It is quite an elementary question, 'What is Nothing?' A question for someone who is familiar with metaphysics, for that is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions such as: what do we mean when we say that something is? And therefore also: what do we mean when we say that something is not?
The being is, the non-being is not
“One of the first philosophers who tackled this question was Parmenides," says Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Professor of Metaphysics at Radboud University. “He came up with the proposition: ‘Being is, the nonbeing is not’. What's interesting about that is that, according to him, we can say something about what exists, but not about what doesn't. But then you have a problem, if you look around you, you see all sorts of things that seem to come out of nothing. A seed becomes a flower - and that flower did not exist before. Or did it? You want to be able to say something about the process of becoming.
In the dialogue 'The Sophist', a century later, Plato looks differently at the non-being. He says that if you want to talk about the non-being, you have to pretend that the non-being exists. And yes, that's a logical contradiction, but he doesn't let it stop him. An important step is that he distinguishes between the non-being that is different from the being - "the chair is not the table" - and the non-being that does not exist.
Aristotle elaborates on this, and at the same time also takes up the problem of becoming or movement, which Parmenides ignored. If you compare a child and a stone, says Aristotle, you can say of both: "it is not a reasonable being and it cannot talk". But everyone feels that one non-being is not the other. The non-being of the stone remains non-being, but the non-being of the child is a not-yet, or even not at all a not-something, but a something-in-the-making.
A lot of nothingness in our doing
The question 'What is Nothing?' was less existential in antiquity than in modern times, Van der Heiden thinks. “In those days, people assumed a cosmos that was total, to which we returned after we died, and in which the soul was immortal. And in a culture marked by Christianity, where you can live forever with God, Nothingness does not threaten your being. But today, the question of Nothingness is existential. We are here for a while, then there is a tombstone for a while, but in the long run nothing remains of us. That can be a difficult thought to digest.”
Heidegger is a philosopher who in the twentieth century was concerned with, among other things, the transience of people. He doubted that we can really imagine our death, “but the ultimate Nothing is constantly at our heels. Heidegger uses the terms 'being' and 'nothingness' very often. When Heidegger talks about being, he is primarily talking about how people exist. According to him, there is something of a nothingness in this, a certain transience. It seems as if we are very solidly engaged in building something, but in the light of eternity there is a lot of nothingness in our doing.'
Heidegger's pupil Gadamer puts a more positive spin on it: “According to him, human existence is a tension between knowing one's finitude on the one hand and not wanting to give in to it on the other. And from the latter comes, for example, culture, art and science. You want to pass on something meaningful to new generations. So that we are able to maintain ourselves as a human community, even if we individually lose out to time.”
Nothing is certain
When Heidegger speaks of a death that we cannot really imagine, he is also talking about a possible and unforeseeable future. And that also offers possibilities, Van der Heiden explains. “You can't really think about the non-being that isn't there or isn't there yet. Suppose in a week's time you meet someone you don't know yet - that can become significant, but now it is nothing and you can't think about it in a meaningful way.”
But what is not, or is nothing, can still come. “Hannah Arendt takes that position when it comes to Nothing. She is much more interested in the nothing-yet from which everyone and everything originates than in the nothing-more after our death. Nothing can be a positive nothing, in which all kinds of meaning can be founded. For her this also goes hand in hand with: because we do not know who the other is or what they bring with them, everything - or nothing - can be a source where something unexpected can emerge.”
“Nothing has to do with what you cannot foresee”, Van der Heiden summarises. “With uncertainty, risk, things we cannot control. If you try to eliminate that, you are running away from an aspect of the human condition that is still there.”
This article was written in response to a question from a reader of Radboud Recharge. You can read more answers to reader questions in our summer special.
Photo: ÉMILE SÉGUIN ✳️✳️✳️ on Unsplash