The Essence of Nihilism

Emanuele Severino, Alessandro Carrera, Alessandro Carrera

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784786120
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

In 1969, Emanuele Severino underwent a Vatican trial for the 'fundamental incompatibility' between his thought and the Christian doctrine, and was removed from his position as professor of philosophy at the Catholic University in Milan. The Essence of Nihilism published in 1972, was the first book to follow his expulsion, and to firmly establish Severino's preeminent position within the constellation of contemporary philosophy. In this groundbreaking book, Severino reinterprets the history of Western philosophy as the unfolding of 'the greatest folly', that is, of the belief that 'things come out of nothing and fall back into nothing'. According to Severino, such a typically Western understanding of reality has produced a belief in the radical 'nothingness' of things. This, in turn has justified the treatment of the world as an object of exploitation, degradation and destruction.To move beyond Western nihilism, suggests Severino, we must first of all 'return to Parmenides'. Joining forces with the most venerable of Greek philosophers, Severino confutes the 'path of night' of nihilism, and develops a new philosophy grounded on the principle of the eternity of reality and of every single existent.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

Returning to Parmenides

1. THE SETTING OF THE MEANING OF BEING

The meaning of Being, first glimpsed by the most ancient of Greek thought, has been progressively altered, distorted, and thus forgotten throughout the history of Western philosophy. But nowhere in this history is the alteration and forgetting less conspicuous than in the history of metaphysics itself. For metaphysics, in explicitly professing to uncover the authentic meaning of Being, calls our attention to, and exhausts it upon, the plausibilities with which the altered meaning imposes itself. Yet the history of philosophy is not, on this account, a succession of failures: we should say, rather, that philosophy’s greatest achievements and conquests have occurred within an inauthentic understanding of Being.

In saying this, however, we allude to something radically different from the Heideggerian interpretation of the history of Western philosophy. The difference is radical, because Heidegger’s thought is itself an alteration of the meaning of Being, and a no less serious one. For him, the most ancient of Greek philosophy saw Being as “presence”; that is, as the opening of a horizon within which each determinate feature of being can manifest itself. The direction of idealist historiography is thereby reversed. For idealism, the horizon—the “actualist” would say the thought, or the “act”—is the culmination of the development of philosophical knowledge. Yet that which is a result for the idealist is, for Heidegger, the beginning: the dazzling beginning which soon pales and abandons the field to the metaphysical-theological mystification of Being, where the horizon of any manifestation of being itself becomes a being, albeit the Ens supremum, das Seiendste.

The arbitrariness of Heidegger’s reading is, today, unquestionable. This does not mean, however, that one should embrace that other dogmatism, which holds that Greek philosophy never became aware of the horizon of presence (it remained, that is, in a situation where thought sees Being, but does not see itself)—it means, rather, that the attempt to discern at the very dawn of Greek thought an identification of the meanings of “Being” and “presence” is historically untenable. There is, no doubt, an interweaving of the two; but, by the same token, there is also their difference. And yet the most essential—and most forgotten—word of all our knowledge is hidden in the few verses of Parmenides’ poem. To rediscover it, what is called for is not the philological shake-up to which Heidegger’s interpretation aspires, but rather a far more profound and arduous one: a shake-up that will allow us to understand the invincible force of a discourse which, while known and articulated for millennia, is in fact no longer understood. It is not a matter, then, of giving words new meanings (as if by tracing “Being” back to “presence” we might find ourselves before something more evident than Being), but of thinking the old meanings, of reawakening them, and in this sense, certainly, of replenishing them from their deepest sources.

