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All for nothingAntti Salminen a & Sami Sjberg ba Huhtimenkatu 5 E4, Tampere 33100, Finlandb Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature, FreieUniversitt Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin,GermanyVersion of record first published: 27 Nov 2012.

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ANGELAKIjournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 17 number 3 september 2012

We should differentiate the nothing from that

which is worthless (nul) by maintaining

the idea that what is worthless is precisely that

which has forgotten the nothing.

Baudrillard

Alice: I see nothing.

Cheshire Cat: My. You have good eyes.

There it is, nothing. Or, actually, it is not,which is its sole characteristic. Nothingevades all attempts at conceptualization, even

though language often overshadows and obscures

this fact. Even so, one should distinguish between

different notions of nothing: for instance, nothing

and nothingness. The suffix renders noth-

ingness a noun, whereas nothing is gramma-

tically far more flexible as it can be a noun or

pronoun. Nothing evokes semantics that plays

with ambiguity and polysemy.

Nothing has both positive and negative

connotations, and philosophies that either

exclude or lead to it. Despite the non-linearity

of the Western tradition concerning nothing, it is

quite clear that from Socrates onwards nothing

has been considered inferior to something. For

instance, Aristotle has no room for nothing in

his categories, neither has Plato in his theory

of ideas. Contrary to the apparent hostility

towards nothing in classical metaphysics, Conor

Cunningham outlines a tradition that is founded

on meontotheological nothing. According to him,

a noteworthy early representative of the meon-

totheological tradition was Plotinus (c.20570),

who stated that being and something are inferior

to non-being and nothing (Cunningham xiii, 34).

The ultimate logic of nothing governs meon-

totheological thought, whereas the ultimate

something has been the standard point of

departure in metaphysics since Plato and

Aristotle.

Predictably, the meontotheological nothing

recurs in various religious mysticisms (such as

Kabbalah and apophatic Christian mysticism)

from late Antiquity to the pre-Enlightenment

period, manifesting through themes such

as ineffability, obscurity and unattainability.

In mysticism, nothing represents that which

is beyond the grasp and comprehension a

property most commonly assigned to God.

In other words, it illustrates a religious desire

that is without an object of desire. Eastern

religious thought is topical here as well: Chan and

Zen Buddhism influenced the philosophies of

Heidegger and the Kyoto School.

In addition to these philosophical and theolo-

gical approaches, the essays in this special issue

study the various manifestations of nothing in art.

EDITORIALINTRODUCTION

antti salminensami sjo berg

ALL FOR NOTHING

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/12/0301^6 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2012.722388

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Pliny took advantage of the idea, Shakespeare

and Lewis Carroll toyed with it and Mallarme

made it the aim of his aesthetic pursuits. The

most familiar instances of nothingness in art are

probably the non-representational paintings of

Malevich and the recurring uses of typographical

empty spaces in poetry by authors as varied as

Celan, e.e. cummings and the Russian futurists.

The interplay of art and nothingness culminates

in completely blank books (e.g., George

Maciunas, Isidore Isou) and empty exhibitions

by Yves Klein, Robert Irwin and others. It should

be noted that these experiments were often

spurred on by various forms of mysticism, as

was the case with Malevich, Celan and Isou.

nothing and nihilism

In the existential-phenomenological line of think-

ing nothingness is not only a textual phenomenon

in the strict sense but also a primordial

experience. Experiential nothingness is deeply

rooted in German soil by virtue of the speculative

theology of the High Middle Ages. On the one

hand, Western mystical traditions from, say at

least, Rhine Mysticism onwards, render the

experience of nothingness a holistic experience,

which connects the spiritual subject to every flow

of creation and ultimately to the godhead in

pantheist or pan-entheist manner. On the other,

there is a more obscure current, presumably

originating from gnosticism and its apocryphic

sermons. This trait regards nothingness as a

kind of counter-holism, where nothing relates

to nothing and nothing else. In addition, this

alternative non-identity fuels the gnostic verve of

the apophatic tradition of negative theology.

