Abstract
The question of nothingness occupies the thinking of a number of philosophers in the first half of the twentieth-century, with three of the most important responses being those of Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Surprisingly, however, there has been little discussion of their specific comments on nothingness either individually or comparatively. This paper starts to remedy this by suggesting that, while Bergson dismisses nothingness as a pseudo-problem based in a flawed metaphysical understanding, Heidegger, in What is Metaphysics?, claims that metaphysics entails a covering of being meaning that Bergson’s analysis actually depends on and so brings thinking to a questioning of being (=ontology). In turn, Heidegger’s insight acts as the transitional point for Sartre who criticizes Bergson’s description of nothingness to show that, following Heidegger, nothingness is a real ontological problem. From this insight, Sartre distinguishes between negativity, nothingness, and nihilation to show that the issue of nothingness is intimately connected to the freedom of human consciousness, which, by distinguishing between ontological and practical freedom, reveals that nothingness has ethical and political significance. By way of conclusion, a number of problems in Sartre’s account are identified.
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Notes
Throughout I use the terms ‘nothing’ and ‘nothingness’ interchangeably.
Given that it focuses on the phenomenological tradition, this paper will not engage with ‘analytical’ discussions/critiques (see Carnap 1966) of the notion. I highlight them, however, to support my claim about the important role ‘nothingness’ plays in early twentieth-century philosophy.
For more on this, see (Rae 2011: 64–66).
Much has been written on Bergson’s theory of time. For example, Ansell-Pearson (2002) provides a very detailed account of Bergson’s theory of time that situates it in relation to other figures (Russell, Popper, Einstein, Dennett, Deleuze, Kant, and Nietzsche) in the history of philosophy. Al-Saji (2004) offers an interesting reconstruction of Bergson’s account of time by contrasting and comparing it to Deleuze’s, while Lazzarato (2007) shows how and why Bergson’s notion of time is useful when thinking about certain technologies.
See (Rae 2013) for a detailed discussion of the different forms of philosophy/thinking in Heidegger.
See (Rae 2014) for greater discussion of Heidegger’s tri-partite understanding of metaphysics.
In his later Zolikon Seminar, Heidegger claims that “rather than speaking about possibilities as constituents of Dasein, it is always better to speak about potentiality-to-be [Seinkönnen] in the sense of the potentiality for being-in-the-world” (2001: 158). In other words, being is now connected to potential rather than possibility. This does not, however, change my basic point. Being is intimately connected to options as opposed to the fixed presence of actuality.
McCulloch (1994: 3) notes that there are, in fact, two senses to being-in-itself: (1) being-in-itself as the ontological characteristic of a particular entity, and (2) being-in-itself as a mode of being consciousness can adopt.
See (Rae 2009) for a detailed discussion of Sartre’s conception of ‘conversion’ and its ethical implications.
See (Rae 2012) for a detailed discussion of this.
See (Rae 2011: 115–117) for a comparison of Sartre’s and Hegel’s analyses on this point.
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Rae, G. Much Ado About Nothing: The Bergsonian and Heideggerian Roots of Sartre’s Conception of Nothingness. Hum Stud 39, 249–268 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9368-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9368-y