DOCSLIB.ORG

On Pillowing One's Skull: Zhuangzi and Heidegger on Death

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
On Pillowing One's Skull: Zhuangzi and Heidegger on Death Front. Philos. China 2016, 11(3): 483–500 DOI 10.3868/s030-005-016-0034-6 SPECIAL THEME David Chai On Pillowing One’s Skull: Zhuangzi and Heidegger on Death Abstract Martin Heidegger famously declares that Dasein does not perish but experiences its demise, and that death stands before us as something to be anticipated. This idea of being-towards-death is an anticipation of possibility, of becoming authentically free for one’s death. If we take Heidegger’s view of death and compare it to that of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi, we notice that the latter also holds death in an unusual light. For Zhuangzi, death is possibility not because it symbolizes the perfection of being but insofar as it reveals its entanglements. This paper will thus argue in support of the Daoist notion that death is neither to be feared nor does it serve as the end of one’s contribution to the world. It will also take the stance that death qua nothingness is both a corporeal and metaphorical embodiment of Dao in that death and nothingness reflect the natural praxis of Dao to be still, empty, and quiet. In order to facilitate our analysis, we will focus on the story of Zhuangzi and the roadside skull, a story that has Zhuangzi pillowing said skull from which he realizes that life is but a pillowing of death. Keywords Zhuangzi, death, Heidegger, meontology Nothing is more vital to a philosophy of life than death; indeed, our entire conceptualization of existence is predicated upon holding back the nihilistic forces of non-existence. Many of the world’s religions and philosophical traditions have sought to elucidate the nature of death. Indeed, many of the world’s moral systems are colored by a dichotomist vision of death and life. What is more, when we are not engaged in ethical debates over the nature of death, we happily psychologize it, hoping to justify our deep-seated resentment at being deprived of life’s gift. Occasionally, however, a figure arises whose conceptualization of death is so unique that the world is forced to pause and re-evaluate its normative sensibilities. David Chai ( ) Department of Philosophy, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China E-mail: [email protected] 484 David Chai One of the greatest intellectual figures of the modern era is without doubt Martin Heidegger. Heidegger is one of the few Western philosophers to see death as contributing to the perfection of being. Writing that Dasein does not simply perish but experiences its own demise, death stands before humanity as an event of anticipation. That man is being-towards-death is to anticipate the possibility of becoming free for one’s death. Heidegger believes that authentic living should not be impeded in the face of one’s own mortality; indeed, one can live a fuller life knowing that one’s time is finite and that the exhaustion of said time can occur at any moment. As for what Heidegger means by death, it is an indefinite something, inevitable, non-relational, and cannot be overtaken. If we take Heidegger’s view of death and compare it to that of the Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi, we notice that the latter also holds death in an unusual light. For Zhuangzi, death is possibility not because it symbolizes the perfection of human being; rather, it reveals the entanglements of life. As humanity can learn as much from death as it can from life, to cherish the latter while despising the former is both unnatural and self-defeating. What the world gets out of death is an intimate familiarity with its rhythmic, cyclical patterning. To look at death from the Daoist perspective is to subscribe to the belief that death and life are mutually dependent, co-arising modalities of Dao. This is not to say that death and life are relative, even meaningless; rather, what is meant is that Dao equalizes both in its meontological oneness such that humanity no longer feels compelled to elevate one whilst demoting the other. In this way, death is more than a partner to life; it manifests itself in and through all that is alive. Bearing the above in mind, this paper will argue in support of the Daoist notion that death is not something to be feared and that it does not mark the end of one’s contribution to the world. The paper will additionally take the stance that death qua nothingness is both a corporeal and metaphorical embodiment of Dao in that death and nothingness reflect the natural praxis of Dao to be still, empty, and quiet. In order to facilitate our analysis, we will focus on the story of Zhuangzi’s encounter with a roadside skull, a story that has Zhuangzi pillowing said skull from which he realizes that life is but a pillowing of death. In this way, the skull is transformed from an image of man’s extinction to a source of life as the skull of the world. 