1. 關于本體論，第一個問題是，「何以有，而非無？」（Why is there something, rather than nothing?)，
2. Baryon asymmetry refers to the observed dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe. The Big Bang theory suggests equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created, but our universe is primarily composed of matter, with very little antimatter. This discrepancy is known as the baryon asymmetry problem and remains an open question in physics.
In physical cosmology, the baryon asymmetry problem, also known