Genealogy of Nihilism

Conor Cunningham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134474004
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

This text re-reads Western history in the light of nihilistic logic, which pervades two millennia of Western thought. From Parmenides to Alain Badiou, via Plotinus, Avicenna, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, a genealogy of nothingness can be witnessed in development, with devastating consequences for the way we live.

Part I

PHILOSOPHIES OF NOTHING

It is fitting to say and to think this: that what is is. For it can be, whereas nothing cannot.

(Parmenides, Fragment Six)

The sophist runs off into the darkness of that which is not.

(Eleatic stranger, in Plato’s Sophist)

One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is. I stick my finger into existence – it smells of nothing.

(Kierkegaard, Repetition)

1

TOWARDS NOTHING

Plotinus, Avicenna, Ghent, Scotus and Ockham

This chapter examines some aspects of the work of Plotinus, Avicenna, Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. My intention is to draw out the operation of the logic of nihilism. I do not for a moment argue that the thinkers discussed here are truly ‘nihilists’. All that is being endeavoured here is to argue that there is an element in each of their work that does attempt to have nothing be as something.

Audacity: to be without being

For both Plotinus and Heidegger, the Nothing is the impetus of our approach to what is most real in the world, although beyond essence and existence: the One, or Being. This is also an important point in Derrida’s analysis.¹

(Eli Diamond)

In Hesiod’s Theogony we are told the tale of a divine drama involving tolmatic patricide and mutilation, which is the very advent of the world. Ouranos, the highest god, fathers wild children whom he hates. Because of this hate, Ouranos buries these children in the bosom of the earth, where they lie like seeds. The earth sets out to free these children. She encourages Kronos, ‘a most terrible child’,², who is the first son, to attack his ‘lecherous’ father.³ Kronos does so, castrating Ouranos in the process. In this way Kronos takes his father’s place, and he in turn fathers sons with Rheia after forcing himself upon her.⁴ These children are ‘glorious’, yet Kronos fears them for they might avenge Ouranos their grandfather. As a result Kronos swallows all the children, keeping them within himself. But Rheia hides one of these sons, who is called Zeus. Zeus is allowed to grow in strength and resolve, until the time when he attacks his father, binding Kronos with chains and emancipating his brothers.

Plotinus utilises this myth to explain the eternal procession of all from the One. For Plotinus Ouranos is the One, while Kronos is Intellect and Zeus is Soul.⁵ The myth encapsulates, in Plotinus’ rather sanitised version, the movement of emanation, which arises contra the Gnostics by way of contemplation, and not discursive and agonistic activity. The One produces Kronos without need, but instead out of a plenitude which overflows. This mode of ‘making’ is external to the progenitor. When Kronos in turn gives birth to a ‘beautiful progeny’ he does so within himself, but for Plotinus this is not, as for Hesiod, a result of hate. For Kronos is said to love and adore his sons. Indeed, it is this love which causes Kronos to swallow them – thought remains inside the mind. But one ‘stands apart’: this is Zeus (Soul). And it is this standing forth which makes manifest the external world. Furthermore, this last child, who brings about the corporeal world, imitates his grandfather (Ouranos) since his generation is apparently external. For Plotinus the One would flow forever were it not for the castration carried out by Kronos. This castration restricts the flow of the One which in turn allows for the advent of the intelligible. It is this ‘calling halt’ that enables the dualism of subject–object, which is the basis of thought per se. If there was no cessation, then there would be no possible conceptualisation or noesis. But because this occurs within the belly of Kronos (‘fullness’; Saturn) there would still fail to arise any visible world.⁶ Plotinus has Zeus perform this task by ‘standing forth’ in the most audacious of manners. Yet here again there is no internecine strife. For Plotinus, Kronos hands over the governance of the world to Zeus in a most willing manner.⁷ Nonetheless it will be argued that this myth epitomises the immanence involved in nihilism. For what proceeds from the One, which is beyond being and beyond preceding, must in a sense remain within its placeless providing.