The modern tradition of the dialectical

metaphysics of nothingness is easily traced back

to Hegels famous passage in the third chapter

of Science of Logic (181213), which provides the

grounding dialectics of Western nothingness

that relates to being and becoming. However,

it is the renegade Hegelian and anarchist Max

Stirner who gives this vision an existential-

political motto in the preface of The Ego and

his Own (1845). All things are nothing to me,

he formulates, and continues: I am not nothing

in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative

nothing [schopferische Nichts], the nothing out of

which I myself as creator create everything (5).

Hence Stirners anarchic ego is asubjective

and devoid of essentialistic substance. With this

gesture, Stirner opens up the possibility of the

empty revolutionary subject that is capable of

leaving the beaten track because of the subjects

radical non-detachment. In fact, this is reminis-

cent of Meister Eckharts negative self, which

Stirner adopts via Hegel. If Stirners Nichts is

atheist and atheological to the point of outright

nihilism, it is his most faithful follower,

Nietzsche, who revitalizes the spiritual urgency

of nothingness. In The Gay Science (1882) one

has to pay attention to the cosmic topography

of the after God situation, which lays the

foundation for the whole of post-Nietzschean

thought. In the words of Nietzsches madman

who seeks God in the market place:

I will tell you. We have killed him you

and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did

we do this? How could we drink up the sea?

Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the

entire horizon? What were we doing when

we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither

is it moving now? Whither are we moving?

Away from all suns? Are we not plunging

continually? Backward, sideward, forward,

in all directions? Is there still any up or

down? Are we not straying, as through an

infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath

of empty space? Has it not become colder?

(Nietzsche 181)

It may be that in the post-Nietzschean era,

namely after the death of God, nothing is the

place (or no-place, utopos) forsaken by the

godhead. If this is true, longing for nothing has

become a placebo for the longing for God. For

instance, Giorgio Agamben highlights the impor-

tance of the experience of nihilism. For him, the

formulation that there is nothing to reveal

becomes the subject of revelation. Yet Agambens

nothing does not simply designate the mean-

inglessness of existence, but rather the absence of

any final (eschatological) revelation (Agamben

34, 160).1 In a similar manner, most of the post-

Nietzschean thought has adopted the atheism of

Nietzsche, which emphasizes a belief in nothing.

editorial introduction

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The belief in nothing constructs a kind of

atheist transcendence, and the transcendental

nothing appearing in texts is a tacit and everyday

revelation, mysticism without mysticism, and an

open horizon of immanent transcendence. It is

worth mentioning that the same abyss without

relief, God without existence, is to be found

mutatis mutandis in another remarkable advo-

cate of gnostically inspired (a)theology, Georges

Bataille. One aspect of his interior experience

(lexperience interieure) is as transgressive as

possible: a sudden encounter with the dead God.

Whereas in Nietzsches thinking God leaves an

empty space after dissolving, Batailles sense of

nothingness summons the absolute spectre, which

continues to haunt contemporary Continental

thought. In other words, many key thinkers of

1900s encountered the radical divine alterity in

nothingness, the ontological status of which was

far from irrefutable.

Active and passive nihilisms, with or without

theological undercurrents, are not, of course, all-

encompassing categories. It is quite surprising

that in Objective Logic (1898), Charles S.

Peirce takes a stance between the two extremes:

The nothing of negation is the nothing of

death, which comes second to, or after, every-

thing. But this pure zero is the nothing of

not having been born. There is no individual

thing, no compulsion, outward nor inward,

no law. (148)

A similar stance is assumed by Blanchot in his

musings about death and dying: the former

is beyond our reach and the latter manifests

our anguish resulting from this fact. However, the

French debate regarding nothing is somewhat

distinct and requires a bit of backtracking.

