there is ‘something that determines that There be nothing is the ‘default setting’ on the control-board of Reality’, but, he claims, ‘there could be no such thing, for nothing is outside Reality’.62 What is interesting here is that Van Inwagen is clearly using the word ‘nothing’ in two different ways. His first usage (italicized) suggests a relativized nothing: ‘There is nothing’, ‘Nothing is there’, which indicates a hidden negation. This is why the phrase ‘empty world’

78

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

is so apt; like an empty box, we are not dealing with ‘true’ nothing here.63 In this case the negation has to do with Reality, which is defined in terms of possible worlds: ‘logical space, or the set or class of all worlds, is the ensemble of all these maximally specific states [that is, ‘possible worlds’] that Reality could be in’.64 So when we say ‘There is nothing’ or ‘Nothing exists’ in the first sense, we are making a negation with regard to other possible states of Reality. But as we saw in the earlier section on a more simple analytic account of nothing, such a relativized understanding of nothing can be criticized. What the analyst really needs is an account of ‘nothing’ as Van Inwagen uses it in the second sense, when he claims that ‘nothing is outside Reality’. Of course, the consequent Heideggerian-style questioning: ‘How is it with this nothing?’ will invite an immediate reply, insofar as it could be claimed that it is easier to prove that it is nonsensical. For if we define ‘logical space’ as ‘the ensemble of all [possible worlds comprising] Reality’, then by definition talk of something outside of Reality is talk of something outside of logical space, something impossible, and as such is nonsensical.65 But this is a little quick. Suppose the analyst says that the laws of logic govern all sensible discourse, every possibility for a state of affairs that makes sense, and to talk of an outside of logical laws is hence nonsensical. We seem to be able to run an analogue of Rodriguez-Pererya’s argument in response.66 To claim an interest in the nothing outside the laws of logic is not to claim the existence of a state of affairs which breaks logical laws, because there are no logical laws for it to break, as nothing, not even logical laws, exists. The ready-made reply to this is that to postulate a ‘beyond’ to the laws of logic makes this ‘beyond’ an object of thought, and so places it under the governance of the laws of logic. But this beyond can precisely not be an object of thought, because this would make it something (although to say this is to find the capacity to reflexively apply the criticism, because it implies that one can know that nothing cannot be an object of thought, and thus characterizes nothing). Therefore, we cannot say that the word ‘nothing’ is nonsensical here because of what it means, because it has not been given a definite meaning, which incidentally, makes Van Inwagen’s (as a representative analyst) second statement problematic. This result may then involve the analyst in striving to find a different understanding of what ‘nonsense’ is, and this I will return to in Chapter 7, where I will discuss ‘substantial’ versus ‘austere’ understandings of nonsense (where the above delineates a ‘substantial’ view of nonsense). For the moment, suffice to say that modal accounts of nothing involve a contradictory and illicit characterization

Nothing Under the Microscope

79

of nothing like the previous analytic account, and can only be held if one is willing to beg the question. So the problem of a contradiction attaching to any putative analytic account of ‘nothing’ is not one that I think is susceptible to solution. But neither do I think that the analyst at this stage should worry unduly, for a number of reasons. First, it remains to be seen whether problems associated with ‘nothing’ in analytic accounts go on to vitiate analytic accounts of negation. Secondly, we noted that the analytic counter, while coming from a source that cannot provide a consistent alternative theory of ‘nothing’, may itself locate a contradiction in the Heideggerian theory. If this theory, and other theories of ‘nothing’, are shown to be similarly in want of consistency, there is no logical reason to give up a general analytic explanatory framework in favour of them. Thirdly and most importantly, the analyst is quite free to claim that the criticism I have advanced against the analytic account does not itself escape the self-contradictions inherent in dealing with the term ‘nothing’. For to claim that the analyst’s prior understanding of ‘nothing’ utilized in forming the objection is illicit, I have to make exactly the same move that the analyst does in assessing the Heideggerian account. That is, I have to compare this prior illicit analytic understanding of ‘nothing’ with a prior understanding of my own, which will in turn be susceptible to criticisms of contradiction. The intuitive conclusion to this might be that an infinite regress has resulted. However, given that the operations involved in explaining the term ‘infinite’ may well necessitate invoking the notion of ‘nothing’, I should like to suspend speculation for the moment and return to this issue in Chapter 6 (if only briefly).

3.10  An intuitive approach to nothing I would like now to turn to an attempt to understand ‘nothing’ by Stanley Rosen that takes place within his acute awareness of the limitations of purely analytic methodology. The context of Rosen’s attempt is somewhat complex and I will not be able to treat it exhaustively here, but I hope at least to sketch the salient points. The most important of these is the part that intuition plays in Rosen’s account, which he returns to a more specific classical role. Although a proponent of analytic thinking where appropriate, he feels that analysts have so admired this

80

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

tool that they use it to circumscribe the world, an overreaching which suppresses other, equally important, aspects of thought. One of these is synthetic thinking, whereby we sum parts into wholes. But another, and the most important, because most fundamental, is intuition, whereby we get hold of things in the first place. Analysis allows us to take things apart, breaking them down into components, which themselves are other things. Synthesis allows us to put things together, to make further, more complex things. But how do we grasp things at all? By an act of intellectual intuition. Intuition allows thought to be more than assembling and disassembling different permutations of possibilia. Other roles for intuition include grasping the point of an analysis, and so being able to see when an analysis is finished (for an analysis is an application of rules, and there are no rules for an application of rules, on pain of regress), and grasping the form, the essential properties, of that which we are analysing (that is to say, grasping the form’s non-formal significance). Now, Rosen’s central objection to analytic accounts of nothing is that these transform nothing into a concept, and a concept is something, not nothing. To take a shortcut, the analyst wants to say that we cannot think nothing (as this would embroil us in the problems of how we can refer to or think about that which does not exist), and so replaces it with a concept which refers to something (like the empty set or somesuch). However, Rosen rightly observes that in order to understand the command not to think nothing, we have to understand what it is to think nothing. And this understanding is different from understanding some concept of nothing, as nothing, when used as a concept, appears to refer to something (a concept being, as it is, sensitive to a formal structure), but in this case of nothing there is nothing to which we can refer. But if this is the case, we have to understand what it is to think nothing, without having any conceptual understanding of nothing. And this is one function of intuition; we find ourselves faced with the illegitimacy of comprehensive doctrines of reference when we consider nothing, which cannot be referred to in the traditional sense, and so we must acknowledge that our notion of nothing is delivered by intuition.67 Now, for Rosen, a notion is different from a concept – the latter can be sharply defined, with a criterion given for its extension, but the former is not determinate in this manner. Intuition and its deliverances are amenable to meaningful talk (which is hence wider than conceptual construction), up to a point. But ultimately there will always be a kernel that will be unavailable to discursive talk and non-circular rational reconstruction, because all such explanations are of something, are rooted in some kind of

Nothing Under the Microscope

81

formal structure. But no form corresponds to pure absence or nothing, which makes the understanding of nothing the extreme case of intuition (equally no form corresponds to the intuited non-formal significance of a form, etc.). Given this caveat, let us see what Rosen does feel permitted to say, about the notion of nothing and our manner of intuiting it. Rosen doubts that anyone has described our direct experience of thinking better than Aristotle when he says that in thinking we somehow become the thing that we think. Rosen glosses this as meaning that ‘when we think something, our intellectual capacity actualises as the thinkable form of the thing in question’.68 However, he backs off from this by saying that ultimately, no-one can provide a discursive account of how this mechanism operates. Nevertheless, there are hints as to how it applies to thinking nothing: ‘If our intellect becomes nothing at all, and if it is possible to think this emptiness . . . by virtue of the very nature of the intellect as that which thinks, then it is possible to account for how we think about nothing’.69 It is in this manner that we managed to distinguish the total absence of reference from a collective representation of everything that we can refer to, and thus attain the notion of nothing.

3.11  Assessing intuition I like much of Rosen’s attempt to bring to our awareness the role intuition plays in philosophy with respect to seeing the point of an analysis, or to grasping form. But I think there are problems applying his framework to questions concerning an account of nothing. One criticism that we cannot aim at Rosen’s account is that it illicitly predicates something of nothing, as predication is part of conceptual thinking, and our intuition of nothing is not conceptual, but notional. However, as we have seen, Rosen still wants to be able to speak about intuition and the mental contents that it furnishes us with, at least to an extent. This is where our initial criticism can be redirected. For, although it may be true that we cannot frame our criticism in the precise formal terms that require concepts, it nevertheless seems to arise again at the deeper notional level (there are shades of Heidegger’s disagreement with the analysts here). A notion may be less determinate than a concept, and may not be able to be sharply defined, but the fact that Rosen thinks that we can talk about it to some degree suggests that there is some degree of determinacy involved, and this is all we need to run our objection at a deeper level.

82

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

We must be able to distinguish an intuition of nothing that provides us with a notion from other notions delivered by intuition – such as form or unity – and we must be able to distinguish the intuition of nothing from just having no intuition at all. Now, these may not be distinguishable using predicates and concepts, but they have to be distinguishable in some way, or Rosen’s framework is meaningless. He may say that he cannot give a discursive account of intuition or its deliverances, but he has to be giving some sort of account. We can then go on to say that we cannot distinguish notions from each other by means of predicates, as these are only appropriate for conceptual thought, but that there must be some features in virtue of which they are distinguished, and that Rosen’s talk of nothing will be making use of these features. But surely nothing cannot have any features, distinguishing or otherwise? In fact, Rosen’s situation is rather worse than this. For his claim that the content of intuition cannot be discussed discursively is itself a discursive statement about the content of intuition.70 Hence, Rosen’s account seems inadequate to cover all our intuitions concerning nothing. To stick with intuition for a moment, Rosen’s belief that we intuit nothing is based on two observations: first, we must understand nothing in order to understand the command not to think it, and secondly, we manage to talk about nothing all the time in ordinary discourse. With regard to this second observation, Rosen’s examples are statements we make like: ‘Where did you go?’ ‘Nowhere’, ‘What did you do?’ ‘Nothing’. I would agree that we understand what these statements mean when we ordinarily use them, but that this is because they concern the contextual use of ‘nothing’. When I say ‘I did nothing’, I just mean ‘I did nothing in particular’, although I may have been doing all sorts of things, such as walking, thinking, and so on. However, it seems to me that our non-contextual use of ‘nothing’ comes with a set of problems about how we can use it in ordinary discourse; it is not uncontroversial in the way that these contextual uses are. If I say: ‘Maybe there had been nothing at all’, immediately questions will arise: ‘Is empty space something?’, ‘Can I imagine absolutely nothing?’, ‘Can I say nothing exists?’ Rosen says that there may be metaphysical ordinary uses: ‘What is on the other side of the universe?’ ‘Nothing’ but this seems to be contextual also – surely we can answer: ‘Empty space’? ‘What is on the outside of the universe?’ ‘Nothing’, is a metaphysical and non-contextual use, but then is just as confusing as our prior example of non-contextual use. The confusion may be masked by appealing implicitly to a scientific understanding of ‘universe’ rather than a metaphysical one, as ‘universe’ in the latter sense will equate to ‘everything’ in a non-contextual sense, which will problematize

Nothing Under the Microscope

83

both the question and the answer, revealing the confusion. It seems to me that any intuition we have of the non-contextual nothing involves a sense of ambivalence – perhaps we have partial or conflicting intuitions, or vacillating ones, or intuition of a contradictory object. As to the first observation, it is not clear that understanding the command not to think nothing forces us to accept that we intuit nothing. For the command must be addressed to someone (at least, historically) and such a person may be quite happy to say that we can talk about nothing; they may reject the command. Now Rosen might join forces with the analyst and attempt to use their techniques to show such a person the folly of their ways, but if Rosen uses the analyst’s techniques, the target is liable to reject these as question-begging insofar as they illicitly characterize nothing just as much as the target is purported to do (indeed the target may not even admit that they themselves are so illicitly characterizing). However, if Rosen uses his own techniques he can scarcely use them to force the target to accept those techniques. How might Rosen respond to the line of criticism that I have outlined? Maybe he could say that the language I have used in designating distinguishing features and discussing intuition is too close to discursive language and thus inappropriate. He himself prefaces his discussion of how intuition works by saying that he cannot give a discursive account. However, the words he uses (and which I have been taking as a basis for my criticism) have to be in some way apt (as evidenced by his saying that Aristotle’s account is ‘better’ than others); for some words to be apt when describing nothing and less apt when describing form is enough for the ‘distinguishing features’ criticism to run, even if we need to translate this criticism into different words (or not put it into words at all?). An example: Rosen acknowledges that if thinking is uniformly becoming what one thinks then we may still believe that it is impossible to think nothing. His response to this is to say that this is an ‘illusion induced by allegiance to doctrines of reference’.71 Unfortunately he does not expand on this. But it does not seem that we need to be under the sway of any doctrine of reference to claim that if the intellect is to become nothing, then it cannot do any thinking. Rosen says that it is the nature of the intellect to think, but that nothing has no form (and so, presumably, no nature), so if the intellect becomes nothing it can have no nature by which it thinks, and so cannot think nothing. Perhaps Rosen will say that the relation of the intellect to that which it thinks is different, and that I have misinterpreted him, but his bind remains the same: to give his claims some degree of sense, even if not a fully discursive sense, while at the

84

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

same time avoiding that sense, once given, from allowing an opponent to object that his view of thought is either just another standard theory of reference or incoherently combines thinking and nothing. The other point Rosen could make would be to say that the notion of nothing is just furnished for us by intuition, and the fact that we may want to say that nothing has no distinguishing features is simply wrong – nothing is what is given to us in intuition, and that is that. Of course this takes the account out of the rational sphere. No reason is given as to why one aspect of our intuition is better than another’s, or, why one person’s assertion of intuition’s deliverances (that they are coherent) should be given more credit than someone else’s (that they are confused). Obviously, the assertion that we do not have straightforward intuitions regarding nothing will not faze someone like Rosen, who thinks that we do. Each view will beg the question against the other. And there are many more views that can be floated: that our apparent ‘un-straightforward’ intuitions need not be solved; or that we can solve them (certain types of analyst); or that we do not have intuitions regarding nothing at all (reject Rosen’s framework); or that these intuitions are the beginning of a work towards understanding nothing (certain types of Wittgensteinianism); or maybe something else altogether. This concludes our discussion of some of the more mainstream analytic attempts to capture the notion of ‘nothing’. However, alternative analytic frameworks are available, some of them in many ways specifically designed to circumvent dogged philosophical problems. In the next chapter, I will examine one of these frameworks: the ‘dialetheism’ of Graham Priest.

4

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. Pascal (Pensées, 384)

4.1  Dialetheism So far, I have striven to indicate that attempts to understand ‘nothing’ within an analytic framework inevitably involve a contradiction. Given that the typical purpose of analysis is to discern whether the object of analysis is inconsistent, and then to remove the inconsistency, we might be tempted to think that we have gone as far as analysis can take us. This would be premature however; some methods of analysis are prepared to accept certain types of inconsistency, which would allow us to give an account of how we can understand ‘nothing’, even though this understanding appears to result in the requirement to accept one or more contradictions. One such method of analysis would be an analytic framework incorporating dialetheism: the view that some contradictions are true. Although the dialetheist claim is a seemingly straightforward statement, it calls for considerable work to indicate why such a counter-intuitive position should not just be ruled out as unacceptable without further ado. I have no particular stake in defending dialetheism, but recognize that due to certain entrenched positions in philosophical logic, it is a prima facie implausible claim. An examination of its credibility will be likely to cover useful exegetical ground concerning the alternative framework of philosophical logic that it relies upon. It is to this task that we shall now turn.

86

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

4.2  Paraconsistency and explosion (ex contradictione quodlibet) Even dialetheists agree that ‘. . . one might think, it seems downright irrational to accept that the intersection of truth and falsity is non-empty – . . . that there are “true contradictions” . . .’.1 But this reaction, together with the upholding of the universal applicability of the law of non-contradiction, is seen as dogmatic in the absence of argumentation for it. Furthermore, J. C. Beall takes the widespread tendency to be sceptical about dialetheic claims to be reduced by the fact that ‘nothing in dialetheism requires the existence of observable contradictions – . . . one might . . . restrict dialetheism to the purely semantic fragment of our language’.2 Observable contradictions aside, it may be felt that the criticism of the law of non-contradiction on the basis that it is a dogma is ill-founded, because there do seem to be some arguments that tell against true contradictions and thus offer at least implicit support for the law of non-contradiction – the most wellknown being the so-called ‘independent argument’. This is the argument to the conclusion that contradictions entail everything, so if a contradiction is true, then everything is true – an ostensibly unattractive doctrine known as ‘trivialism’. The argument runs as follows:

(5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Assume the truth of a contradiction: x ∧ ¬ x By (5) and Simplification (or Conjunction Elimination), x is true. By (6) and Addition (or Disjunction Introduction), x ∨ y is true. By (5) and Simplification (or Conjunction Elimination), ¬ x is true. But by (7), (8) and Disjunctive Syllogism, y is true.

⊥

This can be repeated to prove the truth of any arbitrary candidate for ‘y’ – this is known as the principle of explosion (formally: (x, ¬ x) y, formed by Conditional Proof from the above argument)3 because the truth of a contradiction causes the number of theorems in a system to ‘explode’. Earlier I distinguished between our logical intuitions and formalized systems based on them, claiming that the multiplicity of formalizations suggests that there are certain principles which find their way into formalized systems that are susceptible to criticism, where that criticism can still align itself with reasoning drawn from mutual logical intuitions. Priest would agree: ‘. . . with logic, one needs to distinguish between . . . the structure of norms that govern valid/good reasoning, which is the object of study, and our logical theory, which tries to give

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

87

a theoretical account of this phenomenon’.4 While the principle of explosion holds for classical logic (it was incorporated as part of Boolean negation) of the sort that Carnap uses, and also holds for intuitionistic logic (which offers a different account of negation but is still explosive), it does not hold for paraconsistent logics. In fact, paraconsistent logics, ‘by definition, are not explosive’.5 Given that it is not my present intention to provide an exhaustive defence of dialetheism, I do not propose to outline any model-theoretic accounts of sample paraconsistent logics, as these can be found in the extensive literature on the subject.6 As regards the proof-theoretic account above, dialetheists and other proponents of paraconsistent logics are likely to dispute step (9) by claiming that disjunctive syllogism does not hold when applied to inconsistent situations (they may reject reductio ad absurdum for similar reasons). So Priest says of his modeltheoretic account of paraconsistent logic: ‘It is exactly the same as classical logic, except that one does not make the assumption, usually packed into textbooks of logic without comment, that truth and falsity in an interpretation are exclusive and exhaustive.’7 Of course, it is open to non-paraconsistent logicians at this point to claim that paraconsistent logic here makes an assumption of its own, namely that truth and falsity in an interpretation are not exclusive and exhaustive. David Lewis: ‘My feeling is that this debate [concerning contradictions] instantly reaches deadlock, there’s really nothing much to say about it.’8 But this impasse, like the impasse earlier described between Carnap and Heidegger, should indicate the requirement to cast about for principles held in common as a basis for deciding the dispute.9 In the face of this impasse, the paraconsistent logician, as a bridge-building gesture, may agree that paraconsistent models are useful for performing certain tasks but ultimately do not represent a real possibility, or if they do represent a real possibility, such a possibility is not instantiated. This will avoid the specifically dialetheist claim that there are true contradictions, that inconsistent situations are instantiated (as, after all, dialetheism is but one type of paraconsistent logic). However, it is dialetheism specifically that interests me here, and this incorporates the claim that whichever model-theoretic account of paraconsistent logic the dialetheist subscribes to does accurately describe the world. Given that the independent argument fails, as the dialetheist will accuse the application of disjunctive syllogism as being question-begging, we are now in the position to consider alternative arguments against dialetheism. As these will not be formal (the independent argument is the only formal argument that seems common against dialetheism, for the aforementioned reason that a

88

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

formal argument will require assent to principles within a given system, and as the dialetheist is advancing a competing system, formal arguments are almost certain to be guilty of question-begging), they are likely to target the other part of the dialetheist’s claim – that contradictions can be true. They will also have to utilize principles that dialetheism does not call into question, in order to avoid the possibility of immediate impasse.

4.3  True contradictions? If we are bracketing the formal questions that surround whether there can be true contradictions, then we must look at more substantive arguments as to whether contradictions could actually be instantiated; in short, we must assess the philosophical validity of the law of non-contradiction qua universally applicable law of logic. As the end of the last section indicated, this will necessitate some kind of non-formal argument for the law of non-contradiction, to avoid a stalemate in which each side accuses the other of question-begging. But because the law of non-contradiction is so often assumed to be obvious, the literature defending it is limited. Once again, because I have no explicit interest in a defence or an attack on dialetheism in and of itself, I will give a slightly abbreviated discussion and consider just three sample defences of the law of non-contradiction. What I find most interesting about these defences, and the counters that Priest offers to them, is not whether they work, but how frequently they rely on the use of terms like ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’. The first argument is that contradictions ‘have no content, no meaning. If so, then, a fortiori, they have no true content: contradictions cannot be true’.10 Priest suggests that this argument in support of the law of non-contradiction cannot be advanced by supporters of classical logic as they claim contradictions do not entail nothing, rather they entail everything. So, only those philosophers who wish to support the law of non-contradiction but are not wedded to classical logic can make this objection. But wait; given what we have said previously about the terms ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’, we might claim that Priest is marking a dubious distinction here (albeit a distinction that those he is arguing against may be happy, for reasons of their own, to accept), or at least assuming one without argument. For we have seen that, given that the terms ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ seem to be reliant on one another for their elucidation, and the understanding of either one seems to be a vexed issue, it is not even clear that they can be satisfactorily distinguished (just as there is a strand in Heidegger’s

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

89

thought that would wish to identify ‘Being’ and ‘nothing’). The purpose of our foray into dialetheism was to find some way of elucidating these opaque concepts, but here we see Priest already utilizing a distinction to which it is not yet clear he has any right. Fortunately for dialetheism, this particular problem is of limited impact, as Priest’s reply against this argument for the law of noncontradiction is neutral between whether one takes contradictions to entail everything or nothing. Rather, he claims that they entail something, and as such, they have some definite meaning, and this is based on the observation that if ‘contradictions had no content, there would be nothing to disagree with when someone uttered one, which there (usually) is’.11 If contradictions had no meaning whatsoever, we could not understand a person who uttered one as producing a contradiction, and so could not evaluate it as false. Rosen also suggests that there must be some sort of sense to the notion of a contradiction in order to reject certain characteristics pertaining to it (imaginability for one): I agree that a round square is a self-contradiction, unimaginable and unconstructible, and therefore ‘thinkable’ only in an extremely tenuous sense. Nevertheless I contend that I am thinking it in some tenuous sense precisely because I am able to deny not merely that round squares exist but that they are even imaginable. The attempt to imagine a round square is intelligible in a way that disappears if I am told that I am not thinking about round squares at all, but about something else, say, an imaginary conflation of squares and circles.12

There is a general point to be made here about how contradiction operates,13 but I want to delay this until we have looked at a second possible defence of the law of non-contradiction, and how Priest counters it. This argument appeals to the notion that something is meaningful only if it excludes something else (a principle we saw in action in the previous chapter, when, for a concept to be meaningful, it was required to be applicable to some objects and not to others); a principle Priest terms ‘omnis determino est negatio . . . [which can be glossed as:] a claim that rules out nothing, says nothing’.14 Contradictions rule out nothing; x does not rule out ¬ x if we reject the law of non-contradiction. Thus, if contradictions are true, nothing is meaningful. Priest discerns two answers to this. The one he considers ‘more fundamental’ exhibits the same flaw as the distinction between contradictions entailing ‘everything’ and contradictions entailing ‘nothing’ above. For he wants to dismiss omnis determinatio est negatio, but the only example he offers of a proposition that is not subject to this principle is: ‘Everything is true’. He claims that this ‘rules nothing out: it entails everything. Yet it is quite meaningful’.15 But as we

90

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

have seen, the problems concerning the elucidation of ‘nothing’ as a concept, and thus also ‘everything’ as a concept, make the meaningfulness of Priest’s sample proposition dubious (unless we take the meaning of ‘everything’ very loosely – but then any sufficient loosening of this statement would appear to lead to it excluding something). The only response Priest offers to this doubt is to ask us to consider the negation of ‘Everything is true’, namely ‘Something is not true’. This statement is claimed to be clearly true and so meaningful – and thus its negation must be meaningful also. But we could equally say that the meaninglessness of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ has the potential to vitiate the meaningfulness of terms like ‘something’ (see Section 3.8). Fortunately for Priest, this problem only applies to his more ‘fundamental’ answer. His superficial one is more successful, replying that this second defence of the law of non-contradiction seems to take dialetheism as claiming that all contradictions are true, whereas it actually only wants to claim that some are, in certain special cases. So the acceptance of true contradictions is not a universal doctrine that rules nothing out; rather, it accepts some contradictions that only fail to rule out their specific negations. There are many further negations that are ruled out by non-contradictions. Working through these two possible defences and the responses to them seems to furnish us with interesting information regarding how contradictions operate. For what is common to both responses is Priest’s desire to indicate that dialetheism does not require the universal failure of the law of non-contradiction. However, Priest’s assumptions about the meaningfulness of ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ (as exemplified in his ‘fundamental’ objection to the second argument) arguably lead him to overcomplicate the operation of contradiction. We can synthesize our understanding of contradiction operation if we take an alternative methodology of identifying ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’. Assuming this, we can agree that to try to put the dialetheic claim into a classical logical framework will cause the number of theorems in the system to explode, leading to trivialism. Because the system will then contain every possible theorem as true it will include the conjunction of mutually exclusive theorems, and thus all contradictions. Countenancing one contradiction can thus be seen to explode out to countenancing all contradictions. But if trivialism is the case and all (and not just some) contradictions are true, then by omnis determinatio est negatio they will not rule out anything. If we take this to mean that the contradictions countenanced by dialetheism have no meaning, then we are left with the second argument for the law of non-contradiction. Inverting this argument, we have the claim that contradictions have no meaning, and thus a fortiori no true

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

91

content – the first argument for the law of non-contradiction, complete with its tacit assumption (that countenancing a contradiction will lead via explosion to trivialism and its attendant loss of meaning through omnis determinatio est negatio). It is now easy to see what is going on. All the arguments for the law of noncontradiction require the tacit assumption of explosion (even, pace Priest, the first, which relies on explosion to claim that a given contradiction has no meaning) and thus the transformation of the dialetheic claim into a claim about the universal failure of the law of non-contradiction. But as we saw from the formal arguments in the previous section, the dialetheist is happy to reject the principle of explosion. What saves the dialetheic claim is what is distinctive about it: that there can be some true contradictions, but that this does not mean that all contradictions need be true. What this prevents is the proliferation of true theorems inside the system or logical framework (i.e. by explosion) until the framework becomes senseless by not excluding anything, or to put it another way, by excluding nothing. So a certain contradiction can crop up in the framework, and it can be a meaningful part of that framework. But its meaningfulness is contingent on the fact that the framework is not universally contradictory. Whereas a given statement (or proposition, or whatever) can rely for its meaningfulness on excluding its contradictory, a contradiction (obviously) cannot do this. It must rely on deriving the meaningfulness of its two contradictory sub-statements, in virtue of each of those sub-statements excluding everything that they should to be meaningful except their ‘direct’ contradictory. Now, specifying a direct contradictory is always going to be a problem, not least due to the likelihood of vague predicates being used. But it is not particularly significant here whether there is a contradictory sub-statement that is most apt out of a number of similarly suitable candidates. All that is required is that, aside from an agreed contradictory sub-statement of an initial sub-statement, there are further statements, the negation of which will give some indication of the nature of the initial sub-statement.16 Obviously, these further statements cannot each form part of a true contradictory conjunction with the initial substatement, or there will be no way of meaningfully specifying what that initial sub-statement is. It is this fact that is so important in indicating the requirement to eschew the universal acceptance of the failure of the law of non-contradiction. However, this requirement, that for a given sub-statement of a contradiction there needs to be some statements that exclude it, even if its contradictory does not, nevertheless bodes ill for the utility of dialetheism, and contradictions in general, for providing an understanding of ‘nothing’.

92

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

4.4  Motivating dialetheism There is a third argument for, and response to, the law of non-contradiction that I would like to consider, but less as an assessment of the validity of dialetheism and more as an assessment of what motivates dialetheism. The preceding section indicates that allegedly more substantive arguments for the law of non-contradiction fall back on formal considerations (i.e. the principle of explosion), and the section before that indicates the stalemate that results from differing views on these formal considerations. If this is the case, then dialetheism is left with a problem – how we are to motivate it. Given the impasse between two formalizations, classical and paraconsistent-dialetheic, why should we choose the latter? To find out, let us run the aforementioned third argument. The argument is a simple inductive one to the effect that as we ‘review the kinds  of situations that we witness, very few of them would seem to be contradictory’,17 if any at all. So, by induction (and assuming that it is possible for induction to justify a priori principles) no contradictions are true. But here dialetheists will want to point to certain examples, such as out-and-out paradoxes and spectra, which provide inductive evidence for true contradictions, and, implicitly, motivate dialetheism. The claim is that accepting dialetheism as a reaction to these examples is rationally more acceptable than alternative approaches which attempt to account for these examples while maintaining consistency. I only want to take the briefest look at the alleged examples, which appear to fall into two classes18 – semantic paradoxes and borderline cases (sorites paradoxes). An example of a semantic paradox would be the Liar Paradox: consider the sentence ‘This sentence is false’. Is it true or false? If it is true, then it is false, and the converse is the case. So the sentence is true if and only if it is false, and because it must be one or the other, it is both. An example of the sorites paradox would be the argument that because one grain of sand is not a heap and because the addition of one grain cannot make the difference between not being a heap and being a heap (for any number n, if n grains is not a heap then neither is n  1 grains), then no matter what number n you choose, n grains will not constitute a heap. But presumably you can have heaps of sand. With regard to a version of the sorites, Priest’s most succinct dialetheic statement is: ‘Maybe Socrates is both sitting and not sitting sometimes: at the instant he rises. This, being instantaneous, is not something we observe. We can tell it to

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

93

be so only by a-priori analysis’.19 As for the semantic paradox, the dialetheist claim is that the peculiarly persistent nature of paradoxes like the Liar, despite convoluted and ingenious attempts to solve it, indicates that perhaps such paradoxes just are insoluble. If this is so, it may seem more rational to adhere to a simple framework that accepts some inconsistencies, rather than a tortuous yet allegedly consistent one that either holds the paradoxes in an unsatisfactory abeyance until something can be done about them, or attempts to explain them away in a fashion that some consider dubious. This is really the heart of what motivates the dialetheist claim, and what makes it attractive. We have seen how dialetheists may wish to reduce the perceived price of the doctrine, by claiming that only some inconsistencies need to be countenanced, and that these may only occur in limited areas (such as restricting it to the semantic fragment of our language). What dialetheism can offer in exchange for this is the greater simplicity of a framework that need not develop ways round these inconsistencies.

4.5  Dialetheism and nothing I take the foregoing material on dialetheism to have at least explained something of what its claim that there are true contradictions actually means, and moreover, to have detailed some of its possible applications and the motivations for embracing it. Given this, it is time to turn to the reason for considering dialetheism in the first place – its possible application in providing a framework in which ‘nothing’ can be rationally understood. For this it will be helpful to turn to another, related area of Priest’s work: his examination of conceptual limits in Beyond the Limits of Thought. Of such limits he says: Limits of this kind provide boundaries beyond which certain conceptual processes (describing, knowing, iterating, etc.) cannot go . . . such limits are dialetheic; that is . . . they are the subject, or locus of true contradictions. The contradiction, in each case, is simply to the effect that the conceptual processes in question do cross these boundaries.20

Priest’s arguments to this effect state that for a given totality (of subjects that a given conceptual capacity can apply to) certain operations can generate an object that is both within the totality (Closure) and without it (Transcendence) – what

94

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

he calls the ‘Inclosure Schema’. These operations/arguments will generally ‘use some form of self-reference’21 and so seem to place the paradoxes associated with conceptual limits in the same class as semantic paradoxes, which also appear to derive from the application of self-reference (the Liar Sentence’s application to itself, for example). The reader may have already noted that paradoxes of self-reference attached to specific conceptual categories have been attendant on a number of the various accounts and discussions of ‘nothing’ that we have examined. Heidegger’s initial criticism of science having ‘recourse to what it rejects’ in excluding ‘nothing’ could be considered a self-referential paradox pertaining to expression (i.e. what we can say), whereas my observation on the paradoxical nature of attributing a certain line of thought to the Derrida in Chapter 2 indicates a self-referential paradox pertaining to conception (i.e. what we can think) – although such moves with regard to Derrida are always subject to complication. Priest, pushing a dialetheic line, might suggest that these self-referential paradoxes are insoluble, and that the best reaction in the face of them is to accept the contradictions that they indicate. So, presumably, we can provide an account that can accommodate the contradictions that plague the preceding accounts of ‘nothing’, and so ‘nothing’ can find a harmless place within the dialetheic framework. I think that one of the advantages that Priest would see in this approach is that accepting the contradictions does not ‘solve’ these paradoxes, in the way that putative solutions offered within consistency-preserving frameworks seek to do. It does not let us feel that the problems with ‘nothing’ have been ironed out; rather, it suggests that we just need to accept those problems. This seems an effective technique, as someone who wishes to reject the dialetheist’s account cannot use the usual paradoxes that derive from trying to provide an account of ‘nothing’, as these just are the substance of such an account. This can then be considered analogous to the treatment of the paradoxes related to infinity: ‘[P]aradoxical objects [e.g. the set of natural numbers, which can be proven to be the same size as the set of even numbers] became paradigms of the behaviour of infinities, their paradoxical properties being, indeed, a definition of infinity’.22 The manipulation of infinity in mathematics arguably does not relieve our sense of the paradoxes pertaining to the concept ‘infinite’, but it does, for practical purposes, relegate the use of the paradoxical concept to a certain place in a framework in order to achieve certain ends. Priest believes that, in general, the inconsistent can be treated in the same way, and possibly one of the ends to be achieved is an account of ‘nothing’.

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

95

4.6  Priest on Heidegger Priest has applied his dialetheic methodology to certain themes in the thought of several historical philosophers, including Heidegger and his dealings with the nothing. This is marginally less helpful than it might appear as Priest tends to focus more on the paradoxes of expressibility that arise from Heidegger’s attempts to speak about ‘nothing’ and ‘Being’ than the ontological paradox that seems to be associated with ‘nothing’. Making this sort of distinction – between what the role is that ‘nothing’ plays in our language, and what, if anything, is going on regarding nothing in reality – is contentious as it cuts across a number of on-going disputes as to the relation (if any) between language and reality. I am disinclined to make any assumptions here. Priest adopts a flexible position, claiming to be neutral between ‘metaphysical dialetheism’ (the view that there are things in the world that are actually inconsistent) and ‘semantic dialetheism’ (the view that the world is consistent, and inconsistencies arise from the way that language relates to the world).23 Indeed he seeks to problematize this distinction. However, when referring to the paradoxes of expression that Heidegger involves himself with, Priest is happy to say that these occur ‘not because of the nature of what is doing the expressing, language, but because of what is being expressed about’.24 Discussing Nagarjuna, in whose work Priest discerns a paradox of expression and an ontological paradox which ‘underlies this’,25 he claims that ‘[t]he paradox of language is . . . grounded in the contradictory nature of reality itself ’.26 The context here is slightly different; the ontological paradox concerns ‘emptiness’ (in a technical sense) rather than nothing. But, given that Priest says that for ‘both Heidegger and Nagarjuna, what it is to be, in some most fundamental sense, is contradictory’ in his section on how paradoxes in reality may ground paradoxes of language, it seems plausible that he thinks we can educe an ontological paradox concerning ‘nothing’. Note that Priest himself never does this, nor does he claim that dialetheism is a way of solving the problems associated with trying to understand ‘nothing’. I am merely extrapolating to see whether dialetheic techniques can solve these problems. However, letting Priest set the agenda for how reality relates to dialetheism may rankle with a ‘semantic dialetheist’ who sees Priest as a ‘metaphysical dialetheist’. I do not see this as an insurmountable problem. Both positions require some prior view of how language relates to reality (even if it is merely a denial that there is any further reality for language to relate to). Given that both of these versions of dialetheism are trying to elucidate

96

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

precisely the issue of what it is to exist or not exist (which covers these various claims about reality), it would be partisan to come down on one side or the other.27 With this in mind, although I take my lead from Priest, the subsequent evaluation will be sufficiently neutral to apply to theories that differ from his interpretation of dialetheism in this context, or at the very least be such that analogues can be constructed for those interpretations. The most obvious way to proceed now would be to take Priest’s Inclosure Schema and see where nothing fitted into it. I am wary of this approach. In constructing the Inclosure Schema Priest makes use of some technical machinery, such as sets, diagonalization and the domain principle. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but it might be observed that the previous impasses in analysing ‘nothing’ derived from the fact that granting a framework its own terminology to express its analysis tended to beg the question against any possible criticisms of that framework. However, it would be equally unfair to reject the terminology, as that would merely invert the bias. The solution previously was to join the debate at a level where both parties, proponents and critics, could be happy with the terminology used.28 With that in mind, we can bracket how nothing fits into the Inclosure Schema (returning to it in a diagnostic process if we perceive something wrong with the dialetheic analysis) and move straight to a consideration of the resultant putative dialetheist claim about nothing. Given the dialetheic methodology outlined so far, a dialetheist interpretation of the ontological status of nothing is that it is an object that is generated by certain operations on a totality,29 which cause it to fall both within and without that totality. Those earlier attempts to understand nothing we have seen have led us into contradiction; nothing appears to be both something and not something, to both exist and not exist. Thus, the totality in question that nothing falls both inside and outside is the totality of all existing (some)things. Hence, the dialetheic claim will be that nothing is both an existing thing and not an existing thing (I use ‘thing’ here as a convenient term that implies maximum generality; furthermore, I am overlooking Meinongianism, and so the possibility of nonexistent things), and that although this may be a contradiction, this contradiction is true. Furthermore, the dialetheist can claim that this position is simpler than trying to develop a consistent framework that deals with the paradoxes surrounding ‘nothing’, and that accepting the inconsistency of nothing nullifies much of its perceived perniciousness. There are a number of different ways to state the dialetheist’s final judgement on nothing: ‘Nothing is a thing and nothing is not a thing’, ‘Nothing is something and nothing is nothing’, ‘Nothing is an existent and nothing is not an existent’

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

97

(again, where this last statement overlooks Meinongianism). However, what is most important to understand, as far as dialetheism is concerned, is that any formulation must actually be a contradiction. Take the formulation ‘Nothing is a thing and nothing is not a thing’. It would be a mistake to try to construe this as saying that, for one sense of ‘thing’, nothing is a thing, but for a different sense, it is not. This is the sort of line that might be run for negative existentials, as they apply to, say, fictional objects. Such a claim was dealt with in Section 3.3, but in any case, we cannot make it here, as it is an example of what Priest terms ‘parameterization’. I will not enter into detailed discussion of this notion; Priest outlines it as a way of disposing of contradictions where one can take an object O that appears to both have and lack a property P (a contradiction), and then distinguish two respects in which an O can have (or lack) P, and go on to claim that O has P in one respect and lacks it in the other (not a contradiction). The only important thing to draw from this is that it is a way of avoiding contradictions, and so cannot be interpreted as part of a dialetheist account, which relies on embracing them. No matter what formulation of the ontological paradox of nothing is used, it must be a genuine contradiction.

4.7  Problems Ultimately, the precise phrasing of the dialetheist’s claim is irrelevant, provided that the claim is both a contradiction, and meant to deal with nothing. For there is a general argument that can be advanced against any such claim to understand nothing.30 Very simply, it can be put like this: if we claim that nothing ‘is both something and nothing’ then the criticism can be made that nothing cannot play a part in this elucidation of nothing, as any claim that it can will involve ascribing some properties or qualities to it, and thus transform it into something. Arguably, an understanding of nothing that is faithful to the desire not to reify it will not feature nothing as an object of thought at all.31 If this is the case, the dialetheist claim will reduce to understanding nothing as something insofar as this is the only remaining ‘conjunct’ of the contradiction (or possibly both something and something, which will reduce to the former claim as two somethings together are still something), and thus equate to the claims made by advocates of a consistent framework. That is a generalized form of the criticism, which seeks to avoid the use of any specific machinery and appeal just to logical intuitions. In characterizing the nature of a contradiction, Priest says: ‘the . . . obvious question is what the

98

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

relationship of contradiction is a relationship between: sentences, propositions, some other kind of entity? . . . I shall simply call the sorts of thing in question, non-committally, statements, and leave it at that’.32 If we take Priest’s use of ‘entity’ and ‘thing’ here to be implicitly restricted to truth-bearing entities, this indicates that Priest is taking a semantic view of contradiction, rather than the ontological view which the above criticism relies on. An analogue that may help further explain the idea driving the criticism, and incidentally may appeal to those who, like Priest, see the problem as more one of language, might run as follows. Nothing cannot form part of a contradiction, as contradiction is (usually) conjunctive in form33 and both variables of a formula involving a binary connective such as conjunction must be replaced with something. (Matters might be slightly more complex here, as in the case of ‘nothing is something and nothing is nothing’ we have a conjunction of two formulae each of which involves identity, where we can treat identity as a binary predicate letter. But this will just mean that the problem appears at the level of these subformulae expressing identity insofar as it can be treated in that way, and a problem at this level will infect the conjunctive formula of which those subformulae are conjuncts.) To ‘replace’ one of the variables with nothing will either (i) just leave us with a meaningless schema or (ii) reduce the putative contradiction to its unproblematic conjunct – that is, ‘nothing is something’ (in this case).34 Thus the dialetheist claim, if meaningful, reduces to the claims made by advocates of consistency. The obvious response is that this problem involves a (particularly egregious) Berkeleyan confusion between an object and that which we use to represent an object, and that we can circumvent it by claiming that although nothing is not a thing, a statement about (or a term representing) nothing is, and so can form part of the contradictory relationship. But this will simply defer the problems concerning nothing to attempts to give meaning to any such statement (and furthermore, we can ask how we can be sure that a statement is different from nothing without characterizing nothing illicitly). Any attempt to give meanings to such statements will involve entangling oneself in the generalized form of the problem concerning contradiction involving nothing outlined in the first paragraph of this section. Similarly, Priest also claims that the operations on a given totality described by the Inclosure Schema generate an ‘object’, presumably a contradictory object. But if one of the alleged contradictory ‘properties’ of the object thus generated is inaccessible as an object of thought, then the consequent characterization of the object cannot be differentiated from a consistent object (in its most general form as ‘something’ or ‘an object of thought’).

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

99

It should be noted that this criticism highlights a problem that occurs before it has been established that a contradiction involving nothing is possible or makes sense. Given this, it puts the cart before the horse (indeed, it begs the question) to reply that accepting that nothing is a contradictory object (or is both an existing thing and is not an existing thing) is precisely what makes it possible to make nothing an object of thought, and thus able play its part in a contradiction. Any attempt to avoid the criticism by reapplying the contradiction to produce an understanding of nothing that allows it to act as an object of thought in the original application of the contradiction will just cause the criticism to be reapplied in turn to the newly generated contradiction. The dialetheist does have a response to this criticism, however, in the form of a parallel of the third mitigating circumstance at the end of Section 3.9. They can claim that the notion of nothing used is contradictory in making a claim about nothing; namely that it cannot be an object of thought. This works a little differently from the earlier response, as the dialetheist’s critic asserts that such a position reduces to that of a consistent framework, but the dialetheist’s riposte locates a contradiction in this criticism and presumably goes on to embrace this contradiction. Of course, the criticism can then be reapplied, and once again we have reached an impasse. Where does this leave us? The conclusion seems to be that even a dialetheic programme for understanding nothing is unlikely to cater to all of our intuitions concerning it, or avoid all objections. A dialetheic claim is not a uniquely effective way of understanding nothing, nor can the paradoxes associated with nothing compel us to adopt a dialetheic framework over more traditional models of analysis. However, such a conclusion needs to be balanced by the observation that neither is dialetheism uniquely ineffective as a way of understanding nothing. Thus far we have seen no viable framework that fits our logical intuitions about the nothing. So the task of establishing one as preferable to another will have to involve criteria independent from this case (some of the dialetheist’s side of the story has been outlined above). Furthermore, there is no immediately obvious route from the difficulties for a dialetheic claim about nothing as a contradictory object to difficulties for dialetheic claims about other contradictory objects. So nothing is a special case, and should not be taken as a counterexample to dialetheic methodology in general. With this in mind, we can conclude that, although dialetheism is ineffective in solving the problems associated with nothing, it is no worse than any other solution we have encountered in this regard, and no worse off as a result of it.

100

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

4.8  Further issues We are not quite finished with our exploration of dialetheism. Before we move on, I would like briefly to work back from the above conclusion to sketch its relation to Priest’s Inclosure Schema. Earlier I claimed that if we discovered something wrong with the dialetheist analysis, we could return to the Inclosure Schema in a diagnostic process. Given the conclusion, it is perhaps not fair to say that we have discovered something wrong – it is as good as any other framework. Moreover, the extent to which I have criticized the various frameworks so far can be offset by the extent to which they can return that criticism, as it has yet to be established that I have any privileged framework from within which I can advance these criticisms. With this in mind, there is no basis for believing that the Inclosure Schema will work any less well than any other argument for establishing a claim about how we are to understand ‘nothing’. But, given that a dialetheist claim would be a questionbegging one, it will be instructive to see how the question would be begged in the Inclosure Schema. The relevant application of the Inclosure Schema runs as follows: The general schema concerns properties φ and ψ and a function δ such that:

(10)  Ω = {y; φ(y)} exists and ψ(Ω)  Existence (11)  if x ⊆ Ω and ψ(x) (a) δ(x) ∉ x Transcendence (b) δ(x) ∈ Ω Closure But since ψ(Ω), we have δ(Ω)∉Ω and δ(Ω)∈Ω – a contradiction.35 Where, in this specific case, Ω is ‘Everything’, φ(y) is ‘y ∈ Everything’, and ψ(x) is ‘x exists’. The most obvious problem here is with (10), which amounts to a claim that everything exists. Earlier we noted that in the context of Priest’s using the phrase ‘Everything is true’ as an example, that this use relies upon some pre-theoretic understanding of ‘everything’ (and of ‘nothing’) that is illicit when we are using the dialetheic programme to try to elucidate those very concepts. The same is true here. Without some prior understanding of ‘nothing’ (which will be susceptible to criticism), we cannot explain how a claim like ‘Everything exists’ makes sense. So it is open to the critic to deny the sense of (10).

To Be AND Not to Be – Is that the Answer?

101

The basis for (10) is the domain principle, which Priest explains in this context as: ‘For every potential infinity there is a corresponding actual infinity’.36 So applied to this case, the domain principle would state, with prima facie plausibility, that if a statement about some variable quantity (such as ‘things’) is to have determinate sense, then the domain of its variability must be determinate. That is to say, ‘everything’ must have determinate sense. But as we saw in the previous chapter, there is no reason to suppose that analysis can indicate that statements about everything do have determinate sense. The best we can do is appeal to some pre-theoretical understanding. However, we equally have no reason to suppose that any such pre-theoretical understanding is going to lead us to a satisfactory understanding of ‘everything’ or ‘nothing’. The relevant pre-theoretical understanding is based on sense perception or intuitions, but we never have sense perceptions of everything or nothing in the relevant senses, nor do we intuit either of these in any satisfactory way (hence the need for analysis). Indeed, the question of whether the opacity of the latter two concepts vitiates the very notions used in such a programme (because it can be claimed that unless they are fully understood, we could be mistaken as to what a pre-theoretical intuition of an existing thing actually is) indicates that a decision on the utility of the programme is inevitably partisan. Of course, if one was to decide in favour of this pre-theoretical notion (or any analogues of this decision that are required to be made at various steps in the application of the Inclosure Schema) the dialetheist can produce the relevant contradictory claim about ‘nothing’. Here my discussion of analytic frameworks ends, and, as promised in Chapter 3, I now propose to move onto the Heideggerian position from which a number of the criticisms of such frameworks were voiced, to see if it fares any better.

5

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

When you have nothing to say, say nothing . . . Charles Caleb Colton (Lacon, CLXXXIII)

5.1  Returning to Heidegger I now turn to the critical treatment of Heidegger (and other affective methodologies), the result of which, given the discussion in the previous two chapters, the reader may feel able to predict. After all, the key criticisms of analytic frameworks1 were advanced from a Heideggerian position, and in establishing the susceptibility of a framework to a given criticism, that criticism was ultimately forced to acknowledge its vulnerability to a reflexive iteration. By ‘reflexive iteration’, I mean the capacity one has to draw limits to a certain thought or experience, and then proceed to project the possibility of continuance of that thought or experience beyond those limits.2 For example, we saw the circumscribing of the reach of analysis in Chapter 3 left ‘nothing’ out, and then we proceeded to observe that this nothing in its turn demanded analysis. The mutual vulnerability we saw seems to indicate the continual conclusion of stalemate. So presumably a critical treatment of Heidegger will simply recapitulate this struggle. There are, nevertheless, a number of reasons why it is still important to give a discussion. First, I claimed that my criticisms were advanced from a ­Heideggerian position, and while the material of Part 1 should adequately support that claim, there is a need to show specifically that the reflexivity of the criticisms does not merely act on a caricature of Heidegger’s position. Secondly, such a critical discussion need not narrowly deal with Heidegger alone, but can range over wider themes drawn from his work that require a sustained address, the general applicability of an affective methodology, for example. Thirdly, it will be important to make sure that the reflexive iteration of the criticisms really is legitimate, and it will be helpful to trace the argument to this effect more thoroughly.

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

103

5.2  Early Heidegger Although the material on Heidegger in Part 1 was primarily intended to be expository, my attempts to deal with the shift in focus of thought between ‘early’ and ‘later’ Heidegger in Chapter 1 necessitated the inclusion of a precursor to the possibility of reflexive iteration found in Chapter 3. The reason for the inclusion of such critical material is that Chapter 1 contains exposition of Heidegger’s self-criticism, insofar as he appears to recognize certain possible problems with his early work. This self-criticism seems to take the form of an awareness of the possibility of interpretations of his work that make it susceptible to reflexive iteration. Arguably Heidegger does not escape this problem even in his later thought. I outlined what I saw as the nature of this self-criticism as it pertains specifically to the nothing in Section 1.7. There I claimed that, in his attempts to talk about nothing, Heidegger advances a position that could be mistaken as anthropocentric, in as much as his early claims that the nothing is distinguished from Beyng insofar as it, for example, makes a ‘repelling gesture’ in the mood of anxiety, seem to use a categorizing language for fundamental ontology which is more suited to dealings with beings.3 This demonstrates the seeming lack of fit between ontic language and fundamental ontology. In a discussion of Heidegger’s treatment of death, Mulhall makes the same point, and then goes on to note that ‘Death  .  .  . remains beyond any direct existential (and hence phenomenological) grasp; but it is shown to be graspable essentially indirectly, as an omnipresent condition of every moment of Dasein’s directly graspable existence’.4 This essentially indirect grasp seems far closer to the later Heideggerian position that we know of the nothing via its effects. It should be noted that Mulhall links this treatment of death to methodological similarities in Heidegger’s treatment of Angst, the mood in which nothing confronts and repels us. For Angst, as it is not a confrontation with any being, but rather with nothing, is not a specific mode of Dasein’s being-already-in-the-world. Rather, it is ‘an ineluctable aspect of [Dasein’s] thrownness, the omnipresent ground and condition of Dasein’s specific states-of-mind’.5 As such, it is ‘misleading to call anxiety [Angst] a state-of-mind’,6 let alone a mood, and this supports my observation of the gradual omission both of moods and of much of the talk of the nothing in Heidegger’s later work, as he sought to remove potentially misleading anthropocentrism.7 Mulhall goes on to make the provocative claim that in general ‘Division II of Being and Time attempts to unsettle the insufficiently anxious, excessively

104

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

complacent air of completeness emanating from the existential analytic of Division I’8 (emphasis added). This raises an interesting exegetical point: if Heidegger is aware of the potential for mistaken criticism based on reflexive iteration at Being and Time, why does he not attempt to circumvent it then, instead of gradually during the turn to his later work? Should I be accusing Mulhall of trying the read Heidegger’s later work back into his earlier? No, for it is part of Mulhall’s interpretation that Heidegger, although aware of the possibility of reflexive iteration and the problems that it might pose for his existential analytic, does not wish to take steps to circumvent it. Once again, in the context of death, but finding a parallel in the mood of anxiety, Mulhall considers the question: ‘Doesn’t this choice of terminology actually encourage forms of misunderstanding’?9 However, his answer is that this terminology is claimed to have a ‘compensating and fundamental advantage’ in that it underlines Heidegger’s ‘key insight’ that we cannot understand our relation to death, or to anxiety, apart from our relation to our engagement in the (ontic) world of beings in which we find ourselves.10 So Heidegger’s use of ontic language is necessary to attune us to fundamental ontology. Moreover, Mulhall goes on to claim that: [I]f ‘the nothing’ really is the self-concealing and self-disrupting condition of Dasein’s comprehending and questioning relation to Being, then pheno­ menological philosophy can only acknowledge it as such (that is, allow it to appear as it is) by allowing ‘the nothing’ first to conceal itself and then to disrupt its concealment in the phenomenological analysis itself – that is, to appear within the analysis as that upon which the analysis as a whole is shipwrecked.11

In other words, Heidegger’s existential analytic in Division I appears complete until Division II emphasizes the role of nothingness, which cannot be captured in the phenomenological analysis and so leaves the analysis fundamentally incomplete. This interpretation seems to incorporate the double movement of the nothing first concealing itself and thus indicating that Division I is a complete analysis, but then disrupting this completed analysis in Division II by showing that awareness of such completeness is only possible due to a relation to the nothing that Division I does not subsume under its analysis – as being complete means precisely that it excludes nothing. Mulhall, then, acknowledges the possibility of reflexive iteration in the early Heidegger. Indeed he goes further: on his interpretation this reflexive iteration is an actuality that Heidegger was aware of, and intended to make a virtue. Such an

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

105

interpretation has much in common with the methods of Derrida, (which we will come to in due course) and this is unsurprising given that many Heideggerians have wanted to claim that much of what is considered to be distinctive about Derrida can be found in a sufficiently nuanced reading of Heidegger.12 Mulhall’s characterization of Heidegger as ‘accepting the various ways in which nullity, negation, and nothingness unsettle the architectonic of the text, opening it to forces and vistas that ultimately exceed its grasp’ would fit the tenor of much of Derrida’s work. Where does this leave us with regard to the early Heidegger? There might now seem to be an exegetical problem with my expository reading of Heidegger in Part 1. If we accept Mulhall’s interpretation of early Heidegger, why did Heidegger shift his focus in his later work away from talk of moods and the nothing? One answer may be because, given the misreading of Heidegger by Sartre and others, he sought a way to convey his thoughts without having to rely on the misleading terminology. Perhaps he saw the poetic language that developed in his later work as a more effective way of communicating the same intuitions, less susceptible to erroneous claims of anthropocentrism or Kantianism.13 For Mulhall is happy to accept that it is not the fact that the early terminology is misleading that makes it useful to Heidegger, rather the terminology has another factor ‘compensating’ for it being misleading: its capacity to indicate Heidegger’s key insight outlined above. If another way of speaking can capture that capacity without including the components that make it misleading in seeming to make an elementary error, then this will obviously be preferable. Of course, this is a significant ‘if ’. For Mulhall may well want to say that it is precisely the capacity to indicate Heidegger’s insight that makes the language used to state it misleading. If this is the case, then insofar as Heidegger’s later work preserves the important thinking contained within the early work, the language used to state it must also be misleading – but perhaps less obviously so; certainly sufficiently subtly to allow Heidegger to believe he had found a way of separating these two aspects which are necessarily linked. With this in mind, I propose now to turn to an examination of the later Heidegger. Two questions are at issue. Does Heidegger’s later work, despite attempting to allow a more viable mode of speech, ultimately leave room for the possibility of reflexive iteration? And, if it does, is this a problem as intractable for Heidegger’s analytic as it is for the analytic frameworks discussed in the preceding two chapters?

