2 Answers

  1. Emptiness as non-filling, temporarily unoccupied space, emptiness as the distance between things (Democritus ' atoms), emptiness as a synonym for space (empty space of the Cosmos), a pause between sounds, a space or caesura between words are not interesting to us here. The most relevant understanding of emptiness is stated in Mahayana – Shunyata Buddhism as the actual world itself, existing as a whole and in all its foundations (dharmas). What is meant here is something other than another image of the otherworldly. We are more interested in this world and its internal boundaries, the projection of which” outside ” of the multi-existing entity supports most conversations about Jenseits. But it is Diesseits – the infinite hereafter – that, from the Buddhist point of view, presents us with the image of our own emptiness and the only experience of transcendence that is accessible to us, which does not turn out to be immanently impossible. It is an attempt to interpret the immanently existent as the underside of Nothing, which is not, however, a forced and compelling Being à la Heidegger, but rather an Emptiness.

    It is emptiness without what it is-emptiness, Emptiness in the absolute dimension, as a concept alternative to the existential understanding of being. Unlike Heidegger's Being, it is not the emptiness of being in genitivus objectivus (in being or among being), but rather the emptiness of being itself in genitivus subjectivus (being as a whole as emptiness). Thus understood, emptiness is not opposed to being, for it is being. But again, not in the sense of the “is” of being, but in the sense of its insignificance and absurdity. Given that emptiness is not equal to nothing, and absurdity is nonsense.

    Emptiness rehabilitates the concept of Nothingness, mystified in Western European ontological discourses. The understanding of Nothing as emptiness is not reduced here either to a logical negation or to the grammatical form of ” no”, without speculating either on the uncertainty of the concept of being, or on the assumption of being as a whole as a really existing something. The nothingness that has so long been used to frighten philosophizing infants, defined positively, regardless of the concrete being – is Emptiness. In this sense, emptiness is a conceptual alternative to the concept of being, which is ostensibly concerned with understanding and revealing what exists, but in fact treats it as a bully, imposing on it at the same time wholeness, unity and finiteness, but depriving it of uncertainty and the ability to become independent of human being and consciousness.

    Heidegger's question “Why is there a being at all,” and not, on the contrary, “nothing?” in this regard, rejects non-being as an abstract negation of being as a whole, the imaginary possibility of non-existence of anything and everything in general, forcing thought to be as its own basis, assimilating Nothing in the course.

    The problem with Heidegger's being is its exclusionary nature. Here Nothing itself is excluded, but in a dialectical way-through its inclusion as the basis and condition of being-in-the-world of man. Although at first glance the idea of a finite here-being looks realistic and liberating, the socio-historical conditions of its origin are obscured. Human life is given the essence and meaning of being, but at the expense of excluding everything that is different from this meaning and being or tries to avoid it. For being, according to Heidegger, not as a “verbal sound”, but as “the fate of the spiritual history of Europe” (“Introduction to Metaphysics”, 1935) is supposed not only to reveal itself in the world as a meaningful being, its own self Dasein, but also to protect itself from the “demons” (its own concept) that are alien and hostile to this self – revelation-Jews, communists and Americans. By sacrificing Emptiness to his quasi-theological worldview, in which the chosen representatives of the “metaphysical people” would live comfortably at the expense of eliminating everything that is not proper and inauthentic, Heidegger actually repressed natural and everyday social existence – “naked life” (J. Agamben) animals and humans. The domestication of Nothingness in Dasein, the domination of Being over non-being and emptiness, has historically turned out to be a real horror for the more sensitive, unconfirmed instances of being (Benjamin, as an example). For behind the being that “is” we ourselves are not the essence of being, but an absurd void. It is not the notorious Nothingness that threatens humanity, but the brutal violence that likes to justify itself with “the fate of Europe” and “the truths of Being”.

  2. This is where the misleading language barrier comes in. By calling something empty, I determine that it does not have any given attributes. Emptiness in the head, for example, or emptiness in the pocket. This is my usual use of the word Void.

    Here, the concept of emptiness, in my opinion, has a completely different meaning, if it can be defined at all. emptiness as an alternative to existence will be more clear when we go from the opposite. Being means complete, defined, filled with meaning and boundaries, able to draw experience and conclusions, and be measured. The void in which being occupies a place is a concept that is not interested in defining anything at all, in being definite, complete, or infinite, or in being at all. For clarity, I will collect a glass of water from the ocean. A glass is an entity (some people type a basin), an ocean is a void. A glass can be measured you can talk about it and build theories and even confirm them with research, but a glass in the ocean does not matter and not because it is small and the ocean is large, it simply does not matter as a glass, as a measure, as a definition. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it makes it easier for me to imagine a void in which there is everything and there is nothing.

Leave a Reply

Categories