1 Introduction We begin our analysis with a brief overview of four major streams of inquiry into Zhuangzi’s notion of death, starting with Wu Kuang-ming who sees the story of the roadside skull as emblematic of an over-arching concern with the processes of change taking place in the world: “A thing’s change involves both growth into On Pillowing One’s Skull: Zhuangzi and Heidegger on Death 485 itself and death into species-transformation…death and life are two aspects in the rounds of species-changes among things” (Wu 1990, 70). This theme, that death and life are the natural reversal of one another, is picked up by many others, and rightly so. Daniel Coyle, for example, holds that “[the sage] discloses the continuity between nature and man in all their processions, and thus reveals the culmination of the Zhuangzian attitude(s) toward death…as one of the ‘natural’ transformations of heaven and earth” (Coyle 1998, 204). Brian Lundberg essentially says the same thing: “Death is looked upon as a natural part of the process of birth, growth, decay, and transformation” (Lundberg 1998, 216). Roger Ames argues that, for Zhuangzi, “death is the indeterminate aspect that makes process, change, complexity, and novelty possible. It can be understood as a positive, enabling presence rather than a negative, disabling absence. Death does not inhibit or subvert life, but stimulates and drives it, making it more intense and poignant” (Ames 1998, 54). Hans-Georg Moeller refines Ames’ argument by dividing change qua process into an ontology of process and an ontology of substance whereby, “on the basis of an ontology of process, death does not bring about any substantial loss—since there is nothing substantial in the first place. Nothing of the person who is now alive will be dead; one will rather turn into something else. Therefore, one does not really die, because when one is dead, it is something else that is dead” (Moeller 2004, 84). The above views can be said to constitute one interpretive mode of reading Zhuangzi’s notion of death. A second methodological reading approaches death from a psychological orientation. Chad Hansen, for example, cites the role of the mind. Since the mind is naturally skeptically about what death entails, or what follows it, Hansen thus argues that “Zhuangzi’s conversation with the skull illustrates the possibility that something we do not ‘see’ could make our common-sense judgment seem foolish” (Hansen 2003, 144). Paul Goldin notes that when the skull appears to Zhuangzi in a dream, “the interlocutor [i.e., the skull] looks suspiciously like an immaterial soul” (Goldin 2003, 231). Knowing whether one survives death in the form of the soul is an impossible task according to Mark Berkson: “Zhuangzi’s skepticism reminds us that we simply do not, and cannot, know what happens after death” (Berkson 2011, 193). What is more, “by deconstructing the temporal distinctions that underlie our conceptions of an absolute beginning (birth) and an absolute ending (death), Zhuangzi points to a realm of no birth and no death; instead, he suggests that there is simply an ongoing series of transformations” (Berkson 2011, 200). Going one step further, Chris Fraser argues that death terminates one’s ability to act as an ethical agent: “The Zhuangist stance rests ultimately on the appeal of a certain ethical or aesthetic attitude toward life, death, and the world, rather than on a rationally compelling argument, and thus it cannot claim to be the uniquely ‘right’ way of approaching death” (Fraser 2013, 486 David Chai 411). Out of this, the result is that “our death is the extinction of our capacity for agency—our de 德 [moral virtue]” (Fraser 2013, 425). An alternative psychological apparatus is built around the emotions and how one’s grief shapes the relationship humans have with death. Amy Olberding is a proponent of this approach: “The core problem attaching to Zhuangzi’s grief is that, however brief and spontaneous it may be, it requires the judgment that death is a disvalue…such judgments may be tacitly made, never rising to the level of conscious understanding, but there can be no grief where death is not negatively valued” (Olberding 2007, 343). Olberding’s reading is supported by Jung Lee, who holds that our reaction to death is both skeptical and emotional: “For Zhuangzi, the appropriate emotional and behavioral response to death is not dread, anxiety, or fear but equanimity and acceptance—equanimity based on skepticism of the value of life and acceptance based on the view that death represents a mere episode in the larger narrative of the cosmos” (Lee 2014, 100).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Fyodorov's Meontology
    III. NON-STANDARD TRAITS OF 20TH CENTURY AND RECENT PHILOSOPHY 157 Fyodorov’s Meontology Myroslav Feodosijevič Hryschko (University of Ljubljana) Abstract The text treats the philosophy of Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov as a meontology; that is, as a metaphysics irreducible to ontology. This treatment starts from a certain non-ontological symptom within Fyodorov’s texts and develops two philosophemes found in The Philosophy of the Common Task: The Task qua immortality and resurrection, and Fyodorov’s shift of ontol- ogy from the question “Why does the existing exist?” to “Why do the living die?” Resurrection and immortality are not developed as some ethical re- joinder to the latter question but rather, both philosophemes are posited to- gether as constitutive of a prospective Fyodorovian meontology. Using the contemporary speculative anti-humanism of Badiou, Brassier, Grant, Meil- lassoux, etc., and the anthropic-transcendental lineage of Kant and Heideg- ger as points of both accession and tension, the possibility of resurrection and immortality coupled with the death of being suggests the excision of any constancy or necessity to ontology, to both Being or beings, thus entail- ing the rudiments of such a meontology. 1. Introduction The metabasis eis allo genos that is Fyodorov’s transposition of the ontological question “Why does the existing exist?” to “Why do the living die?”1 is not a vitalism; it is not an appropriation of ontology in terms of a theoretical concern accorded to what may be provisionally formulated as a problem of the organic. This misprision is coextensive to the misprision concerning the decisive status of resurrection and immortality in The Phi- losophy of the Common Task.
