Nigitology: Heidegger vs. Leibniz

Kryuchkova Svetlana Evgen'evna ORCID: 0000-0002-9213-8503 Doctor of Philosophy Professor; Department of Humanities; Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation 51/1 Leningradskiy Street, Moscow, 125167, Russia svetlana.kryuchkova2015@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

The history of philosophy in the "school" presentation often appears as a struggle between different directions, positions and opinions, each of which is not universally recognized. However, despite the desire to sort out and classify by schools and trends, "a long series of worldviews" (K. Jaspers), a productive (primarily for the educational system) historiographical approach that allows you to immediately navigate and get the necessary information, is fraught with the illusion that the history of philosophy provides enough knowledge to understand philosophical problems.

Historical and philosophical schematism, like any classification and typology in general, is a familiar and effective method of science, however, if we go too far with it, it can obscure some concepts in such a way that it makes it difficult to restore (and understand) them in the form in which they existed at the time. Thus, in the history of philosophy, one can identify the uniformity of spiritual searches of representatives of radically opposite philosophical trends, which is paradoxical for "school" philosophy and does not fit into the general framework of the established typological scheme, each time manifesting their own truth of Being and challenging another.

Although it is an elusive goal to identify such uniformity, nevertheless, the analysis of the ideas of some representatives of seemingly incompatible worldviews leads to unexpected results and allows us to better understand the phenomenon of philosophia perennis – a unified ("eternal") philosophy in its essence. An example is the analysis of the approaches of Leibniz, as a representative of classical philosophy, and Heidegger (non-classical) regarding the problem of Nothingness, [i] first stated and comprehended by Parmenides (being is, but non-being is not) ^[1].

The appeal to these influential thinkers in the history of European philosophy is to a certain extent inspired by the revival of research interest in the category of Nothing, which seemed to have long since left the focus of research attention. The current relevance is embodied in the slogan "There is nothing!" by representatives of non-classical metaphysics, which marked a change in the status of this category (the category is existential), and the institutionalization of a modern problem field called "nihitology", in which a new study of the ontological labyrinths of negativity began.

If for some of the current thinkers the prohibition of Parmenides with his idea of integral being still remains important and they avoid the initially illegal discourse about non-being as the opposite of being^{[2, p.49]}, then others legitimize the "negative", understanding it either as another layer present behind being, or as abstract identity with pure being, either as the boundary of thinking about being, or as a "negative idea that has no object" ^{[3, p. 400-401]}, i.e. a negative judgment (pure negation retained in language), or non-existence before the appearance and then disappearance of any fragment of existence. In the latter case, Nothing (past and future) is considered as something that denies Existence, "nullifying" all manifestations of life. "Non-existence kills," A.N. Chanyshev writes in his famous work, "but it kills with the hands of being. It stalks existence with inaudible steps and devours every moment that has lagged behind the present, every moment that becomes the past. Non-existence is chasing after existence. The latter strives forward, not understanding the road, flattering itself with the dream of progress, but finds only nothingness ahead" ^{[4, p.158]}.

The philosophical "landscape" includes not only a variety of interpretations of Nothing, but also attempts to build "negative ontologies" (for example, N. Berdyaev, solving the problem of freedom, considers Non-existence more important than Being), as well as studies in which ontological and logical negativity fades into the background ("Leave it as it is. Don't go there") ^{[5, p. 138]}, making room for psychological, as well as those who use it as an external "resource" (J. Derrida) ^[6] to solve political ^[7] and sociological ^[8] problems. Moreover, in some ontologies, Nothing that had previously claimed primacy and primordiality comes to the fore, becoming not only a methodological principle, but also a "primary and absolute" substance in relation to "relative and secondary Being" ^[4].

This reversal of the traditional philosophical attitude to Being and the "strange games" with Nothing, discussions about which have created a "Gordian knot of contradictions" ^{[9, p.126]}, not only open up other perspectives for the study of Being, prompting attempts to create more and more new philosophical systems and setting the possibilities for a broader theoretical field of understanding, but they also cause a number of conceptual difficulties in a situation where "two relatives stand next to each other – in dangerous and seemingly inconceivable proximity: one who has captured the whole world and is increasingly pushing it to destruction, and the other, half–forgotten, antique, behind which it is no longer possible to hide" ^{[10, p. 122]}. As a result, imaginary Nothingness turns into a kind of what, through which genuine being addresses us (K. Jaspers). And an important role in this gradual change in the status of Nothingness was played by Heidegger's "fundamental ontology", which started from the Greek Logos, which for the first time began to search for being as the true basis of existence.

