Conor Cunningham

Using the work of Lacan but with reference to a number of other philosophers, this article argues eight main theses: first of all, that non-Platonic philosophical construction follows after a foundational destruction; second, that philosophy generally has a nothing outside its text, one that allows for the formation of that text—for example, Kant forms the text of phenomena only by way of the noumena; third, that this transcendental nothing renders all identities ideal, however that is conceived—an example being Badiou’s notion of “belonging,” one derived from the work of Georg Cantor and Paul Cohen; fourth, that a consequence of this ideality is mereological nihilism; fifth, due to this mereological nihilism any existent is only ever an aggregate, that is, an aggregate of some base element, or “stuff ”—a position that returns such philosophy to that of the ancients; sixth, this collapses idealism and materialism into each other, a collapse marked by what is referred to throughout as an impossible monism. Moreover, this impossible monism is a result of philosophy’s constant production of a bastard trinity—a dual monism, as it were. Seventh, that there are two models of difference evident in non-Platonic philosophy: the first is that of a block, with difference cut into it—like Swiss cheese, as it were—while the second is a flux which we seek to arrest with local regimes of stability. Eighth, and finally, that theology, in line with Plato, suggests the possibility of another difference, namely, a peaceable one.

Nihilism is the logic of nothing as something, which claims that Nothing Is. Its unmaking of things, and its forming of formless things, strain the fundamental terms of existence: what it is to be, to know, to be known. But nihilism, the antithesis of God, is also like theology. Where nihilism creates nothingness, condenses it to substance, God also makes nothingness creative. Negotiating the borders of spirit and substance, theology can ask the questions of nihilism that other disciplines do not ask: Where is it? What is it made of? Why is it so destructive? How can it be made holy, or overcome? Genealogy of Nihilism rereads Western history in the light of nihilistic logic, which pervades two millennia of Western thought and is coming to fruition in our present age in a virulently dangerous manner. From Parmenides to Alain Badiou, via Plotinus, Avicenna, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, a genealogy of nothingness can be witnessed in development, with devastating consequences for the way we live. Conor Cunningham's elaborate and sophisticated theology, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, science and popular culture, permits us to see not simply how modernity has formulated its philosophies of nothing, but how these philosophies might be transfigures by the crucial difference theology makes, and so be reconcilable with life and the living - with the very gift which being is.