Being is, while Nothing is-not (Esti gar einai, meden d’ouk estin, Fr. 6, v. 1–2). The words, which return in various guises throughout the poem, are always the same. Yet the great secret lies in the plain statement that “Being is, while Nothing is-not.” Here, what is indicated is not simply a property of Being—albeit the fundamental one—but rather its very meaning: Being is that which is opposed to Nothing, it is this very opposing. The opposition of the positive and negative is the grand theme of metaphysics, but in Parmenides it lived with an infinite pregnancy that metaphysical thought no longer knows how to penetrate. Parmenides’ “simple” opposition between Being (understood as what-is) and Nothing (understood as what-is-not) is, in fact, ambiguous; and this ambiguity gave rise to the prolific development of concepts that led Plato and Aristotle to their reflections on the positive and negative. “Ambiguous,” we say, because the “simple opposition” can be understood (as, indeed, it was always to be understood) as a law—the supreme law—that governs Being, but that does so—and here we are at the heart of the labyrinth—only as long as Being is. “As long as Being is”: the ambiguity has already become fatal. The meaning of Being has already set. But at sunset, as Plato well knew, shadows become particularly prominent and true to life. Where, then, is the ambiguity? Being is opposed to Nothing; but it is clear that such an opposition is possible only if, and only when, Being is; because, if it is-not, it is nothing and so is opposed to nothing. This discourse of the setting of the meaning of Being finds its strictest and most explicit formulation in Aristotle’s Liber de Interpretatione: “Being necessarily is, when it is; and non-Being necessarily is-not, when it is-not. Nevertheless, it is not of necessity that all Being is, nor that all non-Being is-not. That everything that is necessarily is, when it is, is not the same as being purely and simply of necessity. The same must be said as regards non-Being” (19a 23–7). In this clear light of the setting sun, Parmenides’ words themselves cannot but appear equivocal: “Being is”: yes, but when it is; “non-Being is-not”: yes, but when it is-not. Let us not confuse the necessity that Being is, when it is (to on einai ex anankes ote estin), with the necessity sempliciter that Being is (to aplos einai ex anankes); nor the necessity that non-Being is not, when it is not, with the necessity simpliciter that non-Being (the things that are-not) is-not! Parmenides failed to see this distinction.

Yet in this discourse the meaning of Being has already been lost: the very clarity of the discourse itself testifies that the break is irremediable. For the struggle between Being and Nothing is not like those fought in ancient days, when armies made war by day, while at night the enemy leaders drank together in their tents—enemies, therefore, if and when they were on the battlefield. This was possible because, besides being enemies, they were also men. Being, however, is such an enemy of Nothing that even by night it does not lay down its arms: for if it did so, it would be stripped not of its armor, but of its very flesh. Let us look, then, at this Being, which is when it is. By day it is the enemy of Nothing: when it is (when by day it is on the field), it is opposed to Nothing; and Aristotle calls this opposition pason bebaiotate arché, principium firmissimum, “principle of noncontradiction”— that principle to which everyone (even the most obstinate antimeta-physician) in the end, more or less explicitly, assents. But then night falls: when Being is-not (when it has left the field), then it is no longer opposed to Nothing—because it has itself become a Nothing. Yet it is still governed by the principium firmissimum, because, when Being is-not, it is-not. Being’s noncontradictoriness seems to be safeguarded—in the very act in which it is most radically and insidiously denied.

For this nighttime Being, this Being that has left the field, is the Being that has left Being. But what, then, is it? In the phrase “when Being is-not,” what is the meaning of the word “Being”? If we maintain that, when Being is-not, Being has become nothing, why do we continue to say “when Being is-not,” instead of saying “when Nothing is-not”? But there is no difference whatsoever between a Being that is-not and a Nothing that is-not. And yet, we will not let the phrase “when Nothing is-not” replace the phrase “when Being is-not.” We are unwilling to do so, because—despite the betrayal that is being perpetrated—we still intend to maintain that Being is not Nothing, the positive is not the negative. But then—and if there is a moment when the benumbed and torpid meaning of Being is to be roused, these words might be the occasion—“Being that is-not” when it is-not, is nothing other than Being made identical to Nothing, “Being that is Nothing” the positive that is negative. “Being is-not” means precisely that “Being is Nothing,” that “the positive is the negative.” Thinking “when Being is-not”—thinking, that is, the time of its not being—means thinking the time when Being is Nothing, the time of the nocturnal intrigue of Being and Nothing. That which the opposition of Being and Nothing rejects is precisely a time when Being is-not, a time when the positive is the negative.

“A time when Being is-not”: in the failure to realize that assenting to the image of a time when Being is-not, one assents to the idea that the positive is the negative, Being itself has been brought to setting. What does “is” mean in the phrase “Being is,” if not that Being “is not Nothing”? “Is” means “fights off Nothing,” “conquers Nothing,” “dominates Nothing”; it is the energy by which Being towers above Nothing. “Being is” means “Being is not Nothing”; saying that Being is-not means saying that Being is Nothing. Aristotle’s argument (later to be repeated by Aristotelians and Scholastics, past and present) that when Being is, it is, and when Being is-not, it is-not, therefore states that when Being is Nothing, then it is nothing. But in this discourse, then, one fails to see that the real danger that must be avoided lies not in affirming that when Being is nothing, it is Being (and, when Being is Being, it is nothing), but rather in admitting that Being is nothing. The real danger lies in assenting to a time when Being is not Nothing (i.e., when it is), and a time when Being is nothing (i.e., when it is-not)—in admitting, that is, that Being is in time.

In this way, the “principle of noncontradiction” itself becomes the worst form of contradiction: precisely because contradiction is concealed in the very formula that was designed to avoid it and to banish it from Being. This principium firmissimum shuts the stable door after the horse has bolted. It is a judge who, guilty himself of more serious crimes, punishes misdemeanors which are not only unimportant, but which, in the end, no one really intended to commit.

The way of belief, which attends upon truth (Peithous esti keleuthos [Aletheiei gar opedei], Parmenides, Fr. 2, 4), posits instead that “Being is and may not not-be” (opos estin te kai os ouk esti me einai, Fr. 2, 3), and not-Being is-not “and not-Being shall never be forced to be” (ou gar mepote touto damei einai me eonta, Fr. 7, 1). This way diverges and departs from the path of night, “unfathomable” and “impassable” (panapeuthea), on which “Being is-not and necessarily is-not” (os ouk estin te kai os chreón esti me einai, Fr. 2, 5). But after Parmenides the impassable path was the sole route left to Western philosophy. What could be more plausible than positing Being in time, where—necessarily—it sometimes is, and sometimes is-not?

2. THE OCCASIONS AND THE FORM OF THE SETTING
(WESTERN METAPHYSICS IS A PHYSICS)

But for Parmenides, Being is not the differences that are manifest in the appearing of the world: the manifold determinations that appear are all merely “names” (pant’onoma). Parmenides, therefore, also bears the primary responsibility for the setting of Being. Since differences are not Being—since “red,” “house,” “sea” are not synonymous with “Being,” i.e., with “the energy that repulses Nothing”—differences are not-Being, they are very much Nothing, which opinion (doxa) calls by many names. Thus the no-longer or the not-yet being of differences is no longer something that occurs on the impassable path: if “red”—say, the red color of this surface—is not “Being,” then the phrase “when red (or when this red) is-not” no longer conveys a “sick” conception of Being, for it is now taken to be synonymous with the phrase “when not-Being is-not.”

The Platonic distinction between not-Being as contrary to (enantion) Being, and not-Being as other than (eteron) Being, has been as fatal for Western thought as it has been essential and indispensable. For this distinction, which brings differences assuredly and definitively into Being, continues (just as Parmenides did) to leave them in time. But then, one must “set out”—and the way is yet to be concluded— in search of that Being which is outside of time.

