Meontology

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Meontology is the philosophical study of non-being.[1]

History[]

The word comes from the Ancient Greek μή, me "non" and ὄν, on "being" (confer ontology). It refers not exactly to the study of what does not exist, but an attempt to cover what may remain outside of ontology. Meontology has a slim tradition in the West (see Parmenides, Plato's Sophist, and apophatic theology), but has always been central to the Eastern philosophies of Taoism and the later Buddhism.

Nishida was the first to thoroughly expand the Eastern notion of nothingness in the Continental paradigm and is thus responsible for bringing to the West a clearer understanding of the Buddhist notion of non-being.

It can also be associated more recently, with the emphasis placed upon absence or deferral by both Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida.

French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy distinguishes nothingness from nothing. He writes, “Nothingness is not nothing [rien]....There is no ontology without the dialectic or the paradox of a meontology....Nothing is the thing tending toward its pure and simple being of a thing.” Nothing is “the vanishing, momentary quality of the smallest amount of beingness (étantité).” [2]

Levinas on meontology[]

Meontology is evident in Emmanuel Levinas' rejection of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's notion of dialectical meontology,[3] which proposed the principle of oppositionality as the driving force of history.[4] Levinas' skepticism, which according to Martin Kavka "breaks the line of progressive accounts of history", supported the notion of a continual reinterpretation of history and also the idea that the end of history is unpredictable.[3] This forms part of Levinas' heterocentricity, which seeks to inoculate the transhistorical against history. It holds that the traditional history - that which reduces singular persons to members of classes or tribes - cannot be used to narrate the coming-to-pass of the Infinite in the ethical relation.[5] Levinas' conceptualization is encapsulated in a principle for existence or for humanity that states, "Do not go inside, go outside!". It implies that the authenticity of human existence is ensured not by looking inwards (egocentrism) because one does not see oneself without the aid of others but through heterocentricity or dialogue of excentric agents.[6]

According to Levinas, meontology refers not to another being but to an inability to be, the privation of being.[3] Such privation leads to transcendence, which is described as a realm "other than being".[3] For Levinas, what was meontological was what had meaning beyond being, beyond ontology; for him this was the ethical, the primary demand of the other in the face-to-face encounter. In this sense he sought to clarify or take further some of the issues raised by Heidegger and explicitly give ontology a secondary role to ethics rather than continue to parallel them in saying that the Being means care (German: Sorge). Levinas, however, agreed with Hegel in his notion that meontology is the mirror image of ontology, suggesting that they occupy the same logical space, which is the space of the Same.[7]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Schelling’s meontology and the concept of possibility in Kierkegaard
  2. ^ Jean-Luc Nancy, The Creation of the World or Globalization, (SUNY Press. Albany, 2007, pp. 102-03.)
  3. ^ a b c d Herzog, Annabel (2020). Levinas's Politics: Justice, Mercy, Universality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-8122-5197-5.
  4. ^ Embree, Lester (2013). Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 559. ISBN 978-90-481-4429-7.
  5. ^ Kavka, Martin (2004). Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-1-139-45201-4.
  6. ^ Jung, Hwa Yol (2021). Phenomenology, Transversality, and World Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 146. ISBN 978-1-4985-2041-6.
  7. ^ Llewelyn, John (2002). Appositions of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-253-34018-7.
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