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Reconciliare
March 20, 2014
Have faith in the universe and its capability to lead you
to the path of abundance. Stephen Richardsi
What does it mean to see nothing? It means to see
something that is out of sight. One does not simply mean that
seeing nothing is seeing something not visible. Hence, you see
nothing2. One sees the somethingness of nothing. Seeing is not
only limited to the eyes but it also pertains to the other senses
that confirms the presence of something that is nothing. It is
safe to say then that the presence of something is not only
limited to what the eyes can see. It extends all the way to what
one cannot see, what one cannot feel or hear or taste or smell.
There is something more than what our senses can perceive
and it encompasses all that one cannot intuit. This paper
concerns the nothing, the nothing that is present in the
absence of our capability to comprehend and is present in the
presence of our senses; the nothing that extends its invisible
self to what is visible, to the receiver of the perception, to the
subject.
It is something that one does not know, precisely,
and one does not know if precisely it is, if it exists, if
it responds to a name and corresponds to an
essence. One does not know: not out of ignorance,
but because this non-object, this non-present
present, this being-there of an absent or departed
one no longer belongs to knowledge. At least no
longer to that which one thinks one knows by the
name of knowledge. One does not know if it is living
or if it is dead The
Thing is still invisible, it is nothing visible at the
moment one speaks of it and in order to ask oneself
if it has reappeared. It is still nothing that can be
seen when one speaks of it.3
As the apple touched the ground as it fell from the tree,
Sir Isaac Newton supposed that there is an invisible force that
made the apple fall down from where it had been originally
placed. This force is that which cannot be seen but can be
perceived by the senses. What is this force that brought about
attracting one another like the apple that had fallen from the
tree being attracted to the ground. Revisiting GWF Hegel:
But the pure concept or infinity as the abyss of
nothingness in which all is being engulfed must
signify the infinite grief [of the finite] purely as a
moment of the supreme Idea, and no more than a
moment.4
What is this nothing and why am I problematizing it? This
paper aims to reconcile the relationship between the object of
faith the nothing, the supreme Idea as Hegel may suppose it
and the subject of faith, the person, the self, the I. This is the
very reason why this paper is entitled Reconciliare, the latin
word for Reconciliation.5
This nothing I have been concerned this afternoon with is
the object of faith. It is where faith is being grounded on. It is
the believing in something that is nothing, that which cannot
be comprehended fully by the human senses and which
presence is cannot be traced wholly but that which affects
every single object. We seek to know the nothing as we
maintain on believing in it. This nothing is present now. It is
never docilely given a date in the chain of presents, day after
day, according to the instituted order of a calendar. 6
In its possibility as in the experience of the
impossible that will always have constituted it, it is
never a stranger to the event, that is, very simply, to
the coming of that which happens.7
What does it mean to have faith then into something that
is incomprehensible or that which presence does not exist in
the range of the senses and cannot be fathomed fully?
Perhaps, it is in the understanding of Jean Jacques Derrida
that we open ourselves to the infinite possibility of meaning.
That there is more than what it is as defined by the dominant
ideology of the present, that meaning along with history. The
coming of meaning, therefore, is in process. But one must also
be careful in the coming of meaning, for it has to be
understood that one must be in constant search for it as well.
It is then a mutual searching or mutual coming to the arrival of
meaning that meaning does not only come to the seeker but
the seeker must also come to the meaning.
difference.11
In this sense, nothing is presupposed as similar to a
higher being. In Hegels terms, the nothing is the absolute.
Incorporating Derrida, the nothing is introduced to the
concept of infinity. It is the infinite coming of the nothing. It is
the infinite waiting of man to the coming of meaning, to
understand and grasp the totality and actuality of nothing. But
this nothing is cannot be simply reduced to any representation
of its being. Since we cannot fully comprehend it, one cannot
be entitled to participate in the creation of its
representation.12 Even mere speech or thought cannot suffice
to the interpretation of the nothing.13 In Jean-Luc Nancys
interpretation of Hegel, he supposes that any representation
of any being desaturates its beingness. Likewise in the
Phenomenology of the Face by
Notes:
i
MansTherefore,
limited rational
capacity
cannot
fully to
grasp
the
infinite.
is not
qualified
make
representations
of it forman
man cannot
equal
the divine.
13
In Nancys of
Hegel,
she
explains
in Trembling
thatfully
any
representation
pain
through
speech
does not
express the totality
of pain.
14
The Idea
of Idea
the Infinite
and the
Face
the Other.
Philosophy
and
the
of the
Infinite.
Text
andof
Commentary,.
Emmanuel
Levinas.
p.110.
The
face
is
not
simply
a
face. It is
also a master of its own interpretation.
spectre its
of longing
Marxism.
The ghost that manifests itself to
present
for existence.
16
Derrida, p. 99
democracyof
plenitude
itself,
a presence-to-itself,
from
every living
as present
totality of
understood
a presence
as
effectively
identical
to itself.
18
Derrida, p.7
19
Kant, Immanuel. What is enlightenment. (1784) p.1
20
Ibid.
21
By the on
very presence
of opens
other people,
knows
that he
is
thinking
He
himself man
in the
freedom
to
think
in light of his
the own.
perspectives
other.
Michel Foucault: Acceptance of ambiguous ties to
the autonomy
and heteronomy of reason.
Derrida,
p.16
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
conjured a ghost which he has failed to control.
27
Ibid.
28
Nancy, Jean-Luc.
Hegel:
The Restlessness
the Negative.
Minneapolis:
University
of Minnesota
Press. of
2002.
p.10
presupposes
the
absolute.
But
this
presupposition
is made
precisely in order to ruin all presupposition or pre-givenness.
becoming Its
determination
of the
absolute
absolute.
restlessness is itself from the
30
Ibid. p. 44
31
Ibid. p.45
32
The Tremendous
of Spirit.
pp. 18-19 Power of the Negative. Phenomenology
22
23
reconcile
Nancy, p.5 The subject and what it does, it is the act and
its doing the experience of the consciousness of the negativity
of substance as the concrete experience and consciousness of
the modern history of the world that is also the passage of
34
the world
its own
negativity.
CBCPthrough
, of
maturing
in Christian
Faith: National Cathetical
Directory
the
Philippines. (Pasay City, PH: ST. Pauls Publication, 1984) 143,
p.89
35
What is Catholic Theology About?
36
Nancy, p.43
37
Kant: autonomy of reason, reasoning without hindrance
38
Derrida, p.15
39
Check Differance
40
Derrida, p.13
41
Derrida, p.59
42
Spectres of Marx, p.54
York: W.W. Norton & Company. p.145
44
Derrida p.51
45
Ibid.
33
46
47
Nancy, p.7
Derrida, p.88
49
Nancy, p.59-60
50
Ibid. p.60
come eliminates certainty of what or when is it coming.
52
Derrida, p.97
53
Nancy, p.61
48
54
59
On
Revolution.
England:
Penguin