Category: Philosophy

Unknowability

How does the mystery and unknowability of god align with existential nothingness?

The mystery and unknowability of God, particularly in apophatic theology and radical theology, share intriguing resonances with existential nothingness. Both concepts confront the limits of human understanding and emphasize an encounter with the void—whether divine or ontological.

1. Apophatic (Negative) Theology: The God Beyond Being

In apophatic theology, God is understood through negation:

  • Beyond Concepts: God is not “good”, “powerful”, or “wise” in any humanly comprehensible sense. Instead, God is “beyond” these attributes, dwelling in a radical mystery.
  • Encounter with the Void: Figures like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart describe God as the “Divine Darkness”, a kind of holy nothingness where language fails and only silence or un-knowing remains.
🠞 Connection to Existential Nothingness:
  • Confronting the Abyss: Just as existentialists like Heidegger and Sartre see nothingness as a confrontation with the limits of human understanding, apophatic theology invites a spiritual encounter with unknowability.
  • Freedom in the Void: For both, there is a freedom that emerges from this nothingness—the freedom to create meaning (Sartre) or the freedom to be transformed by divine mystery (apophatic tradition).

2. Radical Theology: God as Absence

Contemporary theologians like John D. Caputo, Peter Rollins, and Thomas J. J. Altizer explore a “theology of the void”, where:

  • God is Not a Being: Instead of a supernatural entity, God is understood as an event, a call, or a trace—something that haunts reality with an absence rather than presence.
  • Embrace of Uncertainty: These theologians draw on postmodern philosophy (e.g., Derrida’s “différance”) to argue that faith involves a radical openness to doubt, loss, and unanswered questions.
🠞 Connection to Existential Nothingness:
  • Faith as a Leap into Nothingness: Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” resonates here. Faith is not a grasping of certainty, but a trust in the void, a hope in what cannot be known.
  • Deconstruction of Idols: Just as existentialism deconstructs false meanings and inauthentic ways of being, radical theology deconstructs idolatrous concepts of God, leaving only the void where mystery resides.

3. Existential Nothingness: A Groundless Ground

  • Heidegger’s Nothingness: For Heidegger, the encounter with nothingness (e.g., through anxiety) is not nihilistic, but a revelation of Being itself. It is through the void that we encounter the possibility of authentic existence.
  • Sartre’s Nothingness: Sartre sees nothingness as an integral part of consciousness—the ability to negate, to say “no”, to imagine what is not. This nothingness is what gives freedom but also anguish.
🠞 Theological Resonance:
  • God as Possibility: Just as nothingness opens up possibility, some theologians speak of God not as a fixed being, but as the ground of possibility, a creative nothingness that births new realities.
  • Mystery and the Abyss: The mystical tradition often describes an encounter with God as an encounter with the abyss, a plunge into darkness, which mirrors the existential encounter with nothingness.

4. A Common Spiritual-Existential Praxis

  • Silence and Meditation: Both apophatic prayer and existential reflection value silence, emptiness, and contemplation of the void.
  • Death and Transformation: The “death of God” in radical theology and the death of meaning in existentialism both lead to a potential rebirth—a new understanding of self, world, or divinity.

5. Is This a Nihilistic View?

Not necessarily. While nihilism is often associated with despair, both theological nothingness and existential nothingness can lead to a profound hope:

  • In Radical Theology: The void is not an absence of meaning but an invitation to create and discover new modes of faith.
  • In Existentialism: Nothingness is not a negation of life but a space of freedom, where authentic existence becomes possible.

Would you like to explore how these ideas might influence spiritual practices, or perhaps how they could reshape ethical life in a post-metaphysical world?