106

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

5.3  Later Heidegger’s ‘saying’ ‘Heideggerian prophecy [what I called “saying” in Chapter 1] is the attempt to transcend verbal speech, or to evoke the silent process of Being itself ’.14 The writings of the later Heidegger appear to be conducted in a new form of speech. A speech that attempts to avoid the Scylla of trying to use some form of metalanguage to correct ontic talk of nothingness (which will invariably itself be ontic),15 and the Charybdis of saying nothing about it at all, of keeping silent. Not much has yet been said about this second horn of the dilemma, but the following discussion will perhaps go some way towards elucidating it. In my exposition of Derrida in Section 2.12, I suggested that he was critical of Heidegger for trying to seek ‘the alliance of speech and Being in the unique word’ – this was the Heideggerian hope that Derrida felt was erroneously metaphysical in Heidegger’s work. I also noted that there is an ambiguity in interpreting Heidegger as to whether we should see poiesis as concealing the truth of Beyng in the same way as enframing, or whether a revealing like poiesis reveals Beyng in its essence (Section 1.7). Once again, methodological considerations have persuaded me to adopt an arguably uncharitable interpretation of Heidegger (in this case later Heidegger) so that his work can play a certain role in this discussion. In particular, at points I have emphasized the difference between Heidegger and Derrida, something that Derrida himself sought to do,16 indicating that Heidegger’s project can be read as a ‘“profound” and “powerful” defence of . . . the thought of presence’.17 To do so makes me guilty of ‘using Heidegger as the fall guy in a game we are playing with ourselves’.18 For now, I should like Heidegger to play his part a little longer. I hope to return briefly to the more ‘Derridian’ interpretation of Heidegger (perhaps I should say the possibility of reading Derrida as more of a Heideggerian) before long. But for the moment let us assess the adequacy of trying to capture an understanding of the nothing utilizing the methodology ascribed to later Heidegger in the arguably less charitable interpretative aspects of Chapter 1. Heidegger’s speech in his later work seems to be an attempt to avoid the prima facie reflexive iteration that is attendant on ontic ways of talking about the ontological (see end of Chapter 1). Of course, as all of our everyday understanding of speech is ontic, ‘speech’ or ‘saying’ in this sense of a discourse that attempts to circumvent such problems cannot mean what we ordinarily take it to mean (or we fall into the problem of using a metalanguage to correct a language). Rather, ‘. . . [i]t is claimed that pre-verbal (pre-ontic) or ontological experience

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

107

“speaks” to man of Being in a way that verbal speech cannot, as for example in the experience of nothingness’.19 This pre-ontic experience can be identified with the idea of ‘ontological truth’ that Käufer finds in the early Heidegger. As we saw in the exegesis of Chapter 1, and in the Heideggerian critiques of Carnap in Chapter 3, most ontic (or ‘verbal’) speech conceals the truth of Beyng by revealing it in accordance with enframing. But when we engage in ‘originary thinking’, when we try to attune ourselves to the ‘speech’ of Beyng qua ontological experience (i.e. the experience of nothingness, or the unconcealment of Beyng), Beyng ‘speaks’ to us. It can even, if we refuse to listen to ontic speech as ontic speech, but rather use it to attune ourselves to the ‘speech’ of Beyng, ‘speak’ to us through language  – the ‘alliance of speech and Being in the unique word’ of which Derrida is so wary. This is what underlies Heidegger’s use of unusual or older forms of words, or placing words in atypical contexts – ‘concealing’, ‘destining’, ‘granting’, ‘thinking’. As David Wood says: ‘Heidegger’s later thought, particularly as evidenced in the words in which he chooses to advance it  .  .  . has the peculiar power to awaken in us the most profound possibilities of transformed relatedness for which we would otherwise lack a language’.20 We can see how Heidegger’s understanding of ‘saying’ ties into his later thought as follows: we saw in Heidegger’s later work a strong desire to overcome even the appearance of anthropocentricism by emphasizing the mutuality of Dasein and Beyng, and this is carried into his understanding of the essence of language (subject to usual Heideggerian caveats about the term ‘essence’).21 Language is, essentially, by and about Beyng – so Beyng’s saying addresses itself to man in bringing about the world and beings for man; that is, Beyng’s appropriation, Ereignis, comes about in the saying of the language of Beyng. Such a ‘saying’ is not language in its ontic sense of linguistic expression, but more of a ‘showing’ or a ‘having appear’ (hence the talk of experience ‘speaking’ in the previous paragraph); and what appears in saying (or what saying appears as) is ‘the index which has presencing and being-absent appear and fade away’,22 that is, the appropriative event of Beyng or Ereignis which reveals and conceals beings. Thus we can say that the primordial saying of Beyng is that which ‘makes world and things achieve what is proper to them by ap-propriation’23 – it grants the Being of beings. This takes care of the ‘by’ when we say that language is essentially ‘by and about’ Beyng, but we must also consider the ‘about’; the response to Beyng’s saying by thinkers (and poets) which enables beings to come to be what they properly are – this corresponds to the mutuality of appropriation (Ereignis),

108

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

the dual sense of ‘own’ noted in Chapter 1. ‘In the response which man gives to the word of the saying, he brings the soundless saying into the sounding of the word.’24 There are different possible responses, and here we see the distinction between thinker and poet mooted earlier: ‘The thinker says [Beyng]. The poet names the holy’.25 Both these responses involve the hazarding of certain ‘basic’ words, through which we can attend to the saying of Beyng, although of course, it is misleading to phrase it like this, as it suggests that an ‘action’ of Beyng and an ‘action’ of man somehow meet in the middle. In fact, language, insofar as it inscribes the mutuality of appropriation, describes the essence of man in a historical epoch and a certain revealing of Beyng which are inseparable: ‘language as the Saying, the index, comes to be spoken in man’s speech’.26 So although ‘basic’ words are ‘hazarded’, they are also ‘words which Being itself [Beyng] suggests to the thinker and the poet at the proper time’.27 This notion of ‘proper time’ is important, for ‘basic’ words are historical; the meaning of a polysemous ‘basic’ word in a certain historical epoch grounds that epoch (and as such a ‘revealing’ meaning is always also a ‘concealing’ one), as such the basic or original word in a given epoch ‘lets [beings] be what from now on they properly will be’28; it indicates the appropriation that constitutes the world in which beings are.

5.4  Assessing later Heidegger –1 To end here without saying more would be a perhaps uncharitable interpretation of later Heidegger, and if this is considered to be the sum of Heidegger’s ‘progress’ after his early work, then it is arguable that Heidegger has made no advance at all. For the same possibility of reflexive iteration remains from the uncharitable or anthropocentric interpretation of Heidegger’s early work. It is perhaps true that this possibility is less obvious insofar as later Heidegger does not use such obviously ontic language or so much of an assertoric style to make his claims, but rather seeks to hear the voice of Beyng speaking through language.29 As a result he is less likely to be taken as advancing an obviously contradictory statement. For better or worse, the retrieval of ‘basic’ words in Heidegger’s later work more directly attunes us to ontological experiences than the purely ontic language that Heidegger uses earlier to make his ontological assertions. That is, it is more obvious that Heidegger is not interested in using words in their ordinary, everyday, senses. However, there still seems to be a problem at the deep level of logical intuitions, as mentioned in Chapter 3. For, as I indicated

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

109

there, although the victory for the analyst in their criticism of a Heideggerian position is self-defeating, there does seem to be something deeply contradictory about the Heideggerian position even if we do remain neutral between a purely analytic and a more affective methodology – indeed, even if we take Heidegger on his own terms. The problem is that if we try to understand Beyng (or nothing) as ‘speaking’ to us, its ‘speech’ seems to require some content, but any attempt to specify that content will illicitly predicate ontic characteristics of Beyng. Analogously, we can take an experiential understanding of nothing rather than a linguistic one, as the early Heidegger did, but this experiential understanding will seem to contradict the logic of experience, as it will give some form of content to what is allegedly an experience of nothing.30 Now if, as was suggested in Chapter 1, a certain type of revealing, the poiesis that allows Beyng to appropriate without being concealed by enframing, is at work in ‘originary thinking’, and this allows Beyng to be revealed in its essence, then it seems that we can attribute essential properties to Beyng. All such properties, however, will be ontic. It is doubtful whether these criticisms will find their mark any better than those advanced against ‘analytic’ accounts of nothing, relying as they do on pre-theoretical notions of nothing (as explained in Chapter 3 in their role as criticisms advanced by the analyst against a Heideggerian position). But even if they do pose a problem, this problem will afflict only the uncharitable interpretation of Heidegger. I do not mean yet that we should weigh these criticisms against a reading of Heidegger that sees him as ‘Derridian’. A middle ground appears to be open that stops short of such a move, but that does allow for a more sophisticated understanding of what Heidegger is attempting.

5.5  Assessing later Heidegger –2 In Section 1.7 I isolated an ambiguity in later Heideggerian thought concerning poiesis. The first possibility was that which we have just seen, and which leads to an immediate problem for Heidegger. The second is that poiesis conceals the truth of Beyng just as enframing does, that ultimately every revealing is also a concealing. We could remark that both of these interpretations are live in later Heidegger, where the first corresponds to poetry and the second to originary thinking. Then we could see each interpretation as not being more or less charitable, but rather serving different purposes (and hence our criticism of the first is misplaced). The poet ‘names the holy’, that is, he or she can find his or

110

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

her ‘way toward that which is beyond all question’, even though this may be to ‘remain exposed to the mistaken course between what is holy and unholy’.31 That is, the responsive saying of poetry grounds ‘being-at-home’ in a given epoch, in that epoch’s granting of the Being of beings through unconcealment, but at a cost of being blind to the evaluation of what is questionable in an epoch, where such an evaluation is the role of thinking. Thinking’s saying ‘examines the traditional Saying of the Being of beings in terms of the truth of [Beyng] and brings this truth as unconcealment, the structural articulation of unconcealment as world, to language’32 by utilizing certain basic words. So the essence of language in the thinker’s saying reveals the structure of manifestation. Presumably, Heidegger’s own thinking also takes place in this way. This second interpretation or manner of ‘saying’ seems to sit better with Heidegger’s asserted project of thinking ‘the history of Being’ (unsurprising if this is indeed an act of thinking). For the focus ceases to be on an experience in which Beyng is somehow supposed to manifest itself, and instead emphasizes the process by which beings are revealed in accordance with different types of revealing which are ‘granted’. However, no type of revealing fully reveals Beyng. Rather, the historical process of the granting of these different forms of revealing (and, inevitably, concealing) makes us attentive to the ‘silent process by which the world differentiates itself ’.33 It is this that Heidegger means when he refers to each form of revealing as carrying the seed of a saving power in its recognizable nature as a granting. But now we must understand that this apprehension of Beyng as and via a process means that there is no ‘speech’ of Beyng qua singular ontological experience as there was under the former interpretation. For all we have is the recognition of ways of revealing also as ways of concealing, and Heidegger makes no claim that we have some experience of Beyng itself – how could we, if Beyng is never fully revealed? In the economy of revealing,34 an economy that we can never assimilate to reveal Beyng in its essence, Beyng is truly silent (and hence arguably takes on the hues of ‘nothing’ more potently). In speaking of Beyng one must ‘move within verbal speech toward unification with “the sound of stillness” by means of foundational thinking’ – ‘[w]ithin the speech of things is the “silent calling gathering” of Being as way’.35 So Heidegger does not want to disown the possibility that by foundational thinking we can hear Beyng speak through language. But this is Beyng appropriating in accordance with a certain type of revealing, and so our hazarding of certain ontic ‘basic’ words in our originary thinking is recognized as provisional insofar as it appears in the economy of revealing.

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

111

This certainly seems to have advantages over what was being claimed on the first interpretation. No individual experience is isolated as providing the essence of Beyng. But, on close inspection, it can be claimed that the problems afflicting that interpretation reappear on the improved one, albeit more subtly. One clue to this can be found in Heidegger’s belief that there can be originary thinking or the possibility of attending to the silent process of Beyng in attempting to move within verbal speech at all.36 It is this metaphysical residue that separates the interpretation given here from a full-blown ‘Derridian’ one. For the possibility of attending to the silent process of Beyng suggests a directedness, and the notion of an originary or foundational thinking indicates a type of thinking set apart from others due to some factor. Derrida would be sceptical of both of such notions.37 What makes this interpretation or way of saying different from the first is that the idea of Beyng which our attentiveness outlined by Heidegger makes us aware of is so sparse. In fact, arguably it is not an idea at all. Whereas on the previous interpretation/saying we had an experience with the barest content possible (i.e. an experience of nothing) that made us aware of that which is fundamentally ontological, now we are prevented from having any such experience by our understanding that every revealing of Being is also a concealing. Our experience of Beyng/nothing is now an experience that is nothing – that is to say, it is not an experience (and a fortiori, not a contentful experience).38 Rather, we apprehend Beyng/nothing in its elusiveness in the economy of (revealing) experiences. But this apprehension is just what makes this interpretation of Heidegger different from the ‘Derridian’ interpretation, and just what seems to allow the problem of reflexive iteration to return. For Beyng (or nothing) is still something we apprehend, even if we do not experience it; it makes a difference,39 even if that difference is merely to provide context (otherwise, like the analyst, we might believe that Being is exhausted in that revealing called ‘enframing’). For in allowing us even this barest, most meagre apprehension of Beyng (or nothing) Heidegger makes it an object of our attention. And there is no indication that Heidegger is any more interested in denying the intuitions that underlie our formalized laws of logic here than anywhere else. Indeed, given the discussion in the previous chapter, it is not clear how much this would help him in any case. So, how does the reflexive iteration apply in this case? To phrase it in terms of illicit predication of nothing is liable to suggest a level of formalization with which a Heideggerian may feel uncomfortable. An informal analogue must be

112

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

used, which might run along the following lines: Heidegger claims that if we use ontic language directly to discuss Beyng/nothing we make Beyng/nothing into a being. This is based on an appeal to certain pre-formal logical intuitions we have concerning what can be said of Beyng/nothing, and thus concerning the nature of Beyng/nothing. That is to say that our logical intuitions concerning Beyng/nothing are that we cannot say anything about it. Heidegger proposes in response that through the process of Beyng/nothing’s appropriation in mutually exclusive ways, we are made aware of Beyng/nothing as the mysterious ‘source’ of that process. But such an awareness, although not given rise to by an individual experience, contravenes those same pre-formal logical intuitions that Heidegger appealed to earlier. For if we have the pre-formal logical intuition of Beyng/nothing that we cannot say anything about it, then we cannot say we have apprehended it (which implies difference from the world of beings, and susceptibility to apprehension). Further evidence for the problems with Heidegger’s view comes from paying attention to the ‘basic’ words that he feels he can hazard: ‘presencing’, ‘gathering’, ‘giving’. For if these words are somehow more appropriate than simply saying anthropocentrically that we understand the world in a number of different ways (theoretical, pragmatic, etc.), then their attuning nature must indicate a difference in meaning. Giving and granting suggest a donor; gathering suggests a force behind this henotic movement beyond some random convergence. However, we must apprehend something (even if it is nothing discursable) that makes this difference, that makes this language more appropriate than alternative terms. And nothing is intuitively not something – not even something that is not discursable. For even the thinker’s basic speaking seems bound by our preformal logical intuitions about, say, nothing, in a way that it is not so obviously bound by considerations in a developed formal logic.40

5.6  Options for a defence How can Heidegger be defended? One response we can suggest is that the criticisms in the previous paragraph rely on taking the Heideggerian thinker’s ‘basic’ words as metaphorical, a view that Heidegger was anxious to avoid: ‘Only within metaphysics is there the metaphorical’.41 Some have taken Heidegger’s later work as metaphorical, and some have taken it as wanting to avoid metaphor, but failing to do so. Certainly Heidegger is anxious to avoid metaphorical speaking; his basic objection is that we only ever come to the idea

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

113

of the metaphorical as the transferred sense of a word because we are already bound up within a metaphysical system. If philosophical thinking takes rational explanation to be its essential form, then it calls implicitly for the ideal of clear unambiguous meaning as given by literal language, which upholds the basic ontic ‘metaphysical’ distinctions that metaphor only then is allowed to range over. So metaphor always comes too late for discussion of Beyng/nothing; it derives from an essentially ontic structure of language. If this is true, then we should not attempt to see Heidegger’s utterances in his ‘thinking’ as metaphors or as performing such a function. This immediately raises an obvious question: what function do Heidegger’s utterances perform? Otto Pöggeler suggests that if we reject rational explanation as the essential form of thinking insofar as it is dictated by inexpungably ontic concerns, we draw closer to the spirit of phenomenology when we note that the most fundamental thinking is elucidatory; that is, it ‘show[s] something in the clearness of its essence and . . . keep[s] all hasty explanation at a distance’.42 Furthermore, such elucidation always takes place within a historical epoch, as the result of an unconcealing of Beyng; hence, the thinking we are considering is better termed ‘emplacing’. One way of fleshing out this notion of emplacing thinking is to note Heidegger’s claim that, in abdicating the sovereignty of rational accounting in our thinking, we acknowledge that ‘Being, conceived as itself, avoids every explanation’.43 If we are looking for Heidegger’s utterances to provide some account of Beyng/nothing that we can rationally assess, we will inevitably be disappointed, and so the criticisms above are uncharitable. This thought seems to lie behind a number of responses to criticism in the literature as to what later Heidegger is ‘saying’: so, with regard to the criticism of ‘granting’ earlier, ‘There is nothing to which this ap-propriation could be reduced or from which it could be explained. The only thing that can be said of this ap-propriation is that it ap-propriates’.44 Or: ‘[In emplacing thinking] refutation of . . . others is not an issue’45 and ‘Emplacement must renounce the will to “legitimize” itself ’.46 In short, emplacing thinking tolerates no discussion or argument from a rational point of view as, in the mutuality between Beyng and Dasein in the appropriative event of Ereignis, the saying of the thinker responds to the voice of Beyng, and thus is part of the revelation (and concealment) from which rational discussion first springs. To attempt rational discussion would be occlusion. All very well, one might think, but it leaves Heidegger (or maybe us) with a problem. As Pöggeler now points out: ‘[W]e understand the basic words of Heidegger’s own speaking only if we think along the way upon which they have emerged’.47 In other words, in order to understand Heidegger properly,

114

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

we have to agree with the framework he has set down.48 Worse still, given the repudiation of rational explanation or discussion, let alone argument (for only such a repudiation will militate against the above criticism), Heidegger seems to ‘reduce his own thinking to some form of hermeticism’ or ‘mystification’49 – a double hermeticism which brooks no argument, nor even any explanation. Heidegger wants to proclaim neither logic nor illogicality in emplacing thinking, but rather think outside the difference of these two. However, such an endeavour seems to be naturally marked as a hope that cannot be fulfilled. There are three points to be made here. First, we can say that Heidegger appears to have capitulated to our criticism of the previous section in his seeming acknowledgement that his approach is question-begging (or perhaps our acknowledgement on his behalf, an acknowledgement he refuses to give). Such a move plays out in a very similar way to certain moves made in Jean-Luc Marion’s philosophical theology that I will be looking at in the next chapter; I will thus suspend discussion of it. The second point is to suggest that Heidegger’s emplacing thinking still does not avoid that criticism, as the bare fact that emplacing thought attunes us to something, and that it can be said of that something that it is not amenable to rational discussion, suggests some minimal degree of characterization that distinguishes it from nothing. Finally, one could claim that this apparent ‘hermeticism’ does not accurately represent later Heidegger’s position. What does this last claim amount to? Let us address it by way of the ambiguity concerning whether Heidegger means his own thinking, the thinking that describes emplacing thinking, to be an example of emplacing thinking itself. Earlier, I said that Heidegger’s thinking ‘presumably’ takes place in accordance with his description of it. In a sense this ambiguity is hard to overcome due to issues surrounding reflexivity in methodology that we saw in relation to Derrida; and here we can see the first step towards a ‘Derridian’ reading of Heidegger taking place. Something of this tension can be seen in Pöggeler’s discussion of emplacing thinking. He notes: ‘That primordial thinking is itself emplacement is the result of an emplacement which remains open for further emplacements’.50 Does this mean that Heidegger’s notion of emplacement and his saying thereof could be replaced in a different historical epoch by a different response to the voice of Beyng? Surely, though, if we have interpreted such a replacement in that way, we have accepted the continued validity of Heidegger’s notion across the very epoch that was supposed to end it (again, a very Derridian syndrome).51 Pöggeler sums up the later Heidegger’s thought as a ‘decisive emplacement of Being which brings thinking into its emplacing essence for the first time’,52 and

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

115

even when acknowledging that ‘emplacement remains problematic in itself ’,53 acknowledges this out of a framework that asserts the accuracy of Heidegger’s response to Beyng (an already partisan way of framing it). So even if Heidegger draws our attention here to the provisionality of our claims (which seem to be susceptible to the criticism above) to have apprehended Beyng/nothing, if it is just such provisionality that directs our awareness towards Beyng/nothing, this will simply repeat the problem at the level of meta-theory. Indeed, it will repeat it more starkly. For now the provisionality of our claims about that which we apprehend through the provisionality of our claims directs us towards Beyng/nothing as that which cannot be apprehended. We ‘turn away’ from Beyng/nothing to avoid it becoming an object of our thought, or indeed our attention. So Beyng/nothing reveals itself in its ‘essence’ by concealing itself completely. But, of course, we are left with the same problem, as the impetus to avoid allowing Beyng/nothing to become an object of thought (or apprehension, or attention) relies on a prior understanding of Beyng/nothing that again seems to violate our pre-formal logical intuitions. Furthermore, even in phrasing this account of Beyng/nothing, we have illicitly apprehended it. Heidegger could once again note the provisionality of this account, and keep noting this provisionality each time the inherent contradictions were brought to his attention. On such an account our awareness would appear to be continually directed towards Beyng/ nothing (and continually self-criticized),54 and this leads us inexorably to the ‘Derridian’ interpretation. As an afterword it is interesting to note the resemblance of the above interpretation to certain recent trends in Heidegger scholarship. Sheehan decries the interpretation of Heidegger’s use of the term ‘being’ that ‘hypostasizes and inflates it into “Big Being”, a metaphysical “Something” (however ethereal) that lies somewhere beyond entities and that we can allegedly “pursue” and “relate to”’, as resulting in a ‘ridiculous metaphysical caricature’.55 Instead we need to interpret Heidegger’s work as making us aware of the consequences of our finitude and only our finitude: ‘Our finitude is die Sache selbst [Heidegger’s central issue]. It does all the work. No more room for Big Being’.56 It is important to notice that as part of this dispensation with Beyng and its mystical operations, Sheehan thinks it is better to gloss Ereignis as ‘appearing’ than ‘appropriating’. This is because there is nothing that our part in the event can be appropriate to, there is no metaphysical residue backing Ereignis – thus Sheehan’s interpretation of Heidegger avoids Derrida’s criticism of Heidegger’s attempts to find appro­ priate ‘basic’ words. However, it seems that Heidegger’s position now becomes Derridian. Kockelmans notes Greisch’s contention that this metaphysical residue

116

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

is the reason why ‘Heidegger’s discourse is not a simple rhapsody, and why it does not just fall apart into a set of unrelated aphorisms’.57 With the backing of the metaphysical residue of Beyng removed in Sheehan’s interpretation, Heidegger’s hazarding of ‘basic’ words loses its yardstick, and all talk becomes provisional, yet not ultimately pointing beyond to what Derrida would call a ‘transcendental signified’. This is the process, to use another of Derrida’s terms, of ‘dissemination’.

5.7  Conciliatory remarks Before moving on to the general application that this critical assessment of certain interpretations of Heidegger’s thought has for affective methodologies, I should like to make two closing remarks of a conciliatory nature. First, it may be that in using Heidegger as a ‘fall guy’ here my understanding of these various interpretations might seem wilfully perverse. Perhaps my restrictions on what we can and cannot ‘say’ about nothing, drawn from our pre-formal logical intuitions, are much more draconian than the restrictions Heidegger wishes to place on what we can ‘say’ about Being (or Beyng/nothing). I am happy to accept this; my objections apply only to the extent to which I perceive Heidegger to be offering some form of ‘account’ or ‘understanding’ of nothing. As I claimed at the beginning of Chapter 1, my interest in Heidegger is in his utility as a ‘key’ to certain conceptual areas, even if this utility is bought at the expense of fidelity to his project. So if Heidegger is doing something different from what I claim (i.e. offering some form of ‘account’ or ‘understanding’ of nothing),58 I do not wish to criticize his project here. Secondly, there is here, as before, the necessity to acknowledge the power of the reflexive iteration drawn on by the recently advanced criticisms equally to vitiate the position that they are advanced from, ultimately leading to a stalemate. For, of course, my exhortation that it contravenes our pre-formal logical intuitions concerning nothing to even apprehend it or to experience even the most spare and minimal directedness towards it, rests on a prior understanding of nothing; indeed they presuppose a prior apprehension of it, which itself appears to contravene our pre-formal logical intuitions. Wherever I draw attention to our natural understanding of nothing to claim the inadequacy of some understanding in relation to it, there I make it an object of thought, and thus speak against my criticism. By now the reader may feel able to anticipate the continued discussion in accordance with such moves; they are, however,

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

117

advised to suspend judgement until we have completed the discussion of the ‘Derridian’ methodology that is to follow in Chapter 6, in which the seemingly endless nature of this self-criticism will itself be assessed.

5.8  Generalizing on affective methodologies Until now, the discussion of affective methodologies in this chapter has followed fairly closely exegetical issues in Heidegger, in particular putative difficulties for his specific affective methodology in giving an account of nothing. In this section, I would like to broaden the scope, and give a more speculative overview of how the problems that we have seen occur for Heidegger appear to crop up for any attempt to account for nothing using an affective methodology. Before beginning this, I would like to add some prefatory remarks of caution drawn from Kierkegaard: If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.59

Although I would not presume to such aspirations, and (as we shall see) would demur from the judgement, I hope, in these general remarks, to heed the advice. Specifically this prompts me to say that it would be mistaken, at least for my purposes here, to attempt to elucidate the mechanics of diverse philosophical methodologies from the pretence of an objective standpoint. Any such elucidation will (arguably) inevitably proceed in accordance with a methodology of its own – a methodology that I will have to assume. It might be helpful to take this note of caution into account in reading this book as a whole, but it seems especially important here where I present a speculative diagnosis of problems afflicting affective methodologies in general. For, in the interests of brevity, I will have to outline this speculative diagnosis in general terms that will lack the rigour that is associated with the pursuit of a watertight theory.60 To begin these speculations, I would like to pose a question that has been overlooked in favour of the examination of conflicting accounts and their mutual accusations of self-contradiction thus far. The question is: if affective methodologies suffer from the same problems as ‘analytic’ methodologies, what is it about them that make their proponents think them more effective for giving an account of nothing?

118

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

We have seen, in the criticisms made from a Heideggerian perspective of ‘analytic’ accounts, the rejection of the efficacy of straightforward propositions, bound by a formalized system of logic, to provide such an account. I have also tried to indicate where such an inefficacy is repeated in the alternative methodology that Heidegger proposes. However, there must be some reason, even if it is not ultimately an adequate one, which motivates the proponent of an affective methodology. This reason seems to me to be the apparent capacity an affective methodology has to prevent us from being aware of the possibility of certain versions of the reflexive iteration in the account it provides. Of course, that is a very biased way of putting it. We might alternatively say: the affective methodology has the capability of engaging us in a kind of ‘thinking’ in which this reflexive iteration is impossible (although that is still not quite adequate).61 Let me try to explain what I mean. We have seen that any attempt within an analytic framework to capture the notion of ‘nothing’ is liable, when confronted with criticisms of its account deriving from an alternative one, to be unable to produce non-contradictory ways of rejecting these criticisms (and the account these criticisms rest on). Given that such a methodology will issue its rejection in terms of straightforward propositions bound by a formalized system of logic, these contradictions are very much in evidence (though they become less evident the more technical moves in formal logic are made to circumvent such problems). But we could allege that the problem for the analyst here is that he or she believes that there is something to reject – namely an opposing account of nothing, which issues criticisms of the analyst’s account. However, their rejecting this account will bring out their own presuppositions about nothing, which will be shown to involve a contradiction insofar as they illicitly characterize it. Arguably the better position for Carnap to take at the end of Section 2.4 would not be to fail to see how Heidegger could advance his criticism, but to fail to see that anything had been advanced at all.62 For reasons I shall shortly outline, using an affective methodology goes some way towards avoiding such recognition and achieving this goal. If such is the case, then the proponents of an affective methodology would not see themselves as providing an account in opposition to another. Furthermore, given that the process of constructing an account will always draw on a specific methodology, a failure to see that one has constructed one account among others will also help block one’s awareness that one is operating with a given methodology – this will negate the need to provide a justification of that methodology.63

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

119

Why does this problem not arise with the affective methodology? Well, as I hope to have indicated in the foregoing material of this chapter, it does. The real question is: why is it less evident with the affective methodology? It would seem that, obviously, the distinctive feature of an affective methodological approach is to focus our attention on the affective components of the account. That is to say, it does not account for certain experience(s) we have in terms of literal statements that refer to such experience(s), but rather seeks to use language, literal, metaphorical, poetic, or ‘basic’, not to refer to but to recreate the relevant experience(s).64 It is taken by the proponent of an affective methodology that, at a given time, simply referring to an experience that one understands by having undergone it in the past is inadequate for understanding that experience at that given time. Rather, the experience must actually be undergone in the present to be understood, and the use of language to recreate the experience (to ‘attune’ us to it) is the key to reaching this understanding.65 We might further note that if it is the case that one must have an experience to fully understand it at any given time, then it is at least plausible to suggest that experience is ultimately ineffable; we can never quite do justice to it by utilizing language alone66 (unless we alter our use of language from referential to recreational).67 Having heard this, the proponent of ‘analytic’ methodology might fairly ask if this is not something of a false dichotomy. For, on some accounts at least, it may be justifiable to say that referential language is recreational up to a point, insofar as referring to an experience will also attune us to some affective components of that experience. That seems a reasonable point, and aids this speculative diagnosis. For we might now say that the difference in affective terms between using language to recreate an experience and to refer to that experience is only a matter of degree. Three points seem to follow from this. First, the distinction between affective and ‘analytic’ methodologies is vague. Secondly, the capacity of affective methodologies to circumvent the reflexive iteration that is a problem for ‘analytic’ methodologies would appear to lie in the greater extent to which the former recreate the relevant experience. Thirdly, unless this greater capacity for recreation of experience betokens some qualitative change, the circumvention of the reflexive iteration is likely to be merely superficial. Given this, how are we to go about explaining the seemingly greater capacity that the recreation of experiences via an affective methodology has to circumvent the reflexive iteration? One attractive way of looking at the issue is to note that the recreation of our putative experience, rather than simply referring to it,

120

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

moves us from the activity of theorizing about life to the activity of actually living life. But arguably this does not add much that is new to the foregoing discussion, as the activity of theorizing about life could be claimed (in a rerun of the ‘false dichotomy’ criticism of the previous paragraph) to be part of the activity of living life. I would suggest that the utility of using referring rather than recreational language is precisely that it can construct, for various pragmatic purposes, a theory, which purports to be at some remove from the process of life.68 If each notion in our theory had to be experienced fully (that is recreated in the present) in order to understand the theory, then our theory would merely collapse into the process of living life, just without theory – that is, in an un-self-aware fashion. Referential rather than recreational language involves attuning us to fewer affective components (or less of the affective aspect) of an experience, and the resultant attenuated sense (some might want to call it the ‘abstracted sense’) of the experience has the advantage that we can create complex theories about these experiences, as with no obligation to recreate the experiences we can try out hypothetical contexts or combinations of experiences. Again, there are a plethora of technical explanations of why this might be, but arguably the root phenomenological intuition is that undergoing an experience fully appears to hamper our ability to perform some reflexive iteration on it at the time in a way that merely referring to that experience does not; and further, to the extent that we can and do manage to perform a reflexive iteration, we prevent ourselves from undergoing that experience fully. One plausible explanation of this effect is to appeal to the notion, broached in Section 4.3, of omnis determinatio est negatio. To the extent that an experience is contextualized, either in us coming to the self-aware realization that it is a particular experience in the context of a larger life (temporally or spatially), or contextualizing it in a more attenuated sense as playing a role in a given theory, we are aware of the limits of that experience that provide its context. However, as soon as we are aware of the limits of a given experience (that is to say, as soon as we engage in theoretical thinking), we can perform a reflexive iteration by hypothetically extending the experience past the limits of which we have just been made aware. This talk of the part played by contextualization suggests a direct parallel with some of the argumentation of Chapter 3 (and thus reinforces the requirement to recognize this section as a provisional example only, as the results of the argumentation there were inconclusive). That is to say, in placing an experience under one or more concepts, we become explicitly or implicitly

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

121

aware of a class of things that do not fall under those concepts. So our awareness, in this sense, of the experience involves an explicit or implicit awareness of that which it negates (thus characterizing it). It is important to note here that the contextualization of an experience can be both synchronic and diachronic (corresponding with the spatial ‘differing’ and temporal ‘deferring’ that comprise the ambiguous tracing of Derrida’s différance in its complications of the relational metaphysics of structuralism).69 So on an attractive common-sense understanding of the phenomenal continuity of lived experience, even if one undergoes a synchronically uncontextualized experience this could be (vague boundaries aside) set in the context of the experiences that preceded and succeeded it – it would have temporal limits. If the analogy between language and experience were to be taken seriously, insofar as the meaningfulness of signs as based on their relational context finds a correlation in the necessity of contextualization as a precondition for experience (i.e. an experience that is temporal and spatial), then we seem to be led to the conclusion that uncontextualized experience is impossible. To phrase it more provocatively, experience that was uncontextualized spatially and temporally would not be an experience at all; it would be an experience of nothing (see above, Section 5.5, for this elision).70 More modestly, experience that is not set in a context will not be experience that we can think of; it will be nothing to us. I will discuss more in Section 7.5 how seriously this analogy between language and experience should be taken; for now it will be enough to consider contextualization as it is understood at the beginning of the previous paragraph, that is, as a precondition for thought about experience, but not for undergoing experience. Needless to say, if one can somehow recreate an experience, and avoid subsuming it under a concept,71 this would appear to offer a way of blocking contextualization and the concomitant awareness of contradiction with regard to an account of ‘nothing’. This is just what the affective methodology purports to do. Where the objective is for the affective methodology to give an account of this or that particular notion I reserve judgement on its effectiveness (contextualization does not seem to be a problem for such particular notions). But, given what we have just said, where the objective is to give an account specifically of the notion of nothing, the affective methodology seems inadequate. For, as we have seen, in order to give an account of nothing that avoids the possibility of reflexive iteration that problematizes the accounts given by analytic methodologies, the affective methodology must recreate the experience72 of nothing atemporally and non-spatially.

122

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

5.9  Possibilities for an affective methodology Now there is a way in which an affective methodology could appear to meet this requirement. It could be possible that the experience be recreated so that it is in fact contextualized73 although phenomenologically the subject of the experience is not aware of this context (at least as and how they undergo this experience). That is, although the experience is in fact situated in the context of a larger life, and could be seen to play a role in a theory, the subject of it is, from his or her own perspective, free from awareness of spatial and temporal limits. But this scenario does not appear to help the affective methodology, for the simple reason that the affective methodology cannot tell us about it, it cannot explain it to us. For to bring, as I have just done by presenting it, this scenario into a theory (or even to express this scenario), we contexualize the ‘uncontextualized’ experience, and thus prevent it from being recreated in a way that is adequate to block the possibility of reflexive iteration. The problem with the affective methodology is precisely that it is a methodology – a theory of how to proceed (here, how to proceed with talk of ‘nothing’). As such, it abstracts from the relevant experience, and contextualizes it, opening up the possibility of reflexive iteration into that wider context. At this point, the proponent of an affective methodology might reply that just because there is a problem in explaining their account of nothing does not mean that such an account is not in fact correct. Thus the problems only attach to expressions of that account. But this is really just an analogue of Heidegger’s suggestion, criticized earlier, that although we recognize language’s provisionality, we can still move within ontic speech towards unification with the silent process of Beyng (see Section 5.5). Whether or not we choose to express the account given by the affective methodology is immaterial; what causes the problems of contextualization is the understanding of the account, as contextualization is a necessary part of it.74 This criticism may be felt to be unconvincing, as it still applies to the understanding of the account rather than the content of the account itself. The proponent of affective methodology may shift their ground again and reply in similar terms that perhaps there are problems with understanding and explaining the account, but that does not vitiate the content of the account, the fact of it. This is a concession too far; if the account cannot be explained, or even understood, then claims to its content seem meaningless. This is why I introduced the scenario in question with caution: ‘It could be possible that . . .’.

Feeling Nothing: Is the Affective Effective?

123

The issue now is, if the proponents of an affective methodology cannot express or understand their account, what do they take themselves to be doing? Perhaps they might say that the account can be given by this hypothetical subject that is unaware of this context, if not by themselves. Such a move has problems. For the desired claim is that the hypothetical subject’s experience is in fact contextualized, yet he or she is unaware of this. However, surely if the experience is in fact contextualized, then the subject will have to be in fact aware of this (to some degree) or at least have the capacity to become aware of this. Perhaps we might want to say that the subject has no such capacity. But then we are simply committed to saying that the subject is in some way cognitively deficient – I will discuss this more in Section 7.5. This is the only way that we can regard the subject, as we have to see the subject’s experience as in fact contextualized, and thus the subject failing to be in possession of all the facts (unless we construe who we are much more radically, in ways that I shall outline in the next chapter).75 This diagnosis of affective methodology would seem to explain why this approach, while suffering from the same problem as analytic methodologies, can appear more effective. The minimalization of context during recreation of experience, as opposed to mere reference to experience, reduces the possibilities of being made aware of the capacity for deployment of the reflexive iteration. Analytic methodologies can achieve this effect through complexity, rather than the affective components of experience. The more complex the analytic account, the less obvious the possibility for reflexive iteration.76 And just as a recreated experience might in theory only last a few seconds before it was contexualized (diachronically) and the reflexive iteration performed, so it is true that even the least complex analytic account, such as: ‘Nothing is the absence of everything’ will not be undermined in the same moment that it is grasped. If this were claimed to be the case, it could plausibly be replied that the account had not been grasped at all, rather it was seen to be meaningless or self-contradictory (although this is more likely to be phrased: ‘I was not deluded by this nonsense’). Insofar as an account seems plausible it relies on a delay, a distraction from awareness of the (possibility of) reflexive iteration. This brings us neatly on to Derrida, and how Derridian moves might be seen in terms of this speculative diagnosis. Even discounting the wealth of objections that the story I have told so far might encounter, it might be urged that I ignored a glaring problem earlier on in my unfolding of it. For I suggested that an uncontextualized experience would be an experience of nothing,

124

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

before going on to expand upon the problems associated with claiming that an affective methodology can recreate such an experience for us. But this is the point at which the familiar objection can be raised: the equation of nothing with uncontextualized experience illicitly says something about nothing, and this runs contrary to our intuitions concerning nothing. Of course, this criticism is, like its forebears, susceptible to the repudiation that it is just as partisan as its target – and so on. And it is just this ‘and so on . . .’ that indicates that we have here been led into a Derridian understanding (or possibly: provisional refusal of an understanding) of the attempts to capture the notion of nothing. We have just noted the importance of delay, and here there is constant delay – deferral. With this in mind, let us now turn again to Derrida’s work.

6

Arguing – Avoid!

And further, by these words, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Ecclesiastes 12: 12 (King James Version)

6.1  Re-inscribing Derrida I began my provisional exegesis of Derrida in Part 1 by allowing him to interrupt me on the matter of ‘hope’. This notion of interruption is, I think, highly significant when we turn to critical assessment of Derrida, as it will be my contention that we cannot really argue with Derrida, we cannot really fundamentally disagree with him, unless we interrupt him before he begins speaking (or writing) – unless we brook no interruption (or, better still, are blind to its possibility). Whether we would want to do this, whether we would consider it ‘just’ in its violation of our principle of charity, is another (related) matter. Nevertheless my initial point stands: if we want to argue with Derrida, we need to argue with him without arguing with him. Indeed, as I hope to indicate, if différance just is the structure of thought, we will need to argue without argument. This formula, ‘x without x’, I select for its resemblance to a theme in Derrida that can situate our critical discussion; his confession of his ‘religion about which nobody understands anything’,1 his ‘religion without religion’. This theme is not meant to indicate a straightforward contradiction; Derrida, like Priest, is interested in the impossible, but this has a different meaning in his work. Hence, when we talk of Derrida’s ‘religion without religion’ we are using ‘religion’ in two different senses.2 On the one hand, we have what Derrida calls the ‘concrete messianisms’ of the religions of the book: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. This is the religion that Derrida is without; this is the religion regarding which he can ‘quite rightly pass for an atheist’.3 But Derrida’s religion in the second sense, the religion he cleaves to, is a ‘general openness to an alterity without name, without identity,

126

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

which [religion] he calls the “Messianic” in contradistinction to any particular “messianism” of positive revelation’.4 He believes that ‘all genuine questioning is summoned by a certain type of eschatology, though it is impossible to define this eschatology in philosophical terms’.5 Derrida characterizes this ‘general openness to an alterity without a name’ as a ‘search without hope’,6 that is, without the Heideggerian hope that we can hazard certain words which will attune us to Beyng/nothing (although it may allow other kinds of hope). We noted the possibility of a Derridian reading of Heidegger in which the provisionality of all attempts to use language to orient ourselves towards Beyng/nothing would require constant criticism and then rebuilding of accounts – a de-construction. So when Derrida makes his famous claim ‘il n’y a pas de hors-texte’, ‘there is nothing outside the text’, ‘there is no outside-text’,7 he means to say that there is no self-contained absence or presence8 that is not subject to the textual structure of differing and deferring, namely différance. This emphasis on the ‘text’ leads no more to a linguistic idealism than Derrida’s emphasis on ‘writing’ (just as Derrida’s assertion of his ‘religion’ does not commit him to an adherence to any of the ‘religions of the book’). Rather, it is Derrida’s aim to complicate our dichotomy between writing and other, seemingly more secure, structures of signification such as speech. Following this he indicates that our privileging of one over the other is mistaken as their common aspects of use (their iterability) lead to a susceptibility to the movement of différance that they also hold in common. There is no Archimedean point, no safe place to stand outside of the play of differing and deferral that ranges over our structures of signification. This denial of self-contained presence and self-contained absence indicates Derrida’s unwillingness to either accept or reject metaphysics or nihilism (which, fully accepted, would simply re-inscribe metaphysical moves).9 Hence, Derrida glosses his famous ‘hors-texte’ claim as: ‘Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness towards the other’.10 If there was a stable notion of ‘nothing’ outside the text, outside the structures of signification that our lives take place within (and thus showing them to be ungrounded), then Derrida’s claim would amount to nihilism, but Derrida is making the point that anything that we might wish to identify as such a stable notion of nothing, be it Heideggerian Being or the empty world, will be found to be, through its very susceptibility to identification, already being subjected to the destabilizing solicitation of différance. No matter what we say, we can never make a final pronouncement on the nothing, as any attempt to do so will simply re-immerse us in the play of differing and deferring. This is what I meant when I earlier claimed that by tying

Arguing – Avoid!

127

us up in ‘nots’, Derrida makes sure we are unable to delusively seek the presence of nothing (Section 2.13). Bearing this in mind, we can now return to Derrida’s ‘search without hope’ that is summoned by this ‘openness to the other’ which is the (provisionally) real substance of Derrida’s take on ‘nothing’. This Messianic openness in Derrida is, as we have seen, an openness to an ‘alterity without name, without identity’. As such it is a re-description of Derrida’s claim that there is nothing outside the text. For to assume some sort of presence outside the text, that is, a presence immune to the instability that goes hand in hand with iterability,11 sets arbitrary (because assumed) conditions of possibility on the future and thus our philosophical investigation into the future becomes dogmatic. But with deconstruction’s economy of operations that exemplify that nothing is beyond the text, the future is always left open to surprise us with the impossible, that is, with something that ‘shatters the present horizons of the possible, that confounds our expectations’.12 As Glendinning concludes: ‘The future, as such, is, one might say, the “nothing” outside of the text that is the world of our today’.13 Only in the openness to the other that is to come can we hope to do justice to it, and so Derrida’s Messianism, his religion, can be seen in its opposition to its rivals to be just as much an ethical objection as it is ontological. So Carnap and Heidegger’s ethical dispute would appear to be joined by a third participant. Of course, we must not forget the powerful reflexivity of Derrida’s work, for différance even goes to work on such explanations of différance as the above. For the earlier claim that no matter what we say we can never make a final pronouncement on the nothing itself makes a final pronouncement on the nothing, and must be deconstructed in its turn, and so on, as the concrete operations of Derrida’s economy displace themselves out of any attempt to finalize them in philosophical discourse (such as this one). Thus, Derrida’s injunction to keep the future open to an alterity without identity reflexively complicates the notion of such an alterity that might seem fixed in the stating of it. The stating of Derrida’s Messianism, the reading of Derrida, is never over; we are always already immersed in a process of reading, or series of readings, without end.14 ‘(Again)’.15

6.2  Derrida rejected? So we have begun, if not finished, some sort of elucidation of Derrida’s remarks about ‘nothing’. But how could we possibly object to them? Hard enough to hit

128

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

a moving target, still harder to hit a target that you find has ‘always already’ moved. And should I even want to object to Derrida’s (lack of) position as regards ‘nothing’? After all, in the above discussion of Derrida his disavowals of final pronouncements on ‘nothing’ might seem to find a parallel in the earlier claim, seemingly made for myself, that where I draw attention to our natural understanding of nothing to criticize an account, I speak against my criticism.16 Furthermore, my apparent determination neither fully to accept nor fully to reject any of the accounts given thus far might seem to betoken a methodology of a deconstructive flavour. As I said earlier, I do want to argue with Derrida, an argument without arguing, an argument without argument, perhaps even without ‘parameterization’ of those terms. Doing this will be a formidable task, which, to give a taste of what is to come, will necessitate the complete reinterpretation of this book so far, and beyond this book, everything else. However, before I attempt to make good on this wildly hubristic claim, it will be a helpful propædeutic to examine the case of a philosopher who has sought to argue with Derrida, even if he too seems at times to wish to make room for the possibility of arguing without argument. I turn then to the critique of Derrida offered by Jean-Luc Marion.

6.3  Marion and Derrida I referred briefly to the notion of the impossible earlier as central to Derrida’s movement of thought. John D. Caputo has noted that ‘[I]t seems to me that [Derrida and Marion] are both saying very much the same thing on this question of the impossible’.17 There is some justification for this claim, which would seem to tell against the efficacy of Marion’s argument with Derrida. But although Derrida and Marion might come to similar conclusions, the framework supporting these conclusions could be interestingly different. With this in mind, let us examine the most important aspects of Marion’s work. Commentators on Marion tend to support some form of distinction between his earlier work on philosophical theology and his later work on phenomenology, although these projects are importantly related. Indeed, Marion himself has remarked that one of his later phenomenological works, Being Given, ‘with the inventory of saturated phenomena, completes, in the particular case of the phenomenon of Revelation, a sketch of what [his more theological work God Without Being] bluntly intended through the direct recourse to theology’.18 We will return to some of this specific terminology later; for now the moral to

Arguing – Avoid!

129

draw is that Marion seems to consider his later phenomenology to provide a ­context within which his earlier philosophical theology should be seen. In what follows, I plan to introduce Marion’s philosophical theology qua response to Heidegger (and ultimately Derrida), isolate an apparent problem with it, then move on to an assessment of Marion’s later phenomenological work, whereupon I shall investigate whether this situating context solves the problem or rather repeats it.

6.4  Marion 1: Philosophical theology Marion states his major constructive aim in God Without Being as ‘to give pure giving to be thought’.19 He pursues this ‘pure giving’ under the name ‘God’, and we will have cause to examine how this relates to the notion of ‘nothing’.20 Roughly, Marion adopts a Heideggerian framework insofar as he agrees that allegedly rigorous conceptual understandings of certain notions (i.e. those of ‘analysts’) fail to do justice to them – so, just as Heidegger condemns Carnap’s understanding of ‘nothing’ as scientistic, so Marion condemns modernity’s understanding of ‘God’ as idolatrous. In both cases the relevant notion is subsumed under a concept (and thus understood as a being) and in both cases these concepts are felt to be unacceptably anthropocentric. As far as ‘analytic’ understandings of such notions go, Marion appears willing to go along with Heidegger’s thought on the issue, although he differs from Heidegger in the way he wants to pursue the question of God. For Marion, Heidegger’s insistence that God can only be thought of against the background of Being (that is to say that we can only think of God insofar as we can think of God participating in Being) is a problem. The reason for this is that ‘phenomenologically, the anteriority of Being can be developed and justified only by the anteriority of the analytic of Dasein’.21 If the thinking of Being is ultimately procured on the basis of Dasein, then the thinking of God as a participant in Being will also be procured on that basis, and thus, in Marion’s opinion, will be anthropocentric. It will have to conform to the categories of the subject. So, for Marion, to avoid an anthropocentric thought of God we must think God  without Being, beyond the ontological difference between Being and beings. Marion is here involved in a contentious exegesis of Heidegger. I observed in Chapter 1 that Heidegger was aware of the extent to which his early work could be interpreted anthropocentrically, and that it was this awareness that

130

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

resulted in the shift of emphasis to the attempt to ‘think Being in its own terms’22 in his later work. Marion’s argument that this attempt remains trapped in anthropocentricism has thus been criticized by Han on the basis that it does not sufficiently do justice to the complexity of Heidegger’s thought on the issue, whether one believes that such thought is ultimately successful or not.23 This is an interesting debate, but I propose to bracket it here for the time being. I wish to read Marion on his own terms as an attempt to avoid the ‘logic of subjection’,24 any subjection, and thus to ‘think God without any conditions, not even that of Being, hence to think God without pretending to inscribe him or describe him as being’.25 Marion is aware that there are some problems with this attempt; indeed he acknowledges that ‘to think outside the ontological difference eventually condemns one to be no longer able to think at all’.26 His response is to claim that, for the question of God: ‘to be able no longer to think . . . indicates neither absurdity nor impropriety, as soon as God himself, in order to be thought, must be thought as . . . that which surpasses, detours and distracts all thought, even non-representational’.27 A positive account of the nature of this ‘thought as’ runs as follows: God can give himself to be thought without idolatry [i.e. beyond metaphysics and the ontological difference] only by starting from himself alone. . . . But a gift, which gives itself forever, can be thought only by a thought that gives itself to the gift to be thought. . . . But, for thought, what is it to give itself, if not to love?28

The last sentence here is the pivotal one. In the first two, Marion essentially repeats the need to think God without conditions (the necessity for purity) save the conditions that God gives us (rather than those to which we might subject God, as a subject apprehending an object). That is, the unconditioned experience of God calls us into existence in the response that constitutes us.29 The only response appropriate to this unconditioned call is love, insofar as ‘love itself can strike the world with vanity, in that all meaning comes to be bound up in the loved one and the lover becomes completely indifferent to the delights or otherwise of the world’.30 And indifferent, we might add, to metaphysics and the ontological difference. This is what appears to be the distinctive move in Marion’s work, irrespective of his contentious reading of Heidegger (and, as a consequence, of Derrida as well). As such, it is worth unpacking in a little more detail what he is doing before turning to his later phenomenology as a situating context (which I will suggest is of negligible use in any case).

Arguing – Avoid!

131

6.5  Uncritical dogmatism? First of all, we must remember how Marion got here: by claiming that God is not susceptible to the conditions we would apply (as human beings, or transcendental subjects, or whatever) to beings that we experience. This is the foundation of what Marion terms the ‘distance’ of God, which is characterized by God’s giving of Himself in withdrawal; that is to say, we apprehend God, although not in any final sense, by His excess that constantly frustrates our attempts to capture Him in human concepts (like Derrida’s ‘nothing outside the text’).31 Furthermore, for various reasons, Marion wants to think of God beyond Being, that is, not according to the ontological difference, as well as beyond human concepts (metaphysics). Thus God is not subjected to the ‘condition’ of Being, if you will. But now what sort of thought remains to think God, if we jettison even the broadest ‘condition’ of thought, that of participating in Being? To return to the long quotation above, Marion’s answer is ‘love’, a completely new way of comprehending which enables us to recognize God’s giving of Himself in a gift of love that we do not appropriate, that is, which we do not subject to the conditions of metaphysics or the ontological difference. By responding to God in love, we remain indifferent to these other conditions. This is the heart of Marion’s philosophical theology, and it raises an immediate problem. Marion from the outset wants to avoid the idea that our human concepts can delimit ‘God’, hence, as we have seen, his quasi-Derridian32 commitment to the notion of ‘God’ as resembling ‘nothing’ in His capacity to continually outstrip our efforts to speak of Him. Yet Marion does not here want to reduce God to our common-sense understanding of ‘nothing’.33 Rather, God’s dazzling incomprehensibility devolves from God’s plenitude, a plenitude that we have responded to by recognizing God’s loving call in love. But here is the problem: how do we justify the seemingly arbitrary nature of this response? As Horner puts it: ‘is this not just to overcome metaphysics [and, presumably, the ontological difference] by a (Nietzschean) movement of the will?’34 Talk of God for Marion seems to reside in its own sphere, locked off from criticism by the indifference to such criticism that falls under the appellation ‘love’ – hence the frequent objections to Marion’s project on the grounds of ‘uncritical dogmatism’.35 Obviously if Marion seeks justification from something outside of God, this will make God dependent upon these conditions, which is just what he is trying to avoid. Marion himself was aware of this problem as the quotation in Section 6.3 above indicates, and he hoped to solve this through the situating context of a rethought phenomenology. Before going on to examine this, I should like to

132

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

pause briefly and take stock of how the situation thus far relates to our central theme of ‘nothing’. It is arguable that one could take the central aspects of Marion’s approach and apply them to the problem of providing an account of ‘nothing’. We could agree that ‘nothing’ outstrips our capacity to talk of it using ‘metaphysical’ language, and we could agree (for either Marion’s reasons or independent ones) that a Heideggerian account is ultimately unsatisfactory. The task now is to ‘find a concept of nothingness that is without any reference – even negative – to beings and [B]eing’.36 If we read Marion’s article ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’ alongside the roughly contemporaneous God Without Being, we can see how Marion might outline a theological option: we non-reductively identify ‘nothing’ and ‘God’: God as beyond Being and beings through God’s excess can be seen to find a partner in nothingness’ excess, its own radical unintelligibility. Similarly, the indifference by which our response to God escapes subjection to the ontological difference or metaphysics can equally be regarded as an aspect of nothing (God, for His part, is indifferent to Being and beings insofar as He is beyond them). This is because God’s Goodness and our loving response strike the whole of Being and beings with indifference; God, insofar as He is nothing, allows nothingness to reach other things. Nothingness does not inhere in beings (and non-beings) themselves37 (at least as they are understood in the horizon of the ontological difference) but rather as a result of the switch to a non-ontological horizon – which is the theological horizon of God’s love. In other words, the new horizon thus created takes its starting point from God, and it reinterprets all entities as they appear within it.38 There is a ‘transcendent pole of reference from which the difference between beings and nonbeings [appears] empty according to another deeper difference’.39 The problem we are left with, however, is still the same. How can we say that a Heideggerian account of nothing is unsatisfactory, or that nothing outstrips our ‘metaphysical’ language, without begging the question against those accounts? If we respond that we are to think nothing outside of Being and beings, the broadest conditions of thought, by recognizing its identity with Goodness, namely God, whose loving call we respond to in love, then our account of nothing is also based on a sheer arbitrary act of will.40 It is interesting that in ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’ Marion claims that ‘the relation [to God] itself is more important here than the identity of its pole’,41 indicating from the beginning a desire to generalize his formula from God Without Being. In this vein, Marion observes: ‘We must notice that the mere

Arguing – Avoid!

133

mention of God is not sufficient to define [the new horizon], because of the equivocity of God’s names [i.e. attributions to God using metaphysical speech]’.42 Rather than theology, the task ‘belongs to phenomenology to distinguish between the different horizons’.43 To justify the possibility of Marion’s theological horizon in God Without Being requires phenomenological (rather than theological) investigation, in order to avoid accusations of uncritical dogmatism. Note, however, that this only justifies the possibility of a non-ontological44 horizon simpliciter – both theological and non-theological variants appear to be left open as possibilities.

6.6  Marion 2: Phenomenology The difficulty Marion faces is that it is hard to see how we can isolate a certain experience as not being susceptible to the conditions of the ontological difference or of metaphysics without resorting to some sort of fiat. His response is to draw on his later phenomenological work, particularly his notion of ‘saturated phenomena’, as offering a way of making sense of such experiences. So, what is a saturated phenomenon? The idea of a saturated phenomenon is Marion’s way of trying to think phenomenality without the experience being pervaded by anthropocentric conditions, whether they be those of metaphysics or (according to him) of the ontological difference; in other words to think ‘pure’ phenomenality. But, a phenomenon can ‘preserve its purity only if it proves to be irreducible to any object . . . as well as to any subject’.45 There must be no subject without whom the pure phenomenon could not appear, nor can there be some situating context, or horizon, that is a necessary condition for the phenomenon to show up. Marion claims that the saturated phenomenon ‘does not depend on this condition of possibility par excellence – a horizon, whatever it might be’,46 and furthermore he indicates that this pure phenomenon gives itself to a ‘passive’47 recipient who is not yet a subject (‘l’adonné’, the gifted), and that in attempting to understand the pure phenomenon in terms of something made manifest, the subject will constitute itself. Hence, the pure phenomenon always exceeds any possible horizon, and is never fully graspable by the subject. This should indicate the similarity of the ‘pure’ saturated phenomenon to the notions of ‘God’ and ‘nothing’ in play in the discussion above, although here the notion is not theologically loaded.

