Abstract
Contemporary thought has striven to challenge and discredit the transcendental, constitutive subject, but the aftermath seems still to be tied down by the dichotomic view and by the center that is said to be non-existent or to have been “liquidated.” Zhao proposes the Daoist understanding of nothingness as the infinite ground for presence. With that understanding and within the limits of language, she proposes the metaphor of porous existent. The existent is porous in the sense that boundaries are always permeable where the unfathomable depth, or nothingness, is implicated. The nothingness penetrates existence, yet it is also the ground upon which existence is perched. The existent is porous also in the sense that there are heterogeneous dimensions and intensities, slipping in at every instant of duration.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Todd May, Reconsidering Difference (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
- 2.
May, Reconsidering Difference, 2.
- 3.
May, Reconsidering Difference, 2
- 4.
Nancy, “Introduction,” in Who comes after the subject? 4.
- 5.
Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 55. While I have suggested that Levinas’s conception of subjectivity is still tied down by its point of reference, the constitutive Subject, in conceptualizing the Other, Levinas clearly attempts to reach a realm beyond the confines of any reference to the Subject. Levinas suggests that egology, the “I think,” has compromised the true knowledge of the other in its otherness. Consequently, the other appears to be the opposite of the same or the I, or it becomes an extension of the same. Levinas argues that the other cannot be merely the other of the same and cannot be conceived merely as resistance or reversal of the I, and he warns of the danger of violence in rendering the other the same. He argues that the other must be the absolute Other, the Other that is prior to any geographical, physical, and cognitive opposition to the same. While Levinas has also hinted at such radical Otherness in subjectivity, and hence calls it “Otherwise than being,” a closer read of his conception of subjectivity indicates that it is more about “beyond essence,” as unable to be, as a hostage and responsibility…; all these indicate that he is still working within the realm of the reversal of the constitutive Subject and unable to find a ground radically other enough for the “Otherwise than being.”
- 6.
Ying-shih Yü, “Individualism and the Neo-Taoist Movement in Wei-Chin China,” in Individualism and Holism: Studies in Confucian and Taoist Values, ed. Donald J. Munro (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1985), 134.
- 7.
Laozi, Dao De Jing, trans. Robert Eno (2010), Version 1.2. 16. Retrieved February 2, 2019 at http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Daodejing.pdf.
- 8.
Dao De Jing, 14.
- 9.
Guenter Wohlfart, “Heidegger and Laozi: Wu (nothing)—on chapter 11 of the Daodejing,” trans. Marty Heitz, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2003): 39–59, 45.
- 10.
The Daoist Zhuangzi described a notion of the human self as nonbeing in the sense that it transcends all entities and is beyond all enclosed presence and yet it embodies, generates, and completes all things. See my earlier work on Zhuangzi: “Transcendence, Freedom, and Ethics in Levinas’ Subjectivity and Zhuangzi’s Non-being Self,” Philosophy East & West 65, no. 1 (2015): 65–80.
- 11.
Existence as infinity is not even “becoming,” for “becoming” always points in certain directions and at certain destinations, but infinity has no prediction and no destination.
- 12.
Quoted in Xiangling Zhang, “The Coming Time ‘Between’ Being and Daoist Emptiness: An Analysis of Heidegger’s Article Inquiry into the Uniqueness of the Poet Via the Lao Zi,” Philosophy East & West 59, no. 1 (2009): 71–87, 80. Legend has it that, when Heidegger was searching for the meaning of being, when his project in Being and Time “could not succeed with the help of the language of metaphysics,” he was introduced to the Daoist notion of nothingness by the Japanese Kyoto school scholars. As someone who had denounced the metaphysical tradition that identifies the essence of being through essential endowment, and as someone who believed that being is not a metaphysical entity, not a being or beings, this notion opened up a whole new way of seeing the world for him, a complete avenue that he couldn’t resist. Thus, he claimed that “Tao could be the way that gives all ways” (Heidegger, quoted in Guenter Wohlfart, “Heidegger and Laozi: Wu [nothing]—on Chapter 11 of the Daodejing,” trans. Marty Heitz, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30, no. 1 [2003]: 39–59, 52). Not surprisingly, Heidegger is considered by some to be “the only Western philosopher who not only intellectually understands Tao, but has intuitively experienced the essence of it as well.” [Chang Chung-yuan, Tao: A New Way of Thinking (New York: Harper & Row, 1997), viii.]
- 13.
Heidegger’s comments on Zhuangzi concerning “a huge tree that is useless,” quoted in Zhang, “The Coming Time ‘Between’ Being and Daoist Emptiness,” 80–81.
- 14.
Charles Taylor, “Buffered and Porous Selves,” in The Immanent Frame (September 2, 2008). Taylor describes the distinction between what he calls the modern and pre-modern senses of self. The modern self is called “buffered self” while the pre-modern self is the “porous self.” Retrieved October 10, 2019 at https://tif.ssrc.org/2008/09/02/buffered-and-porous-selves/.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zhao, G. (2020). Being or Nothingness? Infinity and the Porous Existent. In: Subjectivity and Infinity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45590-3_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45590-3_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45589-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45590-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)