467
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_50
Chapter 50
Unthinkable Nullities, Negative Proofs
50.1 Hypotheses of Hope amid Nothingness
When we try to enter the realm of that Asiatic and pre-Socratic fever to transcend
philosophy, in a word, nothingness, we necessarily confront Jean-Paul Sartre’s
startling magnum opus, L’Être et le néant : Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique.
1
The abstruse leaves of levitating through are obviously there, peering down at our
own perplexed efforts to grapple with Hegel’s influential remark in his work
Greater Logic (also known as The Science of Logic, from Chap. 1), “there is nothing in heaven or on earth which does not contain in itself being and nothingness”.
2
Sartre is clear on this Hegelian paradox when he says of “nothingness” that “It
comes into the world by the For-itself and is the recoil from fullness of self- contained
Being which allows consciousness to exist as such”.
3
Sartre had gone to great literary lengths to prove that Freud’s patients struggled
not with suppressed unconscious revelations, but with an internal “censor” that was
part of their knowing consciousness, simply acting in “bad faith.” There is an important ecological equivalency reliant upon a paradox of proofs, the lack of absolutes,
whether speaking of existence or non-existence. We prove nothing. What we know,
don’t know; grasp, fail to grasp. Both sides of the arbitrary equation are that umwelt
of discretion that can be equally formulated in propositions that affirm, on either
side of their Being, a neutral but vetted series of consciously formulated mathematical notations. In essence, it is a ponderous pari passu—side-by-side—orientation to
1 Éditions Gallimard, Philosophical Library, Paris, 1943.
2 Cited by Sartre in his section on “The Dialectical Concept Of Nothingness,” See Jean-Paul Sartre,
Being and Nothingness, Translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956m
p. 13. https://academiaanalitica.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/georg_wilhelm_friedrich_hegel__
the_science_of_logic.pdf.
3 op.cit., Sartre, p. 633.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_50
Chapter 50
Unthinkable Nullities, Negative Proofs
50.1 Hypotheses of Hope amid Nothingness
When we try to enter the realm of that Asiatic and pre-Socratic fever to transcend
philosophy, in a word, nothingness, we necessarily confront Jean-Paul Sartre’s
startling magnum opus, L’Être et le néant : Essai d’ontologie phénoménologique.
1
The abstruse leaves of levitating through are obviously there, peering down at our
own perplexed efforts to grapple with Hegel’s influential remark in his work
Greater Logic (also known as The Science of Logic, from Chap. 1), “there is nothing in heaven or on earth which does not contain in itself being and nothingness”.
2
Sartre is clear on this Hegelian paradox when he says of “nothingness” that “It
comes into the world by the For-itself and is the recoil from fullness of self- contained
Being which allows consciousness to exist as such”.
3
Sartre had gone to great literary lengths to prove that Freud’s patients struggled
not with suppressed unconscious revelations, but with an internal “censor” that was
part of their knowing consciousness, simply acting in “bad faith.” There is an important ecological equivalency reliant upon a paradox of proofs, the lack of absolutes,
whether speaking of existence or non-existence. We prove nothing. What we know,
don’t know; grasp, fail to grasp. Both sides of the arbitrary equation are that umwelt
of discretion that can be equally formulated in propositions that affirm, on either
side of their Being, a neutral but vetted series of consciously formulated mathematical notations. In essence, it is a ponderous pari passu—side-by-side—orientation to
1 Éditions Gallimard, Philosophical Library, Paris, 1943.
2 Cited by Sartre in his section on “The Dialectical Concept Of Nothingness,” See Jean-Paul Sartre,
Being and Nothingness, Translated by Hazel E. Barnes, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956m
p. 13. https://academiaanalitica.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/georg_wilhelm_friedrich_hegel__
the_science_of_logic.pdf.
3 op.cit., Sartre, p. 633.