Ralf Einert

THE WORLD SPIRIT - Part 1:

A Seven-Level World View

Binary Code: Nothing

Before the beginning was NOTHING.

Nothingness is the starting point of the work THE WORLD SPIRIT, which tries to interprete the verse "For all to spring from nothing a oneness suffices." written by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The nothingness that underlies the one is symbolized with the color black - as shown in the previous picture. The logical inconsistency that black is something and therefore not nothing should be disregarded.

A personal attempt to verbally describe the nothingness from my own perspective did not lead a sufficient result, so that external sources are used as an attempt to explain it. A quick look at Wikipedia shows that a description of nothing is not that easy as the question of whether nothing can be thought has been dealt with in very different ways in the history of philosophy.

The manual "Sag es treffender" Essen 1962, provides an overview of the synonyms for the word nothing: 1. emptiness, end, desolation, abyss, chaos, zero point, nirvana, standstill, resolution, 2. zero, nobody, unknown size, anonymus, Cinderella, wallflower, gray mouse, daisy, violet, 3. anomaly, namelessness, offside, incognito, darkness, unknownness, concealment, forgetfulness. Here too it becomes clear that these terms stand for many things, but not for nothing.

Kant writes that the table of the categorization of the term of nothingness must be laid out as follows:

  1. Nothing but an empty term without an object, ens rationis. (Nichts, als leerer Begriff ohne Gegenstand)
  2. Nothing but an empty object of a term, nihil privativum. (Nichts, als leerer Gegenstand eines Begriffs)
  3. Nothing but an empty view without an object, ens imaginarium. (Nichts, als leere Anschauung ohne Gegenstand)
  4. Nothing but an empty object without a term, nihil negativum. (Nichts, als leerer Gegenstand ohne Begriff)

Kant's categorization of the term of nothingness seems to me the best way to help understand the nothing. Finally I would like to present further suggestions for understanding the nothing that was represented by the black: