[lit-ideas] Re: The nothing noths
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- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 05:24:45 -0500
Actually, the nothing does not JUST noth. The nothing noths itself.
Or, to echo Heidegger, "Das Nichts selbst nichtet".
A little context.
Heidegger writes:
"The turning away, however, is as such an expelling of be-ing as a whole
that lets it slip out of one's grasp. The whole rejecting expulsion of
be-ing as a whole that is slipping away, which is the way dread closes in on
existence, is the essence of no-thing: nihilation [die Nichtung]. Neither is
it an annihilation of being nor does it come from negation. Nor can
nihilation be accounted for by annihilation or negation."
It is then that Heidegger concludes, metaphysically:
"No-thing nihilates of its own."
In the vernacular that irritated Carnap:
"Das Nichts selbst nichtet."
The questions raised by McEvoy are super-important. What kind of statements
are metaphysical statements? (The elucidation of this belongs to
'philosophical eschatology').
If you defend a dogma (of the analytic-synthetic distinction) there are at
least a few variants to McEvoy's alternatives below. Yes, they can be
analytic and a priori, but they can also be synthetic a priori. (Grice's
favourite example: "Nothing can be green and red [not read] all over."). We
know
Sir Freddie, who quotes Heidegger's "Nothing" claims denied the possibility
of this type of statement. Later on, philosophers like Donnellan (who wrote
his Cornell PhD dissertation under Max Black on the foundations of
necessary truths in the work of C. I. Lewis) and Kripke will add further
subcategories: necessary a posteriori, for example, or a statement of identity
that
is merely contingent, and so on.
Grice also mentions that the keywords in philosophical eschatology are
METAPHOR and ANALOGY. So perhaps Heidegger was speaking either metaphorically,
or engaging in an analogical sort of reasoning, which would rely on a
'proportion' of metaphysical concepts. Finally, Grice would say that, as in
topology, often in metaphysics, being 'interesting' may pay better than being
boringly true.
(I'm sure Heideggerian get a lot of excitement out of Heidegger's
metaphysical claims that cannot just be encapsulated in 'having grasped a
truth':
it seems to be more like an illumination of some special sort). And yes,
'observation' may play a minimal role here, unless we involve intuition. After
all, there is phenomenological background to Heidegger's thought, and his
intuitions or introspections about 'Nothing' may STILL count as
'observational' (in the 'sense' of, say, Russell's acquaintance with his own
sense
data).
In any case, I'm fascinated that Heidegger, from the passages where "Das
Nichts selbst nichtet" occurs, was SO into 'science': he just thought that
Science ignored nothing, which coming from a religious thinker as he was may
implicate he could have studied the problem in the history not just of
philosophy but of science. In one of my posts on this thread, I notice that the
vacuum, and how nature abhors it, may be a scientific counterpart of
Heidegger's 'question'.
What I'm also fascinated with, as J. L. Scherb is, is how Carnap preferred
to see Heidegger's question (and statement) as a pseudo-statement,
violating the grammar of German. I suppose Carnap was being jocular in that
Heidegger is not committing a _solecism_, so there must be something more to
Carnap's view. McEvoy is of the idea that Carnap's views on language and the
language of science were pretty narrow; but he made an influential point, and
years, nay decades, later, D. P. Henry and J. L. Scherb were still taking
Carnap's 'linguistic' approach seriously, as perhaps Heidegger himself
should.
In a message dated 2/24/2015 10:55:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"Popper [...] claim[s] [that metaphysical statements are unfalsifiable].
It is part of his 'demarcation criterion' between science and metaphysics:
it amounts to saying that metaphysical statements are distinct from
empirical/scientific statements and that the difference lies in whether they
are
falsifiable by 'observation'. This claim leaves open that metaphysical
statements may be 'falsifiable' in some other sense. To take [one] examples:
"Das
Nichts nichtet", if interpreted to mean "Das Nichts immer nichtet", would
be falsified by a "Nichts" that failed to "nichtet". ... But we have to ask
whether [this] counterexample[... is] 'observable' in a scientific sense:
it seems highly unlikely: neither the "Nichts" nor its "nichet" is
observable in scientific terms. ... If Heidegger defends his "Nichtet" thesis
by
way of analytic or definitional argument that renders the claim tautological,
... it is irrefutable; but as a tautology [like "All tables are tables"] it
is without substantive interest - including metaphysical interest. If
defended as a substantive claim, it may be falsifiable in some sense [as
indicated above] but still metaphysical because not falsifiable by
observation.
That it is unfalsifiable by observation is a logical weakness. ... "Das
Nichts nichtet" [may be] taken to mean "There exists a "Nichts" that on at
least one occasion "nichtet"", ... a positive existential statement. ... It is
doubtful H intended his "Nichts" thesis to amount merely to a positive
existential statement of this sort. [H's example] show[s] the usefulness of
Popper's demarcation criterion rather than offering anything significant that
undermines its usefulness as a logical tool."
Well, Popper (like Carnap) would have read Heidegger in German, and so
they would know what Heidegger was _meaning_.
On the other hand, Sir Freddie Ayer (who hated "The Nothing noths") relied
on a, I grant, bad English translation ("The Nought noughts" sounds
better).
What is also perhaps unfalsifiable is Grice's remark, slightly out of the
blue, that either for this or for that, Heidegger was (at the time of
Grice's lecturing), "the greatest living philosopher".
--- SOME CONTEXT FOR HEIDEGGER'S CLAIM, "Das Nichts selbst nichtet".
Heidegger writes in "What is metaphysics", section II: "Nothing":
"How do things stand with this no-thing [Nichts]?"
"Is it an accident that we speak quite automatically in this way?"
"Is it then only a manner of speaking—and nothing more?"
"But why do we trouble ourselves about this no-thing?"
"In fact, no-thing is indeed turned away by science and given up [on] as
the null and void [das Nichtige]."
"But if we give up no-thing in such a way, do we not indeed accept it?"
"But can we talk about an acceptance if we accept nothing [nichts]?"
"Yet maybe all this back and forth has already turned into empty verbal
wrangling."
"Science must then renew its seriousness and assert its soberness in
opposition to this, so that it has only to do with being."
"No-thing—what can it be for science except a horror and a phantasm?
If science is right, then one thing is for certain: science wants to know
nothing of no-thing."
"In the end, this is the scientifically strict comprehension of no-thing."
"We know it in wanting to know nothing about the nothing."
"Science wants to know nothing of no-thing."
"But even so it is nonetheless certain that, when it attempts to talk
about its own essence it calls on no-thing for help."
"It claims for its own what it has rejected."
"What sort of conflicted essence unveils itself here?"
"Reflection on our present life as one determined by science finds us in
the midst of a conflict."
"In the dispute a question has already presented itself."
"The question merely needs to be articulated."
"How do things stand with no-thing?"
"The development of the question about no-thing must put us in the
position to be clear about whether it is
possible or impossible to answer this question."
"No-thing has been admitted."
"With overweening indifference toward it, science commends it as what "is
not a given."
"All the same, we will try to speak about no-thing."
"What is no-thing?"
"Our first approach to this question already shows us something unusual
about it."
"From the outset in asking this question we posit no-thing as something
that "is" such and such, as being."
"But plainly it has in fact been distinguished from just that."
"The question about no-thing—what and how it, no-thing, is—turns what is
being questioned into its opposite."
"The question robs itself of its own object."
"Accordingly, every answer to this question is impossible from the outset."
"For it necessarily starts out in the form: no-thing "is" this or that."
"Question and answer alike are themselves just as nonsensical with respect
to no-thing."
"But such a dismissal doesn't have to come from science."
"The commonly referred to ground rule of all thinking (the principle of
avoiding contradiction), everyday "logic" puts down this question."
"For thinking, which in essence is always thinking about something, would
be working against its own nature in thinking about no-thing."
"Because we keep on failing to make no-thing as such into an object, we
have already come to the end of our question about no-thing, on the
assumption that "logic" is the highest authority on this question, that the
intellect is the means and thinking the way to grasp no-thing in an original
way
and to decide about its disclosure."
"But can the rule of "logic" be challenged?"
"Isn't the intellect really lord and master in this question about
no-thing?"
"After all, only with its help can we determine no-thing at all and
formulate it as a problem, even if only as one that eliminates itself."
"For no-thing is the negation of the generality of being, simply not being.
"Yet with that we subsume no-thing under the higher determination of the
not-like and therewith, so it seems, the negated."
"But under the ruling and never challenged doctrine of "logic," negation
is a specific mental act."
"How then can we with the question of no-thing, and indeed with the
question about its questionability, hope to bid adieu to the intellect?"
"Are we that certain about what we presuppose here?"
"Does the not ["das Nicht"], negativity [die Verneintheit], and hence
negation have about it a higher
determination under which no-thing, as a particular species of the
negated, falls?"
"Is there no-thing only because there is the not, i.e., negation?"
"Or is it the other way around?"
"Is there negation and the not only because there is no-thing?"
"This has not been decided; indeed not once has the question been
expressly raised."
"We maintain that no-thing is more original than the not and negation."
"If our thesis is correct, the possibility of negation as a mental act,
and therewith the intellect itself, depends in some way upon no-thing."
"What hope is there then to decide about this?"
"Does the seeming absurdity of the question and answer regarding no-thing
rest solely on the blind single-mindedness of our far-ranging intellect?"
"However, if we do not allow ourselves to be led astray by the formal
impossibility of the question about no-thing and still confront the question,
we must then at the very least satisfy what is still as the basic
requirement of the possible development of any question."
"If no-thing is to be questioned in the way questioning works, then it
must itself be given in advance."
"We must be able to encounter it."
"How do we go after no-thing?"
"How do we find no-thing?"
