On Ayin, or the Divine Nothing
-
Filippo Casati
Abstract
According to an important part of the Kabbalistic tradition, God is Ayin, that is, God is no thing whatsoever. God is nothing, indeed. Unfortunately, it remains unclear what this really means. My paper aims at casting some philosophical light on this obscure set of ideas, and it tries to accomplish this task in the following way. First of all, I argue that ‘Ayin’ cannot be understood as a quantificational term, for this would ignore the grammar of the word ‘Ayin’ and misconstrue the intended meaning of what Kabbalist thinkers claim about it. Secondly, I argue that ‘Ayin’ cannot be understood as an empty term, for this would deliver an uncharitable way of reading what Kabbalists claim about Ayin. According to some of the most important semantics of empty terms, claims about Ayin would, in fact, turn out to be either false or neither-true-nor-false. To conclude, I argue that ‘Ayin’ can be understood as a non-empty term, that is, a term which refers to something. After discussing some of the problems we face in identifying the referent of ‘Ayin’ with Jacquette’s N-nothing, the empty world and the empty set, I argue that it might be promising to appeal to what mereologists call the null individual.
Abstract
According to an important part of the Kabbalistic tradition, God is Ayin, that is, God is no thing whatsoever. God is nothing, indeed. Unfortunately, it remains unclear what this really means. My paper aims at casting some philosophical light on this obscure set of ideas, and it tries to accomplish this task in the following way. First of all, I argue that ‘Ayin’ cannot be understood as a quantificational term, for this would ignore the grammar of the word ‘Ayin’ and misconstrue the intended meaning of what Kabbalist thinkers claim about it. Secondly, I argue that ‘Ayin’ cannot be understood as an empty term, for this would deliver an uncharitable way of reading what Kabbalists claim about Ayin. According to some of the most important semantics of empty terms, claims about Ayin would, in fact, turn out to be either false or neither-true-nor-false. To conclude, I argue that ‘Ayin’ can be understood as a non-empty term, that is, a term which refers to something. After discussing some of the problems we face in identifying the referent of ‘Ayin’ with Jacquette’s N-nothing, the empty world and the empty set, I argue that it might be promising to appeal to what mereologists call the null individual.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Facing Contradiction in the Absolute 1
-
Part I : Asian Philosophy
- Transcendental Contradictions: The Spectre of Non-Being in Early to Middle Brāhmanic-Hindu Thought-System 9
- “It is Distant, it is Near” – Vedāntic Hindu Visions of Divine Contradictions 39
- Contradictions and Certainty: The Mīmāṃsā Defense of the Authorless Veda 61
- Buddhism, Emptiness, and Paradox 77
- All in One Mind. Huayan’s Holistic Panbuddhism 89
- Heidegger and Dōgen on the Ineffable 105
-
Part II : Christian Philosophy
- Contradiction and God Between Neoplatonism and the Byzantine Tradition: Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Nicholas of Methone 137
- The Ways God Overcomes Contradictions in Human Understanding: Nicholas of Cusa 169
- Identity and non-Identity of the Human Soul with God in Meister Eckhart’s Metaphysical Mysticism 185
- Hegel’s Absolute from a Logical Point of View 211
- The One, the Many, and the Trinity: A Dialetheist Response to the Trinitarian Contradiction 221
-
Part III: Jewish and Islamic Philosophy
- “Laud and praise Him justly and uprightly, not by attributing to Him exaggerations and absurdities”: God and logic in Jewish thought 249
- On Ayin, or the Divine Nothing 269
- Transcendence vs. Immanence in Jewish Philosophy and Poetry 289
- God’s attributes; Are aḥwāl contradictory? 297
- God and Impossibility: A Classical Ashʿarī Perspective 311
- Is Being Contradictory? — Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Principle of Non-Contradiction 347
- Contributors
- Names Index
- Topic Index
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Dedication V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Facing Contradiction in the Absolute 1
-
Part I : Asian Philosophy
- Transcendental Contradictions: The Spectre of Non-Being in Early to Middle Brāhmanic-Hindu Thought-System 9
- “It is Distant, it is Near” – Vedāntic Hindu Visions of Divine Contradictions 39
- Contradictions and Certainty: The Mīmāṃsā Defense of the Authorless Veda 61
- Buddhism, Emptiness, and Paradox 77
- All in One Mind. Huayan’s Holistic Panbuddhism 89
- Heidegger and Dōgen on the Ineffable 105
-
Part II : Christian Philosophy
- Contradiction and God Between Neoplatonism and the Byzantine Tradition: Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Nicholas of Methone 137
- The Ways God Overcomes Contradictions in Human Understanding: Nicholas of Cusa 169
- Identity and non-Identity of the Human Soul with God in Meister Eckhart’s Metaphysical Mysticism 185
- Hegel’s Absolute from a Logical Point of View 211
- The One, the Many, and the Trinity: A Dialetheist Response to the Trinitarian Contradiction 221
-
Part III: Jewish and Islamic Philosophy
- “Laud and praise Him justly and uprightly, not by attributing to Him exaggerations and absurdities”: God and logic in Jewish thought 249
- On Ayin, or the Divine Nothing 269
- Transcendence vs. Immanence in Jewish Philosophy and Poetry 289
- God’s attributes; Are aḥwāl contradictory? 297
- God and Impossibility: A Classical Ashʿarī Perspective 311
- Is Being Contradictory? — Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Principle of Non-Contradiction 347
- Contributors
- Names Index
- Topic Index