134

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Now, Marion may have been able to reach a point where he can say that he has issued no theological fiat by making ‘God’ just one of several options among saturated phenomena.48 But then is he not simply reduced to issuing a deeper phenomenological fiat – kicking the problem downstairs, as it were? Horner observes that ‘we find a conflict between the apparently present and immediate givenness of the phenomenon . . . and the necessary possibility of its multiple interpretations’.49 She resolves this by noting the ‘delay’ between the saturated phenomenon (qua call), and the response, which prevents the saturated phenomenon from ever being fully manifested – hence, we are directed towards the ‘pure’ saturated phenomenon, but only through the inability of our infinite hermeneutical endeavours to ever fully grasp it. The saturated phenomenon does not appear (‘manifest’) as an ordinary, everyday object, such as Husserl’s phenomenology was (allegedly) overly concerned with. Why should it, asks Marion, if not all phenomena take the form of experience of objects? The saturated phenomenon appears in its excess, in our inability to understand it in the phenomenological way suited to dealing with the everyday. Once again, we are reminded of Derrida’s ‘nothing outside the text’. Unfortunately, it now begins to look as though Marion has given up everything to Derrida. Rather than non-reductively identifying nothing and God, he has assimilated God to nothing – because now the notion of a saturated phenomenon looks to be as lacking in content as Derrida’s ‘nothing’. To take the saturated phenomenon of God’s self-revelation (i.e. an attempt at a contentful saturated phenomenon): ‘[I]f God gives Godself in such a way that intuition is saturated, then this is not only because the thought of God is excessive, but because we cannot know whether or not that excessiveness even refers us to God’ (emphasis added).50 Can Marion get some content back into his notion of the saturated phenomenon? Or does it ultimately repeat Derridian themes (as Caputo suggests), but from the entry point of excess of intuition rather than intention? Horner attempts to salvage a sympathetic interpretation, by noting that Marion can return to his advocacy of making a decision to view the world from the perspective of ‘love’ (and thus as pointing towards a God who first loved us). The decision is no longer arbitrary because of the situating context of his phenomenology, which thus recognizes the ‘endless hermeneutical possibilities’51 of that decision, arising as it does from a basis in Derridian aporia. Hence, in this context these theological appeals remain undecideable, safeguarding them from dogmatism. I will return to evaluate this position towards the end of the following section.

Arguing – Avoid!

135

6.7  Relating Derrida and Marion So, given this brief exegesis of Marion’s thought, we are now in a position to ask if it offers a genuine response to Derrida. In some ways, it does not look like a response at all. With the saturated phenomenon always outstripping our concepts, thus forcing us to cancel them and start again, and Derrida’s ‘nothing outside the text’ summoning an infinite reading based in openness to the alterity of the other, the two projects look interpretatively equivalent. Moreover, because the saturated phenomenon does not give its excessiveness (i.e. give itself as itself) in its manifestation for the subject, but only prior to that, in the call to which l’adonné has always already responded, thus creating the subject, the two projects appear as phenomenologically equivalent. The obvious main difference would be that, whereas Marion takes the inherent undecideability to open up the opportunity for a decision, a ‘faith that is solely characterised in terms of a leap’,52 the elucidating assertions pertaining to which can always be destabilized, Derrida refuses to commit himself to any such move. Rather he is committed to holding open the future, precisely to avoid making such leaps which might in some way characterize the other (say, as ‘God’) even if such a characterization is merely the nexus for the tracing of différance. In fact, trying to distinguish Marion and Derrida in this way is to offer a distinction without a difference. It relies on a (perhaps necessary) mischaracterization of Derrida’s project. Earlier I claimed that it is important not to forget the fundamentally reflexive nature of Derrida’s work. I also noted in Section 6.5 that the similarity of Marion’s work was only ‘quasi-Derridian’. For the contrasting outline of Derrida’s position just given is merely one of a number of outlines that can be elicited by reflexively applying the methods of deconstruction. As is the preceding sentence. Let us examine this in more detail. In a piece critical of Derrida, the Radical Orthodox theologian Graham Ward suggests three ‘positions’ that are often taken on the framework of Derrida’s thought: (1) Derrida is a nihilist because nothing is the transcendental ground for signification, which renders all things meaningless. (2) Derrida is not a nihilist. On the contrary his work examines a deconstructive operation that can be used constructively to draw attention to the marginalized, the excluded, the politics, and the finitude of any defined position. Meaning is deferred, not erased, and therefore open to a promise. (3) Derrida is not a straightforward nihilist. He does not transcendentalize the nihil and render everything meaningless. But endless deferral of meaning, while not erasing meaning, does render it local

136

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

and ephemeral, which in effect suggests an absurd world-view in which human beings are embroiled in endless wrestling with accidental meaningfulness and endemic misunderstanding.53

Ward then goes on to attempt to decide which position ‘best describes the kind of transcendental argument informing deconstruction’.54 The impetus behind this attempt is that Derrida on one occasion expressed his wish to ‘out transcendentalize Levinas’ transcendentalism’, a move which, according to Ward, ‘shocked those who had interpreted Derrida as voicing an anti-metaphysical position’.55 It is this sort of interpretation that allows the possibility of making a mistaken distinction between Derrida and Marion, but it is also this sort of interpretation that fundamentally mischaracterizes Derrida’s thought. By ‘this sort of interpretation’ I do not mean the content of any of Ward’s assertions here, but rather their form. For the attempt to select an interpretation of Derrida over certain others that best squares with a comment that Derrida has made on a given occasion appeals to a standard of appropriateness that runs counter to the whole emphasis of Derrida’s work,56 it is a Heideggerian ‘hope’. It does not take into account the reflexivity of deconstruction that renders perverse the taking of a single utterance of Derrida to act as a hermeneutic key to his entire project. Here, Ward might simply wish to reply that I am taking position (3) and so implicitly accede to his analysis. But this would be precisely to miss my point (and, I believe, Derrida’s), for acceding to Ward’s position (3) is just one move in the application of Derrida’s thought. Such a move is continually interrupted by a negation of (3) to be replaced by (1), (2) or any of a number of different permutations. Ward’s use of the word ‘endless’ in position (3) here is a good example of the sort of term that Derrida would want to deconstruct in this characterization of his position, for to remark on the future as endless would be to close oneself to one characterization of future, to close oneself to complete alterity. Perhaps if the ‘end’ of the future did appear to come we might find ourselves deconstructing that end, and finding out that it really was not the end at all, but this in no way indicates that we can predict that no end will come. In this movement of his thought, Derrida would find such attempts to place transcendental limits on our thought to be metaphysical (and thus to be inscribed and then suspected). Derrida’s writing always explodes out of a given textual interpretation, such as the one Ward gives above (and, indeed, the one I have given here). That is why Derrida is not really writing a specific thesis; rather he is giving an example

Arguing – Avoid!

137

of what writing is.57 And that is why it seems virtually impossible to respond to him. To return to particularities, it is also why Marion’s response ends up being subsumed by Derrida’s framework, for Marion makes the decision by faith to open up the possibility of infinite interpretation in a specific area (theology). (This is the interpretation of Marion by which Horner hoped to salvage the otherwise contentless saturated phenomenon.) However, the boundary of this area must be itself subject to the operation of hermeneutics, otherwise the problem of theological fiat that seemed to plague Marion’s early work has not been solved, merely masked. Yet, if this is the case, then Marion is subsumed under Derrida’s framework, operating deconstructively in an (ambiguously) theological sphere. One important point to note here is the bias in my presentation. One could equally say that Marion presents a valid deconstructive movement that Derrida ignored, as Derrida seems partisan against such a movement in spite of himself – in fact, to the extent that he makes such a stand, it could be rendered as a form of atheological fiat (which needs to be rescued by his later suspicion of his own work).58 However, I would like to suggest an alternative treatment of the relationship between Marion and Derrida, one which might sow the seeds of a more genuine response to the latter. My contention is that Marion’s earlier work in philosophical theology is more valuable in achieving this than his later phenomenological project.59

6.8  The theological (re)turn We have seen how a phenomenological attempt to solve the problem of apparent arbitrariness when positing an experience beyond condition (either metaphysical or of Being) does not add significantly to our discussion of a Derridian approach to ‘nothing’. It represents a moment in that approach, a way of appending our discussion of nothing to theological concerns, but still resides within Derrida’s framework (subject to the usual caveats). But rather than trying to solve the problem in this way, why not take Marion’s problem and move in a different direction with it? Maybe Marion ­concedes too easily that the theological decision is not only arbitrary but is problematically so. On the face of it, this does not seem a very promising route. For the attempt to escape conditions on experience (whether because one believes such conditions to be anthropocentric or not) seems to run up against fundamental logical

138

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

problems. Unless these problems can be solved, and the resultant solution shown to be necessarily related to the privileged discourse (and only that discourse), in this case, theology, then the attempt to isolate this discourse from criticism will resemble special pleading. The problems involve a familiar idea. Marlène Zarader notes that a ‘pure’ experience must be ‘non-relative’, but that this is viewed by some as a ‘square circle’.60 Why? Because ‘if thought wishes to embrace anything, even a nothing, it necessarily presupposes a there that guarantees the meaning of the being of this nothing, thus causing it to escape from pure alterity’.61 Marion may be able to assert the possibility of a thought without an object (by appealing to the more affective methodology of ‘love’), but this thought cannot do without any content whatsoever. The resultant thought may have no object in the sense of the everyday objects of phenomenology, but to remain thought at all it must have content, content which presupposes conditions that make it meaningful. Equally, we cannot ‘do without a pole allowing the appearance of phenomena’,62 a subject, if we are to remain within phenomenological analysis. Phenomena, no matter how pure, have to be experienced by someone, and are thus relative to any experiential conditions associated with their subject (even in its most attenuated, purely passive form of ‘experiencer’).63 The familiar idea here is the principle of omnis determinatio est negatio, which I yoked earlier to the idea of uncontextualized (that is ‘non-relative’ or ‘pure’) experience by claiming that uncontextualized experience would be unthinkable, nothing to our mind, or, more seriously, an experience of nothing (Section 5.8). I also noted how reflexively complicating the presuppositions of this move diachronically led into Derridian deconstruction, which then self-complicates. My outline for a response to Derrida at this point would simply be to reject deconstruction. As a response this seems anticlimactic and trivial – not a response but rather wilful ignorance. However, this is because, like Derrida, I am venturing a position that is radically unstateable (indeed, to the point that it is not a position at all). And here the emphasis is on the method of the rejection, not the fact of it. Rejecting deconstruction in our everyday sense of ‘rejection’ would leave us trapped within a Derridian framework, for, as he knows well, deconstruction applies to itself – any attempt to efface it inscribes it to be effaced again. That is why his wish in ‘Différance’ ‘to underline that the efficacity of the thematic of différance may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain of truth it never will have governed’64 is a poisoned pawn. A ‘messianism’ in which the messiah finally arrived65 would be contextualized diachronically, by the time prior to that

Arguing – Avoid!

139

messiah, that other. But what about a messiah who had been here from the start, was here now, and would be here for ever more? Of course, this is still loose talk, and, as such, ripe for criticism. But we can see here a glimmer of the ‘position’ I should like to outline. Throughout the book so far, I have taken pains to isolate a definition of ‘nothing’ within a given account, and then note that this definition relies on excluding certain other definitions to be meaningful, but that such exclusion can only be justified by fiat. Hence, no account is better than any other. With Derrida this strategy is considerably more difficult to implement, as his entire account is based on not wholly or definitively rejecting other definitions of ‘nothing’ (or anything else).66 So my object must be to reject an account that does not wholly or definitively reject any account of ‘nothing’, and in doing so to achieve a commensurate level of reflexivity to that which Derrida achieves in his ‘position’. In short, what Derrida excludes by fiat is not this or that ‘present’ or uncontextualized object or concept, but rather the notion of an entity (construed in the broadest possible terms) which relies for its meaning on nothing but itself, either synchronically or diachronically. Obviously, when I discuss or explain such an entity, my efforts are, in fact, doing nothing to elucidate this entity. The entity is self-present and completely selfexplanatory. This makes argument with Derrida (or anyone else) somewhat redundant; indeed, I seem only able to respond to him by the unargued assertion of the existence of such an entity. This is why the position I am outlining does not really qualify as a response; it is, as I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, an argument without argument. This can be seen as quite right and proper, given that the responses proposed previously to differing accounts of nothing are just as unargued as that which they seek to criticize. However, the capacity to see this indicates that one is already decided on which of the two ‘positions’ to favour, as I will discuss shortly – a natural result of the prominence both ‘positions’ give to reflexivity.

6.9  Detail It may seem that in asserting an entity that lacks susceptibility to deconstruction, I have made a move as arbitrary as Marion’s privileging of theological discourse. But I do not wish to assert that a given entity, as opposed to others, is exempt from deconstruction, rather I wish to reject deconstruction wholesale67 – no ‘entities’ are susceptible to it. If this is so then no individual entity can be isolated as being arbitrarily free from the play of différance. The entire ‘position’ that I am

140

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

postulating could be considered arbitrary, insofar as the rejection of Derrida’s thought has not been argued for. But this could equally be claimed of Derrida’s ‘position’ as a rival to the one that I present here. For Derrida cannot reject this ‘position’ without begging his own methodology against it. In making the move from partial to wholesale rejection of deconstruction, however, it may be thought that I have dispensed with the problem of arbitrariness but at the expense of leaving the resultant ‘position’ open to equally severe charges of implausibility and incoherency. It might be felt that a worldview that asserted the absolute self-presence of every entity might look very strange – surely we have overwhelming empirical evidence against the aseity of entities? But any objection running along these lines would have to appeal to principles that are already disputed by a worldview that considers all entities self-present (such as omnis determinatio est negatio or cognate principles). The only reason why we might be led to believe that the worldview would ‘come out looking strange’ would be if we unwittingly imported the disputed principles before committing to that worldview, and then deployed them in the subsequent attempt to describe that worldview. Then we might find ourselves committed to all sorts of contentious metaphysical doctrines such as solipsism or presentism. In fact, in attempting to render this worldview plausible, I am going to have to engage in this to some extent. For, as I have mentioned, if we take this ‘position’ in a reflexive manner it is hard to see the point in arguing for it, and the process of doing so might mislead. Derrida runs into parallel difficulties in needing to set out arguments and principles for deconstruction (such as différance), which he must then suspect in turn, for fear of being accused of some kind of metanarrative. To bring this out, let us take a look at the sort of account we might give of ‘nothing’ within this ‘position’, and see whether it is really as incoherent as may be suggested. Suppose I comprehend a given account of ‘nothing’ (any will do). If I have rejected deconstruction then I am bound to say that this account reveals the self-present and eternal nature of nothing; it is not susceptible to further criticism (we should also note that the same will be true of anything else that I am aware of at the time). But it is at this point that such a ‘position’ seems at its most counter-intuitive. All we seem to be doing here is inhabiting the delay, postulated in Section 5.9, that occurs before the awareness of the possibility of reflexive iteration. Of course, the problem with this objection is that it assumes the methodology it is trying to argue for. It utilizes ideas that were proposed earlier in Section 5.8,

Arguing – Avoid!

141

but this section was conducted in accordance with a self-avowedly biased methodology. The notion of ‘delay’ contextualizes the account within a temporal structure, which the assertion of the account as non-contextualized denies. Clearly we are running into problems here, specifically problems in attempting to conduct the non-question-begging explanation of a ‘position’ in accordance with a methodology that is inappropriate. But given that this ‘position’ is meant to argue without argument, it is difficult to see what sort of methodology would be appropriate. Nevertheless, while keeping this in mind, I should like to continue attempting some elucidatory remarks, which may form the content of a self-present understanding of the ‘position’.

6.10  Presence An important precursor to note is that it is misleading to suggest here that I have provided an answer to Derrida by rejecting ‘deconstruction’ and affirming ‘presence’. Neither of these words is used in the Derridian sense (as far as Derrida’s words have a determinate sense). I am not talking to Derrida, I am talking past him, and insofar as I am doing that, I am neither engaging with him nor understanding him.68 This is a necessity; at this level of reflexivity in methodology, there is no ‘safe ground’ of pre-theoretical logical intuitions that I have posited in previous bouts, to which both parties can appeal in order to settle their disputes.69 If, in outlining this ‘position’ I concede it as a reaction to Derrida, taken on his own terms, and I take up his definitions (such as they are) of ‘deconstruction’ and ‘presence’, I have conceded everything. All I can hope is to outline an adequately reflexive alternative methodology that is internally coherent, which fails to understand Derrida (at least on his own terms). The former sentence is not particularly helpful, as it seems difficult to see from which perspective one would decide between these two alternate methodologies – if one opts for the ‘position’ I am trying to outline here the parenthesis is strictly inaccurate as the methodology will have accurately and self-presently interpreted Derrida (once and for all!). So any pretence at an objective perspective is probably just that – a pretence. With this in mind, let us take a look at this word ‘presence’. To the extent that it means anything within this ‘position’ it cannot adequately depict the nature of that ‘position’. For ‘present’ like the word ‘delay’ inscribes us within a temporal context, between the past and the future. If only the present existed,

142

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

then we would have no genuine understanding of past and future, and thus no self-conscious understanding of the present.70 We could have an understanding of what ‘present’ meant insofar as that understanding is a phenomenological datum; we could even have a similar understanding of what ‘past’ and ‘future’ meant. But that would no more accurately track what is going on when we have an understanding of these terms than any apparent given definition of ‘presence’ accurately depicts what is going on when we understand the term ‘presence’ for Derrida.71 Let us press on. ‘Presence’ in this ‘position’ cannot mean presence in any phenomenologically temporally extended sense, such as interpretations of a ‘specious present’ in which the present contains successive events. Any event, at any distance, prior (or posterior72) to the present must be interpreted as occurring simultaneously with any event in the present. Or rather, phenomenological experience of temporal succession must be interpreted not as experience of a succession of events, but as experience of one event (that at which the awareness of prior/posterior events takes place) plus simultaneous experience of other events (such as memory73). This does not seem too implausible with moderately distant memories, but extremely recent events, such as those within the ‘specious present’, seem to make this interpretation counter-intuitive. This unease is unjustified, however, as any given moment of suspicion arising from selfconscious reflection on present experience will simply be one more self-present phenomenon occurring at the phenomenologically non-temporally extended point at which that experience occurs. The fact that one can remember a number of presents occurring for one is not an acceptable criticism as it relies on the notion of memory (which is reinterpreted as part of present experience). That some of these present moments appear to have occurred extremely ‘recently’ to the point at which the self-conscious reflection on the present moment takes place adds nothing to the conceptual issue. This is perhaps a rough idea of how we might wish to understand ‘presence’ as a temporal notion (in its capacity to reply to Derrida’s diachronic deferring aspect of différance). But what about ‘presence’ as a spatial notion, a self-present response to the synchronic differing aspect of différance? This is perhaps more straightforward; one must simply deny that any seemingly different aspect of one’s phenomenological experience in a given present moment derives its meaning or qualitative character from any other. Importantly, this will include any self-conscious apprehension of the apparently experiencing subject. The idea here that context is unnecessary for the meaning of different aspects of a present experience in and of themselves (or, to put it another

Arguing – Avoid!

143

way, that differing does not actually happen, and so the notion of context has no application) does not seem so controversial if one accepts the account of presence’s atemporal nature above (of course, that is a significant concession). What seems more controversial is that we clearly experience differing even in our present experience. What is required is some way of reinterpreting this as we reinterpreted the apparent experience of temporality, so that it can be seen as the content of a self-present experience. It is important for my purposes in this section not to think of ‘present phenomenological experience’ as some field that is apprehended by a subject standing over it. The subject, to the extent that it is apprehended in any selfconscious thought in the present moment, is part of that experience, as are qualities or actions we ascribe to the subject, such as a focus on an aspect of the present experience. Given this, and the account of presence’s atemporality just outlined, it is possible to see how the intuitive idea that we have a present experience containing a number of different aspects, and that we can focus on one of them, can be reinterpreted. For the notion of focusing in (or indeed performing any kind of ‘mental operation’) is temporal, so all we have under this interpretation are the results of the operation and any present memories. However, these present memories are not in reality any more associated with the object in focus than any other aspect of the present experience (association itself being a temporal mental operation).74 Any apparent association will merely be a self-present aspect of the present experience, and the alleged results of a mental operation are, in fact, not ‘results’ (which itself is a word that begs in favour of temporality) but rather also such aspects. Thought and other mental operations, then, do not have the meaning that our common-sense intuitions ascribe to them – they are ‘blind’,75 simply aspects of the self-present experience like any other. Thought has nothing to do with its object; in fact, the dichotomy ‘thought/object’ is unsustainable.76 Given this, it might be helpful to say a little more about the term ‘experience’ as it is used here. For Zarader plausibly claims in her criticism of Marion that we cannot imagine an experience without a subject.77 The idea here is presumably that experiences are not somehow transparent, a subject is required for whom they can ‘show up’. But of course, this is all predicated on the failure of self-presence; it simply begs the question against the ‘position’ I wish to outline. For if self-conscious apprehensions of one’s own subjectivity are merely part of experience (that term taken in a non-partisan sense), as are all mental operations, then the sense that a subject is apprehending a subset of the aspects of the self-present experience is mistaken. The immediate thought

144

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

is now: ‘If this is true then how can the experience show up at all?’, but that just enmeshes us once again in the thought that the subject is somehow outside experience. We do not need to explain this. For, if we can provide an alternative interpretation for the aspects of experience that pertain to an apparent subject, then the idea that the subject is required for an experience to ‘show up’ just does not make any sense. Experience just happens (although the word ‘happens’ has misleading connotations of temporal context), subjectless, although the content of that experience may be such that it qualitatively feels (of course, ‘feeling’ is the wrong word here) as though there are differing aspects of it that show up for a subject.78

6.11  ‘Self ’-reflexivity I noted earlier that in attempting to render this ‘position’ plausible, I would have to engage in a metaphysical discussion that would be contentious. I also noted the difficulty of arguing without argument for this ‘position’, insofar as using a methodology that accepted such moves would be to have already decided against it. Bearing this in mind I should now like to say something about the necessity of this ‘position’ being reflexive (to say it proceeds according to a reflexive methodology hardly seems appropriate). In elaborating the ‘position’, especially in the previous section, I have used a number of words and phrases that seem particularly inappropriate, in that they appear to militate against the very ‘position’ I am trying to argue for. For example, I spoke of the self-present ‘moment’, and of ‘events’, despite the fact that, if the aspects of a self-present experience have no temporal context, these words seem inaccurate. Equally, the idea that the ‘position’ outlined is an ‘interpretation’79 (or even a ‘position’), seems to tell against it; for an interpretation is a mental operation that involves notions of difference and temporal deferral that are excluded by the acceptance of this ‘position’.80 The moral to be drawn from this is that which I suggested would be an issue at the outset of this reply to Derrida; that nothing I could go on to say would serve to argue for or elucidate self-presence (which includes this section). My outlining of this notion in the form of an argument in a book is, like the attempt to outline Derrida’s thought, ultimately unsatisfactory. For it looks as though I am attempting to elucidate the stages in an argument that is gradually understood. But as I claimed at the beginning, if there is an entity (or experience) that is ‘selfpresent’ then it requires no argument to understand it, because it is experienced

Arguing – Avoid!

145

in the present (as it were, ‘now’), and is not contextualized synchronically or diachronically by any other entity (or experience). Hence, the elucidation that I am conducting now cannot illuminate us regarding the self-present experience, although it might form its pellucid content (including self-present apparent ‘memories’ of the previous argumentation). It is important to note this, as otherwise a criticism analogous to some criticisms (of debatable efficacy) of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus could be advanced, namely that a given methodology is used to argue for a conclusion, and then is subsequently rejected, but the conclusion held. In fact, to take the ‘position’ advanced in this thesis on its own terms (as I agreed to attempt to do with Derrida in the endlessly reinterpretable section dealing with him), one not only has to discount the argument for it qua argument, but also the concept of argument in general (including, incidentally, the rest of this book).81 Obviously this will not convince sceptics of this ‘position’, but in positing such a problematic possibility, I have already begged against this ‘position’ by stepping outside it, and acknowledging the requirement, or even the possibility, of sceptical criticism. This prompts us to note the important point that, if one is not to beg the question against this ‘position’, then not only will all argument in support of it have to be reinterpreted in the light of its reflexive nature, but so too will all criticism rejecting it. Even if the self-present moment contains a criticism that appears to be telling against the notion of self-presence, it is still required that we beg against the notion of self-presence in the first place in order to understand that criticism as part of an argument, rather than as an aspect of phenomenal experience with no genuine relation to any of the other contents of the selfpresent experience in which it occurs (including apprehension of its target, the notion of self-presence). Of course, this is itself an argument against this possibility of criticism against self-presence, and so it too can be discounted as part of self-present experience, and also, more pertinently, argued against in its turn. However, the move is always available to the proponent of the self-present ‘position’ that any further criticism is merely to be interpreted as an aspect of the self-present experience (although the idea of a ‘move’ being ‘available’ is itself problematically argumentative). This might seem to lead to infinite regress, but of course the proponent of the self-present ‘position’ will again just interpret this as part of the self-present experience.82 So finally (and first) I would argue that all that remains for the proponent of the reflexive ‘position’ is to believe their ‘position’ and stop arguing (not that they ever started), a move that is inherently misleading if such a thing was actually possible. This I then propose to do.

146

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

6.12  Application I should like to end with a few concluding thoughts on this ‘position’. It may seem,  at first blush, that the ‘position’ advanced here chimes less with our intuitions than deconstruction, insofar as Derrida accepts that certain arguments can be advanced in favour of his ‘position’, and readily considers specific criticism. But of course, Derrida complicates both arguments for, and criticism of, his ‘position’ reflexively, and hypertrophically extends this process to the point that the dealings with Derrida in this book no more readily conform to common-sense intuition of how we go about such a project than the dealings with this rival self-present ‘position’. Now, how is this ‘position’ applied to the problem of providing an account of ‘nothing’? The result seems to be that if one adopts this methodology, then the account given of ‘nothing’ in the self-present moment, no matter what it might be, adequately deals with the notion. For any apparent application of reflexive iteration (or indeed any other criticism) to this account will merely form the content of the self-present experience, and whatever we might believe to have replaced it is always already the current account in that self-present moment. Of course, it might be that ‘nothing’ is not at issue in the self-present moment. If this is so, both the problematic and the requirement to solve it are dispensed with. Finally, it might be said that a given account of ‘nothing’ bears no resemblance to what is happening ‘in reality’, as mental operations, words, or whichever analogues one wishes to use, are merely aspects of the self-present experience. However, such a criticism applies reflexively, as it does to the apparent conclusion that can be drawn from this – that there is no ‘reality’ to which our thought applies83 (or rather, this distinction between ‘reality’ and something else cannot be supported). Finally, I should like to discuss the possibility of a partial commitment to this ‘position’, which I eschewed earlier on the grounds that it appeared arbitrary. I believe that Marion wishes to adhere to such a view, but succumbs to the temptation to make the self-present ‘entity’ plausible, which no argument can achieve. My own argumentation to make plausible the notion of an entirely selfpresent ‘position’ is a capitulation to this temptation. It is attractive to suggest that partial adherence to this ‘position’, and partial adherence to Derrida’s ‘position’ would result in an ‘uninterpreted’ engagement with the world, would result in ordinary practice. For both ‘positions’ appear to do some violence to our preconceptions of how matters stand. There appear to be some entities that are not susceptible to suspicion insofar as all discussion

Arguing – Avoid!

147

departs from assumptions; be those assumptions (most significantly here) methodological, theological, logical, scientific, and so on. Equally, there appear to be entities that are not entirely self-evident, and require further discussion. But the difficulty is deciding what ‘ordinary practice’ means here without making methodological commitments.84 I would like to pursue this line of thought by referring to the notion of ‘acknowledgement’ found in the work of Stanley Cavell, where it is elucidated in relation to what Cavell calls the ‘truth’ or ‘threat’ of scepticism. By the ‘truth’ of scepticism, Cavell means the naming of ‘our wish (and the possibility of our wishing) to strip ourselves of the responsibility we have in meaning (or in failing to mean) one thing, or one way, rather than another’.85 Sceptical questions and their (conspiratorial) responses are intertwined; they both spring from the desire to abandon shared forms of life with their concomitant vertiginous contingency – that necessary reliance on others that goes with such shared forms of life. The worry is that ‘If [others] do not go on with me [in my way of doing things], I begin to doubt my way of doing things until now’.86 Obviously one way of avoiding this problem seems to be to fail to acknowledge that there are alternative ways of doing things, ways pursued by other people.87 However, there is an important difference that needs to be marked here between a failure to know and a failure to acknowledge. As Mulhall notes: ‘although it is possible simply to be ignorant of the fact that someone is in pain, it is not possible simply to know the fact; such knowledge must take a positive form . . . whether in an acknowledgement of the pain or in a failure to acknowledge it’.88 So a failure to acknowledge is not a failure to know; acknowledgement is inflected by the claim that the other makes upon me. I can refuse that claim due to coldness, confusion or indifference, and thus fail to acknowledge the other, but such a failure to acknowledge is parasitic on knowledge of the sheer existence of the other, an agreement with the criteria that constitute a shared form of life. Within this notion of acknowledgement, Cavell does allow for the possibility that we may wish to just reject what a given other is claiming as nonsense, as something that does not even count as a position that can be opposed to our own but he emphasizes the responsibility we bear for doing so, for ending such a conversation. What does this mean? Well, it is true that I can, by assessing seemingly aberrant behaviour, choose to rule a person out of my world as regards certain psychological concepts (Cavell gives the example of ‘pain’). This is what is happening in the Carnap and Heidegger impasse, each is withdrawing their acknowledgement from the other; this is why their disagreement can be characterized as having an

148

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

ethical dimension – each recognizes that there is an other there that it is their decision to refuse to acknowledge.89 But the situation with the two ‘positions’ involved in this chapter is different. For the ruling out of the other by either of these ‘positions’ is not just the ruling out of the other from my world of painconcepts, nor is it the ruling out of one other’s behaviour among many as being expressive of mind (a failure of what Cavell calls ‘empathic projection’), but is rather the ruling out of all others as others. It is not a contextual ruling-out, but a wholesale one. By the locution ‘ruling out the other as other’ I do not mean to suggest that either of these positions do not have some understanding of ‘other’. A look at Derrida’s work on the topic confirms this. What I mean to say is that neither of these positions understands the other in terms that could make those positions vulnerable to the doubt that their way of going on with things is right – they rule the other out as a genuine other. The reason is that both positions, being strongly reflexive, legislate as to what sort of things there are in the world in the first place, and these things will be read in terms that confirm the methodological presuppositions of these positions. Present an other, or a whole range of others (which constitute anything that we might wish to claim as expressive of mind), which might be considered to present the possibility of doubt to these positions’ methodologies, and the Derridian will likely welcome the possibility of this doubt as being part of the movement of différance and thus confirm the methodology, whereas the proponent of the other ‘position’ I have indicated in this chapter will be liable to understand such a presentation as merely the phenomenological content of a self-present experience (which likewise confirms this other methodology). Moreover, each will not see their response as an avoidance of a doubt in their own methodology, as they will not see themselves as having made any response at all (nor indeed as adhering to one methodology among others). Rather, their understanding of these presentations that might otherwise cause doubt confirms their own methodology from the beginning. The clash between these positions and alternatives is marked by a failure to know, not just a failure to acknowledge.90 Of course, to talk of a ‘failure to know’ here, and a ‘clash between positions’, already begs the question against such positions – something we have to do if we want to clarify what is going on according to a Cavellian understanding. Thus, it seems that we can phrase the opposing of the methodologies (ways of going on) of deconstruction on the one hand and the ‘position’ I delineated as a way of rejecting deconstruction on the other (although, significantly, I suspect

Arguing – Avoid!

149

that advocates of either would disagree that they proceeded in accordance with a ‘methodology’, for various reasons) in accordance with Cavell’s distinction between knowledge and acknowledgement. As each proceeds reflexively, neither can acknowledge the other, but worse, neither can even know of the other; at best, they can only understand the opposing position as it is translated into their own terms. This will always appear as a mischaracterization to any position (including third-party ones) that does not agree with those terms, although of course the original position can never understand it as that (just as it also cannot understand a third-party position). Hence, ‘acknowledgement’ in its Cavellian sense is of a piece with a certain form of reflexive iteration, insofar as it allows the advocate of a given position to understand the possibility of the contingency of their own assumptions (by contextualizing it in relation to the positions and assumptions of an other). In the preceding material of this chapter, I have occasionally attempted to adopt a third-party position to indicate how one of the reflexive ‘positions’ under discussion relates to the other. But while this offers some clarification on the possibility or not of knowing of the other in terms of strongly reflexive positions, we need to resist being seduced into thinking that this Cavellian attitude is the last word on the subject. For, in setting up the notions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘acknowledgement’ Cavell assumes against both of the strongly reflexive ‘positions’ presented in this chapter. More simply, Cavell’s own ‘position’ assumes its own reflexive methodology,91 retranslating both deconstruction and the counterposition I have presented here into its own terms. And, this is the significant point: the Cavellian position contains certain assumptions that might seem arbitrary from the assumed ‘position’ of either deconstruction or the aforementioned counterposition (to give two relevant examples of such assumptions, the belief in nonsense or the assumption of the other92), but this arbitrariness is only problematic from the ‘positions’ once they have been assumed. So the striving for a middle ground between these two ‘positions’, be it (later) Heideggerian, Cavellian, Carnapian or whatever, is only arbitrary if the (methodological) question has already been begged against it. Of course, in expressing these thoughts I have already adopted a ‘fourth-party’ view and so made the Cavellian assumptions in order to argue for them. This would seem an appropriate partial mirror to the assuming of the entire counterposition elaborated in the latter portion of this chapter in lieu of argumentation. Of course, to say this is not to claim that the assumptions Cavell makes are indisputable to intra-third-party critics (which will include the appropriately

150

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

retranslated versions of deconstruction and its counterposition). They too can regard such assumptions as arbitrary, with of course the possibility for Cavell to argue against the assumptions of the system that advances such criticism. Given this, we can see how deconstruction might be its own unquestioned assumption, although to advance this point is to beg the question against it, to assume a methodology that excludes deconstruction (although this of course will not be obvious to a critic who genuinely wishes to advance this point). The questionbegging alternative would be to claim that deconstruction is just nonsensical. The fact that the Cavellian stance, which might seem to accord better with our expectations concerning how things are with ‘ordinary life’, is itself mired in these methodological problems seems to agree with Mulhall’s characterization of Wittgenstein as conceiving of the ordinary ‘not as immune to, and hence as available as a simple counterweight to, philosophical appropriations and misappropriations, but as inherently vulnerable to them’.93 And of course, once again, this evaluation proceeds according to its own assumed methodology.

6.13  A parergon regarding Hegel The work of this chapter is over, but I should like to enter into a few remarks concerning Hegel. These are not essential to the structure of the book’s argument (except as a response to potential Hegelian objections), but I hope they will be of interest, and they seem to fit best as an addition to this chapter. Recently, Hegel’s work in his Science of Logic, previously overlooked in favour of the Phenomenology of Geist, has undergone something of a reappraisal in terms of its viability. This is due in part to readings of Hegel’s work by scholars such as Richard Dien Winfield, William Maker and Stephen Houlgate. I have found Houlgate’s work on Hegel’s discussion of pure being and nothing that opens the Science of Logic particularly thought provoking,94 and so propose to examine that discussion in light of Houlgate’s presentation of it. Once again, I am motivated by conceptual, rather than exegetical interests (although Houlgate is motivated by both). Hegel can be seen as following Kant’s desire for philosophical thought to be critical, both of its objects and of itself; indeed, Hegel believed he was pursuing this desire more rigorously than Kant himself, as he felt that Kant took too much for granted. If we wish to avoid dogmatism, then philosophy must be utterly self-critical, and it can only be so if we accept nothing as simply given, or on

Arguing – Avoid!

151

authority. Philosophy must, for Hegel, be radically presuppositionless. This means that we must lay aside (although not reject – that too would be dogmatic) all presuppositions we might have had about how thought works, or what thought is. We must consider thought minimally, and this leaves thought, as Houlgate puts it ‘with nothing to think but itself, its own simple being’.95 Hence, the Logic begins (and by ‘begins’ here I mean nothing more than ‘begins historically’; to assume that the first category of Logic is a beginning of something that will continue is to import just that: an assumption) with contemplation of pure, indeterminate being. So we have two notions from the Science of Logic in play; the need for absolutely presuppositionless thought, and, that which is absolutely presuppositionless thought, namely indeterminate being. However, presuppositionless thought does turn out to have certain presuppositions after all. This seems at first blush like a contradiction. I am uncertain about what status contradictions have in Houlgate’s interpretation of Hegel. It is true that the former notes that presuppositionless philosophy will suspend judgement on the applicability of the law of non-contradiction just like any other possible presupposition regarding the nature of thought. Moreover Houlgate on occasion seems to attribute self-contradictory statements to Hegel,96 although at other times he seems anxious to dispel seeming contradictions in Hegel’s thought.97 Given that I have discussed relevant issues concerning contradictions at some length in Chapter 4, I will, where possible, take Houlgate to be avoiding contradictions, while at the same time allowing that both he and Hegel may be quite happy for them to occur. It seems at least that in this matter of the presuppositions of presuppositionless thought, Houlgate is interested in avoiding the apparent contradiction, specifically by the method of parameterization. That is to say, Houlgate distinguishes between historical and hermeneutic presuppositions on the one hand, and founding presuppositions on the other, and goes on to claim that while the Science of Logic has presuppositions in the former sense, it has no presuppositions in the latter sense. Let us go a little deeper into this distinction. Presuppositionless thought presupposes, for Hegel, that the philosopher should have a self-critical openness of mind – we have seen that this is something that Hegel takes over (and arguably augments) from Kant. Such a presupposition Houlgate deems hermeneutic, contrasting it with founding presuppositions, where the latter predetermine the course or outcome of the Logic. We get a little more about the nature of founding presuppositions when Houlgate describes presuppositionless philosophy as

152

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

presupposing ‘no goal, method, or principle that would orient its development’; presumably presupposing such things would amount to making founding presuppositions. Also relevant to this discussion of presuppositions is in what manner the Science of Logic should be said to presuppose Hegel’s earlier Phenomenology of Geist. The nature of the relationship between the Phenomenology and the Logic is vexed; Houlgate sees its role as addressing those who share the openness of mind required as a hermeneutic presupposition for philosophy, but are embedded in a certain perspective. This perspective is that of ordinary consciousness, which takes some things for granted, and thus from which the way of doing philosophy Hegel proposes is seen as bizarre. Such things being taken for granted are contrary to the spirit of Hegel’s desire for radical self-criticism; the Phenomenology, then, should be seen as addressing a certain type of dogmatism that militates against the hermeneutic presupposition – bringing it to light to the unknowing, and hopefully banishing it. Let us consider this hermeneutic presupposition. The motivation for this can be found in Hegel’s claim that ‘One bare assurance is worth just as much as another’.98 If we base our philosophy on assumptions that we cannot justify, and someone else wishes to do likewise, then how do we arbitrate between these two sets of assumptions if they conflict? The only way to avoid this problem will be to begin our philosophy with no assumptions and for that we need Hegel’s commitment to radical self-criticism. Or do we? It seems to me that Hegel’s methodology here presupposes the impossibility or inappropriateness of pursuing a dogmatic philosophy. When I talk of a dogmatic philosophy, I mean a philosophy that assumes, without providing reason for doing so, that some claims are unassailably true (I will go on to discuss this more in Chapter 8). Now it is clear that Hegel (and most other people) will see such a philosophy as deeply unsatisfactory. Likely they will use the example of the two opposing dogmatists suggested above as exemplifying why such a philosophy will ill serve us in our quest for truth. But such an argument begs the question against the dogmatist, as it assumes that the assumptions of the two dogmatists are on a par. But a dogmatist, if urged to place himself in one of the two positions in this imagined dispute, will maintain that they are not on a par; rather, he has access to the truth of the matter, even though he cannot argue for it. To feel the force of Hegel’s argument we would already have to agree with him in believing the two assumptions to be on a par.

Arguing – Avoid!

153

Interestingly, Hegel does acknowledge that to enter into his style of philosophy, we must make the presupposition to think in a radically self-critical way, and that this decision in favour of the presupposition is arbitrary.99 So this seems like a recapitulation of the problem that Hegel raises against those who carry out philosophy with presuppositions. Now the decision in favour of this presupposition may be motivated, as Houlgate says, ‘by the rational desire to be fully self-critical and to take nothing for granted’.100 But this does not add anything to our current problem, insofar as the desire to be fully self-critical is precisely what is at issue. However, Hegel interprets the arbitrary nature of the decision as meaning that it is ‘free’ insofar as we need not do it, but a rational, self-critical person should make such a decision. Our question now is what we should do with these words ‘rational’ and ‘selfcritical’. Given that we have noted that the decision to be radically self-critical is precisely what is at issue here, if we take these words to be referring to that sort of self-criticism, then we will be preaching to the converted. If we do not take these words in this way, then we allow for presuppositions to be present in making such a decision, and such an allowance will nullify the force of the should, as those presuppositions can be of a kind that disallow the importance of radical self-criticism. To gauge the true sense of the use of these words, it is helpful to turn to Houlgate’s discussion of for whom the Phenomenology was written. There we are told that the Phenomenology is ‘directed at readers who although steeped in the certainties of everyday life share in the openness of mind that characterizes true philosophy itself ’.101 Those who do not share such openness of mind are ‘bull-headed’ and ‘“trample underfoot the roots of humanity”’.102 But of course such rhetoric will cut no ice with those who disagree with radical self-criticism, who can no doubt work up some similarly condemnatory phraseology of their own (although such talk is interestingly indicative of yet another impasse that incorporates ethical considerations, of the type we have seen before). Of course, the efficacy of such rhetoric will very much depend on whether the reader addressed already agrees with one position or another.103 With this in mind, let us return to the distinction between hermeneutic and founding presuppositions. Houlgate claims that the presupposition in favour of radical self-criticism is of the former type. However, our foregoing discussion seems to place it in the latter camp. For surely the decision against dogma involves a presupposition of a goal, method or principle that orients the development of philosophy, or that predetermines the course or outcome

154

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

of the Logic? It predetermines the course as non-dogmatic, and the goal as the truth arrived at without taking anything for granted. Now it is true that after this (founding) presupposition is made, no more presuppositions are relied upon, but that does not alter the fact that the decision to pursue Hegel’s style of philosophy is based on a founding presupposition. So I have sought to indicate here the manner in which what is a seemingly harmless hermeneutic presupposition on Hegel’s part is in fact a more substantial founding presupposition. This should be unsurprising if we reflect on the word ‘hermeneutic’ as denoting a method or principle of interpretation. For a hermeneutic presupposition will then be one regarding a method or a principle, and in making such a presupposition one will be making a presupposition about a method or principle that will thence orient the development of philosophy – and this is indicative of a founding presupposition. Now it is possible that Hegel could say that the radical self-criticism of which he speaks is just what he means by ‘philosophy’. He may say that dogmatism is incompatible with the search for truth. Such objections, however, will beg the question: a dogmatist will either claim that this is an arbitrary restriction of the term ‘philosophy’, or that philosophy then does not give us the whole story. As to the claim that dogmatism hampers the quest for truth, the dogmatist who thinks that what he or she holds dogmatically is unassailably true will claim that any methodology that seeks to put this into question can only lead us farther from the truth. Of course, ‘dogmatism’ is word that carries pejorative connotations. And to attempt to argue not even for a specific dogma, but even for a view which allows different dogmas to be plugged in to it, is contrary to the notion of dogma itself (even this argumentation about how to approach dogma will do violence to it – including this sentence!). We saw this problem crop up for Marion, and I will talk more about holding specific dogmas in Chapter 8. It is perhaps easier to see how the Hegelian hermeneutic presupposition turns out to be a founding presupposition, and begs the question, in relation to the ‘position’ sketched in Sections 6.8–6.11. Nothing I have said so far should worry the Hegelian unduly. For he can quite happily issue a tu quoque. But with that caveat and the foregoing discussion in mind, let us turn to look at an aspect of The Science of Logic that is more obviously germane to our discussion so far – Hegel’s treatment of being and nothing. Earlier I noted that to embark on presuppositionless thought can only mean to consider pure indeterminate being, insofar as if anything does

Arguing – Avoid!

155

determine being, this determining factor will have been presupposed. Of course, this is going to lead us into familiar territory. For just as when we talk of ‘nothing’ we must recognize that to say that it is not something is to say something (problematically) of nothing, so with indeterminate being, we must recognize that to say that it is not determinate says something determinate (problematically) of the indeterminate. Hegel is aware of this apparent problem,104 and Houlgate attempts to demonstrate how he can defuse it. This word ‘indeterminate’ which is giving us trouble is not meant to define being, but is rather meant to indicate the correct way of thinking being. We are not meant to think of being as excluding all determination, rather, if we are to think being, we must not determine it in any way. We must not bring to mind determinations – including the determination ‘indeterminate’. So Houlgate: ‘we are to think of being “in its pure lack of determination” as pure being, not as the explicit “sublation [or negation] of determinacy”’.105 Unfortunately, this just determines being on a new meta-level. To replay, we are enjoined not to think being as determinate. The criticism follows that this involves thinking being as determinately indeterminate. The reply is that we must not think of being as caught in this bind – we must not think of it as either determinate or indeterminate, we must abstain from such thoughts. But to say that we must not think like this, that we must abstain from such thoughts, is going to appeal to certain characteristics of being that ground this ‘must’ – and this will determine being. Now what Hegel will say here is that to think of being as determined in this way simply shows that we have not suspended all thoughts of determination. The critic will then run his response again. An impasse results. The non-Hegelian will always regard any attempt to direct us to some ‘indeterminate’ idea of being, where thoughts of determination are suspended, as determining it, the Hegelian will regard his critics’ doubts as indication that determinacy has not been fully suspended. It is true that Hegel makes some effort to quiet these doubts – he is aware that when we think pure being we will be aware of it being mediated by the negation of mediacy or determinacy. But his advice is that we should suspend, indeed try deliberately to forget, these mediations and determinations when we try and think pure being. But this advice is borne out of what is established first about being, that the correct way to think it is to carry out such a suspension. So if we have worries about whether what we are being directed towards is indeed indeterminate being, then Hegel’s advice is going to look as though he is simply advocating wilful blindness.

156

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

To understand how this might look, suppose a theologian were to say that thinking should begin with God, not being. The critic claims that such a view makes certain presuppositions because the concept of God is determined in various ways. In response, the theologian notes that we should suspend, by deliberately trying to forget, the ways in which God is determined, as we must think God purely. In this way we can see that God is where presuppositionless thinking can depart from. And of course, different individuals can fill in the place of God with any concept they wish, even quite incongruous ones. Now Hegel may point to a disanalogy; because being, insofar as it is indeterminate, carries with it the need to suspend all determination, whereas other concepts, such as ‘God’, do not. But given that his critic is sceptical that this need covers the initial move that we need to suspend determinations when talking about being (i.e. that the indeterminate is determinate insofar as it is determined as indeterminate), he or she will see the Hegelian’s being as having been let off a determination just as much as the theologian’s God, or another given concept. And here we see the mirroring of the dogmatism of the hermeneutic presupposition with the dogmatism of suspension of determination. Perhaps Hegel can try something else. William Maker has suggested the following strategy.106 In the face of the sort of argument that Houlgate attempts to deal with above, that to claim that being is indeterminate is to determine being by negating the concept of determinacy, Maker emphasizes the importance of pure knowing. Earlier I noted that the Phenomenology was aimed at those immersed in certain dogmas of ordinary consciousness, and the most important of these is the idea that all science involves a consciousness knowing an object, the two being distinguishable. On Maker’s interpretation of the Phenomenology, this cognitive structure renders itself into indeterminacy, and we are left with what Hegel dubs ‘pure knowing’, which is without any distinction, and present to which is only simple immediacy. So pure knowing is the cessation of mediation and reflection (here Maker seems to differ from Houlgate, who takes it to be the suspension of a specific dogma regarding a cognitive structure). Maker then goes on to note that if we have indeed reached pure knowing by following the Phenomenology through, then from the standpoint of pure knowing, whereby mediation will have ceased, we will not understand the first step of the Logic with indeterminate being as having come about through mediation (i.e. mediation through negation of the concept of determinacy). Such a criticism comes about only due to the fact that we maintain the dogma of the consciousness/object cognitive structure. However, the problem with

Arguing – Avoid!

157

Maker’s attempts to correct us in this regard is that unless we already inhabit the standpoint of pure knowing they will appear question-begging (as we have seen with the Houlgate response above). Arguments and explanations will buy into the structure of determination and mediation that are just what these arguments and explanations are trying to avoid. It is tempting to say here that what Maker should do is forget the attempt to correct his critic and just advocate following the Phenomenology through. However, insofar as his description of what is going on in the Phenomenology is an explanation of it, it will still be addressed to those inhabiting the standpoint of ordinary consciousness. The territory we are in should be somewhat familiar; we discussed these issues in Section 5.9 with regard to seeking a noncontextualized experience. Furthermore, Hegel agrees that prior to reaching indeterminate being we will understand experience as determined; this is also the case posterior as indeterminate being immanently unfolds into determinacy. This suggests that any attempt to understand what Hegel is claiming with regard to pure knowing and indeterminate being will be susceptible to criticism, unless we reinterpret these prior and posterior periods in terms of the standpoint of pure knowing (which will move us from what Hegel appears to be saying to a rerun of the methodology presented in Sections 6.8–6.11) or we dogmatically exclude indeterminate being from determination (see Chapter 8). Of course, as I said earlier in relation to Houlgate, claims of dogma are question-begging on the part of the critic of Hegel. To bring out these problems, we can go back to our theologian. Suppose the theologian claims that when they have a mystical experience of union with God, this can form the basis of presuppositionless thought; distinction between consciousness and object fades away and the thought of God is immediate. Once again, the Hegelian may say that the concept of God is determined in all sorts of ways. However, the theologian is liable to respond that this merely shows that the objector is cleaving to non-mystical consciousness. It may be that once we are no longer undergoing that experience we can see God to be determined; but this is true of indeterminate being also, which we will see to be determined as indeterminate. Mystical mergings can target other ‘objects’ as well, so incongruous examples can once more be produced. Again, a purported disanalogy might be raised: the idea of indeterminacy is just defined as the cessation of mediation and determinacy, and this is not true of ‘God’ (or whatever concept we are using). But the mystical experience scrubs out acknowledgement of determinacy just as much at the time, and

158

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

furthermore, this definition of indeterminacy occurs after or before the experience of indeterminate being. As such, this definition will occur outside the standpoint of pure knowing. Note that to claim that the experience of indeterminate being and of God will just amount to the same thing will involve both stepping outside the standpoints that are alleged to be essential to appreciating such experiences, and also determining these experiences, in order to be aware of the match.107

Part Three

Nothing To Do With Me – The Application of Nothingness

160

7

The Quest for Meaning

And further, man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Miguel de Unamuno (The Tragic Sense of Life, Chapter I)

7.1  Taking leave of nothing? Our examination of the notion of nothing concludes with an evaluation of the impact it has on a topic that has been, until recently, almost equally unfashionable among philosophers: the meaning of life. However, there is still one last task to perform regarding this idea of nothing. What I want to suggest is a deepening of our ignorance (or a more self-aware understanding of the role our own arbitrary leaps of faith play) in determinations of what nothing is (or is not). As we have seen, in each of the foregoing methodologies any attempt to articulate what the notion of nothing might be has resulted in a susceptibility to accusations of incoherence, which can be counter-accused on the same basis.1 This leaves us with a deep ignorance of the notion of nothing. What I mean by a ‘deep’ ignorance is an ignorance that cannot claim that any given notion is somehow ‘closer’ to our idea of what nothing is than any other, regardless of the character of either notion. For example, the phrase ‘inky void’ is no more apt in its properties (aesthetic, metaphorical or indeed any others) to describe ‘nothing’ than the phrase ‘immensely complex city’ or ‘piece of stone’. It is at this stage that we can begin to feel rightly that the continued use of the word ‘nothing’ to describe the notion under discussion has misleading metaphorical connotations, hangovers from everyday usage, and would be better jettisoned in favour of a neologistic substitute (in the same way that Heidegger preferred ‘Dasein’ to ‘self ’ and that Derrida coined ‘différance’). I do not propose to do this, partly because of a disinclination towards introducing my own jargon, and partly because I do not wish to make it seem that I am dealing now with a concept cut off from

162

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

the methodologies we have been discussing (see, however, note 4 below). Each methodology we have looked at has to deal with the notion of nothing but that notion of nothing is precisely that upon which each methodology founders, or, to be more positive, displays its need to make a leap of faith. But in wanting to rid us of the metaphorical and aesthetic connotations that attach to nothing: ‘blackness’, ‘void’, ‘emptiness’ and so forth,2 am I not overreacting to the problems we have found in trying to understand ‘nothing’ so far? I do not think so. We have a very strong inclination to believe that certain terms are more useful in trying to understand nothing than others, but I believe this inclination to be misplaced. For on each account we have seen, the idea of ‘nothing’ has turned out to have some minimal positive content, to be something. But we cannot say that any of these somethings are ‘closer’ or more ‘apt’ as descriptions of nothing than any other, or indeed any description at all, because this would require a prior idea of ‘nothing’ to compare it with. And any prior idea of ‘nothing’ will suffer from the same problems. It might be objected that we come to our idea of ‘nothing’ by subtraction.3 We take away various things (ultimately the universe itself?) and are thus led to an understanding of ‘nothing’. Now, even if the resultant understanding is not quite foolproof because it still contains some minimal level of description, it is still better than a description like ‘immensely complex city’. But this just begs the question. How do we know how to ‘come to our idea’ of ‘nothing’? How do we know in which direction to set out, unless we already have an idea in mind of what nothing is to guide us?4 But any such idea will always be subject to criticism, before it can be used as a regulative ideal. Given this, it is here that we might feel it most pressing to finally scrap the use of the word ‘nothing’ and replace it with a neologistic place-filler, but, as I said earlier, I shall not do that; that would assume that it would be absurd to suggest that ‘nothing’ might in fact turn out to be as well described using the phrase ‘immensely complex city’ as ‘inky void’, and as yet we have no grounds to say that, because we have no prior idea of it. Furthermore, I should like to place under suspicion the notion that ‘nothing’ is some ‘supernatural’ or ‘transcendent’ entity as it is ‘beyond the universe’. Such talk is just as inadequate as that of ‘inky void’ or ‘emptiness’ in trying to be apt to a prior notion of nothing to which we have no more right than any other. It takes the universe (or multiverse, or whatever) to be some cosmological entity situated in the middle of a larger mass of nothing. This is, to use a phrase of John McDowell’s, too much of a ‘sideways-on’ picture. I should like to adduce some pertinent Wittgensteinian considerations here. The reader may feel that Wittgenstein has been the ghost at the feast in

The Quest for Meaning

163

the foregoing, insofar as my dealings with ‘nothing’ may seem susceptible to dismissal in some Wittgensteinian manner as forms of ‘nonsense’. But which manner, and what nonsense?

