The Book of Non-Existence - Vadim Filatov (best classic books txt) 📗

convinced that philosophical pessimism is necessary not only in theory, but also in practice. So, Mainlender, after having published his only book “The Philosophy of expiation” in which he has given a sense to existence of the world for the aim that than with a quiet conscience to leave it, with feeling of deep satisfaction has committed suicide. In his book he has written that “God has died, and his death became a life of world”. Therefore a state and a society should aspire to such organization in which the culture of understanding of aimlessness of a life and cooperation with God in His aspiration to the Nothing would be formed.
The concept of the Nothing is also considered in early philosophical texts by Marthin Heidegger. “It is necessary to research reality and more – the Nothing, only reality and except of it – the Nothing; this unique reality and moreover – the Nothing”, - as he wrote in his essay entitled “What is metaphysics?”: “Where to search for the Nothing? How to find the Nothing? At any rate, the Nothing is known for us, because we hourly, resembling and thoughtless speak about it... The Nothing is a complete negation of set of the real. When we can find a trace of the Nothing? When we are covered by deep melancholy wandering in chasms of our life... Whether there is such mood in our life which is capable to approach as to the Nothing? It can occur and occurs - though seldom enough, only for instants - in fundamental mood of horror. We understand meaning of “horror” here not as too frequent ability to be terrified which as a matter of fact is similar to fear. But the horror is completely distinct from fear... The Horror slightly opens the Nothing.
It is quite obvious that Heidegger spoke about “terrible empty wisdom of the Nothing” as it was told above. The philosopher underlines primary and basic character of the Nothing in it’s relation with existence as a whole, and in relation to subjective perceptions of life by a person: «Only on a basis of primary displaying of the Nothing a human presence is capable to approach to real and to penetrate into it... A human presence means putting forward into the Nothing …And putting of our life into the Nothing on the basis of undercover horror is an exit above the limits of reality, or a transcendention. Our asking about the Nothing urged to show us metaphysics in itself”. Thus, according to Heidegger, the essence of metaphysics compounds immersing in Horror of the Nothing. And without this immersing metaphysics is quite impossible - irrespective of, whether people who try to argue metaphysically understand this point. Simultaneously there appears a fresh wording of the basic question of philosophy: "Why in general there is reality, instead of the Nothing?" Thus is the basic maintenance of the doctrine of Heidegger concerning parity between existence and the Nothing.
The various thinking on this theme we also meet in creativity of the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, in particular, in his composition “The Existence and the Nothing”. In this treatise Sartre adheres to traditional for the European philosophy views about the maintenance of the Non-existence (the Nothing) as deprived of an independent essence and representing itself only as an antithesis to the substantial existence: “So, the Nothing is absent. We can tell about it only because it possesses visibility of the life, borrowed life … An existence by means of which the Nothing comes to the world, there should be it’s own Nothing”. Actually, as we can tell, the Nothing creates the world, as well as a whole existence, as its own time anomaly. We always find out the Nothing – in every place and at every time - as the unique prospect and inevitability. Basically, each life represents its own Nothing, which exists only for the reason of non-existence. No less than the substantive Absolute Nothing exists owing to the non-existence, constantly absorbing isolated fragments of life. After all movement is an eternal process of destruction. Such is the basic function of the Nothing: it destroys.
And at last, in the Eastern philosophical tradition the concept close to the Nothing (but not identical with it) is usually designated as "the Void".

4) Familiarizing with the Void.

Through you, through me
Emptiness rolls the waves,
Appearing in veins of blood at dawn,
As a dead plaster mask in which
An instant flour of pierced moon has fallen asleep.
Look, how all is buried in emptiness.
Both the left wood and the bits from apples.
Look, how fossil is the world
Which has not found a trace
Of its first sobbings of melancholy.
(F. Guarcia Lorca.)

