(from twitter)
what’s odd about nothing is that there are 3 kinds of nothing: 1.absence of anything, 2.absence of change and 3.absence of a particular x.
in programming terms, this analogizes to 1. null, 2. loops and 3. zero.
what’s further odd about zero is that in languages like php, zero can be the value zero, empty, null or one. this 0 = 1 is a 4th kind of zero.
i think this overlap has to do with either specific content, the context of expression or the structure of expression —
all of which may be nil.
the most basic nil is in the structure of expression — which is the kantian negativity. context of expression is hegelian negation (zizek)
and of course specific content is what we are most familiar with and deal with everyday. in culture finding the hegelian negation is akin
to finding the “species which is its own genus” as zizek says, the primary case. something i think south park keeps trying to hit.
of course that’s also philosophy’s goal too, to explicate the zero point of structure, find the root of being all that jazz.
the purest case with the simpliest move. we can always tailor our structure to support other items “a priori”, in theory.
Zeros in numbers are a purely expressive entity but as such refers to what would otherwise be uncaptured substance.
Saying that is like making digital analogue. An mp3 recorded on vinyl.
The inexpressible is expressible by virtue of the concept of the negative, by voids in expressive structure.
This is not to confuse a deployed camera’s negation with the negativity of blackness on a movie screen.
Where hegel abuts universality in force is like law taking onto account violations by being more strict than necessary.
Or like good design swallowing common human error.
This is what theoloticians may mean by taking about human freewill made compossible with god’s supreme will VIA Jesus, god as man.
(post-twitter)
god’s will must encompass everything, including that which is free of god.
that’s where determinism and freewill intermix, in a figure like jesus. jesus acts as the central binding agent on the way to universality, as petit objet a, the stain of god on man, a stand in for the subjectivity/godhood.
but if jesus is the stand in, and jesus is negative, how can god be negative? not just in terms of not-man and not-god but also as zero qua one (as stated above).
what’s particularly interesting in this is that in the fullest level beyond universality, hegel still insists on the emptiness of the notion beyond the traditional readings of dialectics.
in a very real way, negation for hegelian dialectics is necessary — one can’t have universality without taking into account that which is not explicated.
joan copjec in her brilliant essay ‘body as viewing instrument or the strut of vision’ takes heed of this when she explains how renaissance painting isn’t simply a field. the field from the subject projects an idealized viewing point just behind the head of a viewer situated squarely before the painting. the ‘final’ negative acts as the last suture, by taking into account that final kernel of understanding — rooted from the subject.
this brings us beyond negation into universality — but the step beyond negation qua universality is to consider the totality itself as self-determining — that Emptiness is Godhood itself which can only be expressed as the zero-sum of structure.
once again, we find ourselves enwrapped in a kantian lock-box of phenomenon — only this time there isn’t a noumenality by which we cannot know, for the noumenal is included as part of the structure itself like how phenomenon is structured.
if anything, at this point we’ve aligned the first three nils on one another: content, expression and structure like an empty structured database, or a spread sheet or pivot table without data, devoid of content. virtually there but inexpressed. what we’ve ended with is the last kind of zero, where it acts in a higher level as one.
this is simply because while one is a totality when viewed from the outside –from a position of immanence, one is needed as zero to establish metaphysics of presence, marking a structural change from pure absence to a structured presence. in terms of programming, a zero is already one bit. a nothing wouldn’t even show up and cannot be considered.
an interesting consequence of this concept of zeroth-ing is to understand that subjectivity itself is the zero point sum, the empty category that establishes the modal structure of renaissance order. this seems to suggest that we understand others as a consequence of our own singularity.
but this grasp of subjectivity as zero misses the point, for we have a totality as one in subjectivity already.
so where is the nil point that is pre-subject?
copjec talks of the gaze as the field that cleaves and binds; for if the subject is us, what does our presence guarantee? how does being one equate to being zero? it is in the consequences of getting to be one that we already assume a zero — in Lacanian language it is the Other that bounces off subjectivity in so as subjectivity requires others. what copjec calls the gaze guarantees both subject and object and acts as the originary marking place. they are dual views of the same situation.
therein lies the structural difference by which noumenal and phenomenal are cleaved, inexplicable but also nil. the ground of being separate must be established before being can be, a crux of psychoanalysis from motherandchild to i and you. in each point epistemologically, we must have the empty container-notion which can contain it all, and is rightly not anything. The set of all sets is not really a set, it is the empty set par excellence.
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