Differences have to be taken back into Being, because if “red,” “house,” “sea” are not synonymous with “Being”—and this is unshakable!—they do not mean “nothing” either (i.e., they are not Being— and in this sense they are not-Being—but, at the same time, they do not mean “nothing,” but rather “house,” “sea,” etc.). And if “red” does not mean “nothing” (or: if this red is not meaningful as “nothing,” i.e., if its way of being meaningful differs from the way in which Nothing is meaningful), then Being must be predicated of it; it must, that is, be said that it is a repulsing of Nothing, that it is the energy that negates the negative. Being, accordingly, becomes the predicate of that which is different from it, not of that which is contrary to it: so that now the affirmation that not-Being (i.e., a determination) is, no longer means that the negative is the positive. Parmenidean Being has become the predicate of all determinations; rarefied positivity becomes the self-determining of the positive, the positivity of the determinate; no longer pure Being, but Being as synthesis (of essence—a determination—and existence—the “is”), Being as on, as Aristotle was later to call it.

Once differences (determinations) have been taken back into Being, Being—at least worldly Being—comes to be seen as that which, originally, can, and indeed must, not-be (at times, in time). For Parmenides differences are outside being, and therefore it appears legitimate that they not-be, i.e., that there be a time when they are-not (indeed, for Parmenides the time when they are is taken to be illusory). Plato, on the other hand, ineluctably shows that differences belong to Being; with the result that Being is presented as that which is-not: at least to the extent that the great stage of the world attests the coming-on and the going-off of determinations, and so attests the times when they are-not. Differences have been taken back into Being, but they continue to be thought just as Parmenides thought them: as something that can not-be, or as something of which it may be said “when it is-not.” But in this way it is forgotten, once and for all, that Parmenides could allow determinations to not-be, precisely because he understood them as not-Being.

And so the occasion of the forgetting of the meaning of Being is provided by the Platonic-Aristotelian deepening of that very meaning. The irruption of differences into the area of Being draws attention to itself to such an extent that the very whole of the positive, or Being as such, comes to be originally conceived after the manner of worldly Being (after the manner, that is, of Being whose supervening and vanishing appears). But, it should be noted, this assertion has nothing to do with the threadbare accusations of physicism or of empiricism that have been raised against Aristotelian metaphysics. Aristotelian Being qua Being (on e on) is, unquestionably, the transcendental, i.e., the identity and unity of the totality of the manifold, just as Thales’ water was intended to be. In this sense, not only is Aristotle not a “physicist,” but neither was Thales. The determinations of Being qua Being belong, as we have said, to Being, not insofar as it is determined in a specific way (say, as sensible Being), but insofar as it is Being; that is, insofar as it is determinate positivity. Therefore, such determinations belong to any Being, they occupy the whole and do not stop at this or that particular dimension of it; and Being’s transcendentality consists in this very occupation (in, that is, this overabundance with respect to the partial zones of which it is predicated and which, indeed, it fills).

In another sense, however, Aristotle must indeed be called a “physicist.” But in this sense it must also be said that, after Parmenides, all Western metaphysics is a physics. Yet, once again, by this we mean something completely different from the analogous Heideggerian assertion. The irruption of the differences of the manifold into the area of Being led to a conception of the whole of the positive—or the positive as such—after the manner of the empirical positive (here lies the “physicism”) not because after Parmenides metaphysical thought was unable to keep the whole explicitly in view, but because with the idea of Being that was to take shape after Parmenides, Being was seen as that which is, when it is, and which is-not, when it is-not (according, that is, to what one had occasion to observe regarding the differences that manifest themselves in experience). This idea, accordingly, left Being free to be or to not-be, and projected upon all Being observations made about the differences that had irrupted into Being; differences, indeed, that now are, but earlier were-not, and later, once again, will not-be.

Ontology, in this way, can no longer see Being—and Being, as such, is Being-that-is; and so this task has devolved to rational theology, which sets out on its wayward adventures. Contemporary Neoscholasticism has pointed out, quite rightly, that in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, rational theology springs directly from ontology itself: the very “reasons” for Being qua Being—it is said— lead to the affirmation of immutable Being (Being-that-is). But, as we have seen, ontology is forced to go further, in order to recover that whic...