    [Show full text]
  • Being Is Double
    Being is double Jean-Luc Marion and John Milbank on God, being and analogy Nathan Edward Lyons B. A. (Adv.) (Hons.) This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy School of Philosophy Australian Catholic University Graduate Research Office Locked Bag 4115 Fitzroy, Victoria 3065 1st March 2014 i ABSTRACT This thesis examines the contemporary dispute between philosopher Jean-Luc Marion and theologian John Milbank concerning the relation of God to being and the nature of theological analogy. I argue that Marion and Milbank begin from a shared opposition to Scotist univocity but tend in opposite directions in elaborating their constructive theologies. Marion takes an essentially Dionysian approach, emphasising the divine transcendence “beyond being” to such a degree as to produce an essentially equivocal account of theological analogy. Milbank, on the other hand, inspired particularly by Eckhart, affirms a strong version of the Thomist thesis that God is “being itself” and emphasises divine immanence to such a degree that the analogical distinction between created and uncreated being is virtually collapsed. Both thinkers claim fidelity to the premodern Christian theological tradition, but I show that certain difficulties attend both of their claims. I suggest that the decisive issue between them is the authority which should be granted to Heidegger’s account of being and I argue that it is Milbank’s vision of post-Heideggerian theological method which is to be preferred. I conclude that Marion and Milbank give two impressive contemporary answers to the ancient riddle of “double being” raised in the Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s “Parmenides,” a riddle which queries the relation between absolute First being and derived Second being.
    [Show full text]
  • A Buddhist Inspiration for a Contemporary Psychotherapy
    1 A BUDDHIST INSPIRATION FOR A CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOTHERAPY Gay Watson Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. 1996 ProQuest Number: 10731695 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731695 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT It is almost exactly one hundred years since the popular and not merely academic dissemination of Buddhism in the West began. During this time a dialogue has grown up between Buddhism and the Western discipline of psychotherapy. It is the contention of this work that Buddhist philosophy and praxis have much to offer a contemporary psychotherapy. Firstly, in general, for its long history of the experiential exploration of mind and for the practices of cultivation based thereon, and secondly, more specifically, for the relevance and resonance of specific Buddhist doctrines to contemporary problematics. Thus, this work attempts, on the basis of a three-way conversation between Buddhism, psychotherapy and various themes from contemporary discourse, to suggest a psychotherapy that may be helpful and relevant to the current horizons of thought and contemporary psychopathologies which are substantially different from those prevalent at the time of psychotherapy's early years.
    [Show full text]
  • Print This Article
    Levinas and the Anticolonial Patrick D. Anderson Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy - Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, Vol XXV, No 1 (2017) 150-181. Vol XXV, No 1 (2017) ISSN 1936-6280 (print) ISSN 2155-1162 (online) DOI 10.5195/jffp.2017.721 www.jffp.org This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This journal is operated by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program, and is co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy | Revue de la philosophie française et de langue française Vol XXV, No 1 (2017) | www.jffp.org | DOI 10.5195/jffp.2017.721 Levinas and the Anticolonial Patrick D. Anderson Texas A & M University The intellectual has been defined as the one who always misses the mark but who, at least, aims very far. – Emmanuel Levinas1 Over the last two decades, the various attempts to “radicalize” Levinas have resulted in two interesting and important debates: one the one hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and colonialism and racism, and on the other hand, there is the debate regarding the relationship between Levinas and Judaism. Much to the detriment of both, these two conversations have largely been treated as separate issues, and when they have been brought together, the results have been either superficial or violent. For example, Robert Bernasconi and Robert Eaglestone have taken an identity politics approach, insisting that Levinas’s Jewish identity is a source of strength for projects that put him into conversation with colonialism.2 On this view, Levinas’s subaltern status provides enough distance between his work and Western imperialism that, with a few minor adjustments, his philosophy can be brought to bear on colonialism and racism without issue.