7.2  Wittgenstein on nothing and nonsense Wittgenstein, like Carnap, also looked at Heidegger’s discussion of the nothing. Here is what he had to say on the issue: Anyone who speaks of the opposition of being and the nothing, and of the nothing as something primary in contrast to negation, has in mind, I think, a picture of an island of being which is being washed by an infinite ocean of the nothing. Whatever we throw into the ocean will be dissolved in its water and annihilated. But the ocean itself is endlessly restless like the waves on the sea. It exists, it is, and we say ‘It noths’. In this sense even rest would be described as an activity. But how is it possible to demonstrate to someone that this simile is actually the correct one? This cannot be shown at all. But if we free him from his confusion then we have accomplished what we wanted to do for him.5

And later on comes this: If someone says ‘The nothing noths’, then we can say to this, in the style of our way of considering things: Very well, what are we to do with this proposition? That is to say, what follows from it and from what does it follow? From what experiences can we establish it? Or from none at all? What is its role? Is it a proposition of science? And what position does it occupy in the structure of science? That of a foundation-stone on which other building-blocks rest? Or has it the position of an argument? I am ready to go along with anything, but at least I must know this much. I have nothing against your attaching an idle wheel to the mechanism of our language, but I do want to know whether it is idling or with what other wheels it is engaged.6

It is clear what moves Wittgenstein is making regarding Heidegger’s use of the word ‘nothing’. He wants Heidegger to specify what rules of grammar apply to the term’s use, in order to understand its meaning in the context in which Heidegger wishes to use it. Exegetical issues aside,7 the same onus can be placed on myself regarding the use of ‘nothing’ in this book. But is this equivalent to saying that my discussion of ‘nothing’ thus far is nonsensical? This will depend upon our reading of Wittgenstein, and our understanding of  the nature of nonsense. This sentence references some heated disputes in

164

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

current Wittgenstein scholarship,8 but it is not my wish to take a stand on these. My intent is simply to show that, no matter what side one takes on these issues, it does not adversely affect my discussion of ‘nothing’. Here are two ways we might understand ‘nonsense’ in Wittgenstein. The ‘austere’ view claims that nonsense always results from our ‘not having assigned a meaning to expressions in a certain context’.9 Furthermore, ‘all nonsense is just nonsense’10; there are no different types of nonsense. The ‘substantial’ view claims that it is possible to get nonsense from ‘combining meaningful expressions in illegitimate ways’.11 I take neither of these ideas of what nonsense might be as applying deleteriously to my discussion of nothing. Let us look at the ‘substantial’ conception of nonsense first. To criticize my comments on ‘nothing’ as being substantially nonsensical we would have to say that what ‘nothing’ means prevents it from being used in the expressions in which I have in fact used it. This clearly will not work as a criticism, as I have arguably not yet given nothing a definite meaning; rather, I have been searching around for a definite meaning to give ‘nothing’ and failed to come up with anything so far. That is to say, any meaning that might present itself as a suitable candidate has been found to be incoherent (if one begs the question against it). In fact, it could be an interpretation of this book up until now that when I have been accusing a given account of nothing as illicitly predicating something of nothing I have been accusing that account of being substantially nonsensical. The greatest problem that this view of nonsense suffers from if we try to apply it to this book until now is that we have to say that what nothing means prevents it from being used in certain expressions, and this will presuppose a prior illicit characterization of ‘nothing’. So while the substantial idea of ‘nonsense’ might work for ordinary cases, this special case of ‘nothing’ seems to elude the problems associated with it. A concrete example would be to consider Bede Rundle’s claim that there had to be something, as ‘[T]o have literally nothing . . . seems not to make sense’.12 Rundle thinks this makes no sense as, try as we might to conceive nothing, we are always left conceiving something – a scene, or a setting, or the like. However, this of course relies on a prior illicit characterization of ‘nothing’ that allows us to see that it is not this or that, to see that we have indeed failed to conceive of nothing.13 (Note that it will not help Rundle to reply that a scene or a setting is something, and whatever nothing is, it is not something, as the terms ‘something’ or ‘thing’ are equally problematic, being interdefinable with ‘nothing’ – cf. Section 3.8). However, it might be claimed that, in the above criticism of the use of substantial accounts of nonsense to understand my discussion of ‘nothing’ I have

The Quest for Meaning

165

laid myself open to criticism based on ‘austere’ conceptions of nonsense because I have just claimed that I have not given ‘nothing’ a definite meaning, and to fail to do this is to produce a sentence that is plain nonsense. This will not work either. For one thing, a sentence like: ‘The word ‘frabble’ is nonsensical’ makes sense even though one of the words in it has not been given a definite meaning, because the word in question, ‘frabble’, is being mentioned rather than used. So I could claim that I have been mentioning rather than using the word ‘nothing’ until now for some reason, such as in order to demonstrate its vacuity. Indeed, it could be a different interpretation of my book up to this point that it is an ‘austere’ Wittgensteinian attempt to free one from the ‘confusion’ of certain similes (or other types of metaphor) regarding ‘nothing’ by interrogating the concept as it is used by other philosophers (see the long quotations above). But this is not all, for the interrogation must itself be interrogated. This was the strength of my ‘arguably’ when I said above that I have ‘arguably’ failed to give ‘nothing’ a definite meaning. For we saw in the last chapter that it is possible to adopt a methodology that can give ‘nothing’ a definite meaning, moreover, a definite meaning that is immune to reflexive iteration. This was the methodology that was set in counterposition to Derrida.14 To elaborate, on the ‘austere’ view of nonsense, Wittgenstein is trying to bring out to this or that confused individual the manner of rules that govern their discourse, that make sense to say one thing rather than another. This chimes with the Derridian notion of keeping the future open for the other, and with the Cavellian notion of acknowledgement. On this reading, the claim that something is nonsense is ‘always empirical, provisional, and metalinguistic’.15 So it can never be ultimately decided that someone is talking nonsense – there is always more one could do in trying to understand him or her. I could continue talking about the nature of ‘nothing’ in my book for ever, running around in what might look to be ever decreasing circles. But, just as in deconstruction, I think that the proponents of the ‘austere’ view of nonsense would wish to demur from the judgement that such a process with any putative piece of nonsense would in fact go on for ever unless that further judgment itself is taken as being empirical, provisional and metalinguistic. So, according to the proponent of ‘austere’ nonsense, the continued vacillations in this part of the book are just further examples of Wittgensteinian self-therapy. Obviously, as with Derrida, I am not going to win ‘closure’ in the face of the open questioning of the sense of my discussions of ‘nothing’. (But then, who said that I was looking for it?) However, the discussion of the ‘methodology’ counterposed to Derrida at the end of Chapter 6 indicates that there is conceptual room for an outright denial

166

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

of the efficacy of whatever governing principles might back up this ‘austere’ way with nonsense (which must at least include knowledge of the existence of an other that can then be denied by the counterposed methodology).16 Let me clarify. A. W. Moore characterizes the austere view as claiming that the ‘judgement that something is nonsense is always a judgement about the actual history, to date, of some particular sign (“No meaning has so far been given to this sign”)’.17 We can interpret the second quotation from Wittgenstein above (beginning: ‘If someone says . . .’) as signalling the requirement to give the sign ‘nothing’ a meaning. So it is always possible that we could give ‘nothing’ some meaning. But the force of this ‘always’ in the above quotation from Moore is a problematic aspect of the ‘austere’ view. In particular, in holding the sign open to the future (in its provisionality), this view begs the question against a methodology such as that counterposed to Derrida in Chapter 6 that would hold the meaning of the sign to be fixed in a timeless present. To respond that the force of this ‘always’ is itself provisional would be to take the final step towards Derrida and to beg the question reflexively in one’s own methodology against the Chapter 6 counterposition – it would be worse than a failure to acknowledge the other, it would be a failure to know of the other. Of course, all of this can be said to apply reflexively – we can claim that ‘inky void’ is a more apt description of nothing than ‘immensely complex city’, and so on. But I think it is important to see what conceptual space the notion of ‘nothing’, held in concert with our confession of ‘deep’ ignorance of it, opens up in its entirety, not just what is opened up with regard to ‘typical’ metaphors used of the term ‘nothing’.

7.3  On the meaning of ‘the meaning of life’ What impact does the foregoing discussion have on the meaning of life? Until recently this topic has received comparatively little attention from ‘analytic’ philosophers, with more work being done in ‘Continental’ philosophy, although there the phrase ‘meaning of life’ is usually avoided. The issue interesting me that centres on this idea of ‘the meaning of life’ is quite specific, and I introduce it by quoting Thaddeus Metz, an influential ‘analytic’ philosopher working in this area (and whose work is representative of much ‘analytic’ literature on the topic): ‘[S]ome maintain that while a life can have a limited or superficial kind of meaning in a world without God or a soul, it cannot have an ultimate or deep sort of meaning.’18

The Quest for Meaning

167

Metz goes on to ask whether there are different types or kinds of meaning in life; as regards meaning ‘is a qualitative distinction necessary, or will a quantitative one do?’19 If we bracket the reference to God and the soul for the moment, it is from these remarks that I wish to take my cue, for I would like to claim a distinction between life having meaning and life having ultimate meaning. Elsewhere in his article, Metz mentions that it ‘used to be common to believe that statements about life’s meaning are not well-formed propositions’20 and deals quickly and plausibly with certain ordinary language and positivist-style arguments to this conclusion. However, he then makes the move to saying that ‘[i]nquiry has focused on determining which proposition most people are expressing when they say that an individual’s life has meaning (or lacks it)’21 (emphasis added). But this has already imported notions into the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ which we may wish to keep it free from. To be fair to Metz, he says at the outset: ‘I set aside those [writings] that treat a meaningful life as a purely descriptive property or that discuss the meaning of anything supraindividual such as the human race or the universe’.22 Metz’s narrowing down of the question of the meaning of life in this way has the advantage of allowing us to debate the propositional content of claims about the meaning of life for an individual and so avoiding the predominating thought of not so long ago that the question of life’s meaning was ill-formed. But, if we want to avoid narrowing down the question in this way (and Metz’s responses to some of the specific criticisms notwithstanding), I am not so sure that this critical attitude was unjustified. Many philosophers still hold it today, and it may be that, when confronted with the current ‘analytic’ philosophical literature on life’s meaning, the philosopher or the layman will claim that it does not really answer the question they were asking. To account for this intuition I would like for the moment to distinguish between two related questions. First, what is the meaning of life? And second, what is the ultimate meaning of life? The first question deals with ‘a positive final value that an individual’s life can exhibit’23 and is fairly well formed.24 The second is much more likely to be associated with the parodic Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything which appears in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and which is prima facie not well formed, not least because the characters ask for the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, but never actually ask a question. ‘What is the meaning of life?’ can be considered a well-formed question (particularly with the introduction of synonyms for ‘meaning’ such as ‘point’).25 But the string: ‘life, the universe and everything’ does not ostensibly ask a question, well formed or otherwise, and thus the characters in Adams’s fiction get their just deserts

168

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

when the Answer comes back as the arbitrary ‘42’, which confirms to them that they did not know what the question was. And so we all learn a salutary lesson about making ourselves clear in our deepest existential problems. I would link the question of the ultimate meaning of life with this desire for an Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything; that is to say, I think ‘life’ is being used differently in this context from the context that Metz generally uses it in. I think that in this context, it is a lot harder to establish that there is a wellformed question at issue here. I am not, as yet, claiming a qualitative difference in these questions. Metz’s own painstaking work in attempting to evaluate what the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ itself means results in the conclusion that ‘we may at this point reasonably doubt that there is any analysis available that can provide a single common denominator among all the diverse theories of meaning’.26 Nevertheless, he follows this up by pointing to similar problems in trying to articulate the concept of morality; that there exist various conceptions, all of which are related to the central concept of morality, but none of which have reached an indisputable status. They are linked together by ‘family resemblances’, that is, characteristics relating to morality that a conception of morality must have at least some of in order to count as a conception of morality. The same goes, Metz opines, with the concept of a meaningful life, and the multiple conceptions of it in the literature. I have no quarrel with this attitude per se, but as I said, I think that ‘life’ in the sense of the question: ‘What is the ultimate meaning of life?’ is very different from ‘life’ in the way that it has been used in recent literature answering the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ In the former sense, it carries more a sense of the Adams-esque generality, a generality that often begets a sigh and the words: ‘What’s it all about?’ And this generality is where I think the difference lies. I have no conceptual axe to grind with Metz at this stage, but I think that his characterization of this issue as ‘whether and how the existence of one of us over time has meaning’ is unduly narrow. When David E. Cooper writes on the meaning of life, for example, he glosses ‘life’ as ‘not to be taken in the biological sense, but [as what Dilthey and Wittgenstein] refer to as the human “life-world” or the human “form(s) of life”’.27 If this is the case though, how do I banish worries that my riddle of life cannot have any sense made of it, or that my claims regarding the meaning of life are nonsensical because I have not given certain key terms a meaning? There seems to be a tension here between not wanting to specify the question regarding life’s

The Quest for Meaning

169

meaning for fear of arbitrarily ruling out certain fruitful avenues concerning the question and needing to specify the question in order to get any possible answer under way. Given this, I propose to bracket discussion of the question as to how sense can be made of the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ for the moment, and instead turn to a significant text on the topic, hoping that the reader has enough of an intuitive grasp of the idea of ‘the meaning of life’ to follow the discussion. By pursuing certain lines of inquiry, I hope to shed light on the conceptual space of discussions concerning life’s meaning, and then perhaps return to the sense of the question more prepared. So, let us turn to the account of life’s meaning given by Robert Nozick.

7.4  Nozick on the meaning of life Let us take a sample statement by Nozick on the notion of life’s meaning: However widely we connect and link, however far our web of meaningfulness extends, we can imagine drawing a boundary around all that, standing outside looking at the totality of it, and asking ‘But what is the meaning of that, what does that mean?’ The more extensive the connections and linkages, the more imagination it may take to step outside and see the whole web for the particular thing it is. Yet it seems this can always be done. . . . To see something’s limits, to see it as that limited particular thing or enterprise, is to question its meaning.28

Here we have a paradigmatic statement of the problem arising for life having meaning. Our lives are limited in all sorts of ways; they are finite with regard to time, and our experience only encompasses a small spatial region. As Nozick says: ‘The problem of meaning is created by limits, by being just this, by being merely this’.29 We see good in our lives, say in purposive activity and achieving certain kinds of goals, but from a standpoint external to those goods or those lives (achieved via a reflexive iteration) we see that purpose as finite and bounded, and thus meaningless from this point of view. This is why so many people seek something larger than themselves, something external to them as a way of connecting with something more meaningful. No matter what we claim as a putative meaning-conferrer, however, we can always go on to question the meaning of that thing itself. If it relies on something else for its meaning, then the question arises again for this something else. If the

170

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

meaning-conferrer does not rely for its meaning on something else, then we cannot answer the question as to its own meaning, and so it is meaningless. An individual life might be able to stave off a sense of meaninglessness for a while by aligning itself with a greater purpose, a meaning-conferrer, like society or God, but unless these meaning-conferrers can somehow answer the question: ‘Yes, but what is the meaning of that?’ in a non-arbitrary fashion, then the meaningfulness gained by the individual will only be local. Their life will not be ultimately meaningful. Similar strands of thought can be found in Thomas Nagel’s writings on the absurdity of life.30 He notes that we can ‘see ourselves from outside, and all the contingency and specificity of our aims and pursuits become clear’,31 although Nagel’s emphasis is different insofar as he claims that it is our continued drive to take our lives seriously in the face of this fact that makes them absurd. Yet he still makes the point, similar to Nozick, that ‘justifications come to an end when we are content to have them end – when we do not find it necessary to look any further’ but also that ‘[o]nce the fundamental doubt has begun, it cannot be laid to rest’.32 So Nagel here appears to agree with Nozick that any end to justification is ultimately going to be arbitrary, even though this is natural for the type of beings we are. In ‘The Absurd’ Nagel makes a distinction between asking for a justification of an individual goal and taking a point of view that recognizes that we can never really justify our practices and goals as a whole. Both involve a reflexive iteration, but Nagel thinks only the latter is problematic (although the former provides the subject matter for this problem), as to continue to ask for justification after justification with regard to a specific goal ‘makes a vacuous demand. It insists that the reasons available within life are incomplete, but suggests thereby that all reasons that come to an end are incomplete. This makes it impossible to supply any reasons at all.’33 I would reply that, although this makes ultimately justifying reasons impossible to supply, partial reasons are still available.34 So we can supply reasons, but not ultimately justifying ones that would render our lives ultimately meaningful. Throughout ‘The Absurd’ there seems to be ambiguity as to whether the doubt that worries Nagel attaches to our purposes, or to our evaluative practices (my use of the phrase ‘practices and goals’ above was meant to capture this ambiguity).35 In drawing an analogy with Nozick, I am playing up the former, but I take Nagel’s ‘official view’ in that article to be the latter.36 It is pertinent to note that at the points where I take Nagel to most emphasize the former,37 he approvingly cites an article by Nozick (‘Teleology’) which does not seem to

The Quest for Meaning

171

differ appreciably in its treatment of life’s meaning from Nozick’s views as laid out above. Equally important is to track the development of Nagel’s thoughts on life’s absurdity through his later publications. For in The View from Nowhere, Nagel seems to sideline his earlier view that scepticism might attach to our evaluative practices and suggest more that it attaches to our purposes and aims. This shift is emphasized in his later book What Does It All Mean?38 Hence, I feel somewhat justified in presenting Nagel’s overall views as I do here, as similar to Nozick.39 These strands from Nozick and Nagel suggest a powerful argument, which can be simply stated. Life is ultimately meaningless, because, no matter what candidate one might suggest as being able to confer meaning on life, we can ask the further question as to what the meaning of that candidate is. So it looks like we have an infinite regress of reflexive iteration. Metz believes that there are a number of ways to criticize this argument and suggests three.40 First, there is the possibility that certain things may be meaningful in themselves without needing to obtain their meaning from anything outside themselves (such as altruistic action). Secondly, there is the possibility that something could be meaningful by relation to something that is not necessarily in itself meaningful, but is instead valuable. This is conceded by Nozick: ‘[t]he chain that grounds meaning cannot terminate in something worthless, but it need not end in something that somehow is intrinsically meaningful; it can rest upon something valuable’.41 Nozick considers the difference between meaning and value as consisting in the idea that meaning concerns life as centred in a wider value context beyond that life’s limits, whereas value attaches to a person’s life within its limits. In fact, given that Nozick would thus seem to take ‘meaningful in itself ’ as a contradiction in terms, we can safely conflate these first two criticisms. To put it another way, we can reject Nozick’s distinction between meaning and value (after all, I have already indicated that I do not want to get too tied down to any one way of expressing our question), and assert that what he would call ‘valuable’ aspects of life are also candidates for meaningfulness. As for the third criticism, we will deal with that implicitly in due course.

7.5  Reflexive iteration and final value As we have seen, these former two criticisms are effective if we keep within the limitations of Nozick’s argument, because they target the view that the meaning of life is a solely cognitive notion. However, I believe that there is a parallel

172

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

argument that targets the finally valuable, non-cognitive goods that, insofar as they are candidates for meaning, support such criticisms. The criticism is well demonstrated again by Nagel: ‘No further justification is needed to make it reasonable to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhibit of the work of a painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his hand on a hot stove. No larger context or further purpose is needed to prevent these acts from being pointless’.42 I am sympathetic to Nagel’s point here.43 But by the very fact that we find such activities meaningful in themselves, I think such a position is susceptible to a parallel argument to Nozick’s. Let us use the example of taking aspirin for a headache. There is no justification for doing this beyond preventing us from experiencing pain, and it would seem that we need no larger context of justification for that. But if this is so, then we are committed to prevent ourselves from experiencing pain maximally (that is to say, to minimizing pain as far as we can), unless we can find some non-arbitrary reason to allow a certain amount of pain in our lives. It is hard to see what such a reason might be. Let us draw out the consequences of such a view. Suppose that it gives me pleasure to eat ice cream, and that this needs no justification beyond itself – eating ice cream is a final good. If this were the case, then, in the absence of countervailing reasons, I would wish to maximally fulfil my capacity to eat ice cream. Obviously, there are difficulties here concerning the fact that I can only eat so much ice cream in one sitting (perhaps we should refine this to ‘tasting ice cream’), or that I have other final goods that compete for my time – the countervailing reasons I have just mentioned. However, I would like to hypothesize that these can be circumvented, and set them to one side for the moment. Now, suppose that I can have the pleasurable experience – and only this experience – of tasting ice cream for as long as I want (i.e. for an infinite amount of time), and to the intensity that I want. The problem arises that if I manage to achieve this, it is plausible to say, invoking omnis determinatio est negatio, that I will be unable to conceptualize my experience; indeed I will not understand my experience at all – it will be an experience of nothing. Note that this is a stronger claim than saying that if the pleasure from tasting ice cream is my only sensation, then I will not intellectually understand it, or I will not understand it as happening to me. What I am claiming is that our phenomenal experiences have to be contextualized by other phenomenal experiences in order that I have any qualitative experience at all. Our phenomenal life cannot just consist of one experience – that of the pleasurable sensation of tasting ice cream, say. We are all familiar with the concept of boredom, and it is often used in an attempt to show how an infinite amount of life in general (rather than a

The Quest for Meaning

173

particular phenomenal experience within life) can be undesirable. This reasoning suggests that boredom is merely a step on the road to non-conceptualization of experience, to an experience of nothing. Three points are relevant here. First, it may be said that memories I have of the period before I have tasted ice cream might count as a way of contextualizing my future endless phenomenal experience of tasting ice cream. I do not think this will work; to the extent that these memories can recreate the unpleasant experience of not being in the state of tasting ice cream, then I would wish to be rid of them, and, if I am successful in doing that, then I will no longer be able to understand my phenomenal experience (the material in the last two sections of Chapter 5 is relevant here). What we are working towards seems to be some kind of timeless present in which I am having the gustatory delight of ice cream tasting. The second possible objection to my argument is that it is too much a work of science fiction. There will never be a situation in which a subject has an experience of tasting ice cream and only that experience for an infinite duration of time at a uniform intensity. This is because experience always takes place in a wider context of an embodied life, with desires pertaining to this or that intentional object. The problem with this objection is that it assumes against the account. All I am trying to do when I describe the problems associated with a maximal experience of a phenomenal quality is note that such a maximal experience is impossible, yet any line drawn before that maximal experience will be arbitrary, if one seeks that experience at all. Thus the argument parallels Nozick’s claim that a maximally justificatory appeal is impossible (for any putative candidate for a meaningconferrer we could always ask ‘Yes, but what is the meaning of that?’) but that stopping at any given candidate and refusing to ask the sceptical question will be arbitrary. We may well say with Nagel that justification just ends somewhere, but that does not mean that we are satisfied with this end point.44 The notion of final value was introduced to try to halt the justificatory regress, but, insofar as the candidates for final value include phenomenal experience or anything that depends on phenomenal experience, then a parallel of the justificatory regress (via reflexive iteration) pertains to those candidates. Thirdly, and most seriously, it may be argued that the scenario I describe, in which a single experience undergone continually will lead to non-conceptualization is mistaken; in other words, we need to reject omnis determinatio est negatio here. We have seen that the somewhat speculative counterposition to Derrida of Chapter 6 would allow us to make this claim but it is hard to see how proponents

174

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

of a more moderate methodology would object. The most direct repudiation comes from David Pearce, who claims that acclimatization is a hangover of an evolutionary past that can be overcome through neurophysiological manipulation.45 So my science fiction example can be given (in principle) a science fiction solution. It is notable that Pearce deals here with the notion of acclimatization to happiness rather than a specific phenomenal quale, as I am doing here, and so the analogy would be mistaken (and importantly so; we will come back to this). But the evidence Pearce introduces for his hypothesis does not unambiguously support his claim: he notes experiments in which rats, hooked up to apparatus which allows them to derive electrical stimulation of the brain’s pleasure centres, will repeatedly stimulate themselves to the exclusion of all else, even the search for food. They do not become acclimatized. Such a claim goes beyond the evidence. The rat repeatedly self-stimulates at intervals (it has to press a lever), so how are we to know that these intervals do not outlast the pleasurable experience? What cues the rat to press the lever? Presumably the experience fades slightly, so the rat presses the lever again to get another burst of pleasure (otherwise the rat would have no reason to press the lever). But then this oscillation is precisely the kind of variation that would militate against acclimatization, but also is precisely the kind that I would wish to exclude from my example. A vacillating experience of tasting ice cream would be one that we would wish to further perfect, and thus one that falls short of non-conceptualization.46 Returning to the distinction between happiness and a particular phenomenal sensation, we can see the analogy between these two cannot support the weight Pearce wishes to place on it. My example deals with an individual whose only experience is the taste of ice cream, whereas Pearce’s rats are undoubtedly stimulated, but that stimulation takes place within a wider context: their embodiment as living creatures in a world of myriad qualities. Now, certain considerations may give pause for thought when assessing the foregoing argument. First, we might object to the move from being unable to conceptualize my experience to being unable to understand it. For it may be true that the only result of being unable to conceptualize my experience is that I cannot consider it intellectually – but nevertheless I am able to undergo it. In order to make this move plausible I invoked the notion of boredom, specifically sensory adaptation. I then fended off the counterexample proposed by Pearce. But perhaps this is not enough. For, without more being said on this topic, there remains the possibility that the necessity of contextualization that is associated

The Quest for Meaning

175

with sensory adaptation is merely a result of our biological make-up, and there could indeed be Pearcean ways around such roadblocks. The example from Pearce that I considered was not dispositive against my claim. However, that does not mean that his more abstract point, that science may one day overcome our human inadequacies, is not telling. More could be said here to bolster the move from sensory adaptation to the impossibility of uncontextualized experience, but even if we avoid making such a move we can draw on the discussion surrounding it to advance a new, different argument. Let us assume what the previous argument denied: that we can have a phenomenally uncontextualized experience. Suppose that our phenomenal field is homogeneous. Obviously such homogeneity will need to be that of an experience that we desire; we can use the example of tasting ice cream again. Contra the previous argument, this gustatory experience will be an unfading delight. Once we have got this experience, what should we do with it? Enjoy it, certainly. But if this experience is one we want and will never pall, we will want to maintain its presence. We will not want it to cease, and we will not want it to be replaced by other experiences either in part or in whole (we want it to maximally ‘fill’ our phenomenal field, to use a somewhat crude metaphor). At the same time we will be aware of the possibility of our homogeneous phenomenal field changing its character. Our phenomenal field can alter its character over time, and items outside our phenomenal field can obtrude on us. In short, we will be aware that the make-up of our phenomenal field is contingent.47 This will have two effects. First, the contingency of our phenomenal field will be a source of dissatisfaction and anxiety. Secondly, that dissatisfaction and anxiety, and the desire to eliminate it, will distract us from enjoying the experiential quality of our phenomenal field. I will not pursue the problems that arise from this second effect; it is not yet obvious to me that a creature that is fully aware of all parts of its phenomenal field at once (where the aforementioned sense of dissatisfaction is understood as part of that field) is impossible. Such a creature could not be distracted or inattentive, and, depending on the nature of the possibility that pertains to such creatures (nomological, metaphysical, etc.) a Pearcean scenario might be envisaged in which they are engineered. The first problematic effect, however, that of dissatisfaction with the contingency of our phenomenal field, is not amenable to engineering in the same way. We desire that our homogeneous phenomenal field exhausts space (so that nothing alien can obtrude upon it) and is maintained through every moment of time (so that it cannot change to something lesser). So the only way to combat

176

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

the dissatisfaction we feel is to convince ourselves that our experience of a homogeneous phenomenal field exhausts time and space. Unfortunately it looks as though the attempt to convince ourselves of this is as ill-fated as the attempt to convince ourselves that a putative meaningconferrer cannot be questioned as to its meaningfulness. For any temporal and/ or spatial extension of our phenomenal field, we can envisage further space or time existing past the limits of that extension. But if this is so, we cannot think of our phenomenal field as exhausting time and space, and so a fortiori we cannot convince ourselves that it does.48 When considering my first argument in this section, I noted a second objection to it, which claimed that talk of a homogeneous phenomenal field abstracted too far from the wider context of an embodied life. This objection can be parlayed into an objection against our current argument, by claiming that a homogeneous phenomenal field that is accompanied by feelings of dissatisfaction and anxiety will no longer be homogeneous; it is polluted by those feelings. (Alternatively, one might say that the current argument says nothing against the possibility of a homogeneous phenomenal field and merely introduces a problem arising from accidental external factors.) Given this, it will be claimed that any genuine attainment of a homogeneous phenomenal field will not suffer from the problem of contingency awareness. But what would such a ‘genuine’ attainment amount to? For we know for any extent of space and time our phenomenal field might encompass, it will always be  possible to think of space and time extending beyond it.49 Given the ineradicable nature of this possibility, the only way forward seems to be to eradicate not the possibility, but our awareness of it. Rather than ‘engineering up’, we ‘engineer down’, by excising those capacities that lead to our painful recognition of contingency. Such a move would not convince us that our phenomenal field exhausts time and space, but it will ensure that the question of whether it does or not will not arise. This will not, however, appeal as a solution to someone who has such capacities, for the problem itself, the contingency of our phenomenal field, has not been solved; we have just been blocked from knowing about it.50 Note that it may be possible to alleviate scientifically the phenomenal nature of the anxiety resultant from awareness of the contingency of our homogeneous phenomenal field, by medication or neuroengineering. This is irrelevant; the contingency problem concerns phenomenal properties, but it is not its own phenomenal aspect that makes it a problem. It would be no reply to the first argument for life’s ultimate meaninglessness discussed in Section 7.4 to say that

The Quest for Meaning

177

we could medicate away the negative affect associated with the apprehension of life’s meaninglessness; whatever we feel about it, the problem is still there, and is still a problem, no matter how much we divorce ourselves from reality through artificial means. In the present case, the anxiety is appropriate as it is directed towards something undesirable: the contingency of our phenomenal field, that is, its potential to change. Whether or not we have some control over this contingency (and only perfect control will ultimately satisfy us),51 this is an undesirable state of affairs. Let us try to get a little clearer on exactly why this contingency is a problem. We saw earlier that Nagel made the point that our activities might meaningfully end in the attainment of some good that has final value. However the good which has final value will be comprised of a certain state that our phenomenal field is in, and such a state will be spatially and temporally contingent. Such a state will do as a partial end, but, due to its susceptibility to corruption, it will not do as an ultimate end.52 Can we say more about why such a contingent will state not do as an ultimate end? The answer seems to be that once we have obtained it, we still have a situation that can be improved upon. The make-up of our phenomenal field will be vulnerable to change, and we will either have to reinstate it (if such change occurs), maintain it, or keep an attitude of continual vigilance towards it. Only a state which we have to neither reinstate nor maintain will serve as an ultimate end. When I discussed the taste of ice cream I winnowed out all sorts of real-world problems to make it more plausible as an answer to the question of meaning. We saw how neuroengineering might circumvent further problems. The result of getting rid of all these problems is to make the valuable state more secure. We will want to make it ultimately secure, however (we will be no more satisfied with saying that the issue is out of our hands at a point prior to ultimate security than we would be if we had taken that attitude when our valuable state was less secure). The only plausible candidate for this will be for the state of our phenomenal field to exhaust time and space. But as was noted earlier, we cannot think of our phenomenal field in this manner. The inadequacy of a contingent state will obtain whether we are aware of it or not, just as the inadequacy of the various purposes suggested by Nozick/ Nagel obtains whether or not we ask ourselves: ‘Yes, but what is the point of that?’ (in both cases we are inhabiting a delay).53 So excising those capacities that lead to an awareness of contingency will get us nowhere. The reason for this can be deduced from the comments at the end of Section 7.4. There, in the face of problems grounding meaning, it was suggested that chains that ground meaning could terminate in something valuable, rather than meaningful (or, to

178

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

phrase it differently, we could reject the distinction between meaning and value). Neither the problems with grounding nor contingency worries need affect such non-ultimate finally valuable goods. However, I suggested that the desire to maximize that attainment of finally valuable goods will produce an analogue of the grounding problem, and, moreover, this analogue will hold whether we are aware of it (as per the contingency worry) or not. The parlous state of the finally valuable homogeneous phenomenal field is a matter of fact. Of course, the question of life’s meaning cannot be asked from the perspective of a being that does not have the capacity to be aware of the contingency worry, as such a capacity underlies the ability to ask that very question. So such a being may not worry about life’s meaning.54 Nevertheless, life’s meaning will be a problem for it insofar as the constitution of its phenomenal field is in fact contingent. A more effective manner of nuancing these considerations into a response to the above argument would be to say not that we should ‘engineer down’ our capacities (or a subset thereof), but rather to say that our capacities are already at the level in some way. But again, unless we are willing to follow the Chapter 6 counterposition to Derrida, such a move seems impossible to make.55 In setting up the ice cream example, I claimed that in the absence of countervailing reasons, I would wish to maximally fulfil my capacity to eat ice cream, and sidelined a few practical concerns. One concern I cannot sideline, though, is the notion of satisficing. The view I have taken here is that with regard to practical rationality, the rational individual will maximize his or her own good (unless external factors come into play). However, some have argued that in certain situations the rational individual might seek less than the best for him or herself, and this is known as satisficing. Now a certain type of satisficing will not provide a problem for my assumption of maximization. This type of satisficing occurs when an agent does not seek what is best for that agent on a given occasion in order to maximize the good for that agent over his or her life as a whole. The reasons for this will be counted among the external factors that I suggested, for the sake of argument, that we sideline, and it can be seen as a global form of maximizing. A much more interesting example of satisficing that would cause problems for an assumption of maximization is the final or non-instrumental satisficing defended by Michael Slote.56 Slote believes that in certain cases we can be rationally permitted, and even rationally obliged, to choose what is less than best for us (even when the best is on offer), even if this will not lead to global maximization either. His reasons for thinking this are subtly developed, and I will only be able to give an attenuated discussion of his arguments here.

The Quest for Meaning

179

Slote elucidates the notion of satisficing using several scenarios (two involving house-buying, one involving snacks and one involving fairy-tale wishes). I will use his final, most finessed, example. X is selling his house via an agent, who receives a firm bid that is good enough for X. The agent advises X to wait a few days (the bidder is not expecting an earlier response) in case a better offer turns up. But X just decides to take the good enough offer – he is not interested in seeing whether he can do better, and so satisfices. Slote thinks that this is perfectly acceptable. Leaving aside the fact that others’ intuitions about such a case may differ, one problem I have with Slote’s various scenarios is that the description of them may unwittingly bring in reasons and factors that, strictly speaking, should not be present, and lend the satisficing individual’s actions undue plausibility.57 For example, Slote rejects his initial house-buying scenario on the basis that the seller is not confronted with two offers, one higher than the other, choosing the latter. But this is true of our current scenario as well. What if we changed the scenario so that X is confronted with two offers, one higher and one lower, and accepts the lower? This would cancel any implicit reasons that may be operating in waiting a few days for a merely possible higher offer, and so provide a clearer example of satisficing. However, it does so by reducing the plausibility of the example, and so calling into doubt the notion of satisficing. A second, perhaps more serious, problem runs as follows. Let us look at the house-buying case again, in the altered form I have suggested. There, X has good reason to take the lower offer, but even better reason to take the higher offer. However, he takes the lower. Yet this would seem to be irrational. Conversely, if X can go against his best reasons, that is, satisfice, and we do not consider him irrational in doing so, this seems to make opaque action explanation by means of reasons. So even if we grant the coherence of a case of satisficing whereby an individual acts in a non-maximizing way, we can only purchase the rationality of the individual in the case at the cost of the coherence of our explanation of action. This is part of a larger issue pertaining to (non-instrumental) satisficing; in order for satisficing to be rational, we need to give reasons for doing it. But any such reasons we give are liable to be co-opted by the proponent of maximization either as supporting maximization directly or a global form of maximizing. As I have said, the scenarios that Slote presents purporting to show cases in which we satisfice may contain implicit reasons that can be so co-opted; furthermore, Slote goes on to provide explicit reasons in favour of satisficing in order

180

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

to show that it can be rational to choose the merely good over the better. In fact, these explicit reasons would seem to go a long way towards making the aforementioned scenarios plausible, and aiding the coherence of satisficing. Now these explicit reasons may prove vulnerable to hi-jacking too; let us take a closer look at them. The first is that the entirely satisfactory nature of one’s present state may provide a reason for rejecting a transition to another (satisfactory) state. This seems to fit well within a maximizing framework, for it can be the case that the satisfaction derived from the status quo is an enjoyable good that one may not want to interrupt. This can provide an overwhelming reason to maintain the status quo, even in the face of a potential good, a form of global maximizing. For example, if I eat something tasty, I may not want to immediately take a swig of a pleasant drink, as I want to savour what I have just eaten. If I have satisfied my hunger, I may not want to get up and do something else, even if that thing is good – I may simply want to enjoy my sense of satisfaction. So I do not think satisfaction and enjoyment are either/or affective states; satisfaction can be enjoyable in itself. This is not to say that satisfaction is always enjoyable in itself; but I think that in those situations where it is not, then it will not be plausible to suppose that satisfaction with the status quo is a reason in favour of satisficing. The other form of reason that Slote postulates is much less easy to fit into a maximizing framework. He notes: The fact that great wealth is much more than she needs (or cares about) can count, for such an individual [i.e. an individual with a distinctively moderate standpoint], as a reason for rejecting great wealth and choosing moderate wealth, but of course such a reason will not motivate, or even occur to, someone who always seeks to optimize.58

At first blush, it might seem that the reason for rejecting the great wealth has something to do with a virtue like temperance, but then we would just be led into a form of maximizing, whereby the virtuous good provides overwhelming reason in motivating the individual in question. But then the problem is: what good are we talking about that gives us a reason for rejecting the better? Presumably, the reason must be connected with some good. If this is so, however, then it will simply seem that the individual in the position above does not see great wealth as ultimately a motivating reason overall (that is to say, it may provide a reason, but there will be overwhelming reasons to choose against it), in which case the choice of the ‘less-good’ is not actually ‘less-good’ at all.59

The Quest for Meaning

181

Maybe the satisficer will reject the idea that the reason must be connected with some good, as this seems to play into the maximizer’s hands. Such a view gains some support from Slote’s mentioning that the reasons in play ‘will not motivate, or even occur to’, the maximizer. However, such a move radically changes the shape of the debate. If we seek to justify the rationality of satisficing against the maximizer, then appealing to reasons that will not even occur to the maximizer, that will not count as reasons to such an individual, will seem, from the maximizer’s point of view, to be question-begging. Saying that an individual has a reason for satisficing, and appealing to the moderation of an individual in elaborating this reason, where such a moderation can only be assessed as to whether said individual in fact satisfices, is elliptical for saying that the individual is satisficing because he or she is the type of individual who satisfices. Of course, this need not be an insoluble problem for the proponent of satisficing. They can claim that the maximizer begs the question against them! We can see here an example of several threads from earlier discussions being drawn together. There is an impasse between maximizer and satisficer, one in which the concession of the very coherence of the opposing position will be too much. While it may seem at first glance that there is not the clash of methodologies that we have (problematically in its turn) suggested between Derrida and the standpoint sketched in Chapter 6, there are certainly elements of that clash present here. For example, I would suggest that the satisficer should eschew the giving of reasons for satisficing, or being drawn into debate about its  rationality, as this assumes a maximizing framework that it will be impossible to fit the notion of satisficing within. So here we have an example of the manoeuvre I engaged in at the end of Chapter 6, where I refused to give reasons or an argument for adhering to the standpoint described there, as to do so would in fact concede the position of my opponent. The difference here is that we are engaging in this manoeuvre with regard to a specific subset (this notion ‘subset’ should indicate that we are excluding the standpoint of Chapter 6 from the outset!), that is, instances of satisficing. Whether we see the fact that we are dealing with a subset here as not indicating a clash of methodologies, but as leaving space open for common ground between satisficer and maximizer, will depend on whether we believe a methodology can allow for specifics in its description. In fact, we may even want to start questioning my use of the word ‘methodology’ in the foregoing discussion as indicating a bias towards the Cavellian ‘methodology’ of Chapter 6 and under analysis now (although such questioning will reveal bias of its own – as will this caveat!).

182

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Rather than pursuing this further now, I plan to discuss the idea of adopting an unquestionable subset further in Chapter 8, where I will analyse the notion of ‘faith’, which need not necessarily be understood in a theological sense. For the moment, let us just take a quick look at where these remarks on satisficing have left us. In offering a qualified defence of the notion, I seem to have conceded that this may cause problems for my earlier arguments that rely on maximizing rationality. That said, I am not sure how severe these problems really are. I will, after all, be calling into questions both my arguments and the conclusions I draw from them shortly and for reasons cognate to the satisficing issue I have highlighted here. One final point. I have here been dealing with a single phenomenal experience, but it must be remembered that all desires regarding phenomenal qualia will be fighting each other for experiential ‘space’. That is to say, if I have a desire I will wish to fulfil that desire maximally, and this goes for all the desires I have at a given time, even though I can only fulfil one maximally (or a certain subset maximally), due to finite representational capacities.60

7.6  More complex cases Given what I have just said above, it might be claimed that this offers an easy route to an aspect of life that is finally meaningful, but avoids the problems associated with pleasurable experience above. For I excluded the fact that the argument in the last section directly affects a subject whose experience takes place in the context of an embodied life with desires pertaining to this or that intentional object. I dealt with the pleasure of tasting ice cream, but Nagel’s examples of where justifications end, or rather, what seems to need no justification beyond itself, are more complex – preventing a child from touching a hot stove, that is to say, altruistic action, or enjoying a painter’s work, that is to say, complex aesthetic experience. To this we might add a rich emotional life, including the loving of, and being loved by, another. I do not wish to deny the meaning of these things, just as I do not wish to deny the meaning of certain purposes we have in our lives, or certain pleasurable experiences we have. What I do wish to deny (or at least call into question) is the idea that any of these things can be ultimately meaningful. The problem with things such as love or morality insofar as they are used to provide a basis for ultimate meaning is that to the extent that they combine both affective and

The Quest for Meaning

183

cognitive aspects, they are susceptible to both the arguments for meaninglessness above rather than neither. To the extent that a loving relationship relies on phenomenal experience then, this experience can only rationally be desired to its most intense degree, and for the longest duration; and so it is covered by the argument above. But equally, as far as love is something cognitive, that is, as far as it involves an intentional object, we are given resources to perform a reflexive iteration on that object and ask ‘But what is the point of loving it?’ Similar problems afflict the use of morality in this regard. Morality, to the extent that it promotes the easing of human suffering is parasitic on affective states, which are targeted by the argument of the preceding section. The ideal for a moral person is a world in which morality is no longer necessary, hence, if one links morality with meaning, a world ultimately without meaning. To the extent that morality has cognitive aspects, it enables us to see the lives of humans as limited and thus in need of further justification, in line with the first argument. So far from circumventing these problems, appeals to love or morality are subject to both. A brief postscript: In this section, I have kept the discussion somewhat general; there are a number of issues where I could go into more detail. There are on the market a plethora of theories of reasons, values, desires, and so on. and theories of ways these are related, and philosophers who have spent time carefully sifting and weighing the issues associated with these may be interested in more coverage. How do I see value and meaning interrelating? Should we opt for a teleological or a buck-passing account of value? Is well-being a master value, or should we talk about choice-worthiness of life, or something else? My unwillingness to get into the specifics of these questions results from the difficulties highlighted earlier in specifying what the question we are attempting to answer actually is. This indeterminacy has commensurate repercussions for all of my following discussion, and I can only hope that, although the specific manner in which I have made these points may need some adjustment to fit disparate theories, the intuitions behind those points are nevertheless valid, no matter what underlying theory is taken. To assuage (possibly well-founded!) fears that this is less of a methodological necessity and more a way to avoid criticism, I would suggest that objections regarding these intuitions can still be advanced at this more general level (and I plan to advance some myself in due course), and furthermore I will be indicating the point at which specification of these more detailed theories can come into play, at which point these aforementioned general objections can be specified in their turn.

184

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

7.7  Ultimate meaning None of the argumentation above is meant to suggest that there is not some degree of meaning in life, that life is meaningful up to a point. What it does mean to suggest is that the degree is insufficient and stops arbitrarily before it reaches a point at which we are fully satisfied. We exist without any ultimate meaning in our lives; there is always some reflexive iteration we can perform. But it might fairly be asked what the problem is, if I have conceded that we can have partial meaning in our lives in fairly simple ways. As Metz says: The field [of literature on the meaning of life] needs to reflect much more systematically on the proper standards to use when appraising the meaning of human lives. Relatively few these days believe that a perfect world or the point of view of the universe – and hence an immortal soul – are relevant to judging meaning, but, as should be clear, there has been insufficient reflection on what less than perfect world or more restricted point of view is relevant.61

I take the two arguments just given, which are really just two forms of the same argument, one applying to instrumental value and the other applying to final value, to indicate that any stopping point short of perfection with regard to our aims will be arbitrary. It may be our essential nature that we are finite, and can only attain finite goods, but then our awareness of a lack of perfection will always manifest itself in our sense of a life that is ultimately meaningless, even though it may contain meaning of a more everyday kind.62 But what sort of thing could satisfy our desire for perfect meaning, for an ultimately meaningful life?63 If no plausible candidate offers itself, should we be  suspicious of drawing a distinction between the meaning of life and the ultimate meaning of life at all? And if a plausible candidate does offer itself, how are we then to relate to it? These are all valid questions. To take some steps towards answering them, it will be helpful to work within a framework; I propose to continue to use Nozick’s remarks on the topic, as they speak to these sorts of concerns.

7.8  The answer (Nozick 1) First of all, let us consider the efficacy of Nozick’s work for ascertaining a candidate that will give our lives ultimate meaning. He claims that the problem of seemingly ultimate meaninglessness (i.e. the conclusion of the first argument above, that

The Quest for Meaning

185

I have supplemented with a second analogous argument) ‘can be avoided or transcended only by something without limits, only by something that cannot be stood outside of, even in the imagination’.64 This putative candidate has the problem that ‘[n]o word of English perfectly fits the concept’,65 but the word ‘unlimited’ offers itself as a possibility. Eventually though, Nozick settles on the Hebrew term Ein Sof (meaning: ‘without end or limit’, or, although Nozick does not mention this interesting interpretation, ‘nothingness’). When he notes that if ‘existing implies limitation, and to be is to be some thing rather than another or rather than nothing, then what encompasses all would not itself, strictly speaking, exist’66 we can see how close this notion comes to Heidegger’s idea of Beyng/nothing (for which a neologistic term also had to be coined). Thus, Nozick’s idea of what might stop the regress of meaninglessness looks like it might be identifiable with some of the accounts of ‘nothing’ that have been offered and critiqued earlier in this book, specifically Heidegger’s. Although it initially seems to contradict this hypothesis, support for it can be drawn from paying attention to Nozick’s comment that Ein Sof ‘somehow includes all possibilities, all possible universes, and excludes nothing’67 (emphasis added), in which Nozick’s attempt to fend off all the possible reflexive iterations that might apply to Ein Sof leads him to utilize a pre-theoretical notion of ‘nothing’ (for the purposes of exclusion). This results in two problems. First, we can say that differentiating Ein Sof from nothing is useless unless we have some idea of what nothing is – this pulls us into the bleak discussion concerning accounts of ‘nothing’. Secondly, we can say that any notion of ‘nothing’ used by Nozick that is contentful enough to be used to understand Ein Sof (i.e. nothing as nihil negativum)68 will open up conceptual space for the reflexive iteration to apply (i.e. it distinguishes Ein Sof from this given notion of nothing, and so gives us some apprehension, however vague, of the nature of Ein Sof on which we can then perform – with commensurate vagueness – a reflexive iteration). Note that this problematic exclusion of ‘nothing’ occurs before Nozick brings in the notion that Ein Sof transcends the pair of terms ‘existent-nonexistent’ (and, incidentally but importantly, the pair of terms ‘meaningful-meaningless’). As I say, there may be some confusion here in that Nozick is excluding ‘nothing’ rather than trying to give an account of it, but this can be mitigated if we remember that: (i) ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ (that latter of which corresponds roughly to what Nozick is trying to give an account of) are interdependent notions, and arguably not even distinct (see Section 3.7), and: (ii) the terms ‘nothing’, ‘Ein Sof ’, ‘everything’, ‘Beyng/nothing’ are, as indicated in Section 7.1 above, all equally inadequate ways of designating the same issue.

186

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

So it does not matter that here Nozick is not trying to take ‘nothing’ as his theme but rather ‘something immeasurably great’; the problems he runs into are those that apply to giving an account of nothing, hence my hypothesis of some identity between the two notions. In fact, Nozick is very similar to Heidegger again here, in that Heidegger ultimately could not support a distinction between Beyng and nothing, as I have tried to show earlier. Nozick himself is clearly troubled as to how he can speak of Ein Sof. In a manner reminiscent of St Augustine, he says that ‘[t]he unlimited is ineffable. Yet cannot we correctly apply to it the term “unlimited”, or at least “ineffable”? We can leave this difficulty in understanding the notion of ineffability, with regard to metalinguistic predicates, for the techniques and developments of semantics to resolve’.69 Given the thorough nature of his treatment of this topic, Nozick seems cavalier here. Perhaps aware of this, he returns to the issue in an endnote where he distinguishes between levels of predicates: level zero predicates stating properties that are not about whether other properties hold, and level one predicates that state whether level zero predicates hold (which themselves are governed by level two predicates, and so on). In this manner, we could say that there is a level one predicate P that states that no level zero predicates apply to x, that is, x is ineffable at level zero. But if we say that x is ineffable with regard to level zero predicates (thus using the level one predicate ‘ineffable’), we still appear to be predicating something of x illicitly, namely its ineffability. The most we could get out of this would be a restricted ineffability claim, that x is ineffable at level zero. Restricting concepts to a certain level is not going to help us here, however. This would be a form of parameterization (as Nozick acknowledges), which, as we have seen, is a way of allowing an object to have a certain property at one level and lack it at another, so as to avoid contradiction. However, nothing cannot have properties at any level on pain of illegitimate characterization. An alternative suggestion Nozick makes is to jettison the law of the excluded middle in the case of the unlimited, resulting in the understanding that no level zero predicates apply to Ein Sof, but equally no level one predicates apply to it either. But if we are paralleling discussion of Ein Sof with discussion of ‘nothing’, it is clear that this will not work. For why should no predicates of either level be used of ‘nothing’ (i.e. why should we call nothing ‘ineffable’)? Any answer to this question will implicitly characterize ‘nothing’, and so fall foul of the familiar problems. Furthermore, surely saying that the law of the excluded middle fails to apply in cases involving the unlimited, or that neither level one nor level zero predicates apply to it, is illicitly saying something of it?70

The Quest for Meaning

187

Nozick concedes that ‘completely unlimited’ is a contradictory concept when not restricted to level, and seems to toy with the idea of rejecting the law of non-contradiction, at least in this special case. However, Chapter 4 indicates that even if we accept contradictions, this will not be enough to capture our understanding of ‘nothing’, so, if we are analogizing the process of understanding Nozick’s Ein Sof with that of understanding Heidegger’s Beyng/nothing, then it seems that even this route is not available to him.71 Note that the above criticism of Nozick’s ‘ultimate’ term as opening up space for reflexive iteration by arbitrarily excluding something, namely a pretheoretical notion of ‘nothing’, itself uses a pre-theoretical notion of nothing, just as on many occasions earlier in this book, and so is self-defeating. And so it looks as though, when trying to answer the question of what can solve the problem that the foregoing two arguments pose for life’s meaning, the answer will be subject to the same considerations as those concerning the elucidation of nothing. I would suggest that this is because the answer to the question ‘What is the ultimate meaning of life?’ is ‘nothing’. This claim may look nihilistic in the popular sense of the term, but if it seems that way then we have not taken well the lessons of the foregoing material in this book. For the associated metaphors of ‘blackness’, or ‘emptiness’, or whatever are just as bad as any other in trying to evoke a sense of what ‘nothing’ is. What one decides to take as the ultimate meaning of life depends on what one decides to take as one’s concept of ‘nothing’, of what content one decides to give it. Of course, given what we have said earlier we may wish to scrap the use of the word ‘nothing’ and call the answer ‘the ultimate’ or ‘transcendence’ or similar, because these terms do not have misleading pre-theoretical connotations. I am not averse to that, as I said earlier, but for consistency’s sake I intend to retain the use of the word ‘nothing’. It is worth spending some more time unpacking what I am saying here. Nozick notes that, when asking the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’, for any putative answer, we can always step outside that answer and ask: ‘Very well, but what is the meaning of that?’ Moreover, I have claimed that, as regards phenomenal experiences, for any phenomenal experience, there is always the desire to expand upon that experience, whether in intensity or duration. So in both cases of these analogous arguments, any suggested candidate can have a reflexive iteration performed upon it. So, although we can experience meaning up to a certain point, that is to say, partial meaning, we will never experience meaning that cannot be improved upon, that is to say ultimate meaning. Now Nozick considers that there may be something that ends the regress. Such a thing cannot simply be infinite because it might still be limited in other

188

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

respects. Garrett Thomson puts this point well when he says: ‘[A] sequence of numbers can be infinite, but it is limited because it consists only of numbers’.72 Thus, reflexive iteration can cross those limits. That is why Nozick’s definition of the unlimited, Ein Sof, includes everything; this prevents it from having limits that a reflexive iteration could cross. But, as we have seen, Nozick runs into problems when trying to give us an idea of what Ein Sof is; specifically he excludes nothing, which exclusion offers an implicit limit that a reflexive iteration can then cross. My own response to the apparent regress (or regresses) is to say that it (or they) ends in nothing (with appropriate caveats regarding the metaphorical connotations of that term). This could mean that the regress does not end, or it could mean that the regress ends in a special type of thing called ‘nothing’, which we have to characterize in some way. However, as we have seen from the material in this book up until this point, no characterization of ‘nothing’, whether as signalling an infinite regress, or as Ein Sof, or as an empty world, or as Beyng/ nothing, is satisfactory in a non-question-begging sense. So, how one characterizes ‘nothing’ or ‘the ultimate’ or whatever you want to call it, will depend on what (question-begging) methodological presuppositions one sets out with. The depth of this dependency needs to be brought out. For example, we cannot say that any characterization of ‘nothing’ will always be susceptible to some reflexive iteration, as the ‘methodology’ counterposed to Derrida in Chapter 6 could avoid this. But by saying the above, I am ruling out implicitly a Derridian methodology in a way that is illegitimate. So, in applying the notion of ‘nothing’ to the issue of the meaning of life, I have managed to say nothing on the subject. This should not be surprising; the upshot of my discussion regarding ‘nothing’ in the first two parts of this book led to no conclusions (although this is itself arguably a conclusion), so in applying this lack of conclusion it is only fitting that we reach no conclusion again (and, again, this is arguably a conclusion). It is interesting to note, as a side issue, the intuitive plausibility of nothing as a terminus for regress with regard to meaning: nothing has no limits which a reflexive iteration can cross, as it is not characterized in any way. This will cover both of the arguments given above, the first concerning meaning insofar as it links to something outside itself, then second concerning something ‘meaningful in itself ’/finally valuable, as both rely on the application of reflexive iteration. (Moreover, if we do accept the first argument of Section 7.5, it will cover that as well. A phenomenal experience that has uniform maximal intensity and duration cannot be undergone as there is no context within which to understand it, hence it will not be experienced, it will be an experience of nothing.)

The Quest for Meaning

189

However, it should be noted that in the above paragraph, ‘nothing’ is implicitly characterized (in the sense of an inky void or empty space), and such characterization is not only illicit, but also opens up dimensions by which we can perform reflexive iterations. So although what we have said looks plausible, it is as far from the truth as anything else (although this caveat is also subject to the problems concerning nothing, and so on).

7.9  Back to the meaning of the question (Nozick 2) But if all the above is the case, then the same problems that arise for the answer to the ultimate meaning of life arise for the question. For the foregoing discussion was all built on my bracketing the problems concerning the sense of this question, and diving straight in with Nozick. (I chose Nozick, like I chose Heidegger, as a ‘key’ to help me access certain useful conceptual areas more quickly but I could equally have chosen anyone.) But now our lack of understanding as regards the answer looks set to permeate into a lack of understanding as regards the question. For if the answer to the undefined question could easily be ‘42’, given that this is a characterization of ‘nothing’ the criticisms of which will be equally question-begging, then the question could easily turn out to be ‘What do you get if you multiply six by seven?’73 This looks like a reductio ad absurdum, but it must be borne in mind that to specify the question concerning the meaning of life in the appropriate way here would involve telling a certain story about why such a question is pre-eminent (that story might include such elements as an all-consuming love of Douglas Adams’s work and a pleasure in mathematics). Whether or not the asker of the question would then go on to feel that the ultimate answer to the question of the meaning of life had not been solved (i.e. reflexive iterations of the relevant kind could be performed) would then indicate that his question was insufficiently filled out or somehow inappropriate. But we cannot decide this without making methodological commitments. What I am trying to say here is similar to what Nozick and Wittgenstein have, in their own ways, tried to intimate about the question of the ultimate meaning of life. Nozick says: ‘[T]here is no answer to the question “what is the meaning of the unlimited” but there is no question either’.74 Wittgenstein says: ‘The solution to the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time . . . [w]hen the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it’.75

190

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Nozick claims that the lack of question results from the fact that if to question something’s meaning is to ask what it connects up to outside itself, then this question is nonsense when we attempt to apply it to Ein Sof, which has nothing outside itself. Wittgenstein comes to a similar conclusion: when the answer to the riddle of life cannot be put into words, nonsense results,76 and the same applies to the question. I differ from both these points of view insofar as I am willing to accept that both question and answer can be put in sensible terms (the sketch above being but one, somewhat outlandish, example), as to exclude this possibility is to characterize both illicitly, that is, it is to make the mistake of presuming that we can decide on what ‘nothing’ is. Of course, I must acknowledge that I am also characterizing answer and question illicitly when I make this claim, and so on. This brings us, I believe to an important conclusion: any questioning concerning the meaning of life is itself part of life, and so any perceived problems regarding the meaning of life will have to reflexively apply to the endeavour to discuss them. Part of the struggle of attaining ultimate meaning in one’s life is the attempt to outline the question of what the meaning of life is, such that the outline cannot be further perfected (i.e. such that it cannot have reflexive iterations performed on it), because this attempt is part of one’s life – one’s intellectual life to be specific. Hence, only if one had already achieved ultimate meaning could one have phrased perfectly the question to which such an achievement is the answer.77 This is not to say that such an achievement cannot be attained; this would be tantamount to saying that we cannot achieve an experience of ‘nothing’, and so illicitly characterizes ‘nothing’ in the familiar manner. Note that the same considerations that apply to the question also apply more generally to this book, which ultimately says nothing regarding the meaning of life, but, I hope, says nothing in a rigorous manner. These problems in picking apart question and answer with regard to ultimate meaning suggest an interesting thought. Insofar as the riddle of life or the ultimate question can be considered expressive of, or even identical with, the human condition, our difficulty in understanding it may indicate a deep and pervasive difficulty in understanding what ‘we’ are (and even the appropriateness of this word ‘we’).