A key characteristic in the French discussion

concerning nothing is the interplay between

philosophy and literature that addresses philoso-

phical themes, such as existential topics. The

interaction became apparent during the latter

part of the nineteenth century. Victor Hugo

illustrates this characteristic in Les Miserables

(1862) by stating that everything is something

and nothing is not anything (272). Hugo

continues along the lines of Diderot and

DAlembert, according to whom thought and

language always render nothing into something

(Diderot 816).

The beginning of the twentieth century was a

culmination of the French tradition of thought

regarding nothing. Henri Bergsons seminal

Creative Evolution (1907) treats nothing as

utterly alien to everyday life. According to him,

nothing is a pseudo-idea that is merely an

impression produced by language. Bergsons

renowned argument is that nothing is as

absurd as a square circle, which resurfaces

anew in philosophical discussion (Bergson 167).

The Bergsonian view holds that absolute nothing-

ness is comparable to lack of awareness or death

and, hence, it is not within the field of

experience. The ability to imagine nothingness

is merely a characteristic of imagination, not an

ontological foundation.

Bergsons positivist critique stands against the

backdrop of Hegels philosophy. Hegelian dialec-

tics and its emphasis on negativity were pivotal

in French philosophy throughout the twentieth

century. Alexandre Koje`ves lectures on Hegel

in the 1930s resulted in the predominance

of Koje`vian Hegelianism in France, which also

aroused determined anti-Hegelian reactions, one

of these being Batailles idea of interior experi-

ence. Besides Koje`ve, Batailles influences

derive both from Nietzsche and Heidegger, the

grand old man of nothingness-related thinking

in twentieth-century Continental philosophy.

However, perhaps the most renowned popular

application of ontological nothingness derives

from Sartres Being and Nothingness (1943).

According to him, the scope of philosophical

inquiry is broader by means of negation than with

affirmation. Sartres point, which is derived from

Hegel, in all its simplicity, is that negation has

a broader phenomenal scope than affirmation.

His term nihilation (neantisation) refers to

negation on the level of immediate perception

instead of reflexivity. Furthermore, nothingness

is the ontological reality derived from nihilation.

Sartre aims his argument at Bergson, because,

for Sartre, nothingness could not be a part of

consciousness, which is why it necessarily estab-

lishes a separate ontological category. Sartre

hereby emphasizes the fact that nothingness

cannot be named without rendering it an object

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with a false presence. However, the problem is

that even in this manner nothingness is postu-

lated by the conscious subject, which renders

nothing noumenal. In this respect, Sartre proves

to be an essentialist.

nothingness as away of being

The German ideas of nothingness preceding

Heidegger were characterized not only by active

and passive variations but also by ontico-spiritual

transformations. In his mid- and late philosophy

(after the Kehre of the 1930s), Heidegger perfects

his anti-Hegelian and anti-Koje`vian under-

standing of nothingness as a dichotomy-

transcending third term that is not bound to

any negation. The final corrections to his What

is Metaphysics? (1929) reveal that nothingness is

the authentic way to Being and that Being

ultimately fuses with nothingness without result-

ing in any difference.2 Following Heideggers

thought, nothingness is non-dialectical and

does not negate something. Rather, nothing

nothings (Nichts nichtet) and is thus more

originary than the not and negation (Heidegger

86). According to Heidegger, nothingness is not

reducible to negativity, absence or negative

poetics of any kind, nor can it be rendered into

a positive term. Rather, Heidegger names it as a

placeholder (Platzhalter) for Dasein. Just as zero

lies between negative and positive numbers and

appears as part of other numbers (e.g., 0.0093;

10,022), nothingness is not an ultimate end or

beginning of Being but an event of an in-between

within language instead of its apophatic failure.

Here we are far from Rudolf Carnaps and

Bergsons positivist views of nothingness, which

depict nothing as a pseudo-concept and a

saturation point of classical metaphysics.