One of Heidegger's main reproaches against both Modern European metaphysics and modern physics was that they refused to "think about the truth of being" ^[11], which ultimately led to the oblivion of the essence of man himself. As a result, "human life, carried away by the pursuit of existence, diverged from existence" ^{[12, p.5]}. This situation, according to Heidegger, urgently requires overcoming the Cartesian tradition of "dogmatic metaphysics" by changing the strategies of philosophizing about Being and creating a modern metaphysics capable of radical ways of thinking.

Heidegger begins the realization of the task of destroying traditional philosophy by "thinking through" the problem of Nothing, with the help of which, in his opinion, it is only possible to "redefine" the main question of metaphysics – the question of Being – a question about which modern science "does not want to know anything" ^[13]. To do this, he turns to one of the "most German thinkers in Germany" (J. Beaufre), Leibniz, seeing in him the germs of the future philosophical thinking. And this appeal is not accidental. The traditional reading of Leibniz's works, which we encounter in textbooks on the history of philosophy, where he is referred to as "rationalists" who "laid the foundation", does not explain the constant research attention to his ideas, which shows that not everything in Leibniz's concept is as clear and distinct as it is presented in textbooks on the history of philosophy.

When analyzing the approaches to the problem of Nothingness of Leibniz and Heidegger, who, along with Aristotle and Russell, can also be considered "central figures in the history of understanding negation" (Lawrence R. Horn) ^{[14, p.46]}, the unexpected (from the point of view of the strategy of philosophizing and the foundations of worldview) closeness of these equally criticized contemporaries was quite clearly revealed. thinkers. This article is devoted to identifying the commonality that has manifested itself outside the systematics and constructive framework of the history of philosophy, starting from the idea that "no construction of the history of philosophy as a meaningful sequence of positions coincides with its historical factuality" ^{[15, p.125]}. The methodological basis of the work was comparative historical and hermeneutic methods, as well as content analysis and the use of heuristic possibilities of the existential analytics method.

The style of philosophizing of the two thinkers looks in many ways the opposite: if Leibniz, a philosopher, mathematician, and logician, is dominated by rigor of definitions, a focus on validity, and a desire to clarify key categories, then Heidegger's style is characterized by philosophizing in the form of "metaphysical questions" that are never completed and "slip into the poetic." And in this, despite the declarations of rejection of tradition, he can be seen as following the old (including Leibnizian) metaphysics, which he seeks to overcome, namely: a constant appeal to the most fundamental philosophical questions. At the same time, despite the difference in styles and fundamentally different strategies of "searching for truth," an analysis of Heidegger's reception of Leibniz's nihitology, as well as his own reflections on the problem of the ontology of negativity, especially in the Marburg period, allows us to highlight previously unnoticed common aspects.

For Heidegger, thinking about Nothing begins with an appeal to Leibniz, who actively questioned (following Aristotle) in his time: "why is there something and not nothing, because nothing is simpler and easier than something?" ^{[16, p. 408]}. The first point of intersection: Leibniz considers this question to be "the first question of metaphysics" ^{[16, p.408]} and Heidegger fully agrees with this, his formulation is very similar and looks like this: "Why is there anything at all, and not, conversely, Nothing?" ^{[17, p.27]}. The following general point: also Just as Leibniz, for whom God is the ultimate cause of all things, relies on the principle of sufficient reason, Heidegger also relies on this principle, which he called the "statement of justification."

Leibniz did not share the Cartesian strategy of treating Nothing as something empty, as Nothing that exists, i.e. the negation of existence. Initially, he understood it as non-existence, i.e. non-existent. Accordingly, the source of existence of all creatures was seen in God, and non–existence - in Nothing, which in this case acts as an auxiliary world-forming principle. However, in a late essay on ancient Chinese philosophy, devoted to the binary system, which, in his opinion, clarifies the "mystery" of the origin of numbers from zero and one, he will give Nothing a different meaning by drawing an analogy of God (as the supreme being who created everything) with unity, and Nothing with zero. The doctrine of infinitesimals (having a metaphysical nature) in his famous theory of differential calculus, the primacy in the creation of which he disputed with Newton, implicitly contained the idea of "the emergence and separation of quantities or entities at least somewhat different from zero" ^{[18, pp.184-1855]}. Interestingly and significantly, this echoes the vision of the problem by modern mathematicians, who deprive "zero" of emptiness when it is given the status of a natural number. And natural numbers, these ideal entities, can be treated like real objects. Thus, Nothing in this aspect appears as something accessible to rational knowledge (albeit on an infinitesimal scale), and hence a metaphysical interpretation of the problem of ex nihilo emergence.