7.10  Relation (Nozick 3) Similar problems to those associated with the question of the ultimate meaning of life apply to exactly how the answer (however we may wish to characterize it)

The Quest for Meaning

191

relates to us. Nozick contends that Ein Sof provides a stopping point for the question, but goes on to say that ‘the position leaves us puzzled about how and why connecting up with the unlimited (or being part of it) provides meaning for our existence’78 given that Ein Sof transcends the pair of terms ‘meaningfulmeaningless’. Nozick claims that we must either transcend these terms ourselves (presumably by merging with Ein Sof) or connect up with something that does not transcend the pair meaningful-meaningless, but rather is meaningful, and is its own meaning, that is, is intrinsically meaningful. Intriguingly, however, he then devotes considerable argument to how Ein Sof can be its own meaning. The problem with this is that his discussion of the properties of Ein Sof in virtue of which it is intrinsically meaningful runs counter to its nature as beyond the possibility of external standpoint (which we saw was precarious in any case). Ein Sof is supposed to transcend meaningful-meaningless, so how can it be its own meaning; how can our discussions concerning meaning apply in any relevant sense to it? It seems here that Nozick is on the verge of admitting how little Ein Sof can actually achieve, but backs away at the last minute. This leaves us with the possibility of ‘merging’ with Ein Sof, thus transcending the meaningful-meaningless dichotomy. There are all sorts of problems with this, and they do not only attach to the problems surrounding Ein Sof insofar as it is illicitly characterized in various ways (and so susceptible to reflexive iteration, despite Nozick’s protests to the contrary). First, there is the question as to how we could ‘merge’ with Ein Sof if it presumably contained us anyway (as to not contain us would be to have some form of limit). And what about the temporal connotations of the word ‘merge’, or even ‘relate’? These too need to be problematized. More importantly, there is the problem that transcending the meaningfulmeaningless distinction does not confer meaning on our lives, but rather undercuts it, like dying would. The only plausible way to ‘merge’ with Ein Sof, or Beyng, or whatever one wants to call the ultimate, would be to remain fully human but become completely at one with the ultimate at one and the same time. But given that we cannot understand the ultimate (which I have claimed is just another name for the notion of ‘nothing’, or vice-versa), even as part of a contradiction, then this type of merging is not going to give us what we need. Even if we could manage somehow to achieve this contradictory union, it could just as easily be said that it makes our lives as ultimately meaningless as it does ultimately meaningful. The difficulty here seems to be that with both the question of ultimate meaning and the answer being opaque, the relation between them, and even the question

192

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

as to whether there is a relation between them (i.e. whether they are separate relata) is similarly opaque. There is a sense in which we want to say that the increase of certain qualities in our lives, or improvement of certain aspects of our lives, leads to an increase in meaning, and so gets us nearer to ultimate meaning. Partial meaning seems to ‘lead us up to’ ultimate meaning as that partial meaning is apparently increased. But this is as problematic as it is to say that subtraction of objects ‘leads us up to’ nothing, the ultimate subtraction of all objects. Perhaps it does, perhaps it does not; it depends on one’s methodological commitments. In other words, it depends on what one already thinks nothing is as to whether what may to some look like a route to it is in fact a route to it. It relies on some kind of pre-theoretical understanding that we can only justify through an act of faith, and which will be subject to reflexive iteration (although that criticism will be self-defeating, as ever). So the question as to whether we can have partial meaning to life or whether meaning is all-or-nothing is, like the question of the meaning of life, itself part of the (intellectual) life in which it is asked. And so the same problems apply to it as to the question of the meaning of life, namely, that only the achievement of ultimate meaning would allow us to ask that question perfectly. But of course, we then realize that any seemingly partial formulation of the question can be advanced through faith as a putative candidate for the perfected version of the question, just as we can advance any seemingly partial formulation as the ultimate meaning of life in faith.

7.11  Conclusion It is my inclination to believe that, if we cannot understand the ultimate – what I have been examining under the name ‘nothing’ – then we are not going to be able to understand questions that pertain to it, for it figures in those questions, nor are we going to be able to understand what relations a given thing might bear to it, for it figures in those relations. Note, of course, that my claim that we cannot understand the ultimate itself fails to understand the ultimate, in that it contains some minimal illicit characterization. Whether one sees this as pointing towards an infinite regress (see Chapter 6) or a contradiction (see Chapter 4) or something else will depend on one’s methodological commitments.

8

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.372)

8.1  Philosophical theology I now propose to connect my results with an area of discussion that may have been felt to be conspicuous by its absence: religion. Religion may be considered to be the natural competitor to purely secular philosophy in trying to discover what the meaning of life might be. Given this, it will be appropriate to make some investigation into philosophical theology to see what, if anything, it offers to our inquiry concerning the relationship between nothing and the meaning of life. Obviously, there are numerous religious belief-systems available for such an investigation, but, in order for our inquiry to be of sufficient depth, I propose to examine the peculiarly philosophical strains of just two: Buddhism, representing Eastern religion, and Christianity, representing Western religion. Let us turn first to Buddhism.

8.2  Buddhism Buddhism is frequently divided into two schools, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, the latter tending to be a more philosophical extrapolation

194

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

of the Buddha’s teachings. It is particularly apt to discuss Eastern philosophy in the context of an investigation into philosophical theology as philosophy and religion tend to be less separated in the Eastern mindset. To ensure that we are examining Buddhism at its philosophically most impressive, we shall look at the Buddhist philosopher in the Mahayana tradition who is arguably the most influential – Nagarjuna. To understand fully Nagarjuna’s thought it is necessary to understand the language of ‘emptiness’ in Buddhist philosophy. Certain Buddhists claim that the world, that is to say everything, is ‘empty’, by which they mean that ‘persons, material objects and so on do not have “intrinsic” reality or identity, are without “own being”’.1 This is an exemplification of the doctrine of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada), according to which nothing has independent identity, that rather each thing is dependent for its identity on further conditions. Everything is contingent, dependent on other things. We might immediately be reminded here of Derrida’s claim that each entity is locatable in a holistic spatio-temporal web of entities and it is by such a location that it gains its meaning (see Section 2.7). Nagarjuna noted that it was important to take the idea that everything is empty seriously. That is, when we say everything is empty, we must include in that the doctrine of emptiness itself. This militates against a dualism under which there would be some transcendental truth (i.e. the doctrine of dependent origination) that has its being beyond the reach of emptiness, and thus relegates the everyday world to a comparatively inferior status. The doctrine of emptiness just is the doctrine of dependent origination. David E. Cooper notes some problems with this ‘downbeat’ interpretation of the doctrine of emptiness (which I will sketch shortly) and attempts instead to elaborate some resonances of the metaphor of emptiness that circumvent these problems. I will select the resonances that ‘speak . . . of emptiness itself ’,2 whereby some metaphors indicate the thought of ‘something (not “some thing”) which enables there to be a world for us . . . but which, precisely as enabling this, cannot be something that is or is like any entity within the world’.3 This is modified by further, dynamic, metaphors of ‘“something ineffable coming like this” at us, an “advancing” by “all things”’.4 Emptiness is spoken of as emptying itself and making everything alive. The world is ‘experienced as a “wondrous” emergence from an inexplicable “field of possibility”, as an “advancing” towards us that is the manifestation of an ineffable “source”’.5 Cooper links his remarks with the strategies of the later Heidegger, which we have already seen criticized, and it would seem that his metaphors

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

195

suffer from similar problems.6 Although disavowing any similarity between this ‘source’ and anything in the world, the fact that Cooper regards some metaphors (such as ‘source’) as more adequate than others indicates an implicit reliance on the similarity between the subject of the metaphor and the things in the world (such as everyday sources) that the metaphor draws on. To be sure, at many times Cooper attempts to cancel unattractive features of the metaphors: ‘[w]hen raindrops strike our faces, it is upon these that attention is confined, to the exclusion of the emptying which enables them’.7 But Cooper is wedged between needing to cancel the unattractive features of metaphors, yet also needing to uphold the attractive features that direct our attention. Furthermore, it is unclear whether any sense can be made of the metaphor of ‘advancing’ which does not also include unattractive connotations of a place from which that ‘advancing’ occurs, to which we can direct our attention (thus I am bound to say that there seems to be something dubious about Cooper’s raindrops metaphor; a cloud may self-empty, and my attention may be confined to the drops, but is always possible for me to focus on the source of the drops). So the elimination of unattractive features of the metaphors seems to place an unsupportable burden on the aspects of metaphors that Cooper wishes to stress; the metaphor is qualified so many times that it seems to have no content to it. The upshot of all this is that there are serious problems with elucidating in a language of emptiness how there might be an indiscursable reality beyond the human (i.e. beyond the reach of the doctrine of dependent origination), as the metaphors that indicate or talk of this reality are too rooted in the ordinary human world, and any attempt to cancel this unattractive feature of the metaphors simply makes those metaphors inapt for use. If I were to say: ‘Philosophy is a rose’, and then go on to say that by this I do not mean that it blooms, or grows, or smells sweet, or any of the various other connotations that such a metaphor has, whether they be phrased in literal terms or not, then it can be rightly argued that my metaphor meant nothing in the first place.8 Given this, let us re-examine the ‘downbeat’ interpretation of the language of emptiness that Cooper tried to modify. As we have seen, the key notion under this interpretation is that emptiness is itself empty. Priest and Garfield have noted that this appears to generate a contradiction; namely that ‘emptiness is the nature of all things; in virtue of this, they have no nature, not even emptiness’.9 In other words, each thing is empty, dependently co-originated, and thus lacks any intrinsic nature. But this state of emptiness is no more a statement of the intrinsic nature of things than any, more conventional, statement – because

196

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

emptiness is itself empty. ‘There is no way that things are ultimately, not even that way’.10 What are the implications of this view? The repercussions on Buddhist soteriology are considerable, the most radical being that on this interpretation Nagarjuna seems to identify the usually antithetical concepts of samsara (the cyclic existence of death, suffering and rebirth) and nirvana (the enlightened state that comes from leaving desire, and thus suffering, behind). Nirvana is not taken to be some transcendent state of mind, but rather is simply our apprehension of everyday reality once aware of emptiness, and the emptiness of that emptiness itself. ‘The emptiness of emptiness is the fact that not even emptiness exists ultimately, that it is also dependent, conventional, nominal, and in the end, it is just the everydayness of the everyday’.11 As I indicated earlier, Cooper details some problems for this ‘downbeat’ interpretation, noting that ‘it remains hard to see why the experiential embrace of the doctrine [of dependent origination], whatever that might be like, should be the momentously life-transforming one that Buddhist soteriology requires of the appreciation of emptiness’.12 This is the criticism that I would like to focus on. Cooper does adduce other concerns, namely that the ‘downbeat’ reading does not do justice to claims that emptiness is somehow ‘ineffable’ and is the ‘source’ of the world, but these points seem more exegetical. However, the criticism that the ‘downbeat’ reading weakens Buddhist soteriology is pertinent, especially when our consideration pertains to what contribution Buddhism can make to our understanding of what the meaning of life might be. At first blush it might seem that the ‘downbeat’ interpretation is a reworking of Derridian deconstruction, insofar as Derrida also points to the dependence of any individual entity on a temporal and spatial web of other entities, and moreover, Derrida reflexively applies his methodology in order to avoid claims that he ultimately characterizes entities as having an intrinsic nature, that is a nature subject to the play of différance. The difference is that whereas for deconstruction the characterization of entities according to some intrinsic nature and the reflexive application of that characterization are two poles in constant flux, the ‘downbeat’ Buddhist interpretation (at least on the Priest/Garfield view) combines the two poles in a contradiction. We have already seen in Chapter 4 the problems that arise in trying to give an account of nothing even when we accept contradiction, and in Chapter 7 the importance of giving an account of nothing for blocking reflexive iterations that seem to militate against finding

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

197

meaning in life. It now remains to be seen whether the type of contradiction involved in the ‘downbeat’ interpretation is of any use here. The outlook is not good. The ultimate aim of the ‘downbeat’ interpretation is that it returns us to our understanding of everyday entities, with the added rider that we are aware of the reliance of these entities on each other (co-dependent origination) and are aware, in a contradictory way, that this ultimate characterization of entities itself lacks aseity. But if, according to the arguments outlined in Chapter 7, our understanding of everyday entities entails the possibility of reflexive iterations that challenge the ultimate meaning of such entities for us (in whatever way), what does the awareness of co-dependent origination add? Cooper notes the identity between emptiness and wondrousness in Buddhist soteriology, and goes on to ask ‘. . . what . . . could be so ‘wondrous’ about samsara if it is simply a human world of interdependent, conditioned things?’.13 There seems to be no obvious way of using the fact that entities are co-dependently originated to stop reflexive iteration. Furthermore, as the contradictory aspect of the ‘downbeat’ interpretation is there solely for the function of allowing the doctrine of co-dependent origination to proliferate (i.e. to apply to itself as well as all other entities) there seem to be no additional resources forthcoming from this corner. In fact, we might go along with Cooper in saying that such a doctrine is more likely to induce ‘despair’ insofar as the awareness that experiences are inevitably contextualized seems to imply an awareness of certain limitations on one’s experiences which one can then aspire (in vain) to transcend.14 What makes Buddhism attractive to many secular Western philosophers  – its tendency to blend philosophy with the religion – actually makes it less useful for our current purposes. Having discussed philosophy, we are looking for something distinctive that religion might bring to the table: given this, the philosophical tenor of much of Buddhism means that we are likely to find little new here, although it may well pre-empt certain important ideas in the secular Western philosophical tradition.

8.3  Theism I would now like to consider Western and Eastern theistic religion in general, by which I mean to encompass not only the Abrahamic traditions, but also certain strains of Hinduism, and possibly even of Buddhism as well. Central to

198

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

such religions is a general notion of a creator God who has certain superlative attributes, and who takes an interest in humankind. Within such traditions, Metz has made the distinction between God-centred and soul-centred views as regards what spiritual realm one must relate to in order to live a meaningful life, the former holding that God but not a soul is necessary for an individual’s life to be significant, the latter, the reverse. He goes on to note that many religious interpretations hold that both God and the soul are necessary; this seems to be the more orthodox view, but let us bracket it for the moment and concentrate on God-centred views for the sake of clarity. Within God-centred views we find further sub-divisions corresponding to the nature of the relationship with God that is deemed necessary for life’s meaning. Chief among these is what Metz calls ‘purpose theory’, which he glosses as ‘the view that a life is meaningful insofar as one fulfils a purpose that God has assigned’.15 So a life is meaningful to the extent that it proceeds in accordance with a plan that God has in mind for it, and is meaningless to the extent that it deviates from this plan. Numerous objections have been brought to bear on purpose theory but I should like to focus on what appears to me to be a central one, which runs as follows. If purpose theory is true, we seem to have to face the uncomfortable idea that, if God were to make our purpose in life a lowly one, say, to act as food for intergalactic travellers, then fulfilling this purpose would make our lives meaningful. This is counter-intuitive. It is of a piece with an objection raised to divine command morality, that if what God commanded was the basis of morality, God could command us to commit acts of pointless cruelty, and it is counter-intuitive to say that such acts would then be moral (they do not chime with any of our moral intuitions).16 Of course, it is open to the purpose theorist to simply accept this counterintuitive consequence and maintain that God’s purpose is what makes life meaningful, even if that purpose is a seemingly lowly one. Metz notes that those ‘willing to bite the bullet by maintaining that such a purpose would make life meaningful if it were indeed God’s do so at the risk of cracked teeth’.17 Well, that is not really an argument against biting the bullet, so much as a redescription of it. For the moment let us suppose that we do not want to accept the counterintuitive consequence quite so readily. Maybe we can engage in some sort of inquiry as to why a lowly purpose does not chime with our intuitions about meaning. To do this I want again to appeal to the (admittedly problematic) distinction between ultimate and partial meaning. Furthermore I would like to suggest that

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

199

while a life whose meaning is to act as food for intergalactic travellers would lack ultimate meaning it might have some minimal partial meaning, although the partial meaning it might have would be so minimal as to justify its classification as ‘meaningless’ in the non-technical sense of the word. So we can imagine a scenario in which we ask someone what the purpose of their life is, and they reply: ‘To eventually act as food for intergalactic travellers’. Our response to this will invariably be: ‘That’s a poor purpose’, and so it is. But it is a purpose, in the sense that an even more depressing scenario (analogous to there being no divine plan at all) in which we were slaughtered arbitrarily or by accident by intergalactic travellers who happened to be passing through our solar system would not provide us with a purpose. Suppose an optimist was to say: ‘It is disappointing that my purpose is to be  food for intergalactic travellers, but at least it means my life will benefit someone else, namely, whoever eats me’. Such an attitude indicates that a very little partial meaning may be gleaned from any given purpose, even if that purpose turns out to be one that does not provide as much meaning as that given by our pre-theoretical intuitions of what constitutes life’s meaning, such as loving one another, acting in a morally responsible way, and so on. But it is clearly a purpose, which could be improved on, in all sorts of ways (that is very much the point of choosing such a stark example). What does this mean? Let us take it as an example that our desire to benefit others does solely take the form of acting as food for intergalactic travellers. If that is what gives our lives partial meaning, it will give our lives more meaning if we could act as two meals for an intergalactic traveller, rather than just the one. So we might wish that we were 12 feet tall rather than 6 feet, to provide more food. But three meals would be better than two, so we might wish that we were 18 feet tall, and so on. What is evident here is that we have a reflexive iteration operating, in which there is always the potential to increase that in which meaning inheres, and so meaning is always partial.18 Furthermore, this will be true, not just of the rather bizarre case we have been looking at, but of any putative purpose, no matter how noble or exalting. I have argued in Chapter 7 that the only candidate that seems to lack susceptibility to reflexive iteration is ‘nothing’, that ‘nothing’ is the only possibility for providing meaning that cannot be improved upon, that is, for providing ultimate meaning. The foregoing is an elaboration of the point that Nagel makes that ‘a role in some larger enterprise cannot confer significance unless that enterprise itself is significant’.19 To this we might add that we are talking about ultimate significance or meaning, as a role in some larger enterprise seems to be able to confer greater

200

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

partial significance or meaning. And any specified purpose, no matter how great, is finite and susceptible to reflexive iteration, since [i]f we can step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from [larger enterprises such as] the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.20

Hence purpose theory seems inadequate to grant us ultimate meaning, although it might be a good way of making our lives more meaningful. The purpose theorist might take issue with the notion that the purpose has to be ‘specified’ in some way, particularly when we think of a divine purpose. Could God’s purpose for us not be so exalted that we finite beings cannot grasp it? Perhaps. But there is a double-edged problem here. To the extent that something is even specified as a purpose, even a purpose specified in no other way, it is contextualized in certain ways (most notably temporally – a purpose is future orientated) that yield the possibility of reflexive iteration. And to the extent that something fails to specify itself in even this most bare of manners, it fails to be recognizable as a purpose, as something distinct from there just being no purpose at all, and so evades characterization as a purpose theory. We can say then that God’s purpose for us can provide us with more partial meaning.21 However the problem is that no matter how noble or exalting the purpose turns out to be, it cannot grant us ultimate meaning. Let us then turn to other God-centred theories, to see if they offer better prospects.

8.4  Eschatology Metz concludes from the above problems that ‘if one is sympathetic to Godcentred theory, one should reject the version of it which has been central to Western religious thinking about the meaning of life [i.e. purpose theory]’.22 But some might view with suspicion his claim that purpose theory is the central Godcentred theory regarding the meaning of life. After all, Abrahamic tradition has it that we are inescapably finite and marked by the Fall and we cannot be restored in this life. As St Paul says: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face’ (1 Cor. 13: 12, King James Version). It is this strand in Christian thought specifically that allowed Schopenhauer to (approvingly) characterize the religion as denial of the will-to-live, to find tranquility in the ascetic consciousness

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

201

that transcends the travails of the world (including any attempted location of purpose therein).23 We do not need to go as far as Schopenhauer here, but we can acknowledge that for much Abrahamic theology the standard view is that this world can only ever bestow partial meaning, even in relationship with God. For ultimate meaning we must look to a world beyond where we meet God ‘face to face’. All this is a prelude to examining God-centred theories about the meaning of life that highlight the afterlife, or some state in the life beyond such as the beatific vision, as that which provides ultimate meaning. For his part, Metz tends to classify this as a soul-centred, rather than a God-centred theory, noting that the concepts of ‘God’ and ‘soul’ are logically distinct. (The word ‘soul’ here is perhaps misleading; Metz glosses it as an entity ‘that will forever survive the death of one’s body’,24 but a number of philosophers of religion take the view that the afterlife requires bodily resurrection, as they believe that there is no consciousness-bearing entity that can survive the death of the body.) However, this should be qualified in practice by Metz’s own argument that soul-centred theories on their own are implausible, and need to be supplemented by Godcentred considerations, constituting a hybrid theory. It is just such a hybrid theory that I would consider to be the traditional theistic answer regarding the ultimate meaning of life. What is the motivation behind this theory? I noted in Chapter 7 Nozick’s plausible intuition that the problem of meaning is created by limits, by being ‘merely this’. One of the limits I highlighted there was the notion of a temporal limit; that we are finite in time. Obviously the thought that we possess an eternal afterlife contradicts that limit. Of course this is only part of the story. For although an eternal afterlife might provide more partial meaning, insofar as it circumvents the problems associated with temporal limits, all sorts of other limits might impinge upon one’s eternal life and rob it of ultimate meaning. For example, supposing that hell exists, the unfortunates there possess an eternal afterlife (on the most common interpretations) but presumably it is not an ultimately meaningful one. So we must look to the afterlife to provide other benefits beyond the negation of mortality, which is a necessary but not sufficient component of ultimate meaning. Of course the notion of heaven, or the beatific vision enjoyed therein, does provide such benefits – benefits of intense and transcendent happiness. But this is where we begin to encounter familiar problems; in Section 7.5 the arguments deployed against putative candidates for ultimate meaning suggested

202

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

that I could attain valuable experiences to the intensity I wanted (which a heavenly afterlife would provide) and to the duration I wanted (which an eternal afterlife would provide) but that this would not be sufficient for ultimate meaning.25 It might be noted that in Chapter 7 I advanced as a response to such argumentation that it could be considered too much a work of science fiction; that it could never happen in reality. But a divine power could actualize such a scenario, indeed, is held to do so by providing heaven for the blessed. Nevertheless it seems that even if such a being could actualize this scenario, such a scenario cannot provide ultimate meaning. One response might be that the goods of heaven are transcendent, beyond our comprehension, and so not susceptible to argumentation that is effective as regards earthly pleasures. But it is difficult to see how this response is to work; the distinction between heavenly goods cannot be a quantitative distinction, for the Chapter 7 argument applies to any quantity (in intensity or duration) of a good. But nor can the distinction be a qualitative one, for (i) reflexive iteration will still apply deleteriously to that subset of goods attained in heaven that are not qualitatively distinct (i.e. goods we also experience on earth), thus leaving a certain amount of meaningful experience unfulfilled, and, more importantly, (ii) the Chapter 7 argument targets the form of experience in general; anything that is sufficiently qualitatively different to not be affected by this argument would seem to be so far away from what we would ordinarily call ‘experience’ that we can be rightly sceptical if the word ‘experience’ applies here at all.26 Some concluding remarks on the notion of an afterlife. In Chapter 7 I noted that the attempt to maximally fulfil certain desires seems to lead one to wish to enjoy them in some form of timeless present. Certain strands in philosophical theism have wished to construe the afterlife as constituting just this sort of timeless present, a move usually hazarded to avoid the argument that heaven might become boring after a given amount of time. Such a move suffers from serious difficulties. The kind of timeless existence that is required has undergone discussion in philosophy of religion insofar as it touches on the (not universally held) doctrine of God’s eternality. There are serious questions as to whether the notion is coherent. A full consideration of the arguments for and against is beyond our current scope (in any case such a consideration would be grist to the Derridian mill, the only response to whom would be an invocation of the counterposition outlined in Chapter 6, a counterposition which would be the most effective outworking of the idea of a timeless present – although it could not be understood in those terms without vitiating it) nevertheless, I think that some points made even by defenders of the doctrine are instructive.

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

203

Paul Helm refers to Richard Swinburne’s claim that a positive account of timeless eternity must be in terms of eternity as an instant or eternity as duration, but that since both ‘duration’ and ‘instant’ are essentially temporal terms, it is incoherent to explicate eternity using them. In response to this dilemma and its consequences, Helm suggests that we ‘cultivate a proper agnosticism about God’s timeless eternity’,27 perhaps supplemented by an appeal to the analogical sense of certain terms. Issues concerning analogical discourse aside, this appeal to agnosticism seems an appropriate response as it allows us to cancel certain features of this timeless existence that lead to problems concerning its internal coherence, thus, incidentally, moving this timeless existence closer to the notion of nothing (although it will, of course, be determined in other respects, spatially, say – and such determinations will bring problems of their own). Presumably, however, this agnosticism has another aspect which allows us to maintain that the facet of existence we are discussing has something to do with temporality. This will prevent a full collapse to nothing (where ‘nothing’ is understood as subject to the usual caveats). This further aspect is the faith I associated with Marion in Sections 6.7 and 6.8, but circumscribed to prevent it from collapsing into the counterposition to Derrida that I outlined in Chapter 6. I develop this idea in Sections 8 and 9 of the current chapter, and so I shall leave further discussion until then. Aside from the above, more severe problems attach to the idea of an atemporal realm coming after our present temporal life. Roy Perrett notes that entering an atemporal realm after one’s earthly existence might be tantamount to destruction, as we are beings whose essence it is to have certain temporal qualities which we would lose in the transference to such a realm.28 Moreover, when we talk of entering an atemporal realm after our current lives this notion of ‘after’ is itself a temporal one. Wittgenstein criticizes ‘[p]hilosophers who say: “after death a timeless state will begin”, or: “at death a timeless state begins”, and do not notice that they have used the words “after” and “at” and “begins” in a temporal sense, and that temporality is embedded in their grammar.’29 Would a timeless present exist as equally before and during this present temporal life as it does after it? There is a fundamental difficulty of how we orientate ourselves towards a timeless present in this life, how we relate to it (see Chapter 7 concerns about how we relate to ‘nothing’). Perhaps some of this pressure can be alleviated by taking lessons from how we orientate ourselves towards an atemporal God but to the extent that this is possible, I would suggest that we are characterizing the atemporal realm of the afterlife (and the atemporal God) in a way which will provide limits to which a reflexive iteration can then apply.

204

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

8.5  The concept of God I would like to develop my comments above regarding the difference between the concept of God and that which might bear ultimate meaning. Metz has suggested that one way of gaining meaning would be to relate to a highest value, a perfect being – namely, God, and that ‘the most intense relationship for a person to have with the divine would be to become one with it’ or ‘merge’ with it.30 Elsewhere, Metz has made the weaker claim that meaning might accrue simply from ‘orientating’ ourselves in an appropriate way to a perfect being with certain attributes. Here it will be helpful to recall the discussion of Nozick’s Ein Sof in Chapter 7. Ein Sof is a kabbalistic term which is sometimes used to refer to God. I would suggest that the material critiquing the utility of the notion of Ein Sof as the bestower of ultimate meaning, and how we may be said to be able to relate to it (where I deal with the idea of ‘merging’ explicitly) is applicable to attempts within philosophical theism to understand ultimate meaning via some relation to God, the perfect being. I indicated in the previous section that the attribute of atemporality faced difficulties if we wanted it to play a role in providing ultimate meaning. Roughly, accounts of ‘atemporality’ or ‘eternity’ as applied to God buy their comprehensibility at the cost of determination, which determination provides boundaries that reflexive iteration can then cross, and thus eliminate the potential to provide ultimate meaning. Now, rather than going further into detail about God’s eternality (which is unnecessarily limited in that it is only one of the  divine attributes among many), I shall discuss broader views about the nature of God, paying particular attention to those that emphasize divine transcendence to most nearly bring God to the idea of bestower of ultimate meaning/‘nothing’. This will essentially be a (brief) reapplication of the argumentation regarding Ein Sof at the end of Chapter 7 but tied a little more thoroughly to a specific account in philosophical theism. Philosophers who have arguably gone the farthest in emphasizing the divine resistance to determinations in God’s perfection and transcendence have been Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scottus Eriugena (John the Scot), St Anselm of Canterbury, Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) and Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus). Let us examine the last of these. Nicholas of Cusa takes his lead from St Anselm’s ‘perfect being theology’ by working out the implications of God as the ‘Absolute Maximum’, or in other words, ‘that than which there cannot be anything greater’.31 This Absolute Maximum is claimed not to be ‘contracted’ in any way, which

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

205

Jasper Hopkins glosses as ‘contraction to (i.e. restriction by) something, so as to be this or that’32 – hence putatively avoiding the problem of meaning described by Nozick (above) as being ‘merely this’. Nicholas derives from the fact  that nothing can be greater than the Maximum that the Maximum is infinite, ‘for things which are comparatively greater or lesser are finite’33; as such, nothing can enter into a comparative relation to the infinite (the Maximum). Since ‘every inquiry is comparative and uses the means of comparative relation’,34 ‘we attain unto [the Maximum] in no other way than incomprehensibility’.35 Just as Nozick notes that Ein Sof transcends such pair terms as ‘existentnonexistent’ and ‘meaningful-meaningless’, so Nicholas claims that ‘opposing features belong only to those things which can be comparatively greater and lesser’ and thus they do not befit the Maximum which is ‘beyond all opposition’36 (incidentally, also a characteristic of Ein Sof in some versions of Judaism, from which Nozick originally derives his term). Nozick ran into problems when trying to give us some idea of what Ein Sof is and Nicholas runs into analogous problems. One method he uses to apprehend the character of the Maximum is through symbols, specifically mathematical ones. We begin by first considering finite mathematical figures, their characteristics and relations, then infinite mathematical figures, and finally move to considering the infinite in itself, the Maximum.37 So, for example, the circumference of an infinite circle is identical to an infinite straight line. This gives us a sense of how opposites are combined in the Maximum but the problem is that all of the symbols that Nicholas uses to illustrate his points are finite in some way. I mentioned in Chapter 7 how something infinite (a number series, for example) can be finite in other ways (by including only numbers). And this is true of infinite circles and infinite straight lines, and so on. Now, when we affirm that the circumference of an infinite circle corresponds to an infinite straight line, by observing that the curvature of an arc of the circle decreases as that circle increases in size, this is because we have an end point we are working towards, namely, an infinite straight line. Such an end point is finite in some respects. But the Maximum is not finite in any respects, and so we cannot have any idea of it in advance (as we do with the infinite straight line) so that it may serve as some kind of regulative ideal. Nicholas seems to note this when he agrees that terms like ‘Maximum’ or ‘Oneness’ or suchlike are in fact inaccurate38 to describe the Maximum and that the Maximum cannot feature in any comparative relation (it being infinite). If this is so, however, the consequences seem to be that symbols, and these mathematical demonstrations, bring us no closer to what the idea of the Maximum might be.

206

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

That Nicholas uses such symbols, and that he is willing to claim that a finite object is not the Maximum, seems to indicate that he does in fact have a prior idea of the Maximum that implicitly serves as a regulative ideal. This is borne out by the manner in which he introduces the notion of the Maximum. In Chapter 7 I noted that Nozick’s Ein Sof was claimed to transcend the distinction existent-non-existent, but that this was undermined by the fact that Nozick had already distinguished Ein Sof from some preconceived idea of ‘nothing’. In Nicholas there is a similar transcendence of the pair existent-non-existent – the Maximum ‘is not, as well as is, all that which is conceived to be; and it is, as well as is not, all that which is conceived not to be . . . it is a given thing in such way that it is all things; and it is all things in such way that it is no thing’.39 But before this, in introducing the notion of the Maximum, Nicholas has already said the following: ‘if such oneness [i.e. the Maximum] is altogether free from all relation and contraction, obviously nothing is opposed to it, since it is Absolute Maximality’40 (emphasis added). He references the same point somewhat later: ‘[s]ince the Maximum is the unqualifiedly Maximum, to which nothing is opposed, it is evident that no name can properly befit it’41 (emphasis added). Here Nicholas makes the same mistake as Nozick, as introducing the Maximum as something that excludes some pre-theoretical notion of ‘nothing’ (in order to give some content to the Maximum) thus leaves conceptual room for reflexive iteration to apply (see Chapter 7).42 I will not labour the point. Suffice to say Nicholas of Cusa’s ‘concept’ of God, which is perhaps the most determined attempt within philosophical theism to stress God’s transcendence and perfection, does not bring us any further forward in seeing how theology might provide ultimate meaning by relating in a certain way to that God.

8.6  Mysticism Talk of relating in a certain way to God, or of union with God, and mention of such mystically influenced writers as Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa, seems to lead naturally to a demand for a brief consideration of mystical experience. Mystical experience might be a way of coming to ultimate meaning, insofar as there is a subset of mystical experiences, dubbed ‘Pure Conscious Events’ or ‘PCEs’, which are experiences that are phenomenologically not of anything, that is involving no concepts, thought or sensory input, yet which are

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

207

still conscious experiences. St Teresa of Avila notes that: ‘[d]uring the short time the [mystical] union lasts, [the mystic] is deprived of every feeling, and even if she would, she could not think of any single thing . . . [s]he neither sees, hears, nor understands’.43 Perhaps such an experience might be seen as one insusceptible to reflexive iteration. Of course, PCEs are not exclusive to St Teresa’s Christianity; they occur in many other religions, both theistic and non-theistic, such as Buddhism (Paramaartha’s writings, for example). Hence we might hesitate on taking a stand as to whether a PCE represents a union with a theistic God, or whether it represents a non-theistic spiritual alternative. A lot depends here on the position one takes as to how far we can divorce the mystic’s interpretation of his or her experience from the experience itself. But this is irrelevant for our current purposes. The interesting question is whether a mystical experience can deliver what is essentially an experience of nothing. There are some immediate problems with PCEs. It might be said that all experience is conceptualized to some extent, and thus a non-conceptualized experience is impossible. But the role that concepts play in experience is debatable, and, in any case, this objection seems to beg the question against PCEs – maybe PCEs are a counterexample to this claim. Similarly, some have objected that, if we believe that experience always entails conceptualization, then whatever PCEs are, they are not experiences, rather they are better classed as events. Gellman argues against this by saying that a PCE ‘occurs within a wider experience of the subject, including the subject’s coming out of the PCE and assigning it meaning’.44 Hence this wider experience is the relevant form of the PCE, not simply the PCE alone. This raises problems that we will return to in due course. Finally, if a PCE is devoid of all conceptual content, there does not seem to be any way that one could know one has had one, as opposed to, say, simply having been rendered unconscious. I will not devote time to discussing in depth Gellman’s response to this problem, rather simply note that he offers two solutions. One pertains to a reliabilist account of knowledge, and states that if the ‘awakening’ from a PCE produces the belief that one has done just that, it could be a reliable cognitive mechanism that suffices for knowledge that one has had a PCE. Alternatively, on an evidentialist account of knowledge, one might have evidence subsequent to the PCE that suffices for knowledge. Suppose that we simply ignore these problems and just grant the coherence of PCEs. What implications does this have for the meaning of life? Very few. For PCEs are defined as experiences of nothing in virtue of their lack of

208

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

certain phenomenological components. But why should we believe that these phenomenological components need to be absent for the experience to accurately represent nothing? Because we have a prior conception of nothing as something that lacks these components. But this prior conception will inevitably illicitly conceptualize the notion of nothing. In addition, as I said in Section 5.8, the way that a methodology might avoid falling prey to reflexive iteration would be if the experience it is built on could be attained or recreated atemporally and non-spatially. But the answers to the above problems in the previous paragraph relied on the PCE being contextualized within a wider experience, and in any case, a PCE already does occur within a wider experience; it is an experience within the process of a lived life as a whole. But this wider experience militates against experiencing the PCE atemporally and non-spatially. Thus we seem to be left with a scenario whereby the PCE experience is contextualized but the subject is unaware of this contextualization, as a way of avoiding reflexive iteration. But, as I have already explained in Chapter 5, this move will not work (unless one adheres to the radical Chapter 6 methodology where omnis determinatio est negatio was rejected). I will not recapitulate the argument in full here.

8.7  Inconceivable goods In Section 8.4 I overlooked one position the proponent of heaven as life’s ultimate meaning might take: he or she might claim that the goods of heaven are transcendent, beyond our comprehension, and so not susceptible to argumentation that is effective as regards earthly pleasures. This would be of a piece with a more general criticism of my argument that the regress of meaning-conferrers can only end in nothing that comes from the direction of certain views associated with metaphysical realism (although these views are neither necessary nor sufficient for holding such realism). Such views have been defended in the literature by, among others, Thomas Nagel, Colin McGinn and Sven Rosenkranz. They are also associated with certain mystical and/or religious traditions.45 The important claim that they make is that certain things can be the objects of thought even if we are unable to conceive of them. Such a claim, if vindicated, appears to lead to two problems with the arguments presented so far. The first problem concerns the criticism, which has been frequently pressed in the foregoing, that this or that claim conceptualizes nothing illicitly. However,

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

209

if it is true that we can entertain thoughts about things without conceiving them, maybe we can entertain thoughts about nothing without conceptualizing it, and a fortiori without conceptualizing it illicitly. So the criticism of illicit conceptualization may not be effective. However, insofar as our objector will allow that we can still think about nothing, including thinking the thought that it is inconceivable, or that it is an object of thought, this will still illicitly allow some sort of content to the notion of nothing, and so the original criticism reappears at ‘the next level down’, as it were. The second, more serious, problem would be with the earlier claim that for any candidate that we might bring forward as the meaning of life, we can always perform a reflexive iteration upon it. For someone might suggest that there is a candidate, which we cannot currently (or indeed could never) conceive of, but which nevertheless might be the meaning of life. Since we cannot conceive of such a candidate, a case can be made that either we cannot perform a reflexive iteration on it, or it cannot be proved that we can perform a reflexive iteration on it – we just do not have sufficient information about the candidate. If we cannot conceive of something, we cannot conceive of its limits, and so cannot see it as limited. If so, then that thing could be a candidate for ultimate meaning, insofar as it is not, or may not be, limited. The relevant candidate for this chapter would be a religious one – the transcendent wonder of heaven, for example, but secular candidates would be possible too. As noted above, this problem appears to rest on the claim that there are things we can think about without thereby conceiving them, so that claim must be defended before it has any bite. (Note that the claim is independent of metaphysical realism, so there is no need to attack that doctrine.) So let us take a look at some defences of this claim. In an interesting article, Sven Rosenkranz analyses Graham Priest’s reconstruction of Berkeley’s ‘master argument’, which aims roughly to show that the claim that there are inconceivable things is contradictory, insofar as in making that claim involves conceiving the aforementioned inconceivable things. The broad thrust of Rosenkranz’s approach is to drive a wedge between referring and conceiving; if this is possible, then we may be able to entertain thoughts about inconceivable things without thereby conceiving those inconceivable things. There is insufficient space to go into the subtler points of Priest’s argument and Rosenkranz’s response, so we will concentrate only on the issues germane to the current discussion. Priest takes Berkeley’s argument to establish that ‘a contradiction follows from the claim that something is not conceived (and that this itself is conceived)’.46

210

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

Much will depend on how we understand the notion of conception here. Rosenkranz reads Priest as being committed to the claim that the object of a given act of conceiving is not a fact, but a thought.47 Priest then notes that to conceive a thought about a given thing is enough to conceive that thing; he derives this from his ‘Conception Schema’ which says that if one conceives that x has a property y, then one also conceives x. Priest is here using a weak ‘and perfectly legitimate (extensional) notion of conception . . . [where t]o conceive of something in this sense it is necessary only to bring it before the mind and understand a noun-phrase (or other representation), which, as a matter of fact, refers to (or represents) the object in question’.48 Now Rosenkranz concedes that there are some notions of conception for which Priest’s Conception Schema holds, just as Priest concedes that there are some notions of conception for which his Conception Schema does not hold.49 So when it comes to the claim that there are certain things that exist and are inconceivable, Rosenkranz will claim that on any philosophically interesting (read: stronger) notion of conception we can think thoughts about things without thereby conceiving them. So he needs to provide a notion of conceiving which is stronger than Priest’s. How does he go about this? The first step is to consider more specifically the nature of the things that we are saying we cannot conceive – whether they are facts, properties or objects. As Rosenkranz takes (reasonably) facts to involve the instantiation of properties by objects, the conceivability of facts will be dependent on the conceivability of both objects and properties. That is, if certain properties or certain objects are not conceivable, then certain facts will not be conceivable either. Rosenkranz agrees with Priest that conceiving objects is a matter of successfully referring to them, where reference will be made via a noun-phrase the understanding of which will require the conceiving of certain properties. And, of course, as ‘is conceived’ is a property we conceive, Priest’s Conception Schema is applicable to objects. (I will forgo discussion of whether we can refer to objects via indefinite descriptions, as neither Rosenkranz nor Priest appears to think it essential to the argument.) However, with regard to properties, Rosenkranz believes that there is a difference between conceiving a property and referring to it. (It is unclear if Priest is interested in extending his argument’s application beyond objects.) First, he claims that referring to a property by means of a singular term will be less robust, conceptually speaking, than referring to it by means of a ‘genuinely predicative expression’, where the latter implies some knowledge of what it is to

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

211

have that property (either through acquaintance or some other means). So we might be able to think about a property in the former sense, without thereby having conceived it in the latter sense. Secondly, there may be certain properties that we introduce via singular terms, but whose conception may be more robust insofar as we arrive at it by theorizing: ‘for example when we lay down that to have [a property] P is to have the (potentially disjunctive) property which satisfies a given set of theoretical postulates’.50 But then, for a property of that type, it may be that we can refer to it by a singular term, yet be unable to grasp a theory about it, and so unable to conceive it. Rosenkranz has a fairly specific account of what it is to grasp a theory about a property P: the target phenomena of the explanation must be rendered less puzzling in virtue of that explanation’s entailment by a coherent set of P-involving statements – that is, attributions of P form part of the explanation. But merely a loose level of coherence in this set of P-involving statements will not allow us to conceive of P; Rosenkranz requires ‘inferential density’ for this, where: ‘a set Σ of statements is inferentially dense if for any two statements A and B in Σ, A is entailed by B in conjunction with the other statements in Σ’.51 So if the set of statements involving P is not inferentially dense in this way, its coherence is too loose for us to have grasped a theory concerning P, and thus to have conceived P (though we have referred to it, made it an object of thought, by introducing it via a singular term). Rosenkranz’ defence of inconceivable properties fits well with the best-known example of an attempt to invoke the inconceivable as a way of providing a nonconstructive answer to a given problem, namely Colin McGinn’s ‘mysterianism’ about the relationship between conscious states and the brain.52 For McGinn also fixes on properties as being the sort of thing that we are unable to conceive, whereby a certain inconceivable natural property P of the brain is that ‘in virtue of which the brain is the basis of consciousness’.53 P, McGinn claims, is inconceivable as it cannot be captured by concepts formed through our usual channels of concept-formation: introspection, perception or inference from what is perceived. Introspection fails to capture P because through introspection we only have direct cognitive aspect to consciousness – not the brain, and not the link between the two. We cannot tell, just by directing our attention within, that consciousness is dependent on the brain. So we can form no concept of the link purely via introspection. Perception fails because our senses detect properties essentially involved with space but such properties are of the wrong kind to constitute property P – we cannot conceive of any spatial property that could possibly give rise to consciousness. Finally, inference from perception will

212

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

not work if theoretical concepts are formed by analogical extension of those acquired from observables, as such concepts will be too close to the concepts of observables and inherit their failings. On the other hand, if we grant that our inferences may be less restricted in conforming to observables, then this ‘would no more serve to introduce P than it serves to introduce the property of consciousness itself ’.54 For all the physical data that need to be explained are explicable physically: there will never be any explanatory need to introduce either consciousness, or the property that explains consciousness. Examination of some of the tensions in McGinn’s account can show the limitations of applying this method to a candidate for the meaning of life. What I want to claim is that, in general, appeals to inconceivable things (properties, say, or facts) as solutions to certain problems face a dilemma. On the one hand, these inconceivable solutions have to make sufficient sense to be the kind of thing that could be a solution to the relevant question, and so must have some kind of determinate content. On the other, the content cannot be sufficient to provide a normal ‘constructive’ solution in terms of a fully conceivable thing, as the reason for appealing to the inconceivable was the implausibility of such normal solutions. This is not to say that McGinn’s account cannot escape the dilemma. But matters are more difficult for the question of life’s ultimate meaning. Let us start by considering a point first urged against McGinn by Daniel Dennett and significantly developed by Uriah Kriegel.55 While McGinn wants to say that there are some problems that we can formulate even though we cannot understand what their solution could be (we cannot conceive of it), the counterclaim is that there is no problem we can formulate without being capable of formulating its solution. (Note that this does not entail the falsity of the more general assertion that there are things of which we cannot conceive.) This is due to the conceptual connection that obtains between understanding a question and understanding its possible answers: Kriegel gives the example of the question ‘Does John love Mary?’ This question cannot be fully understood without understanding both of its possible answers: ‘John loves Mary’ and ‘John does not love Mary’. Kriegel goes on to note that we individuate questions by individuating the ordered sets of assertions that comprise answers to them. Given this, if we cannot understand some of the set of possible answers to a question due to being unable to conceive some of the things to which those answers make reference, we cannot individuate that question from certain other questions (i.e. all those questions the set of whose answers intersects the set of answers to the question under discussion provided that those answers are in each

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

213

case conceivable). If we cannot pick out a question from certain other questions, we cannot be said to fully understand it. We understand enough to know that there is a question, a source of puzzlement, and to make some sense of it, but we cannot discern which question it is. That there appears to be a difficulty in understanding the question to the extent that we cannot understand the range of possible answers is borne out by McGinn’s own profession of the difficulties in framing the question: ‘We have a sense of the [mind-body] problem that outruns our capacity to articulate it clearly.’56 Later he claims that the problem ‘resists even articulate formulation’ and has cause to use metaphorical language instead: ‘the water of the physical brain is turned into the wine of consciousness.’57 Moreover, the term ‘mind-body problem’ itself, like ‘the problem of the meaning of life’, cries out for further specification before we try to solve that to which it refers. Of course, McGinn does not see the percolation of mysteriousness from answer to question as such a serious problem as does Kriegel. By looking at another set of criticisms of McGinn’s account we may see the reasons for his sang-froid. Take McGinn’s commitment to naturalism – the inconceivable property P is supposed to be a natural property. A number of commentators have questioned the justification for this commitment: McGinn only mentions in passing that he is ‘[r]esolutely shunning the supernatural’ and that there ‘just has to be some [naturalistic] explanation’ (emphasis his).58 What wider problems this professed faith in naturalism might pose for McGinn’s account and whether he can ultimately justify it are not to the present point. For our purposes it is more important here to note that in assuming a naturalistic answer, McGinn cuts down on the range of possible answers to what he calls ‘the mind-body problem’, and thus allows that problem to be stated with more specificity – it can be individuated from problems possible answers to which are non-naturalistic. Here we see the dilemma that I suggested was attendant on all appeals to inconceivable solutions: the need to give content to the answer in order for both answer and question to make sense must be balanced against the need not to assign so much content to the answer that it is ineffective in the same way that conceivable solutions are ineffective. Similar strands are present in Kriegel’s discussion. He works from McGinn’s successfully more-or-less specific formulation of the problem to the possession of the concept that answers the problem. The problem is how non-spatial consciousness can emerge from a spatial brain. For such emergence to obtain, brains must have some kind of properties from which the non-spatial can

214

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

emerge, properties of which we cannot conceive. If these are properties of space, as McGinn supposes, we can say that what we do not understand is ‘the spatial causal basis of the non-spatial’. Thus we formulate the problem, but we also formulate a concept that refers to the property we are looking for, namely: ‘spatial causal basis of the non-spatial’. If we reply that we need a directly referential concept, and not a descriptive one, for formulating the sought-after property, then ‘it is unclear how we could deploy it in formulating the problem.’59 Specifics of McGinn’s philosophy of mind aside, it seems that the uncontroversial moral to be drawn is that to the extent we give content to a problem, we also give content to its solution. Let us now apply this moral to the issue of whether the inconceivable yet referable things that Rosenkranz proposes could form part of a solution to the question of the meaning of life. The problem that faced us was that for any candidate we proposed as the ultimate meaning of life, it was possible to perform a reflexive iteration on that candidate. The potential solution would be that there is some candidate to which we can refer, but which is nevertheless inconceivable, which is not, or at least cannot be proven to be, susceptible to the reflexive iteration in this way. Finally, the worry for that solution would be navigating between, on the one hand, giving sufficient content to the candidate to avoid making the question inconceivable, and on the other, giving so much content to the candidate that we can perform a reflexive iteration on it. The prospects for this balancing act do not seem good. Certainly they seem bleaker than those for McGinn’s account.60 So far I have referred to a ‘candidate’ for life’s meaning. But that term, as I have been using it, is unacceptably vague, like the term ‘entity’ or (more significantly) ‘something’. Not everyone would think this. Nagel asserts that ‘about some of [what we cannot conceive] we may be unable to say anything at all, except that there might be such things.’61 However, given what has been said above about making a distinction between reference and conception, it does not seem to affect the general point Nagel is making here if we were to maintain that we are able at least to say that any one of these given things is, more specifically, a property, or an object, or a fact or a member of some other general kind. This would avoid criticism of Nagel’s claim on the grounds that ‘thing’ is a dubious term or a dummy sortal or somesuch, which we cannot make sense of without making sense of the interdependent notion of nothing.62 If that were so, the problems associated with understanding nothing would afflict the attempt to make sense of Nagel’s claim. (It is worth noting that Nagel appeals to another interdependent and thus equally problematic concept, ‘everything’,

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

215

in supporting his point.) It is possible that considerations along these lines are what prompt Rosenkranz to seek greater specificity by moving from claims about inconceivable ‘things’ to more particular claims about inconceivable facts, properties and objects. This is the first, very small, step in filling out the content of both the question and its inconceivable answer. Further specification can be made. Any property worth the name does not seem to be the kind of thing that could be the meaning of life – the meaning of life could not, it seems, be the property ‘red’, or ‘happy’, or ‘spatial’ (although cf. Section 7.9). More plausible would be the instantiation of certain properties by certain objects, that is, certain facts obtaining. I noted earlier how, for Rosenkranz, facts can be inconceivable in virtue of their being constituted by the instantiation of inconceivable properties by objects (in section 4 of his article Rosenkranz has a more direct argument for inconceivable facts). So the putative answer to the question of the meaning of life will invoke some inconceivable fact, where that fact is inconceivable insofar as it involves the instantiation of an inconceivable property. Will this work? I am not sure it will. It seems that facts, insofar as they are facts, are by nature susceptible to reflexive iteration. In his treatment of the inconceivable, Nagel relies on the general point that ‘Every concept . . . contains potentially . . . the idea of what the concept doesn’t apply to’, a point to which I am sympathetic (cf. Chapter 3).63 If concepts can be used to pick out properties, this seems to indicate that for every property that we conceptualize, we can form the idea of some object to which that property does not apply. This will allow us to conceptually contextualize those objects to which the property in question does apply, seeing such objects as something limited and thus susceptible to Nozickian questioning, or as only contingent occupants of our phenomenal field (see Sections 7.4 and 7.5, respectively). Now there may be properties of which we cannot conceive, but that does not mean we cannot conceive of them qua property – otherwise we could not say that these were inconceivable properties. Thus we can conceptually contextualize these inconceivable properties just as much as conceivable ones. We are no better off for having posited them. Nagel does allow that some concepts pick out properties that are universally applicable; he gives the example of ‘self-identity’. Another example might be: ‘being either human or non-human’. If this is so, we cannot form the idea of some object to which that property does not apply, and so cannot conceptually contextualize those objects to which it does apply. But it is not clear that such properties help us much, for several reasons. These properties are formal or

216

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

logical properties, which we can define as being properties such that everything has them, and moreover has them necessarily.64 Now it seems to me that selfidentity and similar properties are of doubtful coherence; although they may have been useful for certain technical purposes, we should not thereby take them to have metaphysical import.65 Moreover, it is obscure what sort of relation or attitude we would have to stand in or take to formal properties in order that they should be candidates for conferring ultimate meaning. Finally, and most seriously, properties like self-identity or being either green or not green, being formal properties, have their meaning expressed through (roughly) certain structural properties of our discourse. So if we say that there is some property of everything of which we cannot conceive, then it would seem that there is a structural aspect of our discourse of which we cannot currently conceive. But then this will make the problem of a given answer’s inconceivability percolating to the question particularly acute. If there are structural properties of our discourse we cannot understand and we individuate questions by possible answers, it does not seem that we can individuate the question from any other question. For part of what guides us as to whether an answer is a possible one for a given question are the structural properties of both that question and that answer, and some of these will be inconceivable to us. Suppose we just grant that there is a non-formal property that is applicable to everything. We are not out of the woods yet. For although it may be a fact that an object exists that instantiates a property necessarily, this does not entail that the object exists necessarily. Beings which are necessarily self-identical do not necessarily exist. This is not quite as worrying as it first appears, for, given that any being at all has our putative property necessarily, it does not matter which beings exist. However it does mean that I, whatever I am, must necessarily exist (and, moreover, must know this fact), in order to enjoy apprehension of that property (provided that I am indeed distinct from my phenomenal field and/or its objects), and (which is entailed by this) it does mean that it could not be the case that no beings exist: either there is a necessary being or it is necessary that some being or other exists. In Chapter 7, note 47, I discuss the notion of possible non-existence as being a limit case of the contingency of our phenomenal field. (It is interesting to note that both of these requirements, the requirement for a property that is had necessarily by any thing and the requirement for necessary existence, will involve some kind of understanding of the linked terms ‘something’, ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’, and such an understanding may be difficult to come by.)

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

217

Even were we able to solve these problems, there would still be one last objection that seems decisive. The inconceivable property that, when instantiated by an object, comprises the fact that is a candidate for life’s meaning presumably cannot be necessarily inconceivable. If it were, the ultimate answer to life’s meaning, and indeed, whether life’s meaning did have an ultimate answer, would be forever out of our grasp. Only by an act of faith could we say that life had ultimate meaning. Equally, the property cannot be necessarily conceivable, ex hypothesi. But if the relevant property is only contingently conceivable, as it seems it must be, then we face a problem analogous to the problem that confronted us regarding the contingency of our phenomenal field (Section 7.5). Just as in the latter case we would have a sense of dissatisfaction at our lack of control regarding the  composition of our phenomenal field, so in the former case we would have a sense of dissatisfaction at our lack of control regarding our capacity to conceive of the relevant property. (Note that if all properties are contingently conceivable, as it seems they are, even conceivable properties which are claimed to apply to everything, such as ‘being self-identical’, will be unsatisfactory as components for a candidate to life’s meaning.) Now, it may be that as a last-ditch effort, the proponent of an inconceivable meaning will float the possibility of other inconceivable properties the subsequent conception of which will somehow alter our understanding of properties in such a way that the problems outlined above will not apply. But the difficulty here will be familiar: specifying how such inconceivable properties can help by altering our understanding without on the one hand allowing them to fall prey to the objections outlined so far or on the other divesting them of content to such an extent that we lose our grip on the answer, and so on the question.

8.8  Grace Purpose theories, eschatological theories, theories concerning union with God and mystical theories can all be held by followers of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, theistic varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism and many others. Indeed, versions of eschatological, union and mystical theories can even be held in some nontheistic religions. However, I should now like to turn to a concept that seems to be tied more specifically to Christian philosophical theology: the concept of grace. To claim grace for Christian theology is somewhat contentious; while David Braine claims that the ‘notion of grace has no place outside some kind

218

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

of theism’,66 Marco Pallis believes that it is ‘in fact implicit in every known form of spirituality’.67 I suspect Pallis is correct insofar as we take ‘grace’ to refer to a fairly broad notion. However, I specifically wish to discuss what Catholics term ‘sanctifying grace’, a concept common to not just Catholicism, but most Christian denominations, according to which perfect righteousness is infused (Catholicism) or imputed (most Protestantism) to an individual. This concept certainly seems to be less prominent in more orthopraxic theistic religions such as Judaism and Islam.68 Hinduism and Buddhism, while both seeming to have versions of ‘prevenient grace’, appear to have less room for ‘sanctifying grace’.69 In addition, the notion of ‘sanctifying grace’ in Christianity is bound up with issues such as the Incarnation and the Atonement, moving it farther from purportedly similar notions in other religions. But what is sanctifying grace, what outline can we give of the concept? Sanctifying grace in Christianity is the grace by which one is made righteous in the eyes of God, that is, by which one is justified. How this justification is accomplished varies according to the doctrine affirmed by various denominations, but it invariably is held to be dependent upon the self-sacrifice of Christ in the crucifixion, which atones for humanity’s sins. Sanctifying grace bestows righteousness upon the subject when he or she chooses to turn towards God (whether this is effected by ‘prevenient’ or ‘efficacious/irresistible’ grace); and after this initial justification sanctifying grace continues to play a part in the believer’s life, as part of what Catholics call the ‘progressive’ phase of justification and as part of the continuing process that Lutherans (and other Protestants) call ‘sanctification’.70 The most important point on which Catholics and Lutherans (and other Protestants) differ is in the nature of the righteousness which is ‘bestowed’ upon the subject (I have thus far used ‘bestowed’ as a neutral word). For Catholics this is ‘infused’ righteousness, for Lutherans it is ‘imputed’ righteousness. This difference is roughly as follows. Most Protestants believe that justification is forensic; that, although we remain sinners, God legally credits the believer with the righteous acts that Christ performed while on earth. Similarly, the sins of the believer are taken upon Christ, who is punished for them, satisfying the demands of justice. So while we are still flawed human beings, we are covered by Christ’s righteousness in the eyes of God – hence ‘imputed’ righteousness, and hence Luther’s assertion that the Christian is simul iustus et peccator: at the same time both saint and sinner. By contrast, Catholics claim that the righteousness we receive from sanctifying grace is actual, not behavioural or legal. Rather

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

219

than being covered by Christ’s righteousness, we are actually made righteous by Christ’s atoning actions. The soul is made permanently holy before God – hence righteousness is ‘infused’.71 Part of the reason for the differences between these two views is that most Protestants accept some form of the doctrine of ‘total depravity’ whereby God’s image in man is completely lost, whereas Catholics reject this, believing that there is some element in man that strives towards the good, and that there is thus something internal to the believer with which God’s righteousness in grace can be fused. Although these two doctrines concerning justification differ in their description of the mechanics of sanctifying grace,72 their theme is the same: that of human imperfection being supplemented by God’s free bestowal of perfection.73 The important question now is as to what the significance of the concept of sanctifying grace might have for questions concerning the ultimate meaning of life. To this end, I propose to return to a question that arose at the end of Section 6.12: is it possible to adhere to a position that makes only a partial commitment to a rejection of omnis determinatio est negatio? That is, a position that safeguards only a certain subset of entities (be they truths, propositions, objects or whatever) from reflexive iteration. I did not confront this question head-on, instead turning to discuss the related topic of the methodological implications of such a claim. In tackling this issue, I would like to begin by making a controversial move and suggest a model based loosely on the Lutheran moral theologian Anders Nygren’s characterization of agapeistic love.74 For Nygren the important aspects of agapeistic love (as contrasted with erotic love) are that it is spontaneous and unmotivated, that (significantly) it is indifferent to value, that it is value creating, and that it initiates fellowship. Described as such, agapeistic love can only be given by God, and the form it takes is that of grace, both initiating (prevenient or irresistible/efficacious) and sanctifying. However, although believers cannot show these aspects of agapeistic love, the believer can love God agapeistically by willingly surrendering to God’s will in gratitude; this is a form of receptive agape, and goes by the name of ‘faith’. These are the only elements of Nygren’s account that I wish to use – I would remain agnostic as regards his much disputed criticisms of erotic love in Christianity. With this in place, let us return to Cavell and his distinction between ‘knowledge’ and ‘acknowledgement’. At the end of Chapter 6 we came to the conclusion that we can understand the difference between deconstruction and the ‘position’ I counterposed to it in terms of the inability of two reflexive

220

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

methodologies to know of the other. However in setting up this third-person view of the situation we fail to acknowledge either of those positions on their own terms. Failing to acknowledge the other is an acceptable move, but it is something for which we must take a moral responsibility. This is where we can bring the notion of faith into the discussion; I would characterize faith as a selective refusal to acknowledge the other qua certain entities and grace as that which allows this to be possible.