Contemporary thought on non-being

The existentialist exploration of non-being continues to resonate in contemporary thought, intersecting with fields like psychology, theology, postmodern philosophy, and even pop culture. Here’s how:

1. Psychology and Therapy

  • Existential Therapy: Pioneered by figures like Rollo May, Viktor Frankl, and Irvin D. Yalom, this therapeutic approach draws heavily on existential themes of non-being, anxiety, and meaning-making. Clients are encouraged to confront their finitude and the void of meaninglessness, aiming to cultivate a more authentic existence.
  • Death Anxiety: Contemporary psychologists like Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) and Terror Management Theory researchers explore how the fear of non-being drives much of human behavior, from cultural practices to personal defenses against mortality.

2. Postmodern Philosophy

  • Deconstruction and Absence: Philosophers like Jacques Derrida explore absence and nothingness through deconstruction, showing how meaning is always in flux and how presence is intertwined with absence.
  • Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra: Baudrillard’s ideas of hyperreality and simulacra can be seen as a modern take on non-being, where the real is replaced by representations, creating a kind of ontological void.

3. Theology and Spirituality

  • Radical Theology: Thinkers like John D. Caputo and Peter Rollins incorporate non-being into a post-theistic or post-metaphysical framework. They explore a God beyond being, emphasizing the mystery and unknowability that align with existential nothingness.
  • Buddhist Philosophy: Contemporary dialogues between existentialism and Buddhism also highlight non-being, especially through concepts like emptiness (śūnyatā) and non-self (anattā), offering a different lens on nothingness as freedom from attachment.

4. Ethics and Social Theory

  • Critical Theory: Scholars like Judith Butler explore how non-being relates to precarity and marginalization, discussing how certain lives are rendered “ungrievable”—a kind of social non-being.
  • Environmental Philosophy: The Anthropocene has introduced a collective existential anxiety about ecological collapse, echoing nihilism and the threat of non-being on a civilizational scale.

5. Art, Literature, and Pop Culture

  • Film and Media: Movies like The Matrix, Fight Club, and Everything Everywhere All at Once grapple with non-being, nihilism, and the search for meaning.
  • Literature: Authors like Samuel Beckett and Haruki Murakami continue to explore existential voids, depicting characters in liminal spaces between being and non-being.

6. Tech and Digital Life

  • Virtual Reality and Identity: As we increasingly live digitally, questions of authentic existence and non-being arise. The metaverse, AI, and digital personas blur the line between presence and absence, echoing Sartre’s nothingness.
  • Transhumanism: Discussions about life extension, AI consciousness, and post-humanity confront us with new dimensions of non-being, especially around what it means to “exist”.

Would you like to explore how these themes might relate to specific contemporary issues—like mental health, spirituality, or technology—or delve deeper into a particular thinker’s modern influence?

Non-Being

Which existentialists explored the concept of non-being?

1. Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)

In Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927), Heidegger introduces the concept of “nothingness” (das Nichts) as integral to understanding Being (Sein). He argues that confronting non-being—particularly through experiences like anxiety (Angst)—reveals the groundlessness of existence and forces us to confront the finitude of life. This encounter with nothingness can lead to a more authentic way of being.

I don’t see how confronting non-being makes existence groundless. Nor am I convinced that the finitude of life leads to a more authentic way of being.

2. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)

Sartre delves deeply into non-being in Being and Nothingness (L’Être et le Néant, 1943). He argues that nothingness is not an external force but rather a product of consciousness. Sartre distinguishes between “being-in-itself” (être-en-soi) and “being-for-itself” (être-pour-soi), where the latter involves the capacity to negate and imagine possibilities beyond the present reality. Sartre’s idea of freedom is rooted in this nothingness, as it allows for the creation of meaning through human action.

Is meaning created through human action, or is that just a Marxist trope? The imagined possibilities seem to refer to things beyond the present material reality but in the same possible world. There is a conflation of objective material reality and subjective (and intersubjective) space. Also freedom rooted in nothingness ignores the ethical dimension and is psychologically naive – we would all be psychopaths.

3. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

Though not traditionally categorized as an existentialist, Nietzsche’s exploration of nihilism touches on non-being. He describes nihilism as the experience of the “death of God”, which confronts humanity with a void of meaning. Nietzsche challenges this with the concept of the Übermensch (Overman) who can create new values in the face of nothingness.