However, beyond this metaphysical rationale, Leibniz emphasized the usefulness of Nothing as an explanatory principle for the Mystery of creation, which is usually difficult for ordinary people to understand. The imperfection of the mortal world is explained by its emergence from Nothing. "There are only these two first principles – God and Nothing," Leibniz writes in a letter to I. Bouvet, "God as far as perfections are concerned, and Nothing as far as imperfections or substantial voids (vuides d'essence)" ^{[19, 92]}.Such an understanding of Nothing as a lack and imperfection, which connects it with the characteristics of existence, will then serve as a methodological device for the philosopher's justification of the famous principle of God's choice of the best of all possible worlds.

Thus, following Augustine, Leibniz interprets Nothing as the root cause of the imperfections ("evil") of the world, i.e., present in existence, which means interpreting "the concept of nihil theistic formula in a positive sense" ^{[20, p.270]}, since in fact he gives this theistic idea a material status: "The construction of "nothing" in the meaning of the material cause of the world for all its imperfections and limitations," notes V.A. Belyaev, a well−known Russian researcher of the philosophy of Leibniz, "is, of course, fiction. But at the heart of this fiction lies the true idea that the imperfections and shortcomings of the world cannot be caused directly by God, but are related to the very essence of created existence, as such. In the idea of "nothing" as something positive, this principle of the limitation of the created world in theistic philosophy, so to speak, is personified" ^{[20, pp.271-272]}. Thus, the philosopher "puts the Divine essence and Divine properties in place of Nothing" ^{[20, p.277]}.

A similar situation is observed in Heidegger, who, although he opposed giving Nothing a "deplorable ontic property that allows for the possibility of overcoming" ^{[21, p.220]}, nevertheless considers it as something with a positive content. Thus, Nothing turns "into a path along which thought moves hermeneutically, discovering new life meanings with each step, as well as old ones in a new way" ^{[22, p. 18]}.

At the same time, if the Leibnizian approach can be considered a naturalistic version of negativity, then Heidegger suggests an anthropological one, using new concepts such as "presence", Dasein and "being here", meaning that "a person will be viewed from a completely specific angle.": as someone who is marked by his own attitude to being" ^{[22, p. 72]}, which manifests itself primarily in relation to things, in everyday life. Only a person, without whom existence would remain mute (A. Kozhev), can grasp the "elusive existence" by withdrawing from it and going beyond his own limits, i.e. into the sphere of Nothingness. This "pushing forward" of being into Nothingness, the determination of being towards death (rejection of cultural mediation, leaving existence aside) allows one to gain genuine existence, freedom and the meaning of being. Thus, the philosopher asserts the possibility of direct penetration into being, finding support in "absolutely non-existent" [17. P. 18], i.e. in Nothing. The latter, which is both non-being and non-being, "is not something insignificant", still "takes place", exists, i.e. requires a Person. Nothing appears in two ways: either as an intentional object, whose meaning can be phenomenologically constructed, or through "the experience of non-existence, which does not need syllogisms to justify itself: it simply exists" ^{[23, p. 71]}. Thus, the philosopher, quite in the spirit of the ancient Greek metaphysical tradition, with its understanding of philosophy as an "instance of free reason" based on direct evidence ^{[24, p.14]}, recognizes that in identifying the real status of Nothing, one can rely on evidence, "living experience" (the sensory experience of everyday life), as well as direct intellectual discretion.

As a result of his painful persistence in the course of questioning existence, Heidegger comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to consider Nothing as a formal logical abstraction, a substantiation of negative judgment, a "naked negation" that we do not think about, being "lost in one or another circle of existence" ^{[17, p.20]}. The philosopher places it in human existence, where it is found in the situation of experiencing the "primordial horror" of the disappearance of reality (the failure of existence), which cannot be explained either with the help of mythology, religion or psychology, i.e. the saving illusions of culture, acting as an "analgesic drug" for people (VN Porus). In this terrible experience of experiencing Nothing, in going beyond, beyond the edge of being, a person meets himself. In this act of transcendence, which opens up a way to "talk about existence as a whole" ^{[12, p.251]}, Nothing acts as "a condition for the possibility of revealing existence as such for human existence" ^{[17, p.25]}. In this experience, which is not present in the boredom of everyday life, everything alluvial "settles down" and the real world opens up to a person, which is "a strange something that is nothing, and means nothing compared to everything we are dealing with, that is, something that does not exist, but it itself does not exist." so, with such completeness, with such a vivid horror, that nothing that we had known before gave us… Nothing that exists is so... cramping for us. That's it! The world opened up as it is… In front of him we are pure abandonment, loneliness" ^{[23, pp.32, 344]}.