Existing steams of philosophical categories, such as a truth and an error, a life and a death, a freedom and a slavery, a beauty and an ugliness, a pleasure and a suffering, a love and a hatred, a destruction and a creation and others, represent a reflection of the Absolute Void by two mirrors.
In Eastern wisdom there is an ancient concept of the Non-Existence (the Void) which have found its judgment in modern physics (the vacuum theory and the theory of an origin of the Universe). Already in "The Itzing" - Chinese classical "The Book of Changes” - the world comes up from the Non-existence, becoming for a while one of its conditions and, having obeyed to a rhythm of world development, having realized a basic possibility of self-knowledge, comes back into eternity of the Non-existence, according to a principle of movement: “there – back”. The world is dissolved in the Non-existence which represents possibility of infinite creativity "("The Book of Changes»). So the non-existence possesses special creative function – possibility to create from the Nothing some kind of new Nothing. We also meet the concept of the Void in the Chinese philosophy of Taoism. As an example it is possible to mention the Taoist initial entitled «The Book of secret explanations of three heavens» in which a legend about a birth of a founder of Taoism Lao Tzu it contained. In this text Cave of the Void in which Great Absence was born is mentioned. As it is accepted in Taoism, specified concepts hide in themselves set of meanings and give various possibilities for interpretation. Thus, Lao Tzu wrote about the Void like the following: “In the world all things are born in life, and life is born from the Non-Existence”. So all arises from the Non-Existence and, having made a cycle of development, is dissolved in it. The Non-Existence (the Void) is shapeless and absolute, because it is all and comprises all. «A nature gate – is the Non-Existence. All darkness of things appears from the Non-Existence. Life is not capable to become life by means of life it should appear from the Non-Existence. The Non-Existence owns the Unique Non-Existence», - one more Taoist philosopher, Chuang Tzu said.
Much more often philosophical understanding of the Void is connected with traditions of the Indian philosophy. “The gloom has been hidden by a gloom at the beginning. Everything was an indiscernible abyss. That active that has been concluded in the Void, It one has been generated by force of heat», - as narrate sacred texts from "The Hymns of the Rigveda" about an origin of the universe. Doctrine about the Void also takes the important place in philosophy of Buddhism. Thus, when the Buddha has reached enlightenments, within several weeks after that he did not give any doctrines. All this time he stayed in meditation on the Void. Then some gods of the world have come to him and have asked him to produce doctrine for the sake of blessing of all live beings rotating in Sansara. And Buddha has told them: "I realized most precious of all doctrines but if I now open it to people, it will not bring an advantage them. Therefore I will keep silence now". In this case Buddha meant his doctrine about the Void.
The Sunnata (it is literally means —the Void, the Nothing, the Non-Existence) is a concept of the Buddhism believing absence of own nature of things and phenomena (Dharmas) for the reason of their conditionality and interdependence. “For whom the Void is clear, all becomes clear”, - the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna living in India in 3 century told. He taught that outside of a network of dependent origin of causes and effects there is the Void. According to his views, Buddha preached two Truths. The first – the truth of worldly conventions, created by Buddha with compassion to people: to help those who are on a way to the second, final truth of the Void. The human reason is powerless in knowledge of a world which is not present. Besides, a reason for itself also is incomprehensible and empty. There is a search of causality on the basis of human knowledge of the world. However “neither existing, nor nonexistent thing cannot have a reason: a reason of what is a condition if a thing does not exist? And if a thing really exists, for what any reason is necessary then?” (Nagardjuna "Mule-madhjamika-kariki"). It seems paradoxical, but just emptiness of all reality does it possible. Followers of a Buddhism of Mahayana recognize that physical elements and physical bodies consisting of them have no final value. Their doctrine of the Non-Existence or Universal Void is simultaneously a doctrine of universal relativity. Identity of phenomenal and absolute, caused and untied, Sansara and Nirvana is real only from positions of eternity. Everything becomes a reality only after removal of phenomenal illusion. While this illusion exists, the Absolute Non-Existence is inherent in the shown world only as possibility, but not as the validity. The person, who has got rid of phenomenal illusion, becomes involved in the existence of Absolute, which means to be involved in eternity of the Universal Void. It is possible to tell something like this and concerning all the mankind which is capable to familiarize with eternity only on a basis of disposal of all illusions.
The concept of the Void is also present at the Islamic mystical doctrine of Sufizm, where we can find out representations about the Universal Void, which is metaphorically designated as “a bottomless sea», deprived of a form and absolutely non- accessible for rational understanding and even for mystical comprehension. This Non-Existence is often named as “not shown essence” or the Allah, covers all existing world and serves as a support to it. All potential possibilities of universe are settled down in the Non-Existence.

The Eastern idea of the Void has also found development in Western philosophy where its meaning is approached with a concept of “nihil” – the Nothing. So, according to reflections of the German thinker Ernst Junger: “We have nicely worked on a field of nihilism... We march for a long time in a direction to magic zero point, and only one who possesses other invisible sources of power would cross through this point … We put our hopes on a revolt against the domination of a cosiness, for which purpose a weapon of destruction directed against the world of forms is required”.
Essential distinctions between the Eastern and the European approaches to understanding of the Void have been noted by Emil Cioran: “The Non-Existence for Buddhism, and for all East as a whole, does not comprise that gloomy value which is given to it by us. It coincides with last experience of light or with a condition of eternal shining absence, radiant emptiness: it is an existence which has prevailed over all attributes or, more likely, extremely positive Non-Existence which radiates the non-material groundless pleasure and has not a support in one of the worlds”.
Unlike the European, nihilistic understanding of the Non-Existence, in