Challenging Heidegger as a champion of nothing-

ness in his polemic article The Elimination

of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of

Language (1932), Carnap fails to see that in

Heidegger and his tradition of nothingness

rooted in Eckharts vernacular sermons and

Angelus Silesius Cherubinischer Wandersmann

(1674) nothingness is a crucial overcoming of

the very logic of Hegelian negation. Neither does

he credit the experiential quality of nothingness

as mystical and fundamentally ontological topos,

but only a failure of propositional language.

Against this eliminativist background it is not

surprising that the idea of nothingness became

a watershed separating the post-Heideggerian

Continental tradition from the analytical. In

Continental thought, nothingness is understood

as a creative blind spot that would overcome the

double root of Western metaphysics Aristotles

classifying ontology and Platos duplication of

reality. In the legacy of the Vienna Circle,

nothingness is considered a kind of linguistic

fog that should be removed in order to achieve

a scientifically pure language. Depending on

the school of thought, nothingness represents

either a threat or an opportunity. In this

historical and ongoing debate, nothingness

reveals its pre-conceptual and pre-dialectical

power as a non-differentiating concept and an

experience that is an origin, to adopt Benjamins

dictum, as far as it becomes a goal.

Even after Sartre and Heidegger, the Hegelian

identification of being and nothingness is central

in French phenomenology (for instance for

Michel Henry). However, by virtue of anti-

Hegelian philosophers such as Levinas and

Blanchot, the discussion about nothing develops

towards somewhat scattered adaptations of the

concept that branches off to (apophatic) terms

like otherness and abyss, which flicker

at the limits of conceptualization. For instance,

there is no room for pure nothingness in

Derridas thought, in which language plays a

seminal role. Advocating this development is the

fact that even though Derrida does not arrive at a

clear position on nothing, his later philosophy

revolves around the idea. Arguing against

Bergson, Derrida (like Deleuze later on) does

not define the square circle as a logical absurdity.

Rather, even though there is no possible object

the proposition could relate to, the proposition is

meaningful in itself. The grammatical form of the

square circle tolerates a relation to an object

(Derrida 11011). In Speech and Phenomena

(2003), Derrida applies nothing (rien) that lies

between phenomenological dualisms. It is not

pure nothingness but a sort of indefinite and

indefinable limit-state, much as nothingness is

for Heidegger.

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Derridas position contains several key

thoughts about nothing that may best be

described as an intrusion of literary language

into philosophy. The investigation may begin

with death, which Bergson compared with

nothing. For Blanchot and Levinas, death is an

ephemeral blind spot of philosophy. Levinas

points out that Heidegger mistakenly included

death in Dasein, even though death must be

exterior to the individual (cf. Levinas). The point

of the absolute unattainability of death can be

illustrated by comparing death with a black hole.

The event of death is commensurate with the

event horizon. Once a limit has been crossed,

no information, no thought can be transmitted.

In death, individual consciousness ceases to exist

and one can never know ones own death.

As Levinas states, only the death of others can

be known. Hence the event of ones own death

is comparable with that of nothing.

How can we live with nothingness, then? By no

means: nothingness, at least in Western thought,

is a dangerous idea and a radical experience that

has not often been tolerated, but understood as

mere nihilism pure and simple. The counter-

argument for championing nothingness could be

that, after all, foregrounding sheer emptiness

only radicalizes negativity, or, as Werner

Hamacher puts it, mindful of Paul Celans

poetics of nothingness, rendering nothing a

positive danger that threatens many of his

early texts: [. . .] the danger of allowing for

absence merely as the negative of presence, and

thus the danger of wanting to change absence, by

virtue of language, into everlasting Being

(Hamacher 348). Having said this, Hegels

meontic (compared with Spinozas oukontic)

nothingness does not fare any better if we

understand it in terms of the metaphysics of

presence (or absence). Rather, in Celan as well as

in late Heidegger, nothing is not to be taken

metaphysically as a perennial name for an

absolute absence or negation, but as an experi-

ential and dynamic matrix that reveals the

non-foundationality of acting and being (cf.