    [Show full text]
  • Being of God: a Trinitarian Critique of Postmodern A/Theology
    RICE UNIVERSITY (DE)CONSTRUCTING THE (NON)BEING OF GHD: A TRINITARIAN CRITIQUE OF POSTMODERN A/THEOLOGY by B. KEITH PUTT A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY APPROVED, THESIS COMMITTEE Niels C. Nielsen, Jr.,Director Professor Emeritus of Philoso¬ phy and Religious Thought Werner H. Kelber Isla Carroll Turner and Percy E. Turner Professor of Reli¬ gious Studies Stjeven G. Crowell Associate Professor of Philoso¬ phy Houston, Texas May, 1995 Copyright B. Keith Putt 1995 ABSTRACT (DE) CONSTRUCTING THE (NON) BEING OF G8D: A TRINITARIAN CRITIQUE OF POSTMODERN A/THEOLOGY by B. KEITH PUTT Langdon Gilkey maintained in 1969 that theological language was in "ferment" over whether "God" could be ex¬ pressed in language. He argued that "radical theology," specifically the kenotic christology in Altizer's "death of God" theology, best represented that ferment. Some twenty- five years later, in the postmodern context of the 1990's, whether one can speak of God and, if so, how remain promi¬ nent issues for philosophers of religion and theologians. One of the most provocative contemporary approaches to these questions continues to focus on the "death of God." Mark Taylor's a/theology attempts to "do" theology after the divine demise by thinking the end of theology without ending theological thinking. Taylor's primary thesis, predicated upon his reading of Jacques Derrida's deconstruetive philos¬ ophy, is that God gives way to the sacred and the sacred may be encountered only within the "divine milieu" of writing. God is dead, the self is dead, history has no structure, and language cannot be totalized in books; consequently, theo¬ logy must be errant and textually disseminative.
    [Show full text]
  • Taiwanese Philosophy and the Preservation of Confucian Tradition International Conference
    Taiwanese Philosophy and the Preservation of Confucian Tradition International Conference 17-18 October 2019 Chamber Hall of the University of Ljubljana Organized by: University of LjubljanaġİġEARL Ljubljana and Department of Asian Studies Center for Chinese Studies and National Central Library in Taiwan Taiwanese Philosophy and the Preservation of Confucian Tradition International Conference Statement of Purpose Although the philosophical currents in modern and contemporary Taiwan belong to the most influential and important streams of thought in contemporary East Asian theory, they are still unrecognized as specifically Taiwanese. The main reasons for the immense importance of Taiwanese philosophy for East Asia and the contemporary world are twofold. First, they can be found in its contributions to the preservation of traditional Chinese, especially Confucian thought. Secondly, its development of specific innovative philosophical approaches and systems profoundly influenced the theoretical discourses in the entire East Asian region. The philosophical currents in modern Taiwan were mainly developed during the second half of 20th century, in which the philosophical theory in mainland China was largely limited to the Sinization of Marxist thought. Hence, for many decades, Taiwanese philosophy represented the only driving force of developing, modernizing and upgrading traditional Chinese thought and its syntheses with Western thought. Hence, they soon also gained a wide spread popularity in most of the other East Asian societies that were traditionally influenced by classical Confucian thought, as for example Japan and South Korea. The conference, organized by Ljubljana University, the EARL in Ljubljana and the TRCCS at the National Central Library in Taipei under the academic leadership by Professor Jana S.
    [Show full text]
  • The Carno- Phallogocentric Kernel of Animal Rights Discourses
    Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Vol. VIII, No. 3, 2016 0975-2935 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.05 Full Text: http://rupkatha.com/V8/n3/05_Animal_Rights_Discourses.pdf Beyond the Humanist Ethics of Vegetarianism: The Carno- Phallogocentric Kernel of Animal Rights Discourses Swayamdipta Das Currently an M.Phil Research Scholar in English Literature at the University of Calcutta. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8551-5518. Email: [email protected]. Received May 31, 2016; Revised July 20, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016 Abstract The paper would attempt to dwell into the wider philosophical and ontological implications of vegetarianism and in the process offer a deconstructive critique of the more physicalist currency of vegetarianism advocated by many animal rights activists, philosophers and writers like J.M. Coetzee. Taking up Jacques Derrida’s notion of Anthropocentric “Carno-Phallogocentrism” , the paper would argue how any parochial notion of vegetarianism (including those by J.M. Coetzee in Elizabeth Costello) actually reserves the kernel of a certain anthropomorphic Enlightenment humanism and thus partakes in a kind of epistemic violence upon the animal “other” even while it poses to speak on behalf of them. The trajectory of this paper would take up post-humanist thinkers like Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas to trace the kernel of anthropocentric humanism even in the positing of the post-cartesian subject and attempt to locate an etymological anthropocentric inheritance of the same in the differential humanism of animal philosophers like J.M. Coetzee. Keywords: Cultural Vegetarianism, Carno-Phallogocentrism, Conditional ethicality, animal rights, post- humanism.
