Чат Грота

We are on uncertain but well-trod ground in contemplating the question of why anything exists. There are already well developed metaphysical systems which reduce the contingency of existence to some kind of necessity in an attempt to answer this question, among them the philosophies of Leibniz and Spinoza. However, in the case of these thinkers, it is arguable that they are not quite "smooth" enough. They insist that one being - God - exists without requiring explanation. But this being is a substantial being, a substance with distinctive features. As such, it stands out (the original meaning of "exists" comes from the Latin "ex-sistere" which means "to stand out") as a distinctive thing, and thus it becomes difficult to see why its existence does not need to be explained. The Zero ontology, on the other hand, is a purer system. It removes every last trace of substance from the world by cancelling it out in the context of the whole. There are no bumps and hairs, no gods, no substances, no things that are just there without explanation. The universe swallows itself up in the same act by which it releases itself into being. … I like to think of the Zero ontology in a slightly different way, as a perfect combination of rationalism and mysticism. Zero in this case is the greatest and most perfect whole, for it wraps up all of the substances of the world and reveals that they were never truly substances, never truly independent entities at all. But they had to appear in the world, in the guise of substances, for otherwise there would be no "adding-up" procedure, and thus no realisation of Zero. Without this realisation of Zero as the summation of things, the substances of the world would not be effectively combined with nothingness. They would then always remain problematic, for we could always say "well why not nothingness?" instead of "ah, clearly there is nothingness within the heart of the world". Rationalism is involved here in relying upon the process of calculation. In order to believe in the Zero ontology as a possibility, we have to believe that mathematical physics, at least, accurately describes reality. Thus reality must have a rational, mathematical structure. Rationalists have always maintained this to be true. Mysticism is involved here in the final step, the step which claims that when everything gets wrapped up and added up, it is all tantamount to Nothingness. It plays no part in the theoretical structure used to make the calculation, but it is expressed by the final result of the calculation, and by the way that we interpret this result. The variety of mysticism which is particularly appropriate here is atheistic Taoism, which explicitly claims that there is a profound relationship, even an identity between being and non-being. The Tao Te Ching expresses this wisdom in poems rather than calculations: We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the centre hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use. [Tao Te Ching, Chapter 11]