This is much more interesting.

4. Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Kierkegaard, often seen as a precursor to existentialism, explored non-being through the lens of despair and anxiety. In The Concept of Anxiety (Begrebet Angest, 1844), he connects anxiety to the freedom of possibility, which brings an encounter with the abyss of non-being. He believed that facing this nothingness could lead to a leap of faith toward God, as a way to ground oneself.

5. Karl Jaspers (1883–1969)

Jaspers spoke of “boundary situations” (Grenzsituationen), such as death, suffering, and guilt, which confront individuals with non-being. These moments strip away illusions and bring one face-to-face with the limitations of human existence, potentially leading to transcendence or a greater understanding of Being.

6. Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986)

In The Ethics of Ambiguity (Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, 1947), de Beauvoir addresses non-being in the context of human freedom and mortality. She discusses how the awareness of death (as a form of non-being) shapes our ethical choices and the construction of meaning.

Would you like to dive deeper into how these ideas connect to broader themes in existentialism, or perhaps explore how they might intersect with contemporary thought?

Hooper

Is Waugh’s Hooper, Neitzsche’s last man?

Yes, there are strong parallels between Evelyn Waugh’s Hooper in Brideshead Revisited (1945) and Nietzsche’s Last Man, making Hooper a compelling literary embodiment of this philosophical concept.

1. Who is Nietzsche’s Last Man?

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885), Friedrich Nietzsche introduces the Last Man as the ultimate symbol of cultural and spiritual decline. The Last Man:

  • Avoids Risk and Passion: He seeks only comfort, safety, and mediocrity.
  • Lacks Ambition: He has no aspiration for greatness, transcendence, or meaning beyond material satisfaction.
  • Embraces Conformity: He prioritizes stability and predictability over adventure or creativity.
  • Rejects Higher Values: With the “death of God”, the Last Man fills the void not with new values, but with banal contentment.

2. Who is Hooper?

In Brideshead Revisited, Hooper is a young officer during World War II, a stark contrast to the novel’s other characters, especially the Flyte family and Charles Ryder:

  • Materialistic and Unimaginative: Hooper is characterized by his modernity, with a focus on efficiency, bureaucracy, and utility.
  • Spiritually Numb: He shows no connection to the beauty, tradition, or spiritual depth represented by Brideshead Castle.
  • Emblem of Modernity: He represents the post-war England that Waugh saw as increasingly gray, soulless, and disenchanted.
  • Lack of Wonder: While Charles is initially drawn to the mystique and grandeur of the Flytes’ world, Hooper only sees inconvenience and waste.

3. Thematic Connections

  • Mediocrity vs. Nobility: Just as Nietzsche’s Last Man stands in opposition to the Übermensch, Hooper is a foil to characters who strive for meaning and grace, like Sebastian Flyte and Julia Flyte.
  • Spiritual Void: Hooper embodies the secularization and banality that Nietzsche feared. His life lacks tragedy, but also beauty and aspiration.
  • End of an Era: As the Flyte family represents a dying aristocratic and Catholic tradition, Hooper’s utilitarian worldview signifies the emergence of a new, diminished England.

4. Key Moments

  • Arrival at Brideshead: Hooper’s inability to appreciate the grandeur of the estate is symbolic of the Last Man’s blindness to higher values.
  • Practicality over Transcendence: While Charles Ryder undergoes a spiritual journey, Hooper remains stagnant, highlighting his philosophical shallowness.

5. Why It Matters

  • Waugh critiques the modern world through Hooper, showing a society that has abandoned tradition, faith, and aesthetic sensibility, aligning with Nietzsche’s fears of a civilization content with small pleasures over great aspirations.
  • In both cases, the Last Man and Hooper serve as warnings, urging readers to resist complacency and pursue deeper meaning.

Would you like to explore how this reading of Hooper might alter the broader interpretation of Brideshead Revisited, or how Waugh’s own Catholicism might shape this parallel with Nietzsche?