"In order to find something, must we not already know that it is there at
all?"
"Indeed!"
"First and foremost, a person is able to look for something only if he has
already anticipated the actual presence of what is being sought."
"But what is sought here is no-thing. In the end, is there seeking without
some anticipation, a seeking to which a proper finding belongs?"
"Be that as it may, we know no-thing even if only as that which we
casually talk about day in and day out."
"Without further ado, we can work out a definition of this pale no-thing,
which in all the colourlessness of self-evidence so inconspicuously hangs
around our talk."
"No-thing is the complete negation of the generality of being."
"In the end, isn't this characteristic of nothing a sign of the only
direction from which it can encounter us?"
"Generality of being must be given beforehand in order to be made invalid
as such by negation, in which no-thing itself then must manifest itself."
"But even if we ignore the questionability of the relation between
negation and no-thing, how should we as finite essences, make the whole of
being
in its generality accessible in itself and to ourselves in particular.
"If need be, we can think of the whole of be-ing as an idea, and then
negate what has been thus thought up and "think" of it as negated. In this way
we do reach the formal concept of a "thought up" no-thing, but never
no-thing itself."
"But no-thing is nothing, and no difference can prevail between the
thought up no-thing and real no-thing, unless no-thing represents something
other
than the complete absence of difference.
But real no-thing itself, isn't it once again that concealed and absurd
concept of an actual no-thing [eines seienden Nichts]?"
"For one last time now the objections of our intellect would call a halt
to our search, the legitimacy of which can be demonstrated only through a
fundamental experience of nothing."
"As surely as we never get a sure grasp of the generality of be-ing in
itself, just as surely do we all the same find ourselves somehow placed in the
midst of the generality of bare being."
"In the end, there continues to be an essential difference between getting
a grasp of the whole of being in itself and finding oneself in the midst
of being as a whole."
"The former is impossible in principle."
"The latter happens all the time in our existence."
"Of course, it looks just as though in our everyday comings and goings we
were holding fast to only just this or that [kind of] being, as though we
were lost in this or that realm of being. But no matter how fragmented the
daily round may seem, it always maintains being in the unity of a "whole"
although only in the shadows."
"Even then and precisely just then, when we are not especially busy with
things, this "as a whole" overcomes us; for example, in genuine boredom. This
is a long way off far off when this or that book or
play, job or leisure activity, is boring. It breaks out when "it's boring"
Profound boredom, like a silent fog insinuating itself in the depths of
existence, pulls things, others and oneself into it altogether with
remarkable indifference. Such boredom reveals being as a whole. Another
possibility
of such revelation lies concealed in our joy in the present existence, not
merely the person, of someone we love."
Being attuned in such a way that we "are" one way or another, we find
ourselves in the midst of
being as a whole being attuned by it.
"Not only does the situatedness of mood disclose being as a whole in its
own way, but this disclosing, far from being a mere incident, is at the same
time the fundamental event of our being there" (which is the title of a
novel -- now a film with Peter Sellars).
----- THE CENTRAL PASSAGE regarding the 'nichtet' is as per below. If
'selbst' is understood as objective, it may mean that the nothing noths itself.
Of course, 'itself' is a trick. "The fish itself did it" (Wanda, suppose)
does not involve this objective use of 'itself': 'itself' is merely
emphatic. So there is an ambiguity here. Grice said,
"Avoid ambiguity".
But since he also said that Heidegger was the greatest living philosopher,
once can pardon one ambiguity ("or two" as Geary colloquially adds) to the
greatest living philosopher (as Heidegger was when Grice said that -- in
Grice's view -- He never liked Sartre, much).
Heidegger writes:
"The turning away, however, is as such an expelling of be-ing as a whole
that lets it slip out of one's grasp. The whole rejecting expulsion of
be-ing as a whole that is slipping away, which is the way dread closes in on
existence, is the essence of no-thing: nihilation [die Nichtung]. Neither is
it an annihilation of be-ing nor does it come from negation. Nor can
nihilation be accounted for by annihilation or negation."
"No-thing nihilates of its own."
In the vernacular that irritated Carnap:
"Das Nichts selbst nichtet."
In the fifth edition (1949), Heidegger slightly changed his mind slightly,
or rather refined his prose.
"als Nichten west, währt, gewährt das Nichts."
i.e. "in the way nihilating makes be, sustains, gives (up) no-thing]."
I have to grant that there is sermon quality (Protestant sermon) in the
quality of Heidegger's dicta. He was after all lecturing to philosophy
students, and it would be good to know what kind of 'dialogue' Heidegger
extracted
from his students.
Teaching is not of course essential to being a philosopher, and it is when
we do NOT Heidegger as teaching (or preaching) that his statements (like
"Das Nichts selbst nichtet") should be considered, eschatologically, almost.
This may be an individual act: and each reader will derive from it whatever
implicature whom Grice called "the greatest living philosopher" is aiming
at.
Cheers,
Speranza
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