Re-spatializing: Space-walking the Stars, a Multitude of Horizons

The phenomenal disposition exposes an insufficiency with philosophical terminology of being, particularly when it comes up against non-being. Although this appears at first to be a petty dispute over the nature of a symbol, it will highlight a necessary change which the discussion of being and its metaphors can take in order to relate concretely to the human experience.¹⁶ Tillich holds this up as central to his ultimate concern, and as a result, the unconditional point of departure for his correlational theology. The distinction becomes fundamental in the answer the kergyma gives to his question. But, to ask the absolute question 'why is there something and not nothing?'—as Tillich does in the opening to his systematics, and as the question is so often posed nowadays—is a fool's errand: a rhetorical snipe hunt for the uninitiated philosopher. The catcher is tricked into waiting in the dark for no one to scare nothing into his very real net.¹⁷

'Nothingness,' and 'non-being' (ouk on or me on) are from the beginning euphemisms for something fundamentally outside of phenomenal experience.¹⁸ These euphemisms may be helpful, insofar as they do not over-determine the quality of their relation to human life by attempting to delimit something which no phenomenal basis by their very nature. When Parmenides says, "non-being is what is not" is not merely tautological, for it cannot even suspend itself in logic long enough to be confirmed a tautology.¹⁹ As Tillich shows sufficiently, non-being can only be understood only in its inextricable relationship to being. Here in lies the root of his criticism of the classical existentialists which is shared in large part by Gadamer: they afford non-being an ontological priority which it does not deserve.²⁰ Tillich particularly does us a transitional service by recasting the notion of 'non-being' and 'nothingness' in such a light as to break the way it is over-determined by Heidegger and Sartre. But why then, continue leaning on a broken euphemism which fails to serve its metaphorical purpose?

Tillich proceeds from the original fact [Ur-Tatsache] that "there is something and not nothing."²¹ Jean-Luc Marion helps us to augment this ur-tatsache in relation to God revealed through incarnation:

[...] the ontic difference between being and nonbeing indeed intervenes, located in the shadow of the kerygma; however, it no longer functions according to the norms of being but to those of operators (faith, call, as if) that, far from slipping into this ontic difference, make it appear indifferent, though leaving it intact.

Drawing on the Apostle Paul's radical 'wisdom of the foolish' and 'strength of the weak,' (1 Cor. 1) Marion uses scripture to dissolve the classical Greek distinction between Being, being and non-being which occurs as a result of the incarnation.²² So by framing it in slightly differently language, the absolute question is dispelled by a more apparent reality governed by augmenting the ur-tatsache from a phenomenological viewpoint within the horizon of being: there is something. This leads us to a point of departure for phenomenological onto-theology: I cannot see beyond the horizon, but that I cannot see it does not imply its non-being, but its beyond-being.²³ Ideally, this phenomenological shift in onto-theology can end the snipe hunt hazing ritual that begins with puzzling over "why is there something and not nothing?" (Like the snipe, there is an actual bird out there.)

An objection might still be raised, now from a phenomenological perspective, how can we confirm that there is "something" rather than "nothing" (kenon, or the void) beyond the horizon of being? This might apply to being in the 'future' (e.g. the universe collapsing on itself), being in the 'past' (e.g. "before" creatio ex nihilo, "before" the singularity), etc. But the contradiction is precisely this: our situation within being is such that we cannot conceive of any reality apart from it. The "concealedness" of "not-yet-being" and "being-no-more" can be mistaken as non-existence (ouk on).²⁴ Its as though our lack of object-permanence haunts us into adulthood—call it, a lack of being-permanence. Columbus' sailors did not fear plunging their ships into some abyss off the edge of the earth, they feared a journey so deep into the unknown they might not return.

This extends quite precisely into the metaphor of life and death. Recall the popular funeral platitude: "death is only an horizon, and an horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."²⁵ It is a kind of tyranny of our situatedness within life that we cannot conceive of what is beyond life. As a result, we use categories of being in order to conceive of the experience of death when we look at a corpse as though it is now "empty of life."²⁶ But the "emptiness"—as "nothingness" is to being—is a misinterpretation of what is "beyond" precisely because we cannot ourselves also be situated in the beyond of the horizon at which we gaze. The beyond phenomenologically strikes us as "empty," (as Gadamer says "still undecided future possibilities") by its concealedness but it is only because we are not situated there (and cannot be by the very virtue of the beyond). Derrida, drawing on Levinas, identifies this precise error in Heidegger:

Levinas not only reproaches Heidegger for the fact that the Dasein is argued from the privileged position of its own death but because it gives itself death as a simple annihilation, a passage to nonbeing, which amounts to inscribing the gift of death as being-towards-death within the horizon of the question of being.²⁷

This is consonant with Tillich's critique of the existentialist mistake in Heidegger and Sartre: "Somehow [recent existentialism] has replaced being-itself by non-being, giving to nonbeing a positivity and a power which contradict the immediate meaning of the word."²⁸ The immediate meaning of the word, as Tillich argues, is that non-being only has meaning in philosophical relationship to being, not the other way around.²⁹

If one or two bits of interest can be gained usuriously from the donner le mort, it is that there is not only a tyranny, but a double gift given in this horizon which obcures our vision from within the situation of life and being (we will later return to this horizon alongside the pilgrim Dante). But like Columbus' sailors, they did not need to fear sailing off the edge from the apparent likelihood that the earth was round—as one moves toward the horizon, the beyond continues revealing itself.³⁰ The horizon is both a gift, and brings the gift qua gift into being.³¹ Without situatedness, without the horizon of being, we could not receive what is beyond as gift. The horizon is given as gift in order that the (or any) gift may be qua gift.

Drawing the threads together, Tillich offers an effective mechanism for conceptualizing the ontological priority of being over non-being and the process of God as the triumph of being over nonbeing. However, there is a more effective phenomenological treatment of this creative fecundity which we observe as part of the divine life (and from our relation to it) which more fruitfully gestures toward an open metaphysics in which the individual is spatialized and situated concretely. The supra-abundance we observe is not a result of an ongoing ontological process which overcomes the very presence of non-being within itself, but rather, as a result of the super-ontological nature of God which is-beyond always at a phenomenological horizon given as gift to the creature qua situatedness within the divine life.

It is in the same sense that the metaphor of finiteness can be reconstituted within a non-dual onto-theology by recognizing the gift given to the creature qua situated. Seen in this light, if finitude is what compels the anxiety of being by the threat of 'nothingness' or 'meaninglessness' it is also what gives the absolute blessing. The threat of 'nothingness' that comes on to us as the horizon of death, suffers from the same euphemistic acrobatics as non-being. From a phenomenological outlook, death appears as a horizon upon which is nothingness, meaningless, condemnation because— at least in large part—of what we infer from the phenomenon of observing something move beyond a horizon. This existentialism is quite simply an adult version of the anxiety of being-permanence. But from the strict phenomenality of life—like the phenomenality of being—there is a consonant pre-rational recognition that "there is," or "I am." In this way the 'courage to be' is not overcoming an essence of 'nothing' or 'non-being' within us, but in a more hermeneutical way, a courage which inspires us to move toward the horizons that obscure what is beyond.