8.9  Faith Faith clearly appears to fall between deconstruction and the counterposed ‘position’ of Chapter 6. As such it is selective; a partial refusal to acknowledge the other (rather than an inability to know the other), it regards only certain entities. Here it refuses to acknowledge the other as indicative of a position that could call into question the ways in which the faithful go on; in this regard, it is indifferent to the other. All this makes it seem plausible that a Cavellian approach can acknowledge it appropriately, given that they share a common methodology (or better: there is room for faith in a Cavellian framework). This does not mean that there cannot be intra-methodological disputes, of course. One of these might be the condemnation of faith as opening up the possibility (which Graham Ward feared Marion’s work countenanced) of uncritical dogmatism. To ring-fence a class of concepts as unassailable, as held by faith, would appear to be an action that carries with it significant moral responsibility. This is where an appeal to grace proves relevant. For grace, in bestowing moral perfection on the believer (presumably in a way that does not present itself phenomenologically), absolves them of the obligation to acknowledge the other. Note, of course, that almost every major Christian denomination does not take this as relieving one of one’s moral duties. Rather faith in God is taken as leading naturally to a desire to follow certain moral imperatives, one of which will be to acknowledge the other.75 So it will be part of a Christian’s interests to question his or her faith, but equally, his or her right to end that questioning if it seems that the investigation is in a position to endanger it.76 Of course, the non-Christian could well question the invocation of the concept of grace here, but this is likely to simply reduce to a refusal to acknowledge the Christian, as grace will be held as a tenet of faith; it will itself be one of those ring-fenced entities.

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

221

So much for the moral issues, let us examine the phenomenological ones. We might wish to say that a problem arises that is indicated by the differentiation Nygren makes between man’s agapeistic love for God (faith) and God’s agapeistic love for man (grace) – that the former, unlike the latter, cannot be indifferent to value. Obviously such indifference is possible for God, insofar as having been made perfectly righteous (either through imputation or infusion) there is no specification in one’s moral value for God (phenomenologically): perfect object meets perfect love. However, man’s agapeistic love for God in faith appears to lack a parallel to this insofar as the entities ring-fenced (the articles of faith) are not supplemented (or ‘perfected’ for holders of total depravity) in the way that human righteousness is, at least not in any way that appears phenomenologically. If they were, it is plausible to assume that we could not but believe them, nor could we forget them, or think of any way of questioning them, or see them at one time in one light and another time in a different light. But in fact, although these ring-fenced entities may not be susceptible to omnis determinatio est negatio in themselves, they can arguably be obscured/affected by the vagaries of other entities which are. How are we to respond to this? The answer is given implicitly in the discussion of moral issues above. We can be aware of the apparent contingency and imperfection of the entities ring-fenced by faith, but we simply disregard it.77 God by grace imparts certain truths to the believer in revelation, and by grace ensures that those who genuinely believe in these truths never deviate from these beliefs.78 Say I have belief x. I can forget belief x, question belief x, understand different aspects of belief x, lose belief x and subsequently regain it,79 but as a believer who has faith in x I can say that no matter what operations have been performed on x, I have always been led back to belief in x. (Perhaps it will be objected that I cannot be sure that the belief I have been ‘led back to’ at time t2 is not actually z, as opposed to the belief x which occurred at time t1, rather I am somehow unaware of the operations that have been performed on x to make it z – and that now attempts at t2 to re-identify x as it was at t1 will only yield identification at t2 of z appearing as though situated at t1. But such doubts will of course be disregarded in an appeal to grace in faith.) All this is very abstract. Let me provide a concrete example that relates to the question of ultimate meaning. Suppose one holds that the ultimate meaning of life will be achieved when one is inducted into a perfect afterlife. In Section 8.4 above, which draws on argumentation in Chapter 7, we saw that any proposed spelling out of what constitutes this perfect afterlife is liable to be susceptible to

222

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

reflexive iteration. Previously we have taken the implication of this susceptibility to be fatal to the attempt to give an account of ultimate meaning. What I propose is that the believer who holds in faith to an account of the ultimate meaning of life as being inducted into a perfect afterlife should simply ignore, as far as he or she can, this susceptibility.80 This might initially seem implausible but let us return to our discussion of ‘nothing’ in Chapter 7. There we saw that we had a ‘deep’ ignorance in relation to nothing, that is, an ignorance that cannot claim that any given characterization of nothing is any more accurate than any other. Inevitably, any characterization of ‘nothing’ will be held in accordance with an act of faith that simply assumes against alternative accounts (we have seen this in action during the evaluation of various accounts of ‘nothing’ earlier in this book). This assumption of one position against others is a refusal to acknowledge them, in a Cavellian sense. It requires us to ignore, as far as possible, the appearance of the other which threatens the all-encompassing hegemony of our own view.81 We can, of course, do this to a greater or lesser extent; how early we give up on another’s views is up to us.82 Is this fideism? Perhaps a Kierkegaardian fideism that suggests that where the limits of speculative reason are drawn, there we must make our leap of faith?83 That is a complex question. It certainly looks possible to make the following objection: This use of faith seems to open up the possibility for any beliefs, however seemingly irrational, to be protected from criticism. In response to this it is tempting to respond: Some beliefs are easier to have faith in than others; a belief that a perfect afterlife might yield ultimate meaning is easier to hold than a belief that eating a specific ice cream might yield ultimate meaning because the latter is much more obviously susceptible to reflexive iteration. It is harder to ignore other evidence in such a case. There might also be the possibility of pointing towards how far a putative candidate for ultimate meaning conforms to our pre-theoretical intuitions. Such considerations seem to place practical limits on our articles of faith, which will allow our beliefs to conform to some more or less universal norms. I am not convinced that this strategy is necessary, however. The problem with the charge of fideism is that we are assuming a third-party view between two putative candidates for faith, x and y, (one believed in, the other absurd, so as to effect the reductio) which has its own faith commitments, and consequently refuses to acknowledge those of others in its pretence of neutrality. In fact, what we have here is not an intra-third-party dispute between two faith claims x and y, but an intra-third-party dispute between faith claim x and whichever faith

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

223

claims are made by the critic who condemns this fideism. A believer in faith claim x, when confronted with faith claim y, would say that there is a difference between the two beliefs, namely that faith claim y is susceptible to reflexive iteration in a way that the believer refuses to acknowledge with regard to faith claim x, and thus faith claim y is not a fitting object for belief. It may be the case that from the point of view of a third-party assessment of this charge (which in reality already finds against the believer) the believer considers claims x and y to be equally dubious, but selectively ignores potential criticisms of one rather than the other. But in fact, for the believer (and for the one who wishes to acknowledge the believer), it has to be the case that they consider y to be dubious but not x because they refuse to countenance potential criticisms of x. The believer’s faith is constitutive of the indubitability of x, and to claim that the believer should be open minded about x fails to acknowledge the believer’s position as a faithful believer (of course, this reply assumes against the non-believer in x). So the charge of fideism with regard to a faith claim x is predicated on a refusal to acknowledge the believer of x, including what will seem to their critic to be the concomitant bias against other faith claims, where the critic’s refusal to acknowledge such ‘bias’ is likewise based on an act of faith. The only way the critic can eschew criticisms of fideism applying somewhere to his or her own position would be to hold that, with regard to any given view, there is always more to acknowledge and that we will never reach the point where we can dismiss this. However, this seems to transform the methodology into a deconstructive one, and I have dealt with the issues surrounding that in Chapter 6. Essentially, no matter how far the critic of fideism chooses to acknowledge his or her opponents there will always be acts of faith required, both in machinery of the acknowledgement (belief in the existence of the other, analyses of nonsense) and in the individual responses to faith claims.84 The foregoing examination should serve to indicate that, no matter what one’s ontological or methodological commitments, whether they are naturalistic, non-naturalistic, neutral or whatever, at certain points a faith claim will be unavoidable. How far one is prepared to take acknowledgement before reaching these points is a matter for the individual. The characterization of ‘nothing’, or the refusal to characterize it, appears to be one of those points, and the relation of the ultimate meaning of life to ‘nothing’ indicates the role that faith has to play in deciding that issue. Of course, it is possible to object to this entire analysis, on the basis that it fails to acknowledge possible alternatives properly. For example, to claim that we

224

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

must all, even Derridians, make an act of faith with regard to ‘nothing’ is to fail to acknowledge the Derridian approach properly, and so to have already made an act of faith.85 It fails to allow for the possibility that Derrida’s deconstruction of ‘nothing’ will never involve an act of faith (and a criticism that belief in continued deconstruction is itself an act of faith also refuses to acknowledge that deconstruction self-criticizes – even criticizing this self-criticism!); see my comments in Section 6.12 about the charge that deconstruction is its own unquestioned assumption as failing to properly acknowledge deconstruction. Furthermore, there is a lack of acknowledgement even in intra-third-party cases (and it will be a lack of acknowledgement rather than knowledge here, being as it is selective between similar types of cases). For it may be that some intra-thirdparty members are not aware they are making an act of faith (if they consider objections to their position to be ‘nonsense’ for example).86 Furthermore, they may not even be making an act of faith in reality; they may have actually produced or be able to produce an account of ‘nothing’ that does work. It could even be argued, as I suggested in Section 7.7, that we have a failure to know, as the alleged similarity for intra-third-party positions may not mean that there is genuine common ground if we allow that methodologies can allow for specifics (namely the ring-fenced subsets) in their descriptions. Part of the problem here is with the methodology of this book, which takes a third-party view of the different accounts of ‘nothing’, so it looks as though everyone is making faith claims (or can only hold their claims by faith) against each other. But they could in fact just be failing to comprehend the other, or failing even to recognize the other’s existence (failing to know of the other). Even setting the matter up in this way is uncharitable. For in assuming that the other – the alternative account to that of the putative ‘faith claimant’ – makes sense, or even in recognizing its existence, the third-party view taken up by this book fails to properly acknowledge the account of that putative ‘faith claimant’87 (which may not recognize, know of, alternative accounts in various ways). So they could respond that, in striving for a pretence of impartiality, the third-party view of this book makes its own faith claims in giving a meta-account of ‘nothing’ which is itself unacceptable. This is seen, for example, in my Chapter 7 claim that we have a ‘deep’ ignorance with regard to ‘nothing’ which means that no characterization of ‘nothing’ will be more accurate than any other. For such a claim involves an implicit characterization of ‘nothing’ and so is self-refuting. These problems with the standpoint of this book may indicate that the discussion of how there might be a place for a dogmatic subset suffers from the same problem as the

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

225

attempts to argue for the position outlined at the end of Chapter 6; to argue for these options militates against the very nature of what is being argued for. The believer should just hold something on faith and not try to rationalize this faith or its place within an otherwise rational system. Of course this claim itself is a way of trying to understand the place of a dogmatic subset within a rational system. More generally, we could respond that the rejection of rationalizing the place of faith is itself the result of more dogma. An even stronger ‘response’ to the standpoint of this book (where the former, like the response of the methodology counterposed to deconstruction in Chapter  6, does not really qualify as a ‘response’) is just completely to fail to recognize (know of) the other represented by the third-party view of this book.88 Of course, in even laying out this second response, we take a further implicit third-party view of the dispute between the two parties, thus failing to acknowledge either on their own terms. So it might be true to say that any attempt to argue against a position in this book is automatically an unfair misinterpretation of that position. Maybe Wittgenstein’s comment in the Preface to the Tractatus that his book would only make sense to those who had already had the thoughts expressed in it is relevant here. With this caveat in mind (and we should not underestimate how seriously it should be taken), I nevertheless propose to accept the unquestioned assumptions in the foregoing analysis of faith, and continue the discussion with a further question.

8.10  A place for religion? Is the emphasis on faith a peculiarly religious possibility for understanding the ultimate meaning of life? The term ‘religious’ is unhelpfully vague; in the discussion above there is no suggestion that one need have ‘religious’ commitments to have faith in something. Many philosophers who are not considered to be religious in the conventional sense make faith claims with regard to non-religious topics. To take one example, in a purely non-religious context Searle notes the necessity to ‘make some substantive presuppositions about how the world is in fact in order that we can even pose the questions we are trying to answer’.89 Most philosophers, no matter what their religious orientation or lack thereof, note the inevitability of starting from a set of presuppositions, even if they subsequently return to question these presuppositions (which questioning will not only rely on presuppositions of its own, but will have already been built

226

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

on the unquestioned structure of the faith claims now to be questioned). So I think that not only is this emphasis on faith not exclusive to Christian theology, it is not exclusive to theology in general, and is accessible as a strategy to ‘nonreligious’ systems. However, the ‘cost’ of ‘buying’ this solution to the question of ultimate meaning is that the ‘non-religious’ thinker is then committed to the idea of ultimately unassailable faith claims, and to that extent their worldview can be considered just as ‘religious’ in certain respects as Christianity, Buddhism and the rest.90 Here I think we can see resonances with proposition 6.372 of the Tractatus which serves as an epigraph to this chapter. Perhaps the emphasis on faith is not a peculiarly religious component, but maybe the emphasis on grace is. As we have seen, grace is an important concept not just for the moral aspects of refusing acknowledgement, but also for trusting that such a refusal is correct. Given that grace is an article of faith, and that faith is justified by grace, the two concepts are mutually supporting. This mutual support, along with ambiguity regarding the question: ‘What obtains first: grace or faith?’ is summed up in the disputes between ‘prevenient’ grace (which opens the subject to the possibility of making an act of faith) and ‘irresistible’ or ‘efficacious’ grace (which draws the subject into making an act of faith). Now, again, we might wish to say that cognates of grace can be postulated within a non-religious framework. This sort of move is made by Metz, who, in response to the suggestion that a certain ‘religious’ component is necessary for meaning, often suggests that a natural one can do the job just as well. The best example of this is his view that a God who rewards the good and punishes the evil could be replaced by some natural karmic force.91 What exactly Metz means by a ‘natural’ karmic force is unclear; it does not seem to be the sort of entity that a naturalist would want to allow into their ontology. The problem is that both the notion of ‘grace’, with its implications of solicitude, and the notion of ‘karma’, with its implications of desert, seem to be less than readily comprehensible as natural entities.92 That is not to say that they are incomprehensible in such a manner but any attempt to so understand them is liable to be contentious to a similar degree that a religious understanding of the concepts is contentious. So the ability to explain ultimate meaning may once again be bought at the expense of credibility to oneself and others; an expense that can only be paid by faith in one’s beliefs. Linked with this is another manifestation of grace that I passed over briefly: the gift of revelation in grace. Certainly in the Christian tradition this revelation is couched in personal terms – the manifestation of God in the person of Christ.

Divine Inspiration? On Religion as a Source of Meaning

227

Non-religious philosophy too has revelations of sorts, but these are thoroughly naturalistic, the revelation of the ‘book of nature’ and never the revelation of the divine word of a personal authority (there are no prophets or messiahs in nonreligious philosophy who are immune to criticism – or at least, there are not supposed to be). Once again, it is hard to see how these religious components could be translated into naturalistic terms (which will be necessary if faith is such as to require trust in the grace of a personal source, or the motivation of that grace by an atoning act). Again, this is not to say that such a naturalistic reduction is impossible; eliminativist materialists, instrumentalists and Parfitians of a certain stripe might, among others, be amenable to translating facts about the world into wholly impersonal language (however ‘impersonal’ is to be specified there). Aside from the difficulties for this approach, which we can ignore, this tactic will not eliminate religious claims, merely retranslate them (privileging one layer of discourse over another) – insofar as these claims are contentious they will remain so for the naturalist. Let us take stock. In this section I have argued that the novel contributions that religion can bring are the notions of faith and grace, and of revelation. These seem to be ideas that crop up in religion that secular philosophers tend to avoid. However, I have noted that insofar as I understand these notions as being useful for pursuing questions of meaning, they can be (and often are) appropriated by philosophies that we would not necessarily think of as ‘religious’. Hence the word ‘religious’ here covers both what we normally think of as secular and as religious ways of understanding. This seems to contradict the earlier claim that religion can provide a novel contribution; it is possible that that apparent novelty can be explained by the masking of religious ideas in secular philosophy.93 By looking at religion in detail, we find ourselves with no way of distinguishing religious thinking from secular thinking, where our initial understanding of that distinction comes from appeal to certain paradigms of each style – unless of course we stipulate a definition of religion and ignore any dissonance with our intuitions (perhaps via an act of faith?). Thus the attempt to take religion as something distinctive, with something distinctive to say, has failed, as I have been unable to define what religion is in contradistinction to the philosophy discussed earlier in this book. This may not be wholly surprising. An attempt to find a perfect definition of religion, like the attempt to pursue any perfection, is going to lead us into the problems outlined in Chapter 7.

Concluding Speculations

I end by offering some general and speculative thoughts on where the discussion as a whole has taken us. My aim was to undertake an investigation into the nature of ‘nothing’ for I felt that nothing was the only candidate that might block the regress with regard to meaning that we find when we search for ultimate meaning. Such a simple manner of dealing with the question of life’s ultimate meaning turned out to be implausible, however, when, in entering upon just such an investigation of ‘nothing’, it appeared that there was no way of arriving at an acceptable end of it. All accounts of ‘nothing’ appeared implicitly or explicitly to beg the question against their rivals, even to the point of assuming an entire methodology, where such an assumption was unrecognized. Furthermore, in each place that I tried to conclude something about the manner of my investigation (as here) I found that there was always the possibility of self-criticism, and then further criticism of that self-criticism, and so on (a possibility that I have taken pains to mark). Or, by contrast, the option was always open to reject such throes in an act of faith. Matters quickly grew worse. For it appeared that, just as the investigation into nothing itself seemed to go badly awry, so did the questions that had guided that investigation. For the less that could be understood about the putative end point of a line of thought, the less I could be sure that a line of thought was striking out in the right direction,1 or even what the nature of thinking was at all. So the ladder I was climbing disintegrated from the top down before I could step onto the first rung, and I was left with even less idea of what was happening than when I began. Moreover, just as questioning regarding ‘nothing’ ran into problems, so did questioning regarding the ultimate meaning of life, as both sought the same thing (according to my initial, and equally faulty, hypothesis). Finally and most disastrously of all, these problems, afflicting certain lines of inquiry within this book, turn and afflict this book as whole, including this conclusion, and indeed this very sentence.2 So the wider conclusions to be drawn about the investigation into nothing can be drawn about this book, including this conclusion.

Concluding Speculations

229

We saw in Chapter 7 that the word ‘nothing’ involved misleading metaphors and connotations that it was necessary to distance ourselves from. I also noted that using a different word, like ‘ultimate’, was of no help, as this would have misleading connotations of its own (it would also suggest that the connotations associated with ‘nothing’ are inappropriate, which is equally illicit). And a neologism, even a nonsensical one like ‘penjnrnwr’, is no better. For such a neologism will have been introduced for a purpose, and so has some role to play – hence it will not be in every respect nonsensical, and to that extent misleading. So I should have just used the neologism with no introduction. However, the situating contexts of my other remarks in this book concerning the misleading nature of terms like ‘nothing’ might still prompt the reader to interpret this neologism in a way that replaces such terms (which of course I want them to do!). So I would either have to excise these other remarks, or (which amounts to the same thing) replace them with nonsensical neologisms too. Even if this book comprised solely of nonsensical words though (or blank pages), this would be insufficient, for in virtue of being presented as a book it would have some meaning or indicate some meaning. Instead, the book should not be presented at all, should never have occurred as an idea to be presented. Of course, these words are part of this book, and so cannot be used as a corrective in the way that I am trying to use them here. This indicates that the focus on ‘nothing’ in this book is entirely misguided. For I have been using ‘nothing’ or the ‘ultimate’ as a kind of shortcut, a particular kind of extreme idea with regard to which it is easy to see certain conceptual difficulties arising. This idea, however, is no more apt for such purpose than any other idea, nor indeed any other thing, whether that thing is an idea or not (I construe ‘thing’ very broadly here). For the difficulties surrounding coming to an understanding of nothing will appear when we try to understand something insofar as that thing is something. This is not only due to the fact that understanding the notion of something will involve understanding the notion of nothing, with which we have problems; in addition, an attempt perfectly to understand any given thing (i.e. to understand that thing so well that no opposition can be raised to such an understanding), insofar as such an attempt has a goal, will only find satisfaction of that goal in nothing (for the reasons given in Chapter 7). So each thing is, in a sense, nothing, at least when it is perfectly understood. However, we cannot characterize nothing, which would mean that if something was indeed nothing when perfectly understood, we cannot characterize that something. Now of course it is true that saying that we

230

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

cannot characterize nothing is to characterize it, in which case we could claim that we can characterize nothing as something (a piece of stone or an immensely complex city or whatever). So something could be something after all, but then it will partake in all the accusations of question-begging that attend characterizing nothing as a particular something. Such thoughts may help to explain our inability to characterize something, to characterize any thing (this may be the reason why philosophical debates concerning definitions seem unlikely to reach a conclusion). Even the most outlandish characterization of something – black as white, for example – cannot be ruled out. (Perhaps such an argument might run as follows. We cannot understand any given thing unless we remove it from its context, as alterations in contexts always change our understanding of a given thing. But removing it from its context will render it incomprehensible or equal to any other thing. Non-contextual black is the same as non-contextual white.) Now I noted in Chapter 7 that an attempt to ask perfectly the question to which ‘nothing’ was being entertained as the answer would converge on being the answer itself. Such an equation would mean that just as the discussion of the answer is not really about ‘nothing’, so discussion of the question is not really about ‘the meaning of life’ (although this claim itself must be queried). What, then, is the topic of this book? All of our preceding argumentation indicates that anything we suggest will beg the question against other possibilities. So this book being about nothing and/or the meaning of life is no more important than the book being about universals, or the mind-body problem, or tort law, or origami. Outlandish as it may initially appear, this book could be replaced by any other book: On the Plurality of Worlds, Creative Evolution, A Tale of Two Cities, Peter Rabbit (note that this sentence is also part of this book). Reading a book on gardening is just as much a continuance of reading this book as continuing reading it. In taking saying nothing seriously, which could in itself involve saying something, we must acknowledge that to say nothing need not be to do philosophy – nor science, literature, sign-language, or anything else. Indeed, if ideas are just as inapt as other things, then this book is no more helpful than any other thing, let alone any other book. Not just books about gardens, but actual gardens, pieces of straw or paperclips. For the question and answer this book concerns itself with, now equated, are just as much another part of our life, and just as subject to, and resistant of, analysis, as a cat, or handwriting, or a piece of straw (or the concepts thereof). These are (arguably) partial things, and they are just as mysterious as the ultimate, which is (arguably) another partial thing.

Concluding Speculations

231

It might be said that considerations such as the foregoing insulate this book from criticism. For if I have said nothing then there can be nothing to criticize. But this is to claim that I have said something, namely nothing, or that my saying of nothing is somehow significant. My attempt to say nothing, to avoid saying anything, was born out of the awareness that anything I said would be susceptible to criticism that could not be answered, at least not without begging the question (where such an attitude too is to beg the question). It is tempting then to say that any criticism of this book will be ineffective, for the following reason: if a criticism is levelled at it, or if a contradiction is claimed to be found in it, this will involve taking the book to be saying something specific that this criticism aims at or contradiction is located in.3 Insofar as I have acceded to the idea that I cannot justify anything without begging the question, however, I will have acknowledged any given stance to be untenable. Moreover we are left with the question of why the critic should have interpreted this book to hold the position that he or she criticizes. It could equally be interpreted to constitute the position that the critic is arguing from – criticism of this book’s supposed ‘position’ and all! (Note that there are difficulties in saying that although this book cannot be refuted on its claims about nothingness, it can be refuted on other grounds. For as we have seen, the problems in discussing nothing can lead to problems discussing something, where such problems will have repercussion on these other grounds – as such it is wrong to see nothing as some kind of locus.) Such an approach can be queried; for to claim in this way that this book can accommodate any criticism or embrace any contradiction is to see it as taking up a certain stance; that is simply another interpretation in its turn. So it is quite possible to see this book as taking up a given stance which can be criticized, and moreover for those criticisms to be valid (just as valid as any criticisms of any other book). So I cannot avoid the possibility that there could be a decisive criticism of this book. Indeed, insofar as the book could be interpreted in such a way as to be contradictory where contradictions are seen as reasons to reject a view, or as susceptible to a decisive refutation, I must face up to the idea that this book has already been refuted. Moves like this can be seen as disreputable. Recall the discussion of Derrida in Chapter 6 where I claimed that his acceptance that the potency of the thematic of différance must be superseded was a poisoned pawn. For me to say that a criticism, indeed a decisive criticism, of this book is legitimate is no real concession for this is precisely a way of accommodating such criticism – as such a concession is also part of the book, not some meta-claim standing over it.

232

Nothingness and the Meaning of Life

The fact that I could not be wrong in this way is a problem, for it means that I am saying something – whereas saying nothing would involve the possibility of being genuinely wrong in a way that cannot be accommodated by this book (and my saying this simply repeats the problem). To have genuinely accepted that this book is subject to a decisive refutation would mean that I should look at it as not being rescued in its failure somehow, but rather as unfit for publication or consideration. But for me to say that this is part of an endeavour to have genuinely accepted decisive refutation as I do in the previous sentence is precisely to once more attempt to rescue it from failure. Much of the problem here is my attempt to be rigorously self-aware. For the third-person view I adopt throughout to achieve this goal is entirely misleading, as it begs the question just as much as any other view, and using it to progress through ideas is thus an equally misleading outworking. Not one step is advanced. This itself is another attempt at a view that is correct, as I am trying to be self-aware about my self-awareness! So my worry about privileging the third person just reproduces another third-person (sideways-on) view that begs the question in favour of itself in turn. I am going to have to dogmatically believe in something (this statement reproduces problems in its turn – why would a dogmatist need to justify dogmatism?). But, because holding open a conclusion, and choosing one on an act of faith (which may not be recognized as such, or even be as such) are equally valid or invalid, anything would do for a concluding remark. So perhaps it would be apt to finish by saying: ‘the preceding sentence is as misleading as anything can be’?

Notes Introduction 1 Brecht’s original line, ‘Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral’ comes at the end of Act II of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera); the translation here is from W. H. Auden, The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays, p. 87. The translation is somewhat inaccurate, but better fits my purpose here than a more literal one. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, maxim 12.

Chapter 1

1 2 3 4

5

6 7 8 9

Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson, p. 2. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 2. Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, trans. Krell, p. 108. It is open to debate whether we should take this question, as has been traditional, to indicate that Heidegger’s interest was ontology, or whether we should think, as some have recently, that his interest was actually in the ‘meaning of being’. But this should not dissuade us from using Heidegger’s remarks on Being to illuminate our understanding of what he might say on ‘the nothing’; it simply calls for a recognition that we may have to deal with different interpretations of those remarks. How much weight we may want to place on this perceived change of focus is a much discussed issue in Heidegger scholarship; although it does not directly concern me, I will attempt to address it to some degree in what follows. As indicated in Richard Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, in Polt and Fried (eds), A Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’, p. 68. See Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 63–4. Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 58. For the distinction between the ‘guiding’ and ‘basic’ questions, see Michael Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 48; Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, pp. 57–8; and, with idiosyncratic terminology, Thomas Sheehan, ‘Dasein’, in Dreyfus and Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger, pp. 193, 202. I follow Inwood’s labelling of the questions (Polt, using terms from Introduction to Metaphysics,

234

10 11 12

13

14

15 16 17

Notes amalgamates the two under the heading of the ‘prior’ question and distinguishes this from the ‘why-question’: ‘Why are there beings at all rather than nothing?’, which Inwood calls the ‘transitional question’). However, I follow Polt in translating das Sein des Seiendheit as ‘the Being of beings’ (and essentially equating Heidegger’s uses of just Seiendheit with this) but differ in translating Seyn as ‘Beyng’ (rather than Polt’s ‘Be-ing’). I will discuss the Heideggerian term Ereignis below. Sheehan (‘A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research’, p. 200) is sceptical about most of the terms that are used to indicate what he calls die Sache selbst (the thing itself), which refers to the fundamental happening that gives the Being of beings (Sheehan appears to refer to the Being of beings simply as ‘being’ or ‘being itself ’ – ‘Dasein’, p. 193). Again, I will discuss his animadversions later. It should be noted that the term ‘Beyng’ is restricted to subsequent marginal notes in these writings. Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 103. In Introduction to Metaphysics which recapitulates some material from ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ Heidegger again seems to open up the ‘basic’ question by means of the ‘transitional’ question – see Section 1.5 below. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 87: ‘Dasein as such is always something of this sort; along with its Being, a context of the ready-to-hand [see note 14] is always essentially discovered: Dasein insofar as it is, has always submitted itself already to a ‘world’ which it encounters, and this submission belongs essentially to its Being’. Whereas the proposed Cartesian ego can focus its attention on the objects that comprise the (allegedly) subject-independent world, objects which are ‘presentat-hand’, Heidegger sees this as a misleading picture. Any object focused upon will already be of practical interest to the subject who is always already engaged with the world, the two being mutually interdependent. Being for the subject is always already ‘Being-in-the-world’. Hence the use of the word ‘Dasein’, occasionally translated as ‘being-there’ or ‘being-open’, to get away from the misleading implications of world-independence in words like ‘soul’, ‘subject’ or ‘ego’. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 69: ‘. . . the less we just stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we . . . use it . . . the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is – as equipment.’ And later: ‘The kind of Being which equipment possesses – in which it manifests itself in its own right – we call “readiness-to-hand”’. That is to say, being ‘present-at-hand’ is a deficient mode of being ‘ready-to-hand’. See Being and Time, p. 103. Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, pp. 69–70. Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 96. Carnap would wish to know nothing about the nothing, as he would consider it a fantastic entity resulting from a misunderstanding of how language works – he would want to parse language about the nothing in terms of negation.

Notes 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39

40 41

235

Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 96. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 95–6. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., p. 97. Stephen Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference in Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics?’, p. 495. ‘Originary’ here means ‘within the proper conditions that make it intelligible in the first place’. Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 99. Ibid. Ibid., p. 101. I will discuss Heidegger’s relationship with logic more fully in Chapter 3. Werner Brock, in a reading of ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, complains that ‘Heidegger has not made the notion of “within the whole” [‘das Seiende im Ganzen’, that is, beings as a whole] fully clear’ despite it being ‘very important’. Brock, ‘An Account of “The Four Essays”’, in Heidegger, Existence and Being, p. 225. Michael Inwood, ‘Does the Nothing Noth?’, p. 285. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 93. Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, p. 51. See Heidegger’s ‘Preface to the Third Edition’ of ‘On the Essence of Ground’, trans. McNeill, in McNeill (ed.), Pathmarks, p. 97. At least, beings as a whole determined by a certain kind of Being. See Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Ground’, pp. 111–12, 114 (‘Accordingly, world means: beings as a whole’). Also see Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 246. Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 247. Support for this can be found in Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Fried and Polt, pp. 4–5. However, Heidegger notes that ‘the expanse of this whole is changeable’, ‘On the Essence of Ground’, p. 121. Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, pp. 246–7. Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction, p. 52. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Ground’, fn. 59. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Ground’, p. 121. Ibid. Inwood himself seems to come close to this when he says: ‘The world in the face of which Angst occurs [world (3) of Being and Time] is then not sharply distinct from beings as a whole’, ‘Does the Nothing Noth?’, p. 285. Heidegger, ‘On the Essence of Ground’, fn. 59. Compare Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, p. 47: ‘Heidegger uses [‘world’] exclusively in the third sense, although his ultimate goal is to grasp that to which the term applies in its fourth sense’ (emphasis added).

236

Notes

42 This interpretation seems to be supported by Käufer, ‘Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 484. 43 See Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 487: ‘[i]n deep boredom Dasein is indifferent towards entities, but the significance of entities is intact . . . [i]n anxiety . . . “the innerworldy discovered relevancewholeness . . . is . . . entirely without consequence”’. 44 Contra Polt (Heidegger: An Introduction, p. 124) and Inwood (‘Does the Nothing Noth?’, pp. 285–6). Oddly, Inwood does mark the correct distinction between profound boredom and Angst elsewhere (A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 17). Polt and Inwood may be misled into thinking that Angst in Being and Time discloses beings as a whole by the following: ‘Being-anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world’, Being and Time, p. 232. See note 46 for a possible explanation of this passage. It follows that it may be inaccurate to refer to Angst as a mood. 45 Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 100. 46 Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, p. 111. This ‘as such’ indicates the possibility of a rapprochement between the Being and Time view of Angst and that found in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ It indicates here the ‘worldhood of the world’ (sense (4) in Being and Time) – see Mulhall, p. 115, and thus indicates that Angst does not merely disclose world in sense (3)/beings as a whole. 47 Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 103. 48 Ibid. 49 Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 487. 50 ‘Nothing’ is the right term here, because the manifestation perceived in the slipping away of beings as a whole is not this or that being, but still affects us – hence ‘we must say that that in the face of which and for which we were anxious was “properly” – nothing’, Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101. Whether this nothing should be identified with ‘world’ (as in ‘the nothing of the world’) (Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 487) or with an aspect of Beyng (Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 70) is a significant interpretative question, although as I have indicated earlier, I see these two interpretations as addressing a similar issue from different entry points, and so as not necessarily mutually exclusive (although this disagreement may be linked to another, namely whether to interpret Heidegger’s philosophy as taking Being as its theme or something else; I return to this issue in Chapter 5). In what follows, I lean towards Polt’s interpretation. 51 Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 102. 52 Ibid., p. 103. 53 Ibid., p. 104. Also see p. 108: ‘[T]he nothing . . . awakens for the first time the proper formulation of the metaphysical question concerning the Being of beings.’

Notes

237

54 See Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 70, where he notes that the meaning of beings ‘is fragile and subject to reinterpretation – but this fragility is essential to meaning’. 55 Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 70. 56 Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 108. 57 I will use the word ‘turn’ to refer to the alteration in Heidegger’s thinking as a neutral word that can designate either a substantive change in Heidegger’s thought, or a shift in emphasis. This is perhaps not ideal as ‘turn’ is the traditional translation of ‘Kehre’ which some have argued indicates a different matter in Heidegger’s work (Sheehan, ‘A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research’, p. 196). 58 Charles Guignon, The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, p. 15. 59 This neat way of describing the shift of emphasis in Heidegger’s work I take from Michael E. Zimmerman’s ‘Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology’, in Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, p. 247. 60 This passivity is clearly indicated in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 106: ‘We are so finite that we cannot even bring ourselves originally before the nothing through our own decision and will’. 61 Gregory Fried and Richard Polt, ‘Translators’ Introduction’ to their edition of Introduction to Metaphysics, p. viii. 62 It may be at this point that moods still have some part to play in setting up a philosophical stance in which such fundamental questioning can take place. 63 Zimmerman, ‘Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology’, pp. 247–8. 64 In fact, when moods appear in Heidegger’s later works they tend to be moods that affect an entire epoch; the distinctively Greek mood being ‘astonishment’, the mood of modernity being ‘boredom’, and so on. 65 It should be noted that, although the distinction between poetry and ‘originary thinking’ in later Heidegger is downplayed by some (see Ronald Bruzina, ‘Heidegger on the Metaphor and Philosophy’, in Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy, pp. 198–9) the former is generally seen to mark the naming of the ‘holy’ whereas the latter allows the discussing of Being. In both such cases, language is used in a more basic and originary way (see Joseph J. Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, in Macann (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments, p. 316) as part of the ‘saying’ of Being. 66 Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 83. 67 Ibid., p. 89. 68 Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 77. 69 See Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 80: ‘This unique, contingent historical dispensation also brings with it a unique relation to Nothing – Being’s constant companion and ownmost other’. 70 Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, pp. 77–8.

238

Notes

71 By 1949 Heidegger is prepared, in an addition to ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, to talk of ‘the Nothing thus understood as Being itself ’, indicating an elision of the two. Heidegger, ‘Introduction to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, trans. Kaufman, in McNeill (ed.), Pathmarks, p. 290. 72 Heidegger, ‘ The Question Concerning Technology’, trans. Krell, p. 332. 73 David Farrell Krell, Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger, p. 215. 74 Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, p. 17. 75 So my distinction between a change of focus and a substantive change in philosophy is contentious. Vacillations like this are not unexpected in dealing with Heidegger and those who are either strongly influenced by him (Derrida) or of a like mind (some mystics and Eastern philosophers). This is often due to the difficulty in explaining (or to use an apt Heideggerian term, ‘saying’) the ideas of these philosophers without submitting to the temptation to translate them into logical propositions – the difficulty in attempting not to ‘eff ’ the ineffable. Alternatively, it can be seen as the result of trying to live with the irreducible inadequacy of our attempts to explain (or ‘say’) these ideas. We will have cause to examine a section from Krell that makes this attempt, and which shows a similar vacillation. 76 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 326. Note that Krell renders the important Heideggerian word Ereignis as ‘propriation’, whereas it is more typically translated as ‘appropriation’, or ‘en-owning’. I will use ‘appropriation’. 77 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 312. 78 For more on the distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘correctness’, see the beginning of ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, or Heidegger’s 1943 ‘On the Essence of Truth’. 79 See Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 172 for this definition, and Stephen Mulhall, ‘Can There be an Epistemology of Moods?’, p. 205, for a contextual use. 80 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 329. 81 Because Gestell, the Heideggerian term translated as ‘enframing’ here, is meant to be perspective-neutral, some have objected to the translation as having the potential to mislead us into thinking that ‘enframing’ is the work of a subject. I maintain this translation but mention this as a caveat. 82 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 115: ‘A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably’. This is a resonant quotation, given the attitudes of both Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein to the positivism we are to examine in the next chapter. What Heidegger would deem an enframing revealing of language seems very close to what Wittgenstein is here trying to make us aware of, and release us from. 83 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 333.

Notes

239

84 Both ‘poiesis’ and ‘enframing’ are mutually exclusive ways of revealing (‘aletheia’) for Heidegger, the former being a manner of revealing that brings that which is concealed in enframing forth into unconcealment. Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 332 seems to suggest their interrelation (see also pp. 317 and 326). 85 This should not be taken as saying that all the work is done by Beyng. As Heidegger says in Contributions to Philosophy: ‘[Beyng] requires man in order to happen essentially, and man belongs to [Beyng]’, quoted in Richard Polt, ‘Ereignis’, in Dreyfus and Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger, p. 382. This is the strength of the phrase ‘in conformity’ here. 86 Some commentators have suggested that Kant can successfully close the gap between the noumenal and phenomenal worlds, but unfortunately there is no time to discuss this here. 87 Krell, Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger, p. 396. 88 Heidegger, ‘Introduction to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, p. 290. 89 See Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 332. 90 ‘Insofar as a thinking . . . attempts to recall the truth of Being itself . . . thinking has in a sense left metaphysics’ – Heidegger, ‘Introduction to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, pp. 278–9. This is also called ‘essential thinking’ by Heidegger (e.g. ‘Postscript to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, trans. McNeill, in McNeill (ed.), Pathmarks, p. 236). 91 Julian Young, Heidegger’s Later Philosophy, p. 54. 92 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 338. There is also some support for this view on p. 330. 93 ‘The granting that sends one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power’, Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 337. The apprehension of granting as conveying to man that share in revealing that ‘the [ap]propriative event of revealing needs’ (p. 337) carries soteriological force in that man’s realization of the appropriative event prevents the occlusion of the manifold ways of revealing by any single one way. Granting thereby preserves the mystery, the truth, of Being. 94 Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, p. 337. 95 Compare this isolation by Heidegger of the soteriological capacity of Beyng with Wittgenstein’s strikingly similar comments on the nature of his own (later) project: ‘It is all one to me whether the typical western scientist understands or appreciates my work, since he will not in any case understand the spirit in which I write. Our civilisation is characterised by the word “progress”. Progress is its form rather than making progress one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves. I am not interested in constructing

240

96 97 98 99

100

1 01 102 103

1 04 105 106 107 108

Notes a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. So I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs’ – Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 7. Quoted in Polt, ‘Ereignis’, p. 381. Polt, ‘Ereignis’, p. 383. This is unsurprising given that I interpreted the earlier lecture using terminology drawn from Heidegger’s later writings. There is some dispute over whether Heidegger intends Ereignis to be a singular event, a future event, or simply a rare event. I lean towards the latter in this interpretation. There do not seem to be any dealings with the nothing of comparable weight to those in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ or Being and Time in his later work, except for his occasional returns to the former with a 1943 postscript and a 1949 introduction. Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, pp. 71 and 73, respectively. See the discussion in Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, fn. 67. Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, trans. Krell, p. 261. See also the above quotation from Heidegger asserting ‘the Nothing thus understood as Being itself ’. It is interesting to note that in his 1943 ‘Postscript to “What Is Metaphysics?”’ Heidegger suggests that nothing ‘is the veil of being’, indicating some distinction, but glosses this in an appended later footnote as claiming that nothing ‘is as the veil of [B]eing’ (emphasis added), the interpolated ‘as’ significantly altering the meaning. Vincent Vycinas, Earth and Gods, p. 106. Quoted in Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 71. Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 72. Quoted in Polt, ‘The Question of Nothing’, p. 73. See Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 496.

Chapter 2 1 For example in Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 6. 2 Carnap, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language’, trans. Pap, in Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism, p. 64. 3 Carnap, ‘Elimination’, p. 67. 4 Ibid., p. 68. See Abraham Stone, ‘Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics’, in Mulhall (ed.), Martin Heidegger, International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought, p. 233, for the view that Carnap is not

Notes

5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14 15

16 17 18

241

trying to reveal a deeper structure of our ordinary language, but instead is looking to translate our ordinary language into a purer, logically correct, one. Often Carnap discerns further reasons to class Heidegger’s statements as pseudostatements; ‘Elimination’, p. 71, provides some examples. These are both examples given by Carnap, ‘Elimination’, p. 69, found in Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 101. Carnap, ‘Elimination’, p. 70. Critchley, Continental Philosophy, pp. 103–4. In On the Way to Language, Heidegger notes that ‘metalinguistics is the metaphysics of the thoroughgoing mechanisation of all languages exclusively into the operative instrument of interplanetary information . . . [m]etalinguistics and missile technology are the same’ (quoted in Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 209). Cf. Heidegger, ‘Postscript to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, p. 235: ‘The suspicion regarding “logic,” whose consequential development degenerates into logistics, springs from a knowledge belonging to that thinking which finds its source in the experience of the truth of [B]eing, but not in contemplating the objectivity of beings’. More obvious with the benefit of hindsight – that is, reading Heidegger’s work on technology back into ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ It is not anachronistic though, as many of the necessary ideas for this rebuttal appear implicitly in Heidegger’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, which is based on a 1928 lecture course (cf. Edward Witherspoon, ‘Much Ado About The Nothing: Carnap and Heidegger on Logic and Metaphysics’, in Prado (ed.), A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy.) Carnap, ‘Elimination’, pp. 71–2. Quoted in Critchley, Continental Philosophy, p. 104. Quoted in Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways, p. 22. It is interesting that Heidegger, who is often criticized for the paucity of material on ethics in his work, should have this kind of fundamental ethical objection. It may provide support for the view that Heidegger’s whole methodology has an ethical dimension, and possibly explains the lack of detailed ethics within his work. As to use logic in the sense Carnap understands it would concede the whole debate. This was referred to in Section 1.7. See Stone, ‘Heidegger and Carnap’, p. 235 for a similar point. Although I agree with Stone on this point, I am suspicious of his reading of Heidegger in relation to Carnap. He sees Heidegger’s method with the nothing as an ‘analysis of language’ (p. 236) which looks at how we ordinarily use the word ‘nothing’, and hence rules out the possibility that Heidegger might be using ‘nothing’ here in a sense that is out of the ordinary, as this would be untrue to ‘Heidegger’s linguistic method’ (p. 239). But I do not think this is Heidegger’s method; I follow Simon

242

Notes

Glendinning (‘Much Ado About Nothing’) in seeing Heidegger’s use of nothing as ‘strategic’; he clearly denies that the sense in which he wants to use ‘nothing’ is the ordinary sense of a nihil negativum (see Käufer ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 496). Early Heidegger used a lot of neologisms and slightly altered familiar words that did not have their ordinary sense (Dasein, Being, Ereignis). With regard to Heidegger’s intense focus on some basic words, his search for their ‘true’ meaning is not necessarily their most commonplace meaning: ‘this “true” meaning is never claimed to be the primitive or historically first meaning of those words’ (Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 308). Kockelmans even talks of Heidegger’s ‘mistrust of ordinary language’ (p. 302). The difference between Kockelmans and Stone can be readily appreciated by comparing their views on Heidegger’s attempts at ‘etymology’; cf. Stone, fn. 29, and Kockelmans, p. 308. Heidegger does not say that our ordinary talk leads inevitably to understanding the nothing in his distinctive way (in fact our ordinary talk, our ‘idle talk’ is likely to occlude it – see Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, p. 107), rather that it can lead us to the brink of a new kind of understanding, in which we encounter the nothing. Such a use of language is not assertoric as Stone’s Carnap suggests (p. 240), and does not pose the nothing as an object. Thus, there is no way that Carnap can purify Heidegger’s statements, as Heidegger can simply reply that his statements do not need purifying; they make perfect sense as it is – although, of course, Carnap will be unable to understand this. 19 Derrida, ‘Différance’, Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, p. 27. 20 In his essay ‘Différance’, which is my focus here, Derrida tends not to make a distinction between the Being of beings and Beyng, usually simply using the ambiguous term ‘Being’. This has led some, such as Charles Spinosa, to claim that Derrida’s criticism of Heidegger misunderstands him, insofar as Derrida’s criticism seems directed towards Heidegger’s claims about the Being of beings, rather than Beyng (see Spinosa, ‘Derrida and Heidegger’, in Dreyfus and Hall (eds), Heidegger: A Critical Reader, pp. 276–7). I would disagree with this and claim that Derrida is sensitive to the distinction between the Being of beings and Beyng, and thus to Heidegger’s later work, as indicated in the above quotation concerning the ‘proper word and unique name’, which appears to deal with later Heideggerian concerns of how speech and Beyng are related. It should be noted that Spinosa locates a second strand of criticism in Derrida that is applicable to Heidegger’s later work, and so I do not disagree with Spinosa on whether Derrida can be used to interestingly critique later Heidegger, but rather on how aware Derrida was of what in Heidegger he was critiquing. I continue throughout to uphold my earlier distinction between ‘Beyng’ ‘the Being of beings’ and ‘Being’, and the reader should note that my deployment of these terms is coloured by the above interpretation of Derrida’s view of Heidegger in ‘Différance’.

Notes

243

21 Of course, it can be argued that, in vacillating on the decision, we have already engaged. This will be a theme I will develop further later. 22 ‘. . . the need to think a difference “older” than the ontological difference is prescribed by Heidegger himself ’ – Rodolphe Gasché, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida, p. 101. See also Spinosa’s distinguishing of the ‘metaphysical’ ontological difference from the ‘real’ ontological difference between Being as revealing (Beyng) and revealed (the Being of beings) – ‘Derrida and Heidegger’, p. 276. 23 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 22. 24 Ibid., p. 11. 25 Alan Bass, ‘Translator’s note to “Différance”’, in Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, p. 8. 26 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 8. 27 Ibid., p. 11. 28 Ibid., p. 13. 29 Ibid., p. 14. 30 See Spinosa, ‘Derrida and Heidegger’, p. 280. 31 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 10. 32 Ibid., p. 14. 33 Ibid., p. 15. 34 Ibid., p. 11. 35 Ibid., p. 15. 36 Ibid., p. 16. 37 Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, p. 24. See also, ‘Différance’, p. 7. 38 Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, trans. Bass, Writing and Difference, pp. 280–1. 39 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 19. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., p. 21. 42 Darren Sheppard, ‘The Reading Affair’, in Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida, p. 129. 43 Derrida, Positions, trans. Bass, p. 41. 44 Cf. Wittgenstein’s preface to the Tractatus. 45 ‘One cannot think . . . différance . . . on the basis of the present’ – Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 21. 46 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 19. 47 Ibid., p. 21. 48 Ibid., p. 22. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

244

Notes

51 Ibid. 52 Gasché, Inventions of Difference, p. 103. Given what is being said here, we might pre-empt the next section by claiming that différance is equally indifferent to what Spinosa above called the ‘real’ ontological difference. 53 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 23. 54 Ibid., p. 25. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., p. 26. 58 Ibid., p. 27. 59 Ibid. The fact that Derrida is critiquing aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy of language that appear much later than his talk of the ontological difference (and its withdrawal from his work) suggests to me that, contra Spinosa, Derrida’s critique is directed specifically towards Heidegger’s later work as well as his earlier work. 60 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 27. 61 Ibid., p. 26. 62 Ibid., p. 7. 63 Spinosa, ‘Derrida and Heidegger’, p. 280. 64 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 5. 65 Simon Glendinning, ‘Preface’, in Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida, p. 4. 66 Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’ (interview), in Kearney (ed.), Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage, p. 124. 67 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 6. Contrast this with Heidegger’s attempts to direct us to Beyng insofar as it is made known in its withdrawal. 68 ‘. . . différance is (and I also cross out the “is”)’ – Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 6.

Chapter 3 1 See Barry Miller, ‘Existence’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2009/entires/existence/ (accessed 1 April 2012). 2 But not always – see Graham Priest, Towards Non-Being: The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality (2005). 3 Unless we wish to say that a non-existent object is something over and above the sum of its properties. However, the word ‘something’ is the clue here that, even if we accept that having one or more properties is not a necessary condition for being a non-existent object, whatever is left once we subtract all properties will not be a suitable candidate to be identified with nothing.