    [Show full text]
  • University of Glasgow but What Is It That This Man Is Bringing Us? Let's
    WARD BLANTON University of Glasgow “REAPPEARANCE OF PAUL , ‘S ICK ’” : FOUCAULT ’S BIOPOLITICS AND THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PASOLINI ’S APOSTLE But what is it that this man is bringing us? Let’s don’t forget that in the deepest parts of himself he is a slave of law. The archetypical idea which he makes of God corresponds exactly to the archetype of the idea of power. -Intellectuals listening to Paul’s house arrest speeches in Rome (i.e., his declamations in the Village of New York City) 1 Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are. …We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries. -Conversational comment of Michel Foucault 2 Reappearance of Paul, ‘sick’ . -Stage Direction of Pasolini 3 Introduction: (Saint) Foucault with (Saint) Paul—by way of (Saint) Pasolini t is worth reflecting on why much of what now fits under the more general heading of the “turn to religion” in philosophy and critical theory Imay be described as organized around high profile discussions of Paul by Jacob Taubès, Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Slavoj Žižek. On this score, it still seems safe to claim that precious little unpacking of this phenomenon has yet occurred, above all because such labour requires sustained interdisciplinary work that is (let’s face it) not easy in the increasingly routinized, professionalized, streamlined “research time” of the contemporary academic. Without mourning or lamentation, however, it is nonetheless true to claim that most philosophers still do not know the basics of the past fifty years of biblical scholarship on Paul.
    [Show full text]
  • Chai, David, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019, 216 Pages
    Dao (2019) 18:291–294 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-019-09663-6 Chai, David, Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019, 216 pages Eric S. Nelson1 Published online: 1 April 2019 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Recent Anglophone philosophical interpretations of the Zhuangzi 莊子 often tend to construe the text (based on selective ahistorical readings of isolated passages) as articulating forms of skepticism, relativism, and nihilism, relying on modern Western epistemic and normative categories unfamiliar to classical Chinese discourses and the composite multilayered text associated with the enigmatic figure ZHUANG Zhou 莊周.In Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, David Chai offers a philosophically systematic and hermeneutically nuanced elucidation of the Zhuangzi in relation to its historical context, subsequent Chinese reception, and contemporary philosophical concerns. The author displays great erudition by taking into consideration the historical context of the text by contrasting it with recently uncovered excavated texts such as the Hengxian 恒先 (Primordial Constancy)andHuangdi Sijing 黃帝四經 (Four Classics of the Yellow Emperor), the Daodejing 道德經, and other early Daoist and eclectic sources, and the extended history and variety of Chinese commentaries that are frequently ignored in Western philosophical accounts of the Zhuangzi, thereby revealing the text’s complexity and richness. Chai counterpoises the commentary of GUO Xiang 郭象, which through its rendition of the text has deeply shaped the Western discourse concerning the Zhuangzi, with an array of other sources that indicate more hermeneu- tically and conceptually satisfying alternative interpretations (48). In this first of three envisioned volumes (173), Chai’sanalysispromisestotransform Zhuangzi studies by providing a historically informed, textually nuanced, philosophical interpretation of the neglected cosmological and ontological dimensions of the Zhuangzi in relation to its fundamental question of nothingness.