Thus, "insignificant Nothingness" refers a person to existence as such. Only in a borderline situation, which gives "intimate knowledge of the Nothingness that is implied in the old metaphysical question" ^{[12, p.267]}, a person who has looked into its abyss can understand the value of being: "In the bright night of terrifying Nothingness, for the first time, the simplest revelation of existence as such occurs: it is revealed that it is existence, and not Nothing.… Without the initial openness of Nothing, there is no self and no freedom" ^{[17, p.22]}. This connects man as the "seat of Nothing" (substitute for Nothing), with the problem of metaphysics, which is the main event in Dasein's life. Thus, Heidegger's philosophizing is a "daring" questioning of a person about his being.

Between being (treated as non-being) and existence has an irremediable distance, a kind of ontological chasm, the presence of which explains why, against the background of existence, being becomes indistinguishable from Nothing. This position caused discussions among researchers of early Heidegger, who believed that in this case the German philosopher was searching for a term capable of replacing the concept of being, which is a legacy of the old metaphysical tradition with its traditional connotations. These include the assessment of the lecture "What is Metaphysics?" as a document of nihilism, where Nothing appears only as an insignificant instance (nihil negativum), and not as a face of being. This also applies, in particular, to the idea of a mutual transition in the spirit of Hegelian philosophy, where there is a transition of being into Nothing and vice versa. However, in Hegel's dialectical identity with Nothing, it is not about being, but about pure and undeveloped being, i.e., a concept. Moreover, in Hegel's philosophy, the latter prevails due to its highest degree of abstractness, thereby it is associated not with Nothing, which in this respect acts only as a passing moment of self-realization of pure being, but with itself, which then escapes "into a more concrete reality of becoming" ^{[25, p.5]}.

Otherwise, in Heidegger, where being has no self-conversion, because it finds itself in existence, outside of which it is Nothing, which is originally the same as being. "In any case, being does not pass into Nothingness, just as Nothing passes into being. They don't need this transition. Outside of existence, they coincide" ^{[26, p.6]}. In other words, the relationship between them is a direct identity. Nothing is like being, since there is no being in both ^{[26, p.123]}. However, in the later period, this relationship is described by Heidegger as an unequal "Nothing−Co-existence" (being experienced by oneself through a person), where Nothing, like the transcendence of human presence, turns out to be even "more important": "In this "Nothing" of metaphysics– being itself" ^{[10, p. 129]}. This change did not go unnoticed by Sartre, who was influenced by Heidegger, but approached the problem from a different angle: not from Nothing, but from being ^{[27, p. 61]}.

Thus, "we are dealing with the 'non-existent presence' of Nothing, which is, declaring itself in existence. Such a Nothing, according to R. Barth, can in a positive sense take the place of God, assume his functions and perform them" ^{[28, p.114]}. Despite such a clear overlap with Leibniz, it is necessary to ask how legitimate such a conclusion is in relation to Heidegger's secular rather than religious attitude. Although there is an indicative characteristic of his philosophy as "Christian metaphysics without God" (N.A. Berdyaev), and he himself wrote in a letter to theologian R. Bulman dated December 31, 1927 about the connection of his reasoning with religious intuition and intentions towards an ontological justification of Christian theology as a science ^{[29, p.126]}. So, for example, "the search for authenticity," emphasizes Heidegger, −first of all makes itself felt in the field of faith as a search for the certainty of salvation (Luther)" ^{[26, p.292]}. This difficult aspect of the philosophy of Heidegger, the "German master" from the school of the mystic Master Eckhardt, in particular, concerning the perspectives of religious experience, "certainly requires separate and detailed consideration, taking into account, on the one hand, the Catholic (he began as a Catholic philosopher) ^{[12, p. 19]}, and later the Protestant "trace" in his work, and on the other hand, the continuing ambiguity about God and theology of the twentieth century, manifested in an interview with the magazine der Spiegel (1966) in the late period of his work, characterized by a departure from categorical analysis ("there is more rigorous thinking than conceptual") and the proclamation of the impossibility of rational comprehension of being ^[30].