Notes

245

4 Of course, the advocate of ‘is’ or ‘exists’ as first level would be quite within their rights to claim that the intuition that nothing has no properties is equally illicit insofar as it implicitly characterizes nothing in its turn. 5 Instead of ‘analysis’, Heidegger uses ‘science’ in the broad German sense of Wissenschaft, which will include things like the science of logic (i.e. logic as the formulation of a logical system) and humanities like history, as well as the more familiar sciences. To use ‘science’ here may carry misleading connotations, so, given that Heidegger’s use of ‘science’ in ‘What Is Metaphysics’ tends to involve mainly the science of logic, I hereafter substitute ‘analysis’ to hopefully translate the central focus, yet also some of the generality, of the term. Incidentally, Heidegger’s use of ‘science’ in this context may contribute to Stone’s misreading of him, insofar as Stone takes him to be referring only to the ‘special sciences’ – ‘Heidegger and Carnap’, p. 223. 6 Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, p. 95. I have edited together the acceptable statement (1). 7 This is an important point. Stone bases his interpretation of Heidegger as using a methodology of linguistic analysis on Heidegger’s claim that ‘nothing’ is ‘that about which we every day carelessly speak’. But this does not mean that ‘nothing’ as Heidegger wants us to take it is being used as it is in the everyday sentence ‘There is nothing outside’. For the example statements that Heidegger uses (‘What should be examined are beings only, and besides that – nothing’) are not ordinary uses of language. They are metaphysical (part of our ‘everyday metaphysics’), in providing the set-up for science – this is why the scientist is able to occlude them in enframing language. But it is possible to concede this use of ‘nothing’ (see Glendinning, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, p. 283); hence why I have claimed that Heidegger’s criticism is ethical, not intellectual. 8 It might be wise to add a reminder here that Heidegger does not think that the substitution of his affective methodology for analysis replaces ‘thought’ with ‘feeling’, rather that this affective methodology gives rise to an ‘originary thinking’ that is deeper than the ‘mere calculation’ of analysis. 9 Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 4.121 and 4.1212. 10 By ‘generalized negation’ I just mean that we use ‘nothing’ here rather than ‘no xs’, where x stands for something specific like ‘threats’ or ‘cats’. 11 Or, in the case of a metalanguage, in terms not relevantly different from those of the methodology to be elucidated. 12 There is some disagreement between commentators as to whether Heidegger intended his statements to be contradictory or not – Witherspoon claims he did (‘Much Ado About The Nothing’, p. 17), Käufer claims he did not (‘The Nothing and The Ontological Difference’, pp. 497–8). This disagreement seems to depend on the aforementioned point as to whether one understands Heidegger’s ‘nothing’

246

13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Notes to be used in the ordinary sense, as Stone and Witherspoon believe, or as a specialized term betokening the ontological difference, as Käufer and Morris Lazerowitz (‘Negative Terms’, pp. 58–9) think. I lean towards the latter, hence my use of the term ‘superficially’ here. See Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, pp. 490–1. Stone, ‘Heidegger and Carnap’, p. 240. Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 492. Nothing is the precondition of ordinary assertions insofar as it makes an encounter with beings as beings possible, by revealing the Being of beings. It is in this sense that Heidegger asserts in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ that the nothing is prior to negation; without an experience of the nothing we cannot encounter beings as beings, including their ontic relations such as negation. See Inwood, A Heidegger Dictionary, p. 17. ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ appears to blend two differing methodological strands in Heidegger: moods and originary questioning. It is ambiguous which, if either, is meant to be prior. Witherspoon, ‘Much Ado About The Nothing’, p. 11. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 104, quoted in Witherspoon. Stephen Käufer, ‘Logic’, in Dreyfus and Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger, p. 148. Käufer, ‘Logic’, p. 149. Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 498: ‘Attunement and know-how indeed lie “below thinking,” but “attempts to describe” them do not.’ Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, p. 498. In Points of View A. W. Moore suggests that incoherence (of which contradiction can be an example) can result in part from the attempt to put ineffable knowledge into words, but that such nonsensical phrases can still play a role if they are in some way apt. This is unlikely to help in the current context: Moore rejects the view that our ineffable knowledge can pertain to truths, seeing it instead as applying to certain forms of understanding. Even if we can view the ‘intuitive understanding’ that I am speaking of here as one of the forms of understanding that could support ineffable knowledge, rather than an understanding of some truth (and I have doubts about this), there is a problem in this case in producing nonsense which is in any way apt to what we are shown. For the vacillations concerning our intuitive understanding of ‘nothing’ (which will only be exacerbated as they continue to be outworked later), and the disagreement among those who attempt to give voice to, and critically assess the voicing of, that understanding lead me to think that considerations of aptness do not apply here. It seems to me that the whole problem of nothing is that we do not know how to cope with it, that any word or no word could be apt to speak of it (this is true even of this sentence). Nothing in this note calls Moore’s general approach

Notes

24 25 26 27

28

29 30

247

into question, especially if his project and mine are indeed tangential, although it is perhaps worth recording that the reservations concerning application here that I have voiced parallel the areas of Moore’s account where I feel there is some tension. That is, I have some qualms as to whether understanding can itself be regarded as a form of knowledge in virtue of the fact that it is a way of processing knowledge (p. 185), or whether its plausibility as a form of knowledge is because it is really in fact representational. I also worry about how we can establish the quasi-Kantian aesthetic model Moore outlines as a way of explaining convergence on aptness, and whether, despite his assurances, it is not problematically circular (when serving a suasive function), even if unavoidably so (p. 207). Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, pp. 123–6. Richard Cartwright, ‘Speaking of Everything’, p. 7. Chiefly from Cartwright, ‘Speaking of Everything’ – a good defence of it can be found in Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, pp. 280–2. There is some debate about whether drawing on indefinitely extensible concepts to criticize quantification over everything implicitly or explicitly relies on some form of the domain principle. I will not discuss this here, but see the articles by Kit Fine, Charles Parsons, and Stewart Shapiro and Crispin Wright in Agustín Rayo and Gabriel Uzquiano (eds), Absolute Generality. Peter Smith, in his review of Absolute Generality, suggests that a variant of Russell’s paradox due to Timothy Williamson’s 2003 article ‘Everything’ can motivate an alternative argument that does not rely on the domain principle (see also Michael Glanzberg ‘Context and Unrestricted Quantification’, in Absolute Generality, p. 47). Remember, though, the alternative arguments against quantification over everything which seek to complicate the notion of ‘something’ or an individual thing. Interestingly, one of these arguments comes courtesy of Carnap himself (see his ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’). If we take ontological questions to be relative to a conceptual scheme, then it is meaningless to talk of an objectively all-encompassing domain. To tie this back to our discussion in Chapter 2, we noted that Carnap’s objection to Heidegger could not be cognitive, but had to be somehow value-laden. It is an external question, just like the selection of a conceptual scheme. So if we accept Carnap’s framework in ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ (which is a very different issue), we can see why Carnap could not engage Heidegger in debate; the dispute is not an internal question. For an example of this approach, see Shapiro and Wright’s judicious article ‘All Things Indefinitely Extensible’ in Absolute Generality, especially pp. 293–4. See Fine, ‘Relatively Unrestricted Quantification’, in Absolute Generality, pp. 28–9. I differ from Fine, who thinks that the important distinction is between expansionist and restrictivist approaches to objecting to quantification over everything, insofar as I think the important distinction is between objecting to

248

Notes

such quantification, and the piecemeal account (although the way Fine develops the piecemeal account is perhaps less felicitous than the way Shapiro and Wright develop it, as there is a danger of assimilating it to a form of objection). To my mind, Fine’s claim that there is a ‘well-defined issue’ that is just difficult to articulate, puts his position into the objection camp (and aligns with a more earlyWittgensteinian methodology), and I do not see how the metaphor of expansion is any more helpful than the idea of restriction (just as we can ask ‘restriction from what?’, so we can ask ‘expansion into what?’). The problems arise as soon as we claim that there is a problem at issue, because then we make quantification over everything an object of thought. 31 Charles Parsons, in ‘The Problem of Absolute Universality’, p. 205, in Absolute Generality notes that ‘[n]atural language gives us conflicting signals’ as to whether quantification over absolutely everything is something we actually do. The use of ‘thing’ when talking about everything might indicate a restriction to a certain construal of things. On the other hand, when talking about absolutely everything, this connotation is usually cancelled. I think Parsons shows perhaps too much equanimity here insofar as he regards this cancellation as uncontroversial (drawing on a distinction between restricted ‘every thing’ and unrestricted ‘everything’). For a non-circular definition of ‘everything’ in an unrestricted sense will have to invoke the notion of a thing, even though it may be ‘thing’ in the most general possible sense (that is to say, the cancellation of a restriction is posterior to the isolation of a certain type of thing which is to be quantified over, at least definitionally, just as the term ‘everything’ is clearly parasitic on ‘every thing’). Of course, one problem here is specifying what the characteristics are of a thing in the most general sense, and once again we run here into problems of necessary interdefinition, but from the vantage point of ‘thing’, ‘something’ or ‘anything’ – and so we see that the issues affecting quantification over everything that problematize what it is to be a thing cannot be avoided, only sidelined. Pertinent here will be discussions as to whether a term like ‘thing’ denotes a genuine kind of object or whether it is, to use David Wiggins’ term, a ‘dummy sortal’ (Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity, p. 29, cf. also E. J. Lowe, More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms, p. 14); this will go as much for mass terms like ‘stuff ’ or ‘reality’ as for count terms (cf. Francis Jeffrey Pelletier, ‘Non-Singular Reference: Some Preliminaries’, in Francis Jeffrey Pelletier (ed.), Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems, pp. 11–12.) I discuss this more in the next section. 32 This might seem naïve. After all, nothing is not a thing; ‘thing’ just means ‘not nothing’! But as this defines ‘nothing’ in terms of ‘thing’ or ‘something’ we cannot assert this until we understand what nothing is (see the previous note and the next section), and this is precisely what our invocation of ‘everything’ was

Notes

33

34 35

36

37

38

249

supposed to do. If we already knew what nothing was or was not, we could avoid this whole complex detour. Given that I have postponed discussion of the Wittgensteinian way of cutting our Gordian knot until a later chapter, I will not pursue those issues in this context either. If I might be forgiven another suggestive but undeveloped remark, the notion of whether to include nothing in everything might remind us of the Hegelian distinction between the genuine infinite, which contains the finite, and the spuriously infinite. Obviously to carry this idea further would require a discussion of this distinction, but there is insufficient space for this. Here I draw on E. J. Lowe, ‘Objects and criteria of identity’, in Hale and Wright (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, section 3. Consider the following conversation: A: ‘There is nothing that is not susceptible to reference.’ B: ‘Ah, so this thing nothing is not susceptible to reference. So not all things are susceptible to reference!’ A: ‘But you have just referred to it.’ B: ‘You are right, that makes it a thing. I must not have been talking about nothing after all.’ A: ‘So there is nothing that is not susceptible to reference.’ B: ‘Ah, so this thing nothing is not susceptible to reference.’ And so on. This is problematic in itself. If susceptibility to analysis only picks out a subset of things (as there is no contradiction in the idea of things that cannot be analysed), this will hamper its utility in a definition – the definition will not give necessary conditions for being a thing. Another way of getting at our problem is by considering the phrase used above when claiming that some property is instantiated by everything, ‘nothing is left out’, paraphraseable as ‘It is not the case that there is a thing such that that thing is left out (from the extension of property x)’. For how can we know this? We would have to check each thing in turn and see whether this property applies to it. But how do we know when we have finished this process? It is not enough to say that one has finished when one starts going over old ground, as this will not tell us whether all the new ground has run out or whether we are going over old ground prematurely. We would have to somehow map out all the territory and ‘see’ that there was nothing else to go over. But this will introduce a new ‘thing’ outside that territory, namely, nothing (and clearly it will not help to say that we see ‘that there is not a thing such that there is a thing to go over’, for what does ‘there’ refer to here?). Our best option will be to say we have run out of ground when we have considered every consistent thing; I will consider this option later. Stephen Yablo, ‘Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?’. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that other tests for modal knowledge than conceivability are available. Given that I do not take the current argument to be necessary for rejecting ‘necessary property’ criteria for thinghood, I do not propose to examine them here for reasons for space; my apologies to proponents of such tests.

250

Notes

39 Controversial insofar as we must consider the possibility of things of which we cannot conceive (cf. e.g. Simon Evnine, ‘Modal Epistemology: Our Knowledge of Necessity and Possibility’, p. 669); I discuss such things a little in Section 8.7. Perhaps we can assuage our uneasiness with this move by appealing to the distinction between inconceivability qua failing to conceive and inconceivability qua seeing a contradiction (or similar). Here I am relying on the latter notion of inconceivability. 40 Some might object to this. Yablo does indeed assert that ‘[o]n the usual theory, propositions have truth values not in limited situations, but in the complete situations I have identified with possible worlds’ (David J. Chalmers’ account of conceivability as a basis for modal knowledge, although differing from Yablo’s, does seem to agree on this point: Chalmers, ‘Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?’, in Gendler and Hawthorne (eds), Conceivability and Possibility, p. 151), but appends a note, unfortunately not elaborated on, that sense can be made of truth-in-a-limited-situation (Yablo, ‘Is Conceivablity a Guide to Possibility?’, p. 29). Let us not quibble and just suppose this to be true. Yablo’s revised criterion for modal knowledge of the impossibility of non-self-identical things will then be that I cannot imagine a (mere) situation which I do not take to falsify the proposition that there is a thing such that that thing is not self-identical. However in restricting ourselves to mere situations in this way, we appear to call into question how we can judge whether we have successfully conceived those situations which are said to falsify the existence of non-self-identical things. For it may be for all we know that for any of these aforementioned situations, there is some necessarily true proposition which is such that it falsifies the proposition that expresses that situation. If it is impossible to conceive the impossible, this would mean that, on Yablo’s account of conception, we have failed genuinely to imagine a situation that verifies the proposition expressing that situation, and thus we have failed genuinely to imagine a situation that falsifies the proposition that there is a non-self-identical thing. In order to rule out any such troublesome necessary propositions we will need to conceive of at least one complete possible world (to see that such a proposition is not true there), and so we have not completely avoided the use of possible worlds. (There may be an additional problem. By ‘cannot imagine a situation’, I have to assume that my incapability of imagining such a situation is evidence of incapability of imagining all such situations, for if this is not the case, if I do not take my incapability to imagine such a situation as indicative of a wider incapability, then I will not think of my incapability as leading to modal knowledge. But then ‘all such situations’ will either mean ‘all such situations in a world’, or ‘all such situations in logical space’, where logical space is typically explained as the set of all possible worlds. Either way, reference to worlds once again reappears.) Note that none of the foregoing

Notes

41

42

43 44 45

46 47 48

49

251

shows that we cannot make sense of truth-in-a-limited situation; only that we cannot make sense of it without at some point making reference to complete situations, that is to say worlds. Alternatively, it could be said that we do not see that ‘There is a non-self-identical thing’ is a contradiction by trying to conceive it and failing, or positively seeing that it cannot obtain. Rather we just cannot make sense of the statement; it is just gibberish to us. Take then the paraphrase ‘It is not possibly the case that there is a thing such that that thing is non-self-identical’. Let us talk about the case just mentioned. Typically we would say that this case is everything insofar as it excludes nothing. On the view we are currently considering, however, we cannot say this, we cannot say that everything, construed as the totality of all self-identical things, excludes nothing – such a claim just amounts to gibberish insofar as its paraphrase ‘It is not possibly the case that there is a thing such that that thing is non-self-identical’ uses a phrase (‘there is a thing such that that thing is non-self-identical’) that is gibberish. If that is so, we must be more patient with the proponent of the view that self-identity does not apply to all things as we cannot exclude their view a priori by saying that everything is self-identical. Our adherence to the self-identity criterion must be provisional (by showing the nonsensicality of each putative counterexample adduced) and so must our rejection of nothing as a term with reference (cf. Section 7.2). It may be objected that the statement ‘Nothing exists’ or similar always involves a performative self-contradiction, but this objection will rely on some form of conception of what nothing is and excludes, and this is currently the point at issue. A. N. Prior, cited in Roger Teichmann, Abstract Entities, p. 10. Timothy Williamson, ‘Everything’, p. 420 (elucidations of ‘thing’), p. 416 (cautionary note). ‘Comprehension’ is perhaps a more accurate word here than ‘intension’ (where we then understand a group of intensions as comprising a comprehension), but ‘intension’ seems to have replaced it in mainstream use. E. J. Lowe, ‘Metaphysical nihilism and the subtraction argument’, p. 62. A good discussion of this issue is Geraldine Coggins, ‘World and Object: Metaphysical Nihilism and Three Accounts of Worlds’. David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, p. 73. It may be that things are not so bleak for metaphysical nihilism under modal realism: cf. David Efird and Tom Stoneham, ‘Genuine Modal Realism and the Empty World’, and the references in their fn. 5. See Christopher Menzel, ‘Actualism’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2012/entries/actualism/ (accessed 1 April 2012). Just as some have felt that certain theories of possible worlds are either more or less hospitable to

252

50 51

52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65

Notes metaphysical nihilism, so some have felt that certain such theories are either more or less hospitable to the use of possible world semantics. Modal fictionalism and actualism have both been criticized as not being able to ground possible world semantics. I want to take a neutral stance on this debate to allow the analyst every possible opportunity to make his or her case. Peter Van Inwagen, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 96. Lowe suggests a more literal reading of ‘nothing at all’ as the absence of both concrete and abstract objects in his own article titled ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 115. E. J. Lowe, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 112. John Leslie, ‘Efforts to Explain all Existence’, p. 182. Van Inwagen, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 95. Richard M. Gale, Negation and Non-Being, p. 116. See Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, ‘Lowe’s argument against nihilism’, p. 339. It is interesting to note here that Rodriguez-Pereyra’s point bears similarities to A. N. Prior’s use of the notion of ‘necessary statability’ in his modal system Q to block the interdefinability of the modal operators □ and ◊ and thus deal with singular propositions being possibly true on a strict actualist account – cf. A. N. Prior, Time and Modality (1957). A different and more fully developed account in this vein is R. M. Adams’ version of strict actualism, which marks an important distinction between truth-at-a-world and truth-in-a-world (R. M. Adams, ‘Theories of Actuality’, ‘Actualism and Thisness’). Lowe, ‘Metaphysical nihilism and the subtraction argument’, p. 72. Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra records some scepticism of this perhaps vague notion of ‘obtaining’ in his ‘Metaphysical nihilism defended: reply to Lowe and Paseau’. David Efird and Tom Stoneham, ‘Is Metaphysical Nihilism Interesting?’, p. 211. Or that, etc. In many ways, this issue is simply another manifestation of the problems we find in attempting to understand the notion of nothing. It seems to mirror, using abstract objects, Bergson’s argument about subtraction of concrete objects to get to nothing (see Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Mitchell, pp. 305–7). William F. Vallicella, ‘Thinking About Nothing’, Maverick Philosopher, http:// maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/08/thinkingabout-nothing.html (accessed 11 April 2012). Van Inwagen, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 109. For the nothingness occurs within a context. Van Inwagen, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, p. 102. Van Inwagen sees Reality as ‘a useful fiction’ for independent reasons. Even if we accept this, there may be room for manoeuvre, as some philosophers countenance impossible worlds. For a good introductory article, see Francesco

Notes

66

67 68 69 70

71

253

Berto, ‘Impossible Worlds’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/ entires/impossible-worlds/ (accessed 1 April 2012). I will be covering issues of impossibility more fully in the next chapter. In detail, the argument runs as follows: We might think that logic governs all meaningful discourse because when we try to think of something not governed by the laws of logic, such as a square circle, it is impossible, nonsensical. But the difference is that the square circle is something, or rather, two cases of something ‘conflicting’ (a ‘substantial’ view of nonsense). (We cannot yet say that there is a contradiction in supposing nothing to be an object of thought, yet not governed by logic, which governs all objects of thought, because the second premise here is precisely what is contested.) But if we try to think of nothing beyond the laws of logic (to claim it as contradictory), all we get is something (illicit characterization of nothing) or a combination of two somethings, which is not nothing, but is governed by logic (this continual stretching out of logic seems to indicate that judgements of nonsense are provisional and on-going, what I will later call the ‘austere’ view). To get a contradiction out of nothing, one would have to have two ‘somethings’ as place-fillers, but this will illicitly characterize nothing. The best we can say of ‘nothing’ being nonsensical is that we have failed to specify a meaning for it. It should be noted that the argument in this note illicitly characterizes ‘nothing’ as something that is not something, so reflexive criticisms apply. Hence, the ‘substantial’ modal attempt to understand nothing, like all others, is successful if it begs the question. This intuition of nothing then grounds the intelligibility of the ‘not belonging to’ relation, and thus negation. Stanley Rosen, ‘Nothing and Dialectic’, p. 244, in his Metaphysics in Ordinary Language. Rosen, ‘Nothing and Dialectic’, p. 245, in his Metaphysics in Ordinary Language. Either that or it is question-begging. But then Rosen’s demonstrations to the analyst that analytic talk requires a context of analysis can simply be dismissed, either wholesale or as temporary setbacks or puzzles. Rosen, ‘Nothing and Dialectic’, p. 245, in his Metaphysics in Ordinary Language.

Chapter 4 1 J. C. Beall, ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, in Priest, Beall and Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction, p. 8. 2 Beall, ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, p. 8.

254

Notes

3 This is the proof-theoretic version of the argument. I omit the model-theoretic version. 4 Graham Priest, In Contradiction, p. 207. 5 Beall, ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, p. 6. 6 For example, Graham Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, in Priest, Beall and Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction, pp. 25–6, or Beall, ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, pp. 11–14. 7 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 26. 8 David Lewis, ‘Letters to Beall and Priest’, in Priest, Beall and Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction, p. 176. 9 Although Lewis takes a pessimistic view of the effectiveness of this: ‘. . . principles not in dispute are so very much less certain than non-contradiction itself that it matters little whether or not a successful defence of non-contradiction could be based on them’ – ‘Letters to Beall and Priest’, p. 176. 10 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 30. 11 Ibid. 12 Rosen, The Limits of Analysis, pp. 130–1. 13 And a further point about how we are to construe contradictory and nonsensical statements (it seems that both Rosen and Priest are using a ‘substantial’ notion of nonsense; see the discussion of Wittgenstein in Chapter 7). 14 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 30. Priest appears to be invoking the principle derived from Spinoza, which I hereafter render in accordance with the latter as ‘omnis determinatio est negatio’. 15 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 30. Note that if we restrict ‘Everything is true’ to ‘Every proposition is true’, to make such a restriction work we must rule out propositions like ‘Non-semantic entities can have truth values’. But this will then be a genuine restriction, and our original proposition will not entail everything (unless we beg the question by claiming that pairs of contradictory propositions can be true together). 16 It is this (less satisfactory) indication that I think Rosen is referring to in the quotation above when he speaks of the thinkability of a contradiction in a tenuous sense. With the natural intelligibility of each of the two sub-statements found in a contradiction vetoed by the fact that their contradictories are not excluded, it is still possible (indeed, both Rosen and Priest suggest, necessary) to have some knowledge of each of these sub-statements, which will come from these other, less relevant or less direct, contradictories that I have mentioned. A further, more controversial, suggestion may be that in addition, apprehension of the contradictory relation itself may be attained through the negation (in the attempt to think a contradictory relation) of the imaginability that is possible with noncontradictory hypothetical cases. 17 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 31.

Notes

255

18 Beall, ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, pp. 9–10, isolates another important class of example that may motivate dialetheism – what he calls the ‘paradox of (naive) extension’, a version of Russell’s paradox. Priest appears to include this (and indeed Russell’s paradox itself) in one of his two classes, by claiming that Russell’s paradox and the semantic paradoxes have the same basic structure (the ‘Inclosure Schema’ – see Graham Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 134). 19 Priest, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, p. 31. A more detailed example precedes this (p. 28). 20 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 3. 21 Ibid., p. 4. 22 Priest, In Contradiction, p. 208. 23 Ibid., p. 302. 24 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 295. 25 Ibid., p. 265. 26 Ibid., p. 267. 27 It would be possible to trace both ‘semantic dialetheist’ and ‘metaphysical dialetheist’ programmes individually, but unfortunately there is insufficient space here. 28 Although ultimately that solution foundered as well. 29 The operation most discussed by Priest is what he calls ‘diagonalization’, Beyond the Limits of Thought, pp. 117–19, but in this case I leave the nature of the operation open. 30 Possibly a dialetheist might be wary of my use of ‘understand’ in this context, as though somehow the paradox(es) associated with nothing have been ‘solved’ (i.e. by rendering them somehow consistent). Perhaps a phrase like, ‘encompass within an (inconsistent) framework’ might be better. 31 This sort of argument could be advanced in a Heideggerian vein, insofar as ‘nothing’ is not a being, and its elusiveness could be further emphasized by taking this in a Derridian direction or in the direction of the more sophisticated reading of later Heidegger which I will undertake in Chapter 5. For now, I present the argument in neutral terms. 32 Priest, Doubt Truth to be a Liar, p. 78. 33 ‘[T]here appears to be a relationship of a certain kind between pairs such as “Socrates is mortal” and “Socrates is not mortal” . . . we may say that the relationship is that of contradiction.’ – Graham Priest, Doubt Truth to be a Liar, p. 77. 34 It may be objected that ‘nothing is something’ does not express a genuine identity statement as ‘something’ is a dummy sortal; this is not a serious problem as, in order to be distinguished from nothing, something will have to have some property or other attributed to it, and this will suffice as the property we are left with.

256

Notes

35 Priest abbreviates δ(Ω) ∉Ω and δ(Ω) ∈Ω to simply δ(Ω) ∉Ω!. See Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 129. 36 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 124.

Chapter 5 1 By which locution I do not mean implicitly to deny analytic validity to Heidegger’s own project. Indeed, Section 3.5 indicates a deep common commitment to logical analysis that ‘analytic’ frameworks like Carnap and Priest’s share with Heidegger’s work. The (somewhat crude) distinction I intend to draw is between the more purely logical methodology of the former compared with the affective methodology of the latter. 2 Priest’s notion of ‘diagonalization’ referred to in Chapter 4 is one manifestation of reflexive iteration. 3 One interesting point to be made here is that early Heidegger seems to think it is possible to give some sense of nothing by denying ontic characteristics of it. In The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Heim, Heidegger notes that the nothing (or world) ‘must not be a nihil negativum, i.e., not the simple pure empty negation of something’ (p. 210). But this is doubly problematic in filling out an ontological notion by negative ontic predication and accordingly utilizing for this end the specific notion of nihil negativum which Heidegger concedes is impossible to talk about in ‘What Is Metaphysics?’. If that concession is accurate, Heidegger cannot know that nothing is not a nihil negativum! 4 Stephen Mulhall, ‘Human Mortality: Heidegger on How to Portray the Impossible Possibility of Dasein’, in Dreyfus and Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger, p. 305. 5 Mulhall, ‘Human Mortality’, p. 308. 6 Ibid. 7 Although Mulhall’s isolating this strand as early as Being and Time suggests that the seeds of this change were right there from the beginning. 8 Mulhall, ‘Human Mortality’, p. 309. 9 Ibid., p. 305. 10 Here we see something that Derrida is keen to point out, that the ontological difference is a difference, a difference that is significantly to be downplayed/ eschewed in Heidegger’s later material. 11 Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time, p. 133. 12 Although this tends to be readings of later Heidegger. What is particularly interesting about Mulhall’s account is that he takes these ‘Derridian’ themes back further, through even the perceived turn in Heidegger’s thought.

Notes

257

13 A related reason may be Heidegger’s increasing desire to understand his analytic not from the point of view of an individual Dasein with its moods and speech, but from the point of view of Beyng revealing and concealing itself in history (as I indicated in Section 1.5). 14 Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay, p. 37. 15 This would be the crude mistake postulated by a less charitable reading of early Heidegger. 16 Although this may be equally unfair to Derrida, as I am using a single essay – ‘Différance’ – as the centrepiece for my interpretation of him. In ‘Linguistics and Grammatology’, for example, Derrida characteristically complicates his relationship with Heidegger. 17 Derrida, Positions, quoted in David Wood, Thinking after Heidegger, p. 94. 18 Wood, Thinking after Heidegger, p. 103. 19 Rosen, Nihilism, p. 39. 20 Wood, Thinking after Heidegger, p. 102. 21 See Cristina LaFont, Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure, trans. Harman, pp. 106–7. 22 Otto Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, trans. Magurshak and Barber, p. 225. 23 Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 311. 24 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 225. 25 Heidegger, ‘Postscript to “What Is Metaphysics?”’, p. 237. Shortly after this comment, Heidegger goes on to subordinate poetry to originary thinking. 26 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 225. 27 Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 314. 28 Ibid., p. 316. 29 See Käufer, ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference’, fn. 23. Here Käufer notes that he does not make a distinction between ‘Beyng’ and the ‘Being of beings’ in his interpretation of early Heidegger, which may lead him to overemphasize the discontinuity in Heidegger’s considerations of language compared with mine here. I would still claim some degree of methodological alteration in Heidegger though (although this may not be the best way to phrase this). 30 Possibly it could be responded that Heidegger’s understanding of the nothing should not be taken as suggesting a nihil negativum, and so this criticism falls wide of the mark. But the very point of introducing the terminology of ‘nothing’ to link with Beyng is an effort on Heidegger’s part to let Beyng take on nothing’s ‘hue of ungraspability’ as argued in Chapter 1, and the problem that this criticism isolates seems to arise when such a strategy is used. 31 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 227. 32 Ibid.

258

Notes

33 Rosen, Nihilism, p. 40. 34 ‘Experience, in the relevant sense, is not, moreover . . . an act or occurrence at all – more, as Heidegger puts it, a kind of “dwelling”’ – Cooper, The Measure of Things, p. 295. 35 Rosen, Nihilism, p. 41. 36 And thus his indication, in the exegesis of Section 1.7, that poiesis is still somehow a more ‘appropriate’ way of revealing than enframing. 37 Although possibly he overstates the scepticism on occasion to further distinguish himself from Heidegger. 38 This is the ‘more sophisticated’ reading of later Heidegger that I indicated could be a problem for dialetheism in Chapter 4, note 31. Note that the criticisms advanced in relation to that reading here do not vitiate the argument there, as further moves can be made (as discussed in the rest of this section). 39 We might be reminded here of Derrida’s disregard for the primacy of the ontological difference. 40 To pre-empt a criticism I will be making below, to go on to claim that the appropriateness of these words is only provisional condemns the problem to be repeated at this presumably hazarded, but still metalinguistic, level – that is to say, at the level that this claim to provisionality is made (unless we make the ‘Derridian’ move; again, see below). 41 Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, trans. Lilly, p. 89. By now, ‘metaphysics’ is a pejorative term for Heidegger. 42 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 230. 43 Ibid., p. 228. 44 Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 311. 45 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 232. Pöggeler even suggests that here refutation ‘makes no sense’. 46 Ibid., p. 239. 47 Ibid., p. 237. See also Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 313. 48 In keeping with the phenomenological theme of thinking as elucidation of experience, we could argue that later Heidegger’s ‘history of Being’ is argument by display, just as early Heidegger’s powerful analytic of Dasein is argument by display. We are free to interpret experience differently, but maybe at considerable cost (this links in to the ethical nature of Heidegger’s disagreement with Carnap in Section 2.4). 49 Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 308. 50 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 238. 51 This blindness towards the fact that one is oneself advancing in accordance with a certain methodology (see Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 238 for a disavowal of methodology for later Heidegger) is an important theme that will be more fully developed in the next chapter.

Notes

259

52 Pöggeler, Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 240. 53 Ibid., p. 241. 54 Although I will deal with this presumption of infinite regress in my discussion of Derrida. 55 Sheehan, ‘A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research’, p. 190. 56 Ibid., p. 200. 57 Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on metaphor and metaphysics’, p. 304. 58 See Section 1.7 for my justification of this claim. 59 Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard, ed. Dru, p. 134. 60 It is in this spirit that it may be claimed that my assertion that ‘the problem of a contradiction attaching to any putative analytic account of “nothing” is not one that I think is susceptible to solution’ in Section 3.9 is to be taken. In a somewhat Derridian move however, I should note that the provisionality of the prefatory remarks in this section thus far may be indicative of a recognition of the possibility that an alternative methodology motivates this recognition of methodological presuppositions in the first place. 61 We shall return to discussing the nature of this inadequacy in the material on Derrida to come. 62 The relevance of how the analyst should react to the counterexamples – whether he or she should treat them as mere gibberish, or as ‘interestingly incoherent’ (to borrow a phrase from A. W. Moore), or as something else again is a significant one. It would take us too far from our current speculations to discuss these issues, so we shall have to deal with them later. 63 A methodology, construed broadly as a way of carrying on, cannot justify itself by its own lights. That is to say, it cannot justify itself through a process of argumentation that proceeds according to its own method. This would be circular. However, justification in accordance with a different methodology requires both a justification for that methodology in turn and, more pertinently here, necessitates commitment to any additional or different presuppositions that the second ‘metamethodology’ contains. The only way of circumventing this problem is to produce a methodology that needs no justification, that is, one that the proponent of which cannot understand why he or she would need to justify it. 64 There is of course a vast literature on to what extent we can or do use language to ‘refer’ to experience(s), and in what situations we are referring to experience(s) rather than objects, and so on. Given the self-avowedly speculative nature of this section, I would like to remain agnostic on these issues; my thrust is that it does not matter which theory or account we ultimately favour for them – the reflexive iteration will occur nevertheless. 65 In speaking of Heidegger’s affective methodology, Pöggeler claims: ‘To effect experiences; this is the “method” in a more primordial sense of the word’ (Martin

260

66

67

68

69 70

71

72 73 74

75

Notes Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 239). My talk of ‘experience’ here should be taken quite broadly to include affective notions such as ‘comportments’; see Cooper, The Measure of Things, pp. 294–5, for the relationship between ‘comportment’ and ‘experience’ in a Heideggerian context (where it fits well with the Heideggerian notion of ‘dwelling’). ‘Whatever one “thinks in a concept” must be abstract, omitting answers to at least some questions of detail, and so a reality corresponding to any such thought will always have some features with regard to which the thought was, as it were, silent. Kant implies that we might “completely determine” a thing, but that is impossible. Anyway, if we could do so, i.e. could think of a totality of a thing’s determining predicates, perhaps that would involve us automatically in thinking of it as existing’ – Jonathan Bennett, Kant’s Dialectic, p. 230. See also Moore, Points of View, pp. 210–11. Hence the heavy emphasis on metaphor or poetic language in many affective methodologies. This is arguably the most effective recreational or attuning language we have. There is an analogy here with the process of logical analysis, whereby the extraneous elements of a stirring military speech might, for whatever purpose, be pared away to reveal the core argument, but the analyst might be prepared to say that such an argument does not capture the speech as a speech. I have presented the matter as if synchronic and diachronic differences are separable, but this is arguably not so. There is of course much here that finds parallels in Kant, not that it should be taken as making any particular claims for, or criticisms of, any species of transcendental idealism. The notion of ‘subsuming’ experience under a ‘concept’ here may well provoke disagreement. In the attempt to block the possibility of reflexive iteration, ‘concepts’ here need not mean only sortals that apply to objects, but may also mean any more general concepts available, such as Kantian categories. To use a term already familiar from earlier interpretations of Heidegger, it must ‘attune’ us to the ‘experience’ (construed broadly). Either temporally, or spatially, or both. The relation of temporality and spatiality is not a matter I wish to pursue at this point. This is the problem that afflicts the appeal by early Heidegger to pre-logical experience; such an experience can be pre-logical, but in its appearance in an account it has to be distinguished from other things, and in thought has to be understood as such, or the account will be vacuous. It is no use claiming that the problems only affect the expression, because the expression of that claim will itself be rendered problematic. The reason why this scenario proposed in this section seems to provide a plausible solution is because it takes the two conjuncts which are contradictory when

Notes

261

present in the same subject – ‘ignorance of the possibility of reflexive iteration’ and ‘contextualized experience’, and relativizes them to two separate subjects – the subject postulated and the subject postulating, respectively. However, this relativization renders the scenario useless, as it is precisely the point that the two conjuncts need to be present in the same subject at the same time. In fact this is an example of the unsuccessful method of dealing with contradictions that Priest calls ‘parameterization’ – briefly outlined at the end of Section 4.6. The result here is analogous to claiming that one can see a patch as red and green at the same time because one can look at a patch and see it as red, while simultaneously imagining a different subject looking at the same patch and seeing it as green. 76 This is not to say that analytic methodologies are engaged in a process of obfuscation through the use of technical jargon and needless complexity, although this can be a danger. Rather, the accounts are complicated using certain techniques that comprise genuine attempts to circumvent the possibility of reflexive iteration. Success will arguably have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. See note 60 of this chapter above.

Chapter 6 1 Derrida, ‘Circumfession’, in Bennington and Derrida, Jacques Derrida, p. 154. 2 And so confirming that Derrida is not especially interested in logical contradiction – the seeming paradox of Derrida’s statement is explained by what we have called parameterization, which is a method of avoiding direct logical contradiction. 3 Derrida, ‘Circumfession’, p. 155. 4 John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, ‘Introduction: Apology for the Impossible: Religion and Postmodernism’, in Caputo and Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, p. 13. 5 Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, p. 119. 6 Ibid. 7 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 158. 8 Of course, we have suggested that a self-contained absence and a self-contained presence would amount to the same thing, hence the Beyng/nothing locution that I have employed in discussions of Heidegger. It is interesting to observe that Derrida’s claim has been given two possible translations by Spivak, correlating with a denial either of self-contained absence or presence; hence the denial of Beyng/nothing mirrors its structure. 9 See Section 2.10. 10 Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, p. 124. 11 See Section 2.7.

262

Notes

12 Caputo and Scanlon, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 13 Simon Glendinning, ‘Preface’, in Glendinning and Eaglestone (eds), Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy, p. xxiv. 14 ‘As a reader [of Derrida] you have to endure ongoing struggles of not knowing your way about, of not knowing “what it really means”, and of re-learning what wanting to know that might mean’, Glendinning, ‘Preface’, p. xii. 15 John D. Caputo, ‘Apostles of the Impossible’, in Caputo and Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, p. 219. 16 Section 5.7. 17 ‘On the Gift’ (roundtable), in Caputo and Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, p. 78. 18 Marion, Being Given, trans. Kosky, p. ix. 19 Marion, God Without Being, trans. Carlson, p. xxv. 20 Marion does discuss the issue of ‘nothing’ explicitly in his article ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, in Lilly (ed.), The Ancients and the Moderns, and in Chapter 6 of Reduction and Givenness, but I will suspend discussion of this for the moment for clarity’s sake. 21 Marion, God Without Being, p. 42. 22 A phrase that echoes Marion’s own ‘to give pure giving to be thought’. Béatrice Han, who believes Marion to have misread Heidegger, notes that as a result of this alleged misreading Marion is ‘led to unwittingly repeat some of the crucial Heideggerian moves’ (‘Transcendence and the Hermeneutic Circle’, in Faulconer (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion, p. 123). 23 See Han, ‘Transcendence and the Hermeneutic Circle’, pp. 128–35. 24 Thomas A. Carlson, ‘Postmetaphysical Theology’, in Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, p. 64. 25 Marion, God Without Being, p. 45. Thomas A. Carlson notes that the substitution of the word ‘phenomenon’ for ‘God’ in this quotation gives a rough rendering of Marion’s aim in his later phenomenology (Carlson, Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God, p. 196). We could also replace ‘God’ or ‘phenomenon’ with ‘nothing’ as a way of seeing how Marion is directly relevant to the earlier discussion. 26 Marion, God Without Being, p. 45. 27 Ibid. Here is a point at which we might feel that Marion’s misreading of Heidegger has led him to reinvent the wheel, as Heidegger’s later attempts to avoid anthropocentricism led him to distinguish ‘thought’ as metaphysics from more primordial ‘thinking’, which appears to be Marion’s aim here. 28 Marion, God Without Being, p. 49. 29 Of course this raises the immediate question ‘Who is doing this responding, if not a subject?’ (cf. Robyn Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-Logical Introduction, p. 130). More on this later.

Notes

263

30 Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 101. 31 ‘[T]he impossibility of thinking what is ultimately excessive is the way in which distance is given to thought’, Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 57. Again, we may note at this point that ‘God’ could be replaced by ‘nothing’ here to relate this more directly to previous discussion and strengthen the Derridian parallels. (Note that my use of the gendered pronoun to refer to God follows Marion’s usage, but it is, of course, inaccurate.) 32 I say ‘quasi-Derridian’ here to reinforce the importance of remembering that any deconstructive move one makes will, within the Derridian framework, remain a provisional move, ripe for further deconstruction. 33 That is not to say that Marion does not wish to equate God with nothing. But although he has explicitly done so, this is in a specific sense of ‘nothing’: ‘By the way “nothing” pertains to God not as one result of the fact that every name may be applied to Him, but as what is most proper to His original and overwhelming goodness’, Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, p. 189. 34 Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 102. 35 Graham Ward, ‘The Theological Project of Jean-Luc Marion’, p. 229, cited in Horner, Jean-Luc Marion. We can see here that Marion’s thought bears resemblances to the idea of ‘emplacing’ thinking in Heidegger. 36 Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, p. 188. 37 Entities only ‘appear as nothing’ (original emphasis) – Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, p. 192. 38 Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, part VI, esp. p. 192 (nothingness’ excess) and p. 191 (theological indifference). 39 Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, p. 192. At least this is what I believe Marion is saying. He is aware of the ‘paradox’ that ‘nothingness here pertains both to God and to the extreme opposite of God’ (‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, pp. 190–1). The way I understand him to solve the problem is to acknowledge that God is nothing, whose love strikes the beings and non-beings of the world with indifference to the categories of the world, and in taking them beyond those categories God makes them, in a way, God, or appear as God (which seems appropriate given the references to mystical theologians that drive Marion’s account). And because God is also nothing, so this nothingness spreads to beings and non-beings – God binds these to Himself in love. We too can understand this when we truly respond to God’s loving call, but this is all too rare as regards humanity. 40 There are other, connected, problems. Marion claims that nothing must make no reference to Being or beings – not even a negative one. But that very sentence is a description of nothing that makes reference to Being and beings. 41 Marion, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, p. 192.

264 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58

59

60 61 62 63

Notes Ibid. Ibid. That is to say, a horizon that is indifferent to Being and beings. Marlène Zarader, ‘Phenomenality and Transcendence’, in Faulconer (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion, p. 110. I leave the question open here, as earlier, regarding the interdependency or otherwise between subject and object. Marion, Being Given, p. 212. The extent to which we should consider the recipient as passive is moot. See Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 118. Although ‘God’ is a particularly pre-eminent type of saturated phenomenon for Marion. Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, p. 118. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 145. Ibid., p. 146. Graham Ward, ‘Deconstructive Theology’, in Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, p. 86. Ward, ‘Deconstructive Theology’, p. 86. Ibid., p. 84. Incidentally, this sentence makes the same mistake and, like this note, needs to be deconstructed in its turn. This is why Derrida is suspicious of regarding deconstruction as something done by an autonomous subject to a text; rather deconstruction is always already at work within a text (neither straightforwardly active nor passive). ‘The position of dual allegiance, in which I personally find myself, is one of perpetual uneasiness. I try where I can to act politically while recognising that such an action remains incommensurate with my intellectual project of deconstruction’ – Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, p. 120. Here Derrida recognizes the practical tension between adopting a position and leaving it open. That Marion appears to return to his earlier strategy in one of his most recent books, Le phénomène érotique: Six Méditations, is explored by Horner in Chapter 11 of her Jean-Luc Marion, although I wish to draw a different conclusion from this. Zarader, ‘Phenomenality and Transcendence’, p. 113. Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 115. Of course, Marion anticipates this objection when he posits the delay in response between l’adonné and the call. Horner, Jean-Luc Marion, pp. 130–1 are helpful, if perhaps not ultimately convincing, in response to this problem. Nevertheless, here we are trying to avoid making this phenomenological move.

Notes

265

64 Derrida, ‘Différance’, p. 7. 65 I differ from Caputo, ‘Apostles of the Impossible’, p. 219, in thinking that Derrida does allow for this, in a sense. 66 Indeed, as I have indicated, the strategy deployed in the book thus far could be read as a deconstructive endeavour. 67 Or even better (but still not quite right): I wish it to be as though deconstruction had never occurred. 68 Although Derrida might say that this claim is itself a misunderstanding, as he does not have a clear-cut thesis to (mis)understand. But this merely indicates the reflexive nature of this ‘position’ in its misunderstanding of Derrida that refuses to accept his own reflexive deconstruction. 69 We briefly covered this idea in Section 5.8 when noting that it would be most effective for Carnap (or the proponent of any methodology) to fail to see that there is the possibility of any alternative methodology at all (although, of course, this would not be considered a ‘failure’ to the adherent of that methodology – our phrasing it in this way is biased, assuming against the methodology in question). 70 It is important to note that in developing this point I have just made recourse to omnis determinatio est negatio, and thus would seem to be contradicting myself. But this is an ineffective criticism precisely because this is not an argument. It is a phenomenologically self-present experience. This use of the word ‘genuine’ indicates that I am illicitly prescinding from the reflexive ‘position’ I am trying to elucidate. 71 Interestingly, we should note here that both these claims for these respective methodologies have to be complicated by their respective manners of reflexivity (as does this note). 72 I include this to cover cases such as anticipation or protension, as well as less obvious or purely imaginary scenarios. 73 Of course, ‘memory’ is the wrong term here, for any definition of memory is going to make use of the notion of past events, which are precisely what are being disputed here. 74 We might be reminded here of § 398 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: ‘Someone asks [of a picture] “Whose house is that?” – The answer, by the way, might be “It belongs to the farmer who is sitting in the bench in front of it”. But then he cannot for example enter his house’. However, in drawing attention to these features, I am travelling in a somewhat different direction from Wittgenstein. 75 Hence they cannot be said to ‘show’ anything. One counter-intuitive point here is that the qualitative character of mental operations and thought (such as it is) seems very different from the qualitative character of more widely accepted aspects of experience, such as the redness of a flower or sweetness of an orange. But the counter-intuitive nature of this seems to rest on two notions that are

266

76

77

78

79

80

Notes already rejected in outlining this ‘position’. One set of qualitative aspects cannot be considered ‘unusual’ based on past experience, as there is only one present experience. And one cannot compare one aspect of the self-present experience with another, because this interpretation just begs the question against this ‘position’, which suggests that we cannot ‘compare’ things at all – apparent difference is an illusion (just as, significantly, apparent self-present identity is an illusion for Derrida). Equally, words do not have the meaning or use that we attribute to them. Any apprehension of a specific word in the self-present experience will have no genuine relation to whatever other aspects of experience to which it might apparently pertain. ‘One can vary as one pleases the characteristics attributed to the subject . . . yet its function (which is to allow the appearing of phenomena) remains unchanged’, Zarader, ‘Phenomenality and Transcendence’, p. 115. Zarader does claim that experiences require subjects only within ‘the framework of phenomenology’ (‘Phenomenality and Transcendence’, p. 114), which indicates either an unnecessarily restrictive interpretation of phenomenology, or that this ‘position’, like Derrida’s, is not phenomenological through and through. And, incidentally, the idea that there is a difference between how we consider things to be and how things actually are (given that both such considerations have no application). This bears interesting parallels to some points about Wittgenstein’s private language argument made by Stewart Candlish and George Wrisley (‘Private Language’, section 3.1, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/ entries/private-language/ accessed 4 April 2012). They claim that Wittgenstein’s desire to explore the private language user’s scenario from the inside ‘requires him to use certain words when it is just the right to use these words which is in question’. That is to say, when trying to elaborate this scenario to discern its intelligibility, one must rely on certain words, which, if that scenario turns out to be unintelligible, will prove to have been illegitimate. In thus laying out the private language argument, Candlish and Wrisley acknowledge that their reading ‘should constantly be disfigured with scare quotes’, just as my discussion has been. Now, the ‘position’ I am outlining here is more extreme than the modest hypothesis of a private language, but the problems are similar. The difference appears insofar as the private language proponent believes that his or her position could be elaborated without problem (and the scare quoted words will turn out to have perfectly adequate use). But this is not my belief, as I cannot accept that words like ‘elaboration’, ‘discern’ or ‘position’ in the above have any function at all without conceding everything to my opponent, hence my desire to utterly divide the ‘position’ that I am espousing from attempts to outline it (and to discern

Notes

81

82

83 84

85 86 87 88 89

90

267

its intelligibility) – where this note, and indeed this sentence itself, is part of an attempt to outline it. This is wholly appropriate if Derrida’s différance represents the infrastructure of thought, and this ‘position’ is an attempt to reject it. We might be reminded here of Marion’s desire to think God outside the ontological difference, and his acknowledgement that ‘to think outside the ontological difference eventually condemns man to be no longer able to think at all’. It is interesting that this acknowledgement is made in Marion’s early theological work, which I earlier took as being nearer a plausible response to Derrida than his later phenomenological wrong turn. Of course, the idea of a proponent of an interpretation of self-presence itself makes no sense within this methodology, as this idea is just an aspect of the selfpresent experience. There is no standpoint ‘outside’ the experience. It is important to note this or otherwise we might be led to think, via a merely apparent set of reflexive iterations, that we always lack self-consciousness concerning the ‘true state of affairs’. Any such ‘true state’ will lack any application to reality (as will this endnoted caveat – because, of course, elucidation does no work!) as it is merely a part of the self-present experience. And, furthermore, to all the argumentation of this section. For a brief sketch of some of the issues here, see the discussion between Mulhall and Derrida (with input from Simon Glendinning) published as ‘Wittgenstein and Deconstruction’ and ‘Response to Mulhall’ in Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida. Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism, p. 135. Fergus Kerr, Immortal Longings, p. 123. I have referred to this possibility in Section 5.8. Stephen Mulhall, Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary, p. 111. Heidegger’s talk of the ‘seed of a saving power’ that prevents final occlusion of different ways of revealing can be taken (in accordance with some of the interpretations given of later Heidegger in Chapter 5) to support this view. See also Pöggeler on Heidegger: ‘In its place . . . every thinking understands itself best . . . and yet from another place, something unthought can appear in what has been thought of in it’ – Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, p. 231. This should not be taken to rule out other interpretations construing the Heidegger/Carnap disagreement as a failure of knowledge (which failure I will now go on to discuss). Thus, the acrimonious dispute between Derrida and Searle, partially documented in Derrida’s Limited Inc. can be viewed as a failure of acknowledgement on Searle’s part (who has subsequently accused Derrida of morally questionable academic misconduct) and a failure of knowledge on Derrida’s (who cannot even understand the points that Searle is making – or, as Derrida would want to put it, who recognizes that Searle’s points are self-defeating).

268

Notes

91 Although it will not be seen as such from its own introspective point of view. 92 That is to say that Derrida, on the one hand, would arguably not wish to allow for the possibility of a final dismissal of another’s claim as ‘nonsense’, as he wishes to continually keep open the future (on one reading). On the other hand, Cavell’s assumption that there exists an other to acknowledge at all more straightforwardly contradicts the self-present ‘position’ presented earlier. 93 Stephen Mulhall, ‘Wittgenstein and Deconstruction’, p. 113. 94 See Stephen Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity. 95 Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic, p. 31. 96 Cf. Ibid., p. 277: ‘Being . . . is not even the pure being that it is’. 97 Ibid., p. 271. 98 G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, p. 49. 99 Cf. Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic, p. 89. The context here is regarding the decision to think being without any determination. But this is just the same thing as the decision to think entirely self-critically (cf. p. 71). 100 Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic, p. 90. 101 Ibid., p. 160. 102 Ibid. – the latter quotation is from Hegel’s Phenomenology. 103 I therefore both agree and disagree with Houlgate’s claim (The Opening of Hegel’s Logic, p. 160) that potential readers of Hegel’s text need not be disposed to agree with him. They do need to be so disposed insofar as they must not disagree with the need for radical self-criticism. But they need not be so disposed if that means having certainties such as that of ordinary consciousness which could be undermined by such self-criticism, when the dogmatism of such certainties is made clear to them. 104 Cf. Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic, p. 82. 105 Ibid., p. 83. 106 William Maker, ‘Beginning’, in di Giovanni (ed.), Essays on Hegel’s Logic. 107 Of course, the word ‘experience’ is liable to be problematic when referring to indeterminacy, but this will be just as true for ‘experiences’ of the alternatives I have presented as it will be for ‘experiences’ of being.

Chapter 7 1 As we have seen, this even applies to methodologies that make room for incoherence, such as dialetheism (although it is not an argument against the dialetheic strategy generally, only when dealing with this specific notion). 2 David Pearce speaks of ‘the neurological syndrome that occurs when a subject’s primary and associative visual cortex are bilaterally lost through brain damage.

Notes

269

In such cases, the victim isn’t even aware of an inky void which the rest of us misconstrue as analogous to “nothing”’ (Why Does Anything Exist?, Section 6, http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm, accessed 10 April 2012). Presumably, Pearce is referring to Anton-Babinski syndrome, the sufferers of which he glosses elsewhere as ‘not only . . . blind; they are unaware of their sensory deficit’, further still ‘they lose all notion of the meaning of sight’ (The Hedonistic Imperative, Chapter 4, http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon4.htm, accessed 10 April 2012). This does not seem to square with the cases of confabulation found in sufferers of the syndrome. For example, a patient who is told a doctor has entered the room will claim to be able to see the doctor’s white coat (by inference that a doctor should wear such clothing). Given that this syndrome is characterized in part by the confabulations of the sufferers, it would seem that it cannot do the work Pearce wants it to do here. Furthermore, even if it could, the question would remain as to how a subject can know that they are not aware of such an ‘inky void’, without comparing the awareness they now have with an imagined or remembered ‘inky void’. And this would involve sufficient understanding of the awareness they now have. To elaborate, the contention is that blindness is not a visual perception of an ‘inky void’, but rather is no visual perception at all. But what would that look like? It might be protested here that this is a confused question – there is nothing that this looks like. But this protest draws on the resource of nothing, which it opposes to the visual perception of an ‘inky void’, or, for that matter, any other type of visual perception (indeed, when we say ‘No, it is not an inky void’ we implicitly suggest it is something else). But it is the concept of nothing that we are trying to get clear on; to use this concept in an attempt to elucidate it is circular. 3 But how to subtract? Or annihilate? For, if we adhere to omnis determinatio est negatio, every subtraction or annihilation is an addition (at least of empty space). For this sort of argument, see again Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Mitchell, pp. 305–7. 4 Cf. Heidegger, ‘Inquiry, as a kind of seeking, must be guided beforehand by what is sought’, Being and Time, p. 25. From this the question naturally arises: if nothing can be something, like an immensely complex city, and because of this possibility I am placing ways of approaching nothing (such as subtraction) under suspicion, how can I have used ‘nothing’ as a key to the issues discussed in this book so far? (In addition, in previous chapters I have drawn on pre-theoretical intuitions about nothing, but from what is said here it seems that I have no right to do so.) This is a good question, but I think it only has bite if I had claimed to have gotten somewhere using this key. However, I have gotten nowhere, and the observation this question invokes helps to explain why. As we will go on to see (Section 7.3), difficulties with the answer to certain questions lead to difficulties with the question, and the intuitions that go along with those questions.

270

Notes

5 Wittgenstein, ‘Dictation for Schlick’, in Baker (ed.), The Voices of Wittgenstein, p. 71. 6 Ibid., p. 73. 7 For example, Wittgenstein arguably erroneously takes Heidegger to be opposing being and nothing. 8 In particular, the dispute between ‘resolute’ versus ‘traditional’ readings of the Tractatus, and ‘austere’ versus ‘substantial’ conceptions of nonsense. 9 Hans-Johann Glock, ‘All kinds of nonsense’, in Ammereller and Fisher (eds), Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations, p. 222. 10 Cora Diamond, ‘Ethics, imagination and the method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in Crary and Read (eds), The New Wittgenstein, p. 165. 11 Glock, ‘All kinds of nonsense’, p. 222. 12 Bede Rundle, Why there is Something rather than Nothing, p. 112. 13 It is odd to see Rundle, who seems to be pursuing a Wittgensteinian line in his book, making a claim like ‘There has to be something’ in the context of his attack on nothing, given Wittgenstein’s own suspicion of the notion ‘thing’ (Tractatus 4.1272). 14 In setting this originally contra-Derridian methodology against the ‘austere’ conception of nothing, it is interesting to note that P. M. S. Hacker terms proponents of the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense ‘post-modernist’ and ‘deconstructive’ (see Hacker, ‘Was he Trying to Whistle it?’, pp. 102 and 108, respectively, in his Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies) – although one suspects that for Hacker this is a term of censure. 15 A. W. Moore, ‘Ineffability and Nonsense’, p. 186. 16 Whether that other is external or internal to oneself. 17 Moore, ‘Ineffability and Nonsense’, p. 186. 18 Metz, ‘Recent Work on the Meaning of Life’, p. 810. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 801. 21 Ibid., p. 802. 22 Ibid., p. 781. 23 Thaddeus Metz, ‘The Meaning of Life’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/ archives/fall2008/entries/life-meaning/ (accessed 10 April 2012). 24 See Thaddeus Metz, ‘The Concept of a Meaningful Life’ for a survey of attempts to fill out the content of this question. 25 Metz, ‘The Concept of a Meaningful Life’, p. 138. 26 Ibid., p. 150. 27 David E. Cooper, ‘Life and Meaning’, p. 126. 28 Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, pp. 596–7.

Notes

271

29 Ibid., p. 595. 30 Thomas Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, in Klemke (ed.), The Meaning of Life, The View from Nowhere, esp. chapter XI, section 2, What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy, chapter 10. 31 Thomas Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 155. 32 Ibid., p. 156. 33 Ibid., p. 152. Apart from the reply I outline below, something else might strike us as odd about this argument, for it is surely no mark against someone who says that there are no completely justifying reasons to claim that their arguments for this lead to completely justifying reasons being impossible – as this entails their position. 34 Another argument from Nagel is that typical facts that provoke a sense of meaninglessness, such as our comparative temporal or spatial smallness – the ‘speck in the universe’ problem – should not worry us. Immortality or spatial omnipresence would not make our lives meaningful if they are currently meaningless. But just because, say, immortality, is not a sufficient condition for meaning, does not mean it is not a necessary one – so again we have a case here where pursuit of some way of making partial meaning satisfy us leads us to the question of ultimate meaning. Nagel’s most well-known argument, but actually the weakest, may be the following: if we want to say that nothing we do now will matter in a million years, then by that token, nothing that will be the case in a million years matters now – most relevantly, it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter! But this seems to use the word ‘matter’ ambiguously, making the argument invalid. In one sense we have ‘matters’ understood temporally as ‘leads to anything’, in another we have ‘matters’ understood logically as ‘has consequences for’. The two are distinct – a fact in the future that we now know of can have consequences for events in the present, but it cannot lead to anything in the past. Equally, if I say that my life has led to nothing, but someone says that my past has had consequences for the present, I will not feel that they have contradicted me. 35 Cf. Jeffrey Gordon, ‘Nagel or Camus on the Absurd?’, p. 20. 36 It is interesting to note that a number of commentators have claimed that the forms of doubt are analogous, and so, if one argument is valid, both are (cf. Gordon, ‘Nagel or Camus on the Absurd?’ fn. 5, and Steven Luper-Foy, ‘The Absurdity of Life’, p. 94). Interesting also is the question as to why this ambiguity occurs in Nagel’s essay. I think any answer to this question will have to make mention of Nagel’s reasons for the shift in his views on life’s absurdity, some of which I will sketch below. 37 Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, pp. 155–6, among others.

272

Notes

38 There are principled reasons for Nagel’s shift on this issue. In ‘The Absurd’ Nagel seems happy to draw a close analogy between his (idiosyncratically strong) epistemological scepticism and evaluative scepticism, which allows him to place our evaluative practices in dispute. In The View from Nowhere however, he appears to have weakened this analogy (‘The connection between objectivity and truth is therefore closer in ethics than it is in science. I do not believe that the truth about how we should live could extend radically beyond any capacity we might have to discover it’, p. 139), to the point that he claims he can find his life ‘objectively insignificant’ (p. 218). This suggests that the focus of scepticism has moved to our purposes/aims from our evaluative practices, based on the contingency of the former. By the time of What Does It All Mean? Nagel’s position seems to resemble Nozick’s position quite closely (and contains an interesting discussion of religious answers to questions of life’s meaning). 39 As I note above, Nagel does seem to see a difference still between asking for the point of an individual pursuit (e.g. eating because one is hungry) and asking for the point of our lives as a whole. I am less sure that there is a difference here, at least at a deep level. (Perhaps one suggestion would be that the request for the point of an individual pursuit, and subsequent requests to justify the point of whatever justifies that answer in turn, will eventually lead one to ask for the point of our lives as a whole.) If there is a difference it seems to be analogous to the difference between Aquinas’ first way and Leibnizian versions of the cosmological argument (indeed in What Does It All Mean? Nagel explicitly analogizes his version of life’s meaninglessness with the lack of explanation that supports the Leibnizian cosmological argument). 40 Thaddeus Metz, ‘New Developments in the Meaning of Life’, p. 4. 41 Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 610. 42 Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 152. By using ‘final value’ (and such permutations as ‘finally valuable’, ‘final good’, etc.) in this chapter rather than ‘intrinsic value’ I mean to pay due attention to the points raised by Christine M. Korsgaard in her ‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’. 43 Although Nagel himself calls it into question later on: ‘Similarly, we can ask not only why we should take aspirin, but why we should take trouble over our own comfort at all’, Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 158. Presumably this doubt is the result of Nagel’s scepticism regarding our evaluative practices, which he later drops in favour of scepticism as regards our purposes, which would alter his position as given in the quotation above (cf. The View from Nowhere, p. 217). 44 To do so would perhaps be to ‘learn how to be finite’ to use a phrase from A. W. Moore (Points of View, p. 276). To be sure, we might try and live with these arbitrary stopping points as best we can, but I cannot see any way of removing the dissatisfaction that pertains to them.