Thus since Non-being is the father of all that is, there is a sense in which the reditus (to non-being) precedes the exitus (to being).⁸ In other words, that which comes from the One ‘follows’ a (me)ontological return which ensures that its necessity does not infringe the simple, autarchical, supremacy of the One. This means that what emanates from the One, being, is not, in so far as to be is an inferior mode of existence compared to Non-being which is the only entity that really is (the really real). It is for this reason that Non-being can necessarily produce being without infringing simplicity, because to be is nothing. And as comparatively nothing, being does not actually escape the One, but remains immanent to it; being is in this sense an internal production. This is made possible by the protective negations which Plotinus employs at a methodological level throughout the Enneads.

To need: Nothing

The One cannot be alone (this is also the case with Avicenna’s God, Henry of Ghent’s, Duns Scotus’, William of Ockham’s, Suarez’, Spinoza’s, Kant’s and Hegel’s).⁹ If this is true, how will Plotinus account for that which is ‘produced’ without reducing the status of the One? In other words, how can the One remain One? This ancient problematic here gives rise to certain philosophical moves which predispose the generation of the aforementioned nihilistic logic. Plotinus develops a meontological philosophy in which non-being is the highest principle. The One is beyond or otherwise than being.¹⁰ This will, it is hoped, protect its simplicity. The consequence of such a move is a series of negations which will give rise to a fully immanentised realm, one that may accommodate the nihilistic logic of nothing as something.

We can identify at least four prophylactic negations. The first is that of ‘tolmatic’ language, which is to say, language that implies a fall from a state of grace: to be is to be fallen. Although Plotinus sets himself against the Gnostics on just this point he cannot, it seems, help but utilise their logic of creation as a fallen state. By so doing, he ensures that that which is becomes subordinate to that which is not, a consequence to be continually repeated. The second negation arises because in simply not being the One that which is is not: to be is not to be. So all that which emanates from the One is nothing, because it has being. The third negation is the ‘negation of negation’: the ineluctable return to the One. This return, as has been said, in a sense precedes every exit. The fourth negation concerns a series of repetitions of the original negation of the One itself. At some point each hypostasis imitates the One in its contemplative non-production of that which is.¹¹ Plotinus, contra the Gnostics, relies on contemplation to engender production. But the nature of this contemplation is, in a sense, non-production, since being consults nothing (the One) and repeats nothing in the innermost core of everything.

Thus that which proceeds from the One returns to the One – is always already returning. This desiring return is the contemplation of each emanation’s nothingness. In this way the return precedes every departure, for every departure is but the ‘embodiment’ of a return. But this provision will be incomprehensible unless we remember Hesiod. For it was in recalling the Theogony that we learnt of Kronos giving birth to sons within himself. Now we have also learnt that it is characteristic of both the One and the Soul to produce externally. Yet I have argued that we can only understand the emanation from the One as that which, in a sense, takes place within its cavernous belly. How is this reconcilable with the idea of external generation?

The One’s differentiation from all else cannot be spatial, for that would set something over and against it. So difference must, it seems, take place within and through the One: ‘The One does not sever itself from it [all else], although it is not identical with it.’¹² (Hegel argues for a similar understanding in relation to the infinite and the finite.)¹³ Plotinus is unable to posit an ontological difference: we see this to the degree that the One can produce only one effect, doing so necessarily. That is to say, the One re-produces itself in every emanation: the One is non-being and being is not. In this way the One produces nothing ontologically different from itself. For all difference, that is, being, fails to register a real distinction between itself and its cause. Why? Because any reality a being might be said to have would be its non-being, for only the One’s non-being is truly real (or really real). Difference between the One and what falls beneath it is noticed only by an aspectual differentiation: like the aforementioned Gestalt effect of the duck-rabbit; but it must be remembered that both aspects manifest themselves on one picture.

Plotinus does hint strongly at the notion of a ‘cavernous’ – internal – provision, as he states that the universe is in the soul and that the soul is in the intelligible.¹⁴ For each causes only one effect which must remain immanent to the cause as a result of causation’s merely ontic logic. What is meant by this is that the One must look to an external logic, or rubric, which dictates and explains what difference is. In this way the One does not create, for the One cannot create difference, but must, instead, be protected from it. (It is argued in Part II that this is not...