    [Show full text]
  • Signposts to Silence Metaphysical Mysticism: Theoretical Map and Historical Pilgrimages HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2
    HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2 J.S. Krüger Signposts to Silence Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2 Signposts to Silence Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages Published by AOSIS (Pty) Ltd, 15 Oxford Street, Durbanville 7550, Cape Town, South Africa Postnet Suite #110, Private Bag X19, Durbanville 7551, South Africa Tel: +27 21 975 2602 HTS Religion & Society Series Fax: +27 21 975 4635 Email: [email protected] Volume 2 Website: https://www.aosis.co.za Copyright © J.S. Krüger. Licensee: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd The moral right of the author has been asserted. Cover Image: Photograph and background image by J.S. Krüger entitled, ‘Original Rubbing’. All rights reserved. No unauthorised duplication allowed. Published in 2018 Impression: 1 ISBN: 978-1-928396-45-1 (print) ISBN: 978-1-928396-46-8 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-928396-59-8 (pdf) DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2018.BK52 How to cite this work: Krüger, J.S., 2018, ‘Signposts to Silence. Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages’, in HTS Religion & Society Series Volume 2, pp. i–546, AOSIS, Cape Town. Signposts to Silence HTS Religion & Society Series ISSN: 2617-5819 Series Editor: Andries G. van Aarde Metaphysical mysticism: theoretical map and historical pilgrimages Printed and bound in South Africa. Listed in OAPEN (http://www.oapen.org), DOAB (http://www.doabooks.org/) and indexed by Google Scholar. Some rights reserved. This is an open access publication. Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), a copy of which is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.
    [Show full text]
  • Nihilism and Emptiness
    Nihilism and Emptiness The Collapse of Representations and the Question of Nothingness Giancarlo Vianello In this paper I would like to introduce some of the themes I am investigating as part of a larger monograph. They have to do with current modes of thinking and spiritual conditions in the West and in the globalized world that are permeated by nihilism and its resultant : devaluation of values, with the collapse of representation, and hence the reappearance of the question of nothingness. When dealing with nihilism, a distinction must be drawn between reli- gious and historical nihilism. Religious nihilism is a universal cultural attitude found in different civilizations. It is a form of nihilism perceived as opposing values that are thought to be unnatural, or as a reaction to a repudiated reality. Spiritual history is a process of adaptation of the sys- tem of values, sometimes very slow, sometimes abrupt. In the latter case, nihilistic élites add to the crisis, often in the name of mystic experiences. As Gershom Scholem (1974) has masterly pointed out, religious nihilism has always been present and eager to speed up a time of epochal crisis. We may point, for example, to a kind of Gnostic nihilism, in which transcendence of the world identifies with a rejection of the world, and whose überweltich-gegenweltich character stands opposed to the Greek idea of kosmos and the Jewish concept of creation. In this regard, Hans 22 giancarlo vianello | 23 Jonas notes that Gnostic nihilism, unlike the Indian variety, does not show indifference to the world or wallow in the lack of foundations pro- duced by nothingness.
    [Show full text]
  • Doctoral Program in Philosophy -PHIL 731-The Meontology of Nothing
    Content Course Code Course Name Semester Theory Practice Lab Credit ECTS PHIL 731 The Meontology of Nothing 1 3 0 0 3 8 Prerequisites Admission Requirements Language of Instruction Turkish Course Type Elective Course Level Doctoral Degree Objective In this course, we will examine the ontological status of the One and the Multiple. We will treat Alain Badiou’s Hegelian dialectic and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of “the event” and “the multiple” together, passing through non-ontological traditions of negative theology. Content The One which does not exist (“something” – Etwas – does not exist without determination outside of time and space) gives way to a scission which determines itself either in contradictory opposition or in strong difference (difference in historical time, in positional mediations). Or, the One rests weak and indeterminate (structural or minimal difference where this weak force stems from or hoped for). References Kant, Critique de la Raison Pure Hegel, "Science de la Logique" Alain Badiou, "Théorie du Sujet"; "Etre et l'événement" Gilles Deleuze, "Différence et Répétition", "Nietzsche et la Philosophie" Walter Benjamin, "Sur le Concept de l'Histoire" Theory Topics Week Weekly Contents 1 The main problems of ontology 2 Parmenides and unity 3 Heidegger's comments on Parmenides and Heraclitus 4 Pre-Kantian ontology: Leibnitz and multiplicity, the problem of composability 5 The missing ontology of Kant: the sphere of being and noumenon 6 Transcendental schematism and the problem of multiplicity 7 Reduction of multiplicity to the category of quantitative 8 Diversity in the nature and Kant's theory of teleological judgment 9 The multiplicity of ideas 10 From incongruent knowledge to dialectic 11 The multiplicity as amorphous and indefinable 12 Has dialectic got closed branches? (A.
    [Show full text]