Notes

273

45 See Pearce, The Hedonistic Imperative, especially Sections 4.2 and 4.7. 46 Pearce also introduces an argument based on the sufferers of Anton-Babinski syndrome; see note 2 above for my criticisms of his use of this disorder. 47 Death, when understood as irreversible, can be seen as a limit case of the problem of contingency. With other cases of contingency, states pass away but may return. This is not so with death. There is much more to be said about the nature of death, including complicating some of these claims, but there is insufficient space here. 48 In the introduction I spoke of the horror of a tireless, restless, eternally striving existence, and it strikes me that the contingency worry explains part of what is unsettling about it. If I am aware that time and space always extend past my phenomenal field and that matters could change with regard to that field as a result, then I am also aware of my need to be continually striving to preserve the homogeneity of my phenomenal field (or, if there is nothing I can do about it, my continual anxiety that it remain homogeneous). Moreover, suppose my life is guaranteed eternal and phenomenal space guaranteed infinite (the nature of this guarantee will have to be such that the same type of guarantee cannot reassure us that the homogeneity of our phenomenal field will be preserved). Then there is no escape from that anxiety, even in death. (Another part of what may be unsettling about such an existence is that, even though one might not become bored with the contents of one’s phenomenal field, one might become bored with the constant striving to maintain it.) 49 Note that if one exists in space then there will always be a part of space (namely the part that one’s body occupies) that cannot be part of the homogeneous experience. Suppose with dualism, that one can exist without a physical body. The dualist still sees the subject as standing over against experience, and thus as providing room for the extension of one’s phenomenological field. Only an absolutely simple being (such as, on some views, God) would seem to avoid this problem. 50 An alternative route might be to say that, although we may be aware of space and time extending beyond our phenomenal field, we somehow can know that our phenomenal field will always remain homogeneous (see the last note but one). This seems implausible, however, as not only would we have to have knowledge of this that is unaffected by the traditional sceptical worries (moreover, this knowledge itself must not be contingent, and our knowledge of this must not be contingent either, and so on, into regress), but the necessity of our phenomenal field remaining as it is would have to be strong: necessity in the broadly logical sense (and of course, sceptical worries also afflict modal epistemology). 51 In fact, given that the notion of control suggests a power exercised only contingently, what is needed is a guarantee of the state that is so certain that guarantee is not an issue, that it does not make sense to say that the state might be contingent.

274

Notes

52 David Wiggins has claimed that Richard Taylor’s discussion of the impermanence of monuments is meant to indicate a problem that afflicts all of the objects of our psychological states (‘Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life’, p. 103, in his Needs, Values, Truth). What I am suggesting here is the problem here is not impermanence but contingency, and that this can apply to those states themselves, although from this I do not draw the moral that Wiggins imputes to Taylor regarding objects of our psychological states. Furthermore, perhaps the problem applies even more to the states themselves. In his famous discussion of the experience machine in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Nozick suggests that in part we would not want to plug into the machine because we want to live ‘in contact with reality’ (p. 45). Part of the reason behind this desire could well be that living in contact with reality makes our valuable states ‘less contingent’, that is, less hostage to fortune. If I desire the glory associated with painting an important picture and do so in real life, then comparatively few things can prevent my enjoyment of such. But if I am merely simulating that experience in a machine, it could be taken away in a second with ease. 53 This notion of delay is significant. When I earlier collapsed the Nozickian distinction between meaning and value (end of Section 7.4), I allowed the possibility that valuable states could be the answer to the question of the meaning of life. Such an allowance blocks reflexive iteration, which is a cognitive process, whereas value can be located in non-cognitive states. However, when we offer a valuable state as an answer to the question of life’s meaning, we consider it from a cognitive perspective, which allows back in the possibility of reflexive iteration with regard to that state’s temporal and spatial boundaries. There is an asymmetry insofar as stepping outside of a cognitive answer’s boundaries is typically an active process, whereas moving beyond the spatial or temporal boundaries of a valuable state will be passive. Just as we could look at valuable states from a cognitive perspective, so we could look at attempts to offer answers to life’s meaning from a non-cognitive perspective. I discuss this in note 54 below. 54 While it is true that a being without the capacity for considering the contingency of its phenomenal field (an animal, say) will not have these issues concerning the meaning of life, from a certain perspective this is true of us humans as well. At a given moment, we may think that we have the meaning of life. But this will just mean that we are inhabiting the delay mentioned at the end of Section 5.9. So, whereas our intellectual capacities may appear to distinguish us from animals, their products will be just as much unreflected on at a given moment as the contents of the animal mind. Such products could always be reflected upon, and then the product of that reflection reflected upon, and so on. Viewed this way, the distinction between humans and animals collapses, and with it the distinction between meaning and value.

Notes

275

The products of our human capacities no longer being susceptible to principled distinction from the products of ‘merely’ animal capacities suggests that the negative affect associated with our intellectual grasp of the meaninglessness of life is not relevantly different from the negative affect associated with physical pain. ‘Pain’ in our theoretical life and pain in our physical life amount to the same thing: a lack of homogeneity in our phenomenal field (where ‘phenomenal’ is broadly construed). Now, we saw that the only way of avoiding this would be not only to acquire a homogeneous phenomenal field, but to have that field exhaust time and space. As far as our human capacities are concerned, this would mean excising those capacities, or ensuring that those capacities deliver no temporally or spatially specific content, while also being accurate to reality. 55 A dialetheist might respond to these arguments by embracing certain contradictions – that we can come to a meaning of life based on reason which we refuse arbitrarily to call into question, and can be wholly rational in so refusing. Of course, the opponent of the dialetheist is liable to accuse them of making nonsensical statements, leading to the kind of impasse we saw in Section 4.2. This, and the possibility of the Chapter 6 response to which this note is attached, indicates that the arguments for meaninglessness that I am outlining here assume a methodology of their own. 56 See Michael Slote, Beyond Optimizing: A Study of Rational Choice. 57 It is also true that we may have subconscious reasons for the choices we make in apparent cases of satisficing. It may be objected that this claim would make the hypothesis of maximization unfalsifiable; this is a fair point. But if by streamlining the scenarios given by Slote we derive different intuitions about those scenarios, this will indicate that there are reasons in play that are implicit, if not subconscious. 58 Slote, Beyond Optimizing, p. 22. 59 Slote attempts to flesh this account out later by suggesting that an individual may not want to go beyond their needs. The distinction between wants and needs is difficult to make out (cf. James Griffin, Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, chapter III); if we claim a need is what a human being requires for basic functioning, this will lead to asceticism rather than moderation, which Slote wants to avoid. If we allow a broader notion of ‘need’, then it seems plausible to suggest that one might need certain things even if one is satisfied, in order to make them even happier, for example. For those familiar with Slote’s discussion, I disagree that his newspaper example shows that considerations of non-need can have motivating force; rather it seems to me that we have a Buridan’s ass situation, which is disanalogous to cases of satisficing (we need not be a utilitarian to believe this!).

276

Notes

60 Of course, if the end point of desire fulfilment can only be nothing, as I will suggest in Section 7.8 below, then the achievement of that point will count as the fulfilment of all desires in that they all have one and the same end point. There may be the sense that, if this end point is achieved via the perfection of a given phenomenal experience, then it has nothing to do with desires associated with other experiences, which have not ‘led up to’ the end point in the same way. But to follow this reasoning would be to capitulate to the utility of certain metaphors about nothing that we have no reason to think are more appropriate than any other (i.e. that it is something that can be ‘led up to’). 61 Metz, ‘New Developments in the Meaning of Life’, p. 7. 62 It is interesting to compare here existential meaning with linguistic meaning, and the debates over whether a sentence like ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’, or ‘Pass me the yeurgs’, is more meaningful than ‘Ab sur ah’, although stopping short of attaining complete meaning. In this regard see Glock, ‘All kinds of nonsense’. 63 This question is of a piece with Metz’s third criticism, mentioned above, which queries what sort of thing might ground ultimate meaning. 64 Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 599. 65 Ibid., p. 600. 66 Ibid., p. 601. 67 Ibid., p. 600. 68 Chapter 5, note 3 indicates the similarity with Heidegger on this point. 69 Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 608. Cf. St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. Shaw, section 1, book 6: ‘And so God is not even to be called “unspeakable,” [ineffable] because to say even this is to speak of Him. Thus, there arises a curious contradiction of words, because if the unspeakable is what cannot be spoken of, it is not unspeakable if it can be called unspeakable.’ Certain issues in the ineffability debate re-run points that I have just made above. For example, a problem arises when we consider that the predicate ‘ineffable’ has to apply to something in order for us to make sense of the claim ‘x is ineffable’. What is this something? Is it an experience, a mind-independent being or a fictional being? Any answer we give to this question appears to say something of our purportedly ineffable x. In response to this, Kukla suggests that this will be inapplicable to the Ramseyfied sentence version of ‘Ein Sof is ineffable’, which would be ‘Something is ineffable’ (André Kukla, Ineffability and Philosophy, p. 4). But this will still involve us in attributing certain things to this something, namely that it is one thing among other things, that it is not everything and that it is not nothing. Note that we cannot do away with this problem by using the typical Chapter 3 analytic methods of understanding problem terms like ‘everything’ and ‘nothing’ without making substantive presuppositions about what everything and nothing are, and given that ‘something’ will be defined in part by its relations to nothing

Notes

277

and everything, this will lead us to make substantive claims about this something, contravening its purported ineffability. Now we might say that nothing is something, as is everything, so we have not attributed anything to it. But this renders the claim ‘Something is ineffable’ vacuous. If we accept that ‘something’ might refer to nothing, then this is the same as saying that something does not refer (as there is nothing there for it to refer to). (Of course, as I noted at the beginning of this chapter, nothing could easily be something.) This will then amount to the trivial claim that there might be something that is ineffable, but then again there might not. If we accept that ‘something’ might refer to everything, then any given thing – an apple, say, about which we can say that it is red, and sweet, and so forth, will be defined as ineffable. But clearly the word ‘ineffable’ has been rendered vacuous if we can talk of ineffable things so easily, saying that they are red or sweet or whatever. A response might be to claim that ‘something’ here cannot mean ‘everything’ because a given apple is part of everything and we can talk about it. But then we will be able to say of this something that it is not this apple, and so we have said something of this ineffable thing. Kukla ultimately accepts that there are no ineffable beings, but considers that there may be ineffable facts (i.e. ineffable states of affairs that obtain) or insights with ineffable contents (p. 9). Now ‘state of affairs’ is more specific than ‘something’ (each of state of affairs is some thing, but not vice versa), and ‘fact’ is more specific than ‘state of affairs’. So it seems that the move to talk of ineffable states of affairs will result in more specificity, and thus more illicit predication, than talk of ineffable beings or things (unless, of course, Kukla, makes a distinction between ‘being’ and ‘thing’ – see Section 8.7 for Sven Rosenkranz making a similar move with ‘thing’ and ‘object’). I do not think this is necessarily a problem for Kukla’s wider project; he makes a distinction between ineffability due to extraordinary properties and ineffability due to an absence of properties (p. 3) and asserts his interest with regard to the former only – that ‘there are facts that defy expression’. But clearly the issues thrown up by nothing are a special case; see Section 3.9 for problems in seeing ‘There is nothing’ as a state of affairs, or a fact. 70 Cooper opines that, although we may not talk about the ineffable, there is no problem with us talking ‘about’ the ineffable, where the latter is merely talking about the concept of ineffability. There are problems with this. Cooper claims that ‘there is surely nothing absurd in saying “The ineffable can’t be described”’ (Cooper, The Measure of Things, p. 288). But that sentence certainly seems to be absurd, insofar as it says something about this thing or class of things called ‘the ineffable’ – the phrase is being used, not mentioned. A better attempt might be: ‘“ineffable” means “insusceptible to description”’. This does not seem as bad, insofar as it is just giving the meaning of the term ‘ineffable’. However, given that the word ‘insusceptible’ in the definition is a descriptive word, the definition

278

Notes

appears to be self-refuting. Moreover, even if such a claim ‘about’ ineffability were acceptable, it would not tell us if anything actually is ineffable. As soon as we go on to make that claim, we end up talking about, rather than ‘about’, the ineffable, as we are no longer merely discussing the concept of ineffability. It is interesting that Cooper analogizes ‘The ineffable can’t be described’ with ‘Heroes are rare’. The latter does not tell us anything about the meaning of ‘hero’, as nothing in the definition of ‘hero’ implies scarcity. What it does tell us is that the concept is instantiated by few entities. Now, once again, we are not merely discussing the concept of heroism, but we are saying something more substantial. This is not a problem in the case of heroism, as there is nothing in the concept that prevents us from saying this more substantial something. Unfortunately, the same is not true of the concept of ineffability. Another possibility raised by Jerome Gellman would be to claim that ‘x is ineffable’ is not a statement about the concept of ineffability by rather a statement about the term ‘x’, saying that ‘x’ fails to refer to any describable entity (Jerome Gellman, ‘Mysticism’, section 3.1, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2011/entries/mysticism/ accessed 11 April 2012). However, how are we to distinguish such a term ‘x’ from a term like ‘gergfege’ which fails to refer to anything? Unless we can spell this out, ‘x is ineffable’ and ‘x is meaningless’ will be indistinguishable claims. Any way of spelling this out would seem to involve making positive claims about what x refers to, that is, an indescribable entity, and this will be to describe it. Perhaps we could claim that a term always refers to something, so that ‘gergfege’ is not a term. But this will amount to saying that ‘x’ does refer to something, and this thing is not describable, which of course describes it. 71 Both Alvin Plantinga and Keith Yandell, in the context of religious talk about an ineffable God, have claimed that the correct reaction to St Augustine’s problem is to reject the notion of an ineffable object (at least in such a strong sense). Plantinga claims that it ‘is clearly quite impossible that there be a thing to which none of our concepts apply’, (Alvin Plantinga, Does God Have a Nature?, p. 23) and Yandell notes that if, for an experience E, ‘E is strongly ineffable is true, some concepts apply to E, and so E is not strongly ineffable’ (Yandell, ‘Some Varieties of Ineffability’, pp. 172–3). Such a quick way should be seen not to cut much ice, as we have seen with the analogous case of the term ‘unthinkable’ (indeed, Plantinga’s account defines having concepts as involving the understanding of certain properties which will be expressed via predicates, and so it serves as an example of such a case). If I say that there is something that is (strongly) ineffable, the response will be that this says something of it illicitly. But I could reply that this response implicitly says something of the strongly ineffable, which is illegitimate.

Notes

72 73

74 75

76 77 78

To say that there is nothing to which none of our concepts apply (which is essentially the Plantinga/Yandell approach), that it is nonsensical, one would have to understand something to which none of our concepts apply in order to reject it, and in order to reject erroneous putative examples of such a something (and, in a related point, one would have to understand the use of the term ‘nothing’ in that claim, which would require answering questions about ineffability that such a claim was supposed to answer). Of course, one could take the ‘austere approach’ of simply showing that for each putative concept, it cannot apply to the strongly ineffable object, but this will simply repeat the problems that arose for this way of dealing with the unthinkable. Garrett Thomson, On the Meaning of Life, p. 24. Or even: ‘What do you get if you multiply six by nine?’ in base 13, as some have pointed out to Douglas Adams. (We might even claim that the question is ‘What would there be if the universe did not exist?’ and thus connect the question directly to our earlier discussion about nothing in Section 3.3.) Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 601. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.4312 and 6.5. Interestingly, Metz comes by his own route to the conclusion that what might make life meaningful would be relation to an atemporal and non-spatial reality; see his ‘Could God’s purpose be the source of life’s meaning?’. See Section 8.7 for more discussion of the relationship between questions and answers. Here I make no claim as to which flavour of nonsense, ‘austere’ or ‘substantial’, results. I am happy to support either interpretation. In fact, one might say that the perfect answer and the perfect question are no longer distinguishable. Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 602.

Chapter 8 Cooper, The Measure of Things, p. 297. Ibid., p. 311. Ibid. Ibid., p. 312. Ibid., p. 313. In Chapter 5 it was noted that the later Heidegger’s strategies were not best interpreted as metaphorical; nevertheless critiques of a ‘metaphorical’ interpretation of Heidegger were advanced, and it is these that are relevant to Cooper’s project, which is based on metaphor. 7 Cooper, The Measure of Things, p. 312.

1 2 3 4 5 6

279

280

Notes

8 See Chapter 7, note 70, for discussion of Cooper’s about/‘about’ distinction, which may be relevant here. 9 Graham Priest and Jay Garfield, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 265. 10 Ibid., p. 266. 11 Ibid. 12 Cooper, The Measure of Things, p. 306. 13 Ibid., p. 305. 14 Indeed, such a doctrine seems to run counter to the affective and analytic methodologies examined in the last two sections of Chapter 5 which, in pursuit of providing an account of nothing (and thence ultimate meaning), employed certain strategies to downplay one’s awareness of the contextualized nature of one’s experience. 15 Metz, ‘Could God’s purpose be the source of life’s meaning?’, p. 295. 16 To deal with the counter-intuitive idea that God might assign a lowly purpose to us, we might make a move analogous to one made in the Euthyphro problem as it pertains to morality, and claim that God’s choice of purpose will be constrained other divine attributes, such as omnibenevolence, and so will necessarily be a noble or exalting one. 17 Metz, ‘Recent Work on the Meaning of Life’, p. 785. 18 See Sections 7.4 and 7.5. 19 Nagel, ‘The Absurd’, p. 155. 20 Ibid., p. 156. 21 Whether we need God for this role or whether a naturalistic worldview will suffice I leave open (although see Section 8.10 below). There then follows a further question as to whether one of these offers more partial meaning than the other. 22 Metz, ‘Could God’s purpose be the source of life’s meaning?’, p. 311. 23 Schopenhauer, ‘On Religion’, in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, volume 2, trans. Payne, p. 381, groups Christianity together with ‘other . . . world-denying religions’. 24 Thaddeus Metz, ‘The Immortality Requirement for Life’s Meaning’, p. 161. 25 Of course heaven may be said to contain goods that are not completely covered by this argument, such as love or goods that are not wholly affective in nature. These are covered in Sections 7.4 and 7.6. 26 And of course, parallel arguments apply for the other types of goods argued against in Chapter 7 (see previous note). 27 Paul Helm, Eternal God (2nd edn), p. 246. For a similar view, see Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ‘Eternity’, section 2, in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 28 Roy Perrett, ‘Regarding Immortality’, pp. 231–2. 29 Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 22.

Notes

281

30 Metz, ‘The Immortality Requirement for Life’s Meaning’, pp. 175–6. 31 Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance), trans. Hopkins, book 1, chapter 2. 32 Jasper Hopkins, ‘Notes to the Preface’, p. 57, Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia. 33 Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, book 1, chapter 3. He also demonstrates, in book 4, that the Maximum and Minimum coincide, so nothing can enter into the contrary comparative relation with the Maximum, nothing can be lesser than it. 34 Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, book 1, chapter 1. 35 Ibid., chapter 4. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., chapter 12. 38 He actually says that such attributions are ‘infinitely distant’ (De Docta Ignorantia, book 1, chapter 24) from God, but oddly this seems to be bringing the Maximum into a comparative relation. Perhaps he would reply to this that the notion of ‘infinitely distant’ is not a comparative relation as it utilizes the notion of infinity. 39 Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia, book 1, chapter 4. 40 Ibid., chapter 2. 41 Ibid., chapter 24. 42 As an aside, I also noted in Chapter 7 the similarity between Nozick’s notion of the Ein Sof as something immeasurably great and the notion of nothing. This is true too of Nicholas’s notion of the Maximum as something immeasurably great: ‘our understanding of God draws near to nothing rather than to something . . . [b]ut sacred ignorance teaches me that that which seems to the intellect to be nothing is the incomprehensible Maximum’ – De Docta Ignorantia, book 1, chapter 17. 43 St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, Fifth abode, chapter 1, cited in William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 584. 44 Jerome Gellman, ‘Mysticism’, section 6.2. 45 Nagel, The View from Nowhere, chapter VI, Colin McGinn, ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’, Sven Rosenkranz, ‘Priest and the Bishop’. If one understands an affective methodology in a certain way, the discussion in Chapter 5 will be germane here. 46 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, p. 65. Berkeley’s response is to deny the premise that some things exist unconceived; Priest’s is to claim that we have here a true contradiction. 47 Rosenkranz, ‘Priest and the Bishop’, p. 339. 48 Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, pp. 68–9. 49 Rosenkranz, ‘Priest and the Bishop’, pp. 339–40; Priest, Beyond the Limits of Thought, pp. 68, 286. 50 Rosenkranz, ‘Priest and the Bishop’, p. 343.

282

Notes

51 Ibid., p. 344. 52 McGinn, ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’. McGinn later extended this method to encompass a whole range of philosophical problems – see his Problems in Philosophy. 53 McGinn, ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’, p. 353. McGinn sometimes talks of a theory T, which makes reference to P and explains the manner in which the brain is the basis of consciousness; again, parallels with Rosenkranz should be evident. 54 McGinn, ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’, p. 359. 55 Daniel C. Dennett, ‘Review of C. McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness’, Uriah Kriegel, ‘The New Mysterianism and the Thesis of Cognitive Closure’. 56 McGinn, ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’, p. 349, note 1. 57 Ibid., pp. 349, 354. For more, cf. Richard McDonough, ‘The Last Stand of Mechanism’, section I. 58 Ibid., p. 353. McGinn’s dismissive attitude towards dualism is all the more surprising given his perceptive and entertaining article ‘Consciousness and Cosmology: Hyperdualism Ventilated’, which deals with some typical objects to the position. Critics of McGinn’s assumption of naturalism include Andre Kukla (‘Mystery, mind and materialism’) and Mark Sacks, (‘Cognitive Closure and the Limits of Understanding’). 59 Kriegel, ‘The New Mysterianism and the Thesis of Cognitive Closure’, p. 187. 60 Marc Krellenstein, ‘Unsolvable Problems, Visual Imagery and Explanatory Satisfaction’, section 4.11, suggests another difference between McGinn’s mindbody problem and the question of life’s meaning which makes the former seem more tractable. With regard to the former, we have two domains of which we have some understanding – the brain on one hand, and consciousness on the other – and what we lack is the concept for the property needed to explain the relation between the two. The latter, however, seems to be more like the problem of understanding the origin of the universe (Krellenstein’s own contrasting problem) as we have just one domain (the domain of meaningfulness or of spatio-temporal existents, respectively) the obtaining of which we lack the capacity to ultimately justify. This difference is another example of a manner in which we have more of a grip on McGinn’s answer (the question concerns the link between two domains of which we have understanding) than the question of life’s meaning, although the reason for this is something that opens up McGinn’s postulation of an inconceivable answer to criticism insofar as it has been further specified (cf. Owen Flanagan’s criticism presented in Kukla, ‘Mystery, mind and materialism’, section 2). 61 Nagel, The View from Nowhere, p. 92. 62 See Chapter 3, note 31. 63 Nagel, The View from Nowhere, p. 97.

Notes

283

64 Cf. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, p. 47. 65 Cf. Karel Lambert ‘Definite Descriptions and Self-Identity: II’, p. 39. On problems for understanding self-identity, see, for example, Cyrus Panjvani, ‘Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects’. 66 David Braine, ‘Grace’ in the Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p. 323. 67 Marco Pallis, ‘Is There Room for “Grace” in Buddhism?’, p. 65, in his A Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue. 68 The closest equivalent to grace in Judaism seems to be referred to by the word ‘chesed’ which indicates God’s loving kindness in maintaining the covenant relationship with God’s chosen people, despite failures to honour the agreement on their part. However, there appears to be no infusion/imputation of righteousness as in ‘sanctifying’ grace. In Islam, restoration to full righteousness appears to occur just prior to entrance into the afterlife, and is contingent on a certain level of good works. It appears to be closer to the Protestant notion of ‘glorification’ than what Christian theology would term ‘grace’. 69 In Buddhism, grace can be granted by bodhisattvas and buddhas (Amitabha is a particularly well-known example), however the ‘invitation to enlightenment’ that Pallis suggests is similar to grace seems to be closer to prevenient grace than sanctifying grace. Cooper’s presentation of Amitabha (‘Amida’ in Cooper) portrays a notion of grace even more distanced from Christian theology (see Cooper, The Mystery of Things, pp. 325–6). Possibly the closest notion in Buddhism to sanctifying grace is what Pallis calls ‘companionship of enlightenment’. I shall discuss this in due course. 70 ‘Sanctification’ in Catholicism refers to something different: the attaining of full righteousness in the ‘initial’ phase of justification. 71 However, concupiscence is still held to remain as a force in the believer’s life; while the believer may have attained perfect righteousness qualitatively, they must still strive for perfect righteousness quantitatively. 72 Although the significance of these differences has been downplayed in recent years, most notably in the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999. 73 The Buddhist conception mooted by Pallis of ‘companionship of enlightenment’ seems ill-equipped to replace sanctifying grace insofar as it seems to rely on the subject’s interpreting the metonymy of symbols, which devolves from the subject’s own resources. See Pallis, ‘Is There Room for “Grace” in Buddhism?’, pp. 73–4. 74 See his Agape and Eros. 75 Cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:21: ‘Test everything. Hold on to the good.’ (New International Version). 76 We can see the distinction here from Derrida’s methodology, influenced by the more orthopraxic Judaism, whereby acknowledgement of the other is a

284

Notes

moral obligation (indicating a degree of justification by works) rather than supererogatory (as in Christianity). 77 Here might be an apt point to pick up the issue of satisficing from Chapter 7 as involving an unquestionable subset. With regard to the claim that satisficing is irrational, we can disregard the reasons put forward by the maximizer, that is, refuse to acknowledge the maximizer. A trickier question arises as regards whether satisficing is possible. Could we be aware of certain goods, but not desire them (in the Cavellian sense, could we know of them, but not acknowledge them)? One way of making this phenomenological problem more tractable would be to say that we can, by an act of will, choose not to concentrate on (some of) our desires, removing them from our present consciousness, and preventing them from having motivating force. This converts the phenomenological problem to the rational problem (i.e. the rationality of such an act of will). Are there more direct ways? Within a phenomenological moment we have two potential problems for satisficing; the awareness of a good unattained, which may lead to a desire for it, and the fact that the very capacity for such awareness means that there is phenomenological space that could be better employed in enjoying some good. This latter collapses to the former insofar as such a capacity will only be a problem if we have an awareness of it. So, is it the case that awareness of a good is always accompanied by a desire for it? Perhaps we do not have the phenomenological space to be motivated by goods even though we may be aware of them; we may be flooded by a feeling of enjoyable satisfaction, in which case, we may be aware of another possible good, but it does not motivate us (we can rationally assent to it being a good, but feel no affective need to pursue it). Once we acclimatize to our situation (i.e. once our phenomenological moment changes and/or we are not flooded by a feeling of satisfaction), we may desire these goods we merely had awareness of before. Such considerations indicate the truth in the notion of living in the moment, in the present (cf. Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.4311); of course, since the satisficer does not adhere to the standpoint elaborated in Chapter 6, he or she will know that the goods of the present are fleeting. 78 This bears parallels with the contentious Calvinist doctrine of ‘perseverance of the saints’, whereby true believers are guaranteed never to renounce their faith; similar doctrines go under the name of ‘eternal security’ or ‘unconditional assurance’. Although this doctrine is particularly associated with Calvinism, it strikes me that its essentials are possible to reconstruct in other denominational contexts. 79 Of course, believers may lose their belief in x permanently, but other believers in x will be likely to say that these were then not ‘true believers’; they really believed in y, not x. This will be another article of faith on their part (just as it is an article of faith to claim that one was a true believer and genuinely lost belief in x and not merely y).

Notes

285

80 We see here resonances with Marion’s idea of love as a way of knowing that strikes us with indifference to potential hazards to the object of our love (compare with Cavell: ‘A “failure to acknowledge” is the presence of something [such as] an indifference’ – Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays, p. 264). This should not surprise us, as Marion’s philosophical theology is an example of the selective rejection of omnis determinatio est negatio that characterizes faith. 81 Ideally it would involve a failure not just to recognize the validity of the other (a failure of acknowledgement) but a failure to recognize its very existence (an absence of knowledge) as I suggested in Section 5.8. Different conceptions of nonsense are relevant here; if one takes an ‘austere’ view of nonsense, one is less likely to be concerned by one’s failure to acknowledge the other, who is merely taken to be uttering gibberish. I also suggested in the aforementioned section that complex analyses and affective methodologies are two ways in which we can attempt to avoid the apprehension of the possibility of reflexive iteration (whether this is deliberate or not). 82 One way (and this is only one way) of looking at this is to say that we cannot learn to be completely finite, as Moore suggests, rather we must deny our finitude in some respects – and believe ourselves to be infinite in grace. Of course, this does not prevent us from affirming our finitude in other respects. 83 Of course it will itself be a matter of faith to claim that the limits of speculative reason are drawn at all. 84 As I say, it could be argued that now the critic has legitimate grievance with myself for failing to acknowledge his faith claims with the exclusive bias that I allowed for the believer in faith claim x to repudiate his or her view. This argument can then continue to be reflexively reapplied. 85 This is not necessarily wrong, as to acknowledge Derrida properly would be to fail to acknowledge, or even know of, the possibility of acts of faith. But, of course, saying that this is not necessarily wrong fails itself to acknowledge Derrida, and so on. (It should be noted that in this discussion I do not offer the opportunity of the Cavellian view to not know the other, as I offer the Derridian view. This is because if I were to claim the opportunity of the Cavellian view to not know of the other, I would have to step outside the limits drawn to thought in order to draw them.) 86 This can occur with religious views just as much as non-religious ones. One might consider the example of an extreme proponent of natural theology who believes that reason can tell us all we need to know about God’s existence and character (although it is unlikely that any orthodox believer in the major world religions will take this view). 87 Of course, the term ‘faith claimant’ here begs the question in favour of an unacknowledging third-party view.

286

Notes

88 Perhaps by failing to understand the words used to advance this book as expressive of mind, but rather akin to the meaningless jumble of sounds caused by, say, books falling off a shelf. 89 John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, p. 6. 90 But see above on taking the bias of faith claims seriously. 91 Thaddeus Metz, ‘Critical Notice: Baier and Cottingham on the Meaning of Life,’ p. 225. For further deployment of this move, see Metz, ‘Could God’s purpose be the source of life’s meaning?’, p. 307. 92 Certainly some difficult questions will arise as to the relationship between fact and value. Other philosophers who have suggested that some sort of divine solicitude or interest in our arguably otherwise arbitrary human lives is required include John Cottingham, with his idea of our need for the buoyancy of the good (On the Meaning of Life, p. 71), and Alvin Plantinga, with his Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism (Plantinga, ‘Introduction: The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism’, in Beilby (ed.), Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism). 93 Cf. the epigraphical quotation from Wittgenstein for this chapter.

Concluding Speculations 1 We might be reminded of Heidegger’s claim in Being and Time that we must have some implicit idea of Being to guide our inquiry into it (see Section 7.1, ‘Taking leave of nothing?’). Without this, we would not even know where to begin. 2 This book, after all, is part of what gives my life meaning – if I could produce the perfect book (which presumably would be so perfect it would have no producer), then my life would have ultimate meaning. Perfection would appear in the form as in the content, which would not be distinct. 3 Furthermore, it will take it to be saying something complete, rather than being left incomplete, either due to practicality or necessity (philosophy being an activity, it is a category error to say ‘this is my philosophy’, or ‘this thesis represents my philosophy’.) Of course, this note is susceptible to the reflexive application of that criticism again.

Bibliography Adams, R. M., ‘Theories of Actuality’, Noûs, 8 (1974), 211–31. —, ‘Actualism and Thisness’, Synthese, 49 (1981), 3–41. Alston, W. P., ‘Ontological Commitments’, in P. Benacerraf and H. Putnam (eds), Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings (Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 249–57. Ammereller, E. and Fisher, E. (eds), Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations (London: Routledge, 2004). Auden, W. H., The Dyer’s Hand and Other Essays (New York: Random House, 1962). Ayer, A. J. (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959). Baker, G. (ed.), The Voices of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2003). Beall, J. C., ‘Introduction: At the Intersection of Truth and Falsity’, in G. Priest, J. C. Beall and B. Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–19. Beilby, J. (ed.), Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). Benacerraf, P. and Putnam, H. (eds), Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings (Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964). Bennett, J., Kant’s Dialectic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Bergson, H., Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell (New York: Modern Library, Random House, 1944). Berto, F., ‘Impossible Worlds’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/ entires/impossible-worlds/ (accessed 1 April 2012). Braine, D., ‘Grace’, in E. Craig (ed.), Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 323. Brock, W., ‘An Account of “The Four Essays”’, in M. Heidegger (ed.), Existence and Being, trans. D. Scott, R. F. C. Hull and A. Crick (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949), pp. 132–248. Bruzina, R., ‘Heidegger on the Metaphor and Philosophy’, in M. Murray (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays (New Haven: Yale University press, 1978), pp. 184–200. Candlish, S. and Wrisley, G., ‘Private Language’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2011/entries/private-language/ (accessed 4 April 2012).

288

Bibliography

Caputo, J. D., ‘Apostles of the Impossible: On God and the Gift in Derrida and Marion’, in J. D. Caputo and M. J. Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 185–222. Caputo, J. D. and Scanlon, M. J. (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). —, ‘Introduction: Apology for the Impossible: Religion and Postmodernism’, in J. D. Caputo and M. J. Scanlon (eds), God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 1–19. Carlson, T. A., Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999). —, ‘Postmetaphysical Theology’, in K. J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 58–75. Carnap, R., ‘Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 4 (1950), 20–40. —, ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language’ (1932), trans. A. Pap, in A. J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1959), pp. 60–81. Cartwright, R., ‘Speaking of Everything’, Noûs, 28 (1994), 1–20. Cavell, S., Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). —, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988). Chalmers, D. J., ‘Does Conceivability Entail Possibility?’, in T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), pp. 145–200. Coggins, G., ‘World and Object: Metaphysical Nihilism and Three Accounts of Worlds’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 103 (2003), 353–60. Colton, C. C., Lacon (New York: S. Marks, 1824). Cooper, D. E., The Measure of Things (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). —, ‘Life and Meaning’, Ratio, 18 (2005), 125–37. Cottingham, J., On the Meaning of Life (London: Routledge, 2003). Craig, E. (ed.), Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2000). Crary, A. and Read, R. (eds), The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2000). Critchley, S., Continental Philosophy – A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Dennett, D. C., ‘Review of C. McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness’, The Times Literary Supplement, 10 (1991). Derrida, J., Of Grammatology, trans. G. C. Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1976). —, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). —, Positions, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). —, Margins of Philosophy, trans. A. Bass (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982). —, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, (interview with R. Kearney) in R. Kearney (ed.), Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), pp. 107–26.

Bibliography

289

—, Limited Inc., trans. S. Weber (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988). Derrida, J. and Bennington, G., Jacques Derrida (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). de Unamuno, M., The Tragic Sense of Life, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1921). Diamond, C., ‘Ethics, Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus’, in A. Crary and R. Read (eds), The New Wittgenstein (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 149–73. Dickinson, E., Poem 1563, (1883). di Giovanni, G. (ed.), Essays on Hegel’s Logic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Dreyfus, H. L. and Hall, H. (eds), Heidegger: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Dreyfus, H. L. and Wrathall, M. A. (eds), Heidegger Reexamined, Vol. 4: Language and the Critique of Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2002). — (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Efird, D. and Stoneham, T., ‘Genuine Modal Realism and the Empty World’, European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 1 (2005), 21–37. —, ‘Is Metaphysical Nihilism Interesting?’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 90 (2009), 210–31. Evnine, S., ‘Modal Epistemology: Our Knowledge of Necessity and Possibility’, Philosophy Compass, 3 (2008), 664–84. Faulconer, J. E. (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). Fine, K., ‘Relatively Unrestricted Quantification’, in A. Rayo and G. Uzquiano (eds), Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Friedman, M., A Parting of the Ways (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2000). Gale, R. M., Negation and Non-Being (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976). Gasché, R., Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). Gellman, J., ‘Mysticism’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2005 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/ entries/mysticism/ (accessed 11 April 2012). Gendler, T. S. and Hawthorne, J. (eds), Conceivability and Possibility (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Glanzberg, M., ‘Context and Unrestricted Quantification’, in A. Rayo and G. Uzquiano (eds), Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 45–74. Glendinning, S. (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). —, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, Ratio, 14 (2001), 281–8. —, ‘Preface’, in S. Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 1–8. —, ‘Preface’, in S. Glendinning and R. Eaglestone (eds), Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. xi–xxvi. Glendinning, S. and Eaglestone R. (eds), Derrida’s Legacies: Literature and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2008).

290

Bibliography

Glock, H. -J., ‘All Kinds of Nonsense’, in E. Ammereller and E. Fisher (eds), Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 221–45. Gordon, J., ‘Nagel or Camus on the Absurd?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (1984), 15–28. Griffin, J., Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement and Moral Importance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Guignon, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Hacker, P. M. S., ‘Was he Trying to Whistle it?’, in P. M. S. Hacker (ed.), Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 98–140. —, Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Hale, B. and Wright, C. (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). Han, B., ‘Transcendence and the Hermeneutic Circle: Some Thoughts on Marion and Heidegger’, in J. E. Faulconer (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 120–44. Hart, K., Postmodernism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2004). Hegel, G. W. F., Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Heidegger, M., Existence and Being, trans. D. Scott, R. F. C. Hull and A. Crick (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949). —, Being and Time (1927), trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962). —, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (1928), trans. M. Heim (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). —, ‘Letter on Humanism’ (1947), trans. D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 213–66. —, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’ (1953), trans. D. F. Krell, in F. K. David (ed.), Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 307–42. —, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ (1929), trans. D. F. Krell, in D. F. Krell (ed.), Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 89–110. —, The Principle of Reason (1957), trans. R. Lilly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). —, ‘Introduction to “What Is Metaphysics?”’ (1949), trans. W. Kaufmann, in M. Heidegger with W. McNeill (eds), Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 277–90. —, ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (1929), trans. W. McNeill, in M. Heidegger with W. McNeill (eds), Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 97–135. —, ‘Postscript to “What Is Metaphysics?”’ (1943), trans. W. McNeill, in M. Heidegger with W. McNeill (eds), Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 231–8. —, Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), trans. G. Fried and R. Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

Bibliography

291

Heidegger, M. with McNeill, W. (eds), Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Helm, P., Eternal God (2nd edn), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). The Holy Bible, King James Version, (1611). Hopkins, J., Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance (Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985). Horner, R., Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Houlgate, S., The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2006). Inwood, M., ‘Does the Nothing Noth?’, in A. O’Hear (ed.), German Philosophy Since Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 271–90. —, A Heidegger Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience (Plain Label Books). Käufer, S., ‘The Nothing and the Ontological Difference in Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics?’, Inquiry, 48 (2005), 482–506. —, ‘Logic’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 141–55. Kearney, R. (ed.), Dialogues with Contemporary Continental Thinkers: The Phenomenological Heritage (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Kerr, F., Immortal Longings (London: SPCK, 1997). Kierkegaard, S. with Dru, A. (eds), The Journals of Kierkegaard, trans. A. Dru (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938). Klemke, E. D. (ed.), The Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). Kockelmans, J. J., ‘Heidegger on Metaphor and Metaphysics’, in C. McCann (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 293–320. Korsgaard, C. M., ‘Two Distinctions in Goodness’, The Philosophical Review, 92 (1983), 169–95. Krell, D. F. (ed.), Basic Writings: Martin Heidegger (London: Routledge, 1993). Krellenstein, M. F., ‘Unsolvable Problems, Visual Imagery and Explanatory Satisfaction’, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 16 (1995), 235–53. Kriegel, U., ‘The New Mysterianism and the Thesis of Cognitive Closure’, Acta Analytica, 18 (2003), 177–91. Kukla, A., ‘Mystery, Mind and Materialism’, Philosophical Psychology, 8 (1995), 255–64. —, Ineffability and Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2005). LaFont, C., Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure, trans. G. Harman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Lambert, K., ‘Definite Descriptions and Self-Identity: II’, Philosophical Studies, 17 (1966), 35–43. Langan, T., The Meaning of Heidegger: A Critical Study of an Existentialist Phenomenology (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1959). Lazerowitz, M., ‘Negative Terms’, Analysis, 12 (1952), 51–66. Leslie, J., ‘Efforts to Explain all Existence’, Mind, 87 (1978), 181–94.

292

Bibliography

Lewis, D., On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). —, ‘Letters to Beall and Priest’ in G. Priest, J. C. Beall and B. Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 176–7. Lilly, R. (ed.), The Ancients and the Moderns (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). Lowe, E. J., ‘Objects and Criteria of Identity’, in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). —, ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 70 (1998), 111–20. —, ‘Metaphysical Nihilism and the Subtraction Argument’, Analysis, 62 (2002), 62–72. —, More Kinds of Being: A Further Study of Individuation, Identity, and the Logic of Sortal Terms (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Luper-Foy, S., ‘The Absurdity of Life’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52 (1992), 85–101. Maker, W., ‘Beginning’, in G. di Giovanni (ed.), Essays on Hegel’s Logic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Marion, J.-L., God Without Being, trans. T. A. Carlson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). —, ‘Nothing and Nothing Else’, in R. Lilly (ed.), The Ancients and the Moderns (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 183–95. —, Reduction and Givenness, trans. T. A. Carlson (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998). —, Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. J. L. Kosky (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). McCann, C. (ed.), Martin Heidegger: Critical Assessments (London: Routledge, 1992). McCarthy, T. G. and Stidd, S. C. (eds), Wittgenstein in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). McDonough, R., ‘The Last Stand of Mechanism’, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 6 (1992), 206–25. McGinn, C., ‘Can We Solve The Mind-Body Problem?’, Mind, 98 (1989), 349–66. —, Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). —, ‘Consciousness and Cosmology: Hyperdualism Ventilated’, in McGinn (ed.), Consciousness and its Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2004). —, Consciousness and its Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2004). Menzel, C., ‘Actualism’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2012/entries/actualism/ (accessed 1 April 2012). Metz, T., ‘Could God’s Purpose Be the Source of Life’s Meaning?’, Religious Studies, 36 (2000), 293–313. —, ‘The Concept of a Meaningful Life’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 38 (2001), 137–53. —, ‘Recent Work on the Meaning of Life’, Ethics, 112 (2002), 781–814. —, ‘The Immortality Requirement for Life’s Meaning’, Ratio, 16 (2003), 161–77.

Bibliography

293

—, ‘Critical Notice: Baier and Cottingham on the Meaning of Life’, Disputatio, 19 (2005), 251–64. —, ‘New Developments in the Meaning of Life’, Philosophy Compass, 2 (2007), 1–22. —, ‘The Meaning of Life’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/ entries/life-meaning/ (accessed 10 April 2012). Miller, B., ‘Existence’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), http://www.plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entires/ existence/ (accessed 1 April 2012). Mohanty, J. N., ‘Heidegger on Logic’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), Heidegger Reexamined, Vol. 4: Language and the Critique of Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 99–127. Moore, A. W., Points of View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). —, ‘Arguing with Derrida’, in S. Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 57–82. —, ‘Ineffability and Nonsense’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 77 (2003), 169–93. Mulhall, S., Stanley Cavell: Philosophy’s Recounting of the Ordinary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). —, ‘Can There be an Epistemology of Moods?’, in A. O’Hear (ed.), Verstehen and Humane Understanding: The 1995-6 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 191–210. —, ‘Wittgenstein and Deconstruction’, in S. Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 109–15. —, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time (2nd edn), (London: Routledge, 2005). — (ed.), Martin Heidegger, International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). —, ‘Human Mortality: Heidegger on How to Portray the Impossible Possibility of Dasein’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 297–310. Murray, M. (ed.), Heidegger and Modern Philosophy: Critical Essays (New Haven: Yale University press, 1978). Nagel, T., ‘The Absurd’, in E. D. Klemke (ed.), The Meaning of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 151–61. —, The View From Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). —, What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance), trans. J. Hopkins (Minneapolis: The Arthur J. Banning Press, 1985). Nietzsche, F., Twilight of the Idols (1889), trans. R. Polt (Indiana: Hackett, 1997). Nozick, R., Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

294

Bibliography

—, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1981). Nygren, A., Agape and Eros (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982). O’Hear, A. (ed.), Verstehen and Humane Understanding: The 1995-6 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). —, German Philosophy Since Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Pallis, M., A Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Bloomington: World Wisdom, Inc., 2003). —, ‘Is There Room for ‘Grace’ in Buddhism?’, in M. Pallis (ed.), A Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Bloomington: World Wisdom, Inc., 2003), pp. 65–87. Panjvani, C., ‘Wittgenstein on the Self-Identity of Objects’, Papers of the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium, Sprache und Welt—Language and World, (2009). Parsons, C., ‘The Problem of Absolute Universality’, in A. Rayo and G. Uzquiano (eds), Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Pascal, B., Pensées, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910). Pattison, G., Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to the Later Heidegger (London: Routledge, 2000). Pearce, D., The Hedonistic Imperative, http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/tabconhi.htm (accessed 10 April 2012). —, Why Does Anything Exist?, http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm (accessed 10 April 2012). Pelletier, F. J. (ed.), Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems (The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979). —, ‘Non-Singular Reference: Some Preliminaries’, in F. J. Pelletier (ed.), Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems (The Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979). Perrett, R., ‘Regarding Immortality’, Religious Studies, 22 (1986), 219–33. Plantinga, A., Does God have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980). —, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). —, ‘Introduction: The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism’, in J. Beilby (ed.), Naturalism Defeated?: Essays on Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 1–14. Pöggeler, O., Martin Heidegger’s Path of Thinking, trans. D. Magurshak and S. Barber, (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1994). Polt, R., ‘The Question of Nothing’, in R. Polt and G. Fried (eds), A Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) pp. 57–82. —, Heidegger: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2003). —, ‘Ereignis’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 375–91. Polt, R. and Fried, G. (eds), A Companion to Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Prado, C. G. (ed.), A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003).

Bibliography

295

Priest, G., Beyond the Limits of Thought (2nd edn), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). —, ‘What’s So Bad About Contradictions?’, in G. Priest, J. C. Beall and B. Armour-Garb (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 23–38. —, Doubt Truth to be a Liar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). —, In Contradiction (2nd edn), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Priest, G., Beall, J. C. and Armour-Garb, B. (eds), The Law of Non-Contradiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Prior, A. N., Time and Modality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957). Quinn, P. L. and Taliaferro, C. (eds), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Rayo, A. and Uzquiano, G. (eds), Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Rodriguez-Pereyra, G., ‘Lowe’s Argument against Nihilism’, Analysis, 60 (2000), 335–40. —, ‘Metaphysical Nihilism Defended: Reply to Lowe and Paseau’, Analysis, 62 (2002), 172–80. Rosen, S., Metaphysics in Ordinary Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). —, ‘Nothing and Dialectic’, in S. Rosen (ed.), Metaphysics in Ordinary Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). —, The Limits of Analysis (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000). —, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000). Rosenkranz, S., ‘Priest and the Bishop’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 87 (2006), 335–47. Rundle, B., Why there is Something rather than Nothing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Sacks, M., ‘Cognitive Closure and the Limits of Understanding’, Ratio, 7 (1994), 26–42. Sartre, J. -P., Existentialism Is a Humanism (Paris: Nagel, 1946). Schopenhauer, A., Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, volume 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Searle, J., The Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin Books, 1996). Shakespeare, W., Macbeth (1606). Shapiro, S. and Wright, C., ‘All Things Indefinitely Extensible’, in A. Rayo and G. Uzquiano (eds), Absolute Generality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Sheehan, T., ‘A Paradigm Shift in Heidegger Research’, Continental Philosophy Review, 32 (2001), 183–202. —, ‘Dasein’, in H. L. Dreyfus and M. A. Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 193–213. Sheppard, D., ‘The Reading Affair: On Why Philosophy is not “Philosophical” Through and Through’, in S. Glendinning (ed.), Arguing with Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 121–34. Slote, M., Beyond Optimizing: A Study of Rational Choice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). Smith, P., ‘Absolute Generality’, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, 14 (2008), 398–401. Spinosa, C., ‘Derrida and Heidegger’, in H. L. Dreyfus and H. Hall (eds), Heidegger: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 270–97.

296

Bibliography

St Anselm, Monologion, trans. S. N. Deane (Chicago: Open Court, 1903). St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. J. Shaw (Hayes Barton Press, 2005). Stone, A., ‘Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics’, in S. Mulhall (ed.), Martin Heidegger, International Library of Essays in the History of Social and Political Thought (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 217–44. Stump. E. and Kretzmann, N., ‘Eternity’, in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (accessed 3 September 2012). Teichmann, R., Abstract Entities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992). Thomson, G., On the Meaning of Life (South Melbourne: Wadsworth, 2002). Vallicella, W. F., ‘Thinking About Nothing’, Maverick Philosopher, http://www. maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/08/thinking-aboutnothing.html (accessed 11 April 2012). Vanhoozer, K. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Van Inwagen, P., ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 70 (1998), 95–110. Vycinas, V., Earth and Gods (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961). Ward, G., ‘Deconstructive Theology’, in K. J. Vanhoozer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 76–91. Wiggins, D., Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967). Williamson, T., ‘Everything’, Philosophical Perspectives, 17 (2003), 415–65. Witherspoon, E., ‘Much Ado About The Nothing: Carnap and Heidegger on Logic and Metaphysics’, in C. G. Prado (ed.), A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003), pp. 1–20. Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations, revised edn, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974). —, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge, 1994). Wittgenstein, L., with von Wright, G. H. (eds), Culture and Value, trans. P. Winch (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980). Wood, D., Thinking after Heidegger (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). Yablo, S., ‘Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53 (1993), 1–42. Yandell, K., ‘Some Varieties of Ineffability’, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 6 (1975), 167–79. Young, J., Heidegger’s Later Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Zarader, M., ‘Phenomenality and Transcendence’, in J. E. Faulconer (ed.), Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 106–19. Zimmerman, M. E., ‘Heidegger, Buddhism and Deep Ecology’, in C. Guignon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 240–69.

Index acknowledgement  147–9, 165–6, 219–20, 222–6 Adams, Douglas  167–8, 189 afterlife see immortality All-in-One principle see domain principle Angst  10, 15–16, 18, 20, 56, 103 Aristotle  11, 81, 83 Bass, Alan  36 Beall, J. C.  86 Berkeley, George  98, 209 Beyng  12–13, 19–22, 24–8, 40–5, 103, 106–16, 122, 126, 185–8, 191 Braine, David  217 Brecht, Bertolt  2 Buddha  194 Caputo, John D.  128, 134 Carnap, Rudolf  4, 9–10, 14–15, 29–35, 49–50, 52–3, 56, 62–3, 87, 107, 118, 127, 129, 147, 149, 163 Cavell, Stanley  147–50, 165–6, 181, 219–20, 222 Conception Schema  210 Cooper, David E.  168, 194–7 Critchley, Simon  31 Dasein  11–13, 16–22, 25–8, 57, 103–4, 107, 113, 129, 161 death  1, 103–4, 196 Dennett, Daniel  212 Derrida, Jacques  4, 22, 34–45, 94, 105–7, 109, 111, 114–17, 121, 123–31, 134–42, 144–6, 148, 161, 165–6, 173, 178, 181, 188, 194, 196, 202, 224, 231 Descartes, Rene  11, 13 dialetheism  56, 84–101 différance  35–41, 43–5, 121, 125–7, 135, 138–40, 142, 148–9, 161, 196, 231

Dilthey, Wilhelm  168 domain principle  61, 65, 96, 101 Efird, David  77 Ein Sof  185–8, 190–1, 204–6 emptiness  194–7 empty world see metaphysical nihilism enframing  23–6, 31, 106–7, 109, 111 Ereignis  25–8, 107, 113, 115 everything  59–67, 69–74, 82, 88–90, 100–1, 123, 167–8, 185, 188, 194, 214, 216–17 explosion, principle of  86–7, 90–3 fictionalism (about abstract objects)  76 fideism  222–3 Fine, Kit  64 Frege, Gottlob  50 Fried, Gregory  20 Friedman, Michael  32 Garfield, Jay  195–6 Gasché, Rodolphe  41 Gellman, Jerome  207 Glendinning, Simon  127 God  75, 129–35, 156–8, 166–7, 170, 198, 200–4, 206–7, 217–21, 226 grace  217–21, 226–7 Greisch, Jean  115 Guignon, Charles  20, 40 Han, Béatrice  130 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  117, 150–7 Heidegger, Martin  4, 9–35, 37–45, 52–9, 62–3, 65, 74, 78–9, 81, 87–8, 94–5, 101–18, 122, 126–7, 129–30, 132, 136, 147, 149, 161, 163, 185–7, 189, 194 Helm, Paul  203 Hopkins, Jasper  205

298

Index

Horner, Robyn  131, 134, 137 Houlgate, Stephen  150–3, 155–7 Husserl, Edmund  32, 134

Moshe ben Maimon  204 Mulhall, Stephen  18, 103–5, 147, 150

Jesus Christ  218–19, 226 John Scottus Eriugena  204, 206

Nagarjuna  95, 194, 196 Nagel, Thomas  2, 170–3, 177, 182, 199, 208, 214–15 neo-Meinongianism see Meinongianism Nicholas of Cusa  204–6 Nietszche, Friedrich  2, 131 nonsense  78, 123, 147, 149–50, 163–6, 168, 190, 223–4, 229 austere  78, 164–6 substantial  78, 164 Nozick, Robert  2, 169–73, 177, 184–91, 201, 204–6, 215 Nygren, Anders  219, 221

Kant, Immanuel  11, 13, 20, 24, 105, 150–1 Käufer, Stephan  18, 107 Kierkegaard, Søren  117, 222 Kockelmans, Joseph J.  115 Krell, David Farrell  10, 22, 25 Kriegel, Uriah  212–13

omnis determinatio est negatio  89–91, 120, 138, 140, 172–3, 208, 219, 221 ontico-ontological difference see ontological difference ontological difference  35, 40–2, 44, 129–33

l’adonné  133, 135 laws of logic  15–16, 20, 57, 72, 78, 86, 88–92, 111, 151, 186–7 law of identity  57 law of non-contradiction  57, 86, 88–92, 151, 187 law of the excluded middle  57, 186 Levinas, Emmanuel  136 Lewis, David  75, 87 logical laws see laws of logic Lowe, E. J.  75–6 Luther, Martin  218–19

Pallis, Marco  218 paradox  1, 14–15, 35, 40, 44, 60–2, 64–5, 92–3, 94–7, 99 Liar  92–3, 94 Russell’s  60–1, 64–5 sorites  92 Paramaartha  207 parameterization  97, 128, 151, 186 Parfit, Derek  227 Parmenides  51 Pearce, David  174–5 Perrett, Roy  203 Pöggeler, Otto  113–14 poiesis  24–6, 40, 106, 109 Polt, Richard  13, 17, 20–1, 26 possible worlds  72, 74–8, 126, 188 empty (see metaphysical nihilism) realism about  75 semantics  75, 77 strict actualism about  75 Priest, Graham  84, 86–98, 100–1, 125, 195–6, 209–10 principle of explosion see explosion, principle of

immortality  1, 184, 201–3, 221–2 Inclosure Schema  94, 96, 98, 100–1 indefinite extensibility  61–3, 65, 67–8 ineffability  15–16, 119, 186, 194, 196 infinity  79, 94, 101, 135, 137, 145, 163, 171–3, 187–8, 192, 205 Inwood, Michael  12, 17 iteration, reflexive see reflexive iteration

McDowell, John  162 McGinn, Colin  208, 211–14 Maker, William  150, 156–7 Marion, Jean-Luc  114, 128–39, 143, 146, 154, 203, 220 Meinongianism  50–1, 70, 96–7 metaphysical nihilism  75–7, 126, 188 Metz, Thaddeus  166–8, 171, 184, 198, 200–1, 204, 226 Miller, Barry  50–1 Moore, A. W.  166

Index Prior, A. N.  73 Pseudo-Dionysius  204, 206 pseudo-question see pseudo-statement pseudo-statement  9, 30, 33, 52–4, 56 Quine, Willard Van Orman  50 reflexive iteration  102–6, 108, 111, 116, 118–23, 140, 146, 149, 165–6, 169–71, 183–5, 187–92, 196–7, 199–200, 202–4, 206–9, 214–15, 219, 222 regulative ideal  162, 205–6 Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gonzalo  76, 78 Rosen, Stanley  79–84, 89 Rosenkranz, Sven  208–10, 214 Rundle, Bede  164 Russell, Betrand  50, 61 paradox (see paradox, Russell’s) St Anselm  204 St Augustine  186 St Paul  200 St Teresa  207 Sartre, Jean-Paul  20, 22, 105 satisficing  178–82 saturated phenomenon  128, 133–5, 137 Saussure, Ferdinand de  36 Schopenhauer, Arthur  200–1 Searle, John  34, 225 self-identity  66, 68, 70–3, 215–17 set theory  60–2, 64, 80, 94, 96, 212 von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel  60 Zermelo-Fraenkel  60 Sheehan, Thomas  115–16 Sheppard, Darren  39 Slote, Michael  178–81

something see thing sortal  65–6, 70, 74, 214 Spinosa, Charles  43 Stone, Abraham  32, 55 Stoneham, Tom  77 Swinburne, Richard  203 Teichmann, Roger  73 thing  62, 64–74, 89–90, 96–9, 101, 112, 115, 155, 164, 194, 214–16, 229–30 thinking (Heideggerian)  15, 20–1, 25, 57, 107, 109–11, 113–14 emplacing  113–14 originary  15, 20–1, 25, 57, 107, 109–11 Thomson, Garrett  188 Vallicella, William F.  77 Van Inwagen, Peter  75, 77–8 Vienna Circle  14, 29 von Neumann, John  60 Vycinas, Vincent  27 Ward, Graham  135–6, 220 Wiggins, David  2 Williamson, Timothy  74 Winfield, Richard Dien  150 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  10, 22, 30, 33, 39, 42, 54, 64, 84, 145, 150, 162–6, 168, 189–90, 203, 225 Wood, David  10 Yablo, Stephen  72 Zarader, Marlène  138, 143

299

300

301

302

303

304

305

306