Schurmann). Such nothing leads to an existential

state of anarchy that has its roots in the mystical

non-detachment of Meister Eckhart as well as the

political Nichts of Stirner and his radical legacy.

nothing today

Amid the current crises, be they ecological,

economic or social, both nihilisms, the passive

and active, are topical again this time as

responses to the collapse of Western hegemony

over the liberal economy and biosphere. Perhaps

the heart of the late-modern capitalist matrix was

really the Stirnerite schopherische Nichts, which

was such a destructive view of nothing bereft of

meaning and out of joint from the start because

of its nihilistic passivity. It almost goes without

saying that the power centres are always empty

(just visit the capitals of capitalism: Brussels,

Beijing, Moscow, Paris or New York), and that

the idea of nothingness is to be found not in the

textual margins but in the inner kernel of late-

modern semiosis. Maybe there is an approaching

momentum in which the active concept of

nothingness could be taken up consciously and

politically, not only as a topos to be meditated.

The potential of revolutionary nothingness is still

largely untapped and has an imprint of Russian

nihilism of the 1800s. Perhaps, and hopefully,

there is a possibility of zero-points (becoming no-

one, owning/owing nothing, having literally

nothing to lose) that could evoke creative

resistance to the current crisis.

Baudrillard envisions the power of nothing

as a kind of non-recoverable resource. Against

the Nietzschean backdrop of passive nihilism,

which entails the exchange of everything to

nothing, he envisions its opposite. Any system

including nothing will face the non-exchange-

ability of nothing, in other words, the impossi-

bility of exchange be it economic, ecologic,

the communication of messages and so on. The

potential of nothing becomes apparent once it is

not regarded as mere rhetoric.

Leibnizs well-known question why is there

something rather than nothing? gains a prag-

matic formulation in this special issue: How is

there nothing rather than something? This

change of perspective to immanent may partially

resolve the Leibnizian paradox, which is, after all,

a Western koan (as nothing is not). For these

reasons our approach to the theme is largely

descriptive: what is at stake, when nothingness

unfolds in thought and writing, in semiosis and

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in experience? Alternatively, formulated into

material form: why is there nothingness

instead of ? Thus nothing is the

remainder between the positive

and negative connotations of

nothing. After the operation of

reduction to nothing, nothing

remains.

notes1 Similar loss of foundation had already surfacedin Russian religious existentialism (Shestov,Berdyaevs Ungrund), which is, however, distinctfrom the nihilism-oriented French existentialism.

2 The original passage reads: Das Nichts als dasAndere zum Seienden ist der Schleier des Seins.Im Sein hat sich anfa nglich jedes Geschick desSeienden schon vollendet (Heidegger 55).

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Levinas, Emmanuel. Totalite et infini. Essais surlexte riorite .The Hague: Nijhoff,1961. Print.

Nietzsche,Friedrich.TheGay Science.Trans.WalterKaufmann.NewYork: Random,1974. Print.

Peirce, Charles S. Objective Logic. CollectedPapers of Charles S. Peirce. Vol. 6. Ed. CharlesHartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge, MA:Harvard UP,1965.147^54. Print.

Sartre, Jean-Paul.LEtre et lene ant.Paris: Gallimard,1949. Print.

Schu rmann, Reiner. Heidegger on Being and Acting:From Principles to Anarchy. Bloomington: IndianaUP,1990. Print.

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Antti Salminen

Huhtimaenkatu 5 E4

Tampere 33100

Finland

E-mail: antti.salminen@uta.fi

Sami Sjoberg

Peter Szondi Institute of

Comparative Literature

Freie Universitat Berlin

Habelschwerdter Allee 45

14195 Berlin

Germany

E-mail: sami.sjoberg@helsinki.fi

editorial introduction

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