Thus, the mental dialogue between Heidegger and Leibniz through the centuries, when considering and posing the problem of Nothing, shows that for all the originality of these original German thinkers, who were very different in their initial attitudes, they practically look in the same direction, have a "related" ontological orientation and starting point of the path. Their proximity is evidenced not only by Heidegger's frequent references to Leibniz and the common goal of "creating Nothing," but also by the similarity of ways to legalize the negative. This was evident both in relation to Leibniz's "Nothing is God" and in relation to Heidegger's "Nothing is Dasein". In both cases, Nothing acquires a new meaning, having a meaningful character, as for the personification of the imperfection of the world − in Leibniz, or evil (continuing the tradition of the Christian Gnostic tradition of metaphysics) - in Heidegger, as the latter discussed in a letter to Elizabeth Blochman dated September 12, 1929 ^[31].

Also, the point of intersection of their systems can be considered the search for a new philosophical language (and comprehension of its essence), because, as Heidegger admitted, "within certain limits they were also forced to speak the language of what they were helping to overcome" ^{[17, p.36]}. It is significant that Heidegger, whose own philosophical language was characterized by eccentricity, admired not only the originality of the intuitions of the author of "Monadology", but also his linguistic boldness, which manifested itself in the introduction of new linguistic forms into philosophical circulation, for example, the term existeturire is a modification of the Latin term, which in the context of his work acquired meaning. "something like a thirst for being. For Heidegger's own ideas, forced to speak the language of traditional metaphysics, which he sought to overcome, it was akin to a rallying cry" ^{[24, p.185]} to create new concepts. The latter were supposed to help carry out the planned "destruction of the history of ontology" with its instrumentalist-type subject-object thinking ("calculating thinking") and allow them to express their ideas more adequately on the way to comprehending the essence of language, often giving "morally negative ontic words positive ontological meanings" ^{[10, p. 121]}. For such a distortion of the meanings of traditional philosophical terms, as well as the invention of new ones to overcome the terminological insufficiency of the available philosophical vocabulary, both thinkers were criticized by their contemporaries, who accused them of theoretical arrogance, exoticism of language, leading to vague reasoning ^[32].

At the same time, despite the difference in their original methods of philosophizing, they still generally think along the lines of a traditional strategy centered on the essential. In an attempt to overcome the Leibnizian attitude towards his research, Heidegger makes him the beginning of a new path, a support for a leap to the "truth of being", thereby, in a certain sense, continuing the existence of tradition with his metaphysical and poetic questions ^{[33, pp.38, 40-41]}. V. Beemel, a former student of Heidegger, who wrote his biography, noted"We stand in the tradition of Western metaphysics– whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are trying to understand this tradition from the beginning, or whether we imagine that we can do without it. We are so caught up in tradition that we are necessarily looking for approaches to Heidegger from her perspective. And then it turns out to be very difficult for us to see how he himself moved away from this tradition, and what it means to “move away" here. By no means does he shake it off with frivolous alacrity, he does not cross it out, he does not put it out of the brackets. Rather, it consists of a passionate dialogue in it" ^{[22, p.235]}.

This intuitive passion for philosophical inquiry is another point of contact between these two German thinkers, each of whom at one time protested against classifying it as some kind of "... ism" or "... logic." Thus, Leibniz sharply opposed classifying him as a Cartesian, and Heidegger (in a letter "On Humanism", 1947) ^[34] – to hermeneutics, existentialism and phenomenology ^[35], whose features, and not without reason, are found in the works of the author of the treatise "Genesis and Time" (1927) by numerous researchers ^[36], most of whom seem to agree that "the diversity of philosophizing, contradictions and mutually exclusive claims to truth cannot prevent the fact that here, in essence, there is something unified that does not belong to anyone and around which all serious efforts of thinkers are circling at all times: an eternal unified philosophy, philosophy perennis" (K. Jaspers) ^{[15, p.15]}, preserved and developed by the great representatives of the "invisible college", among whom such significant representatives as Leibniz and Heidegger belonged.

[i] Within the framework of this work, the categories of Nothing and non-existence will not be distinguished (this is beyond the scope of the article), although there are works that substantiate their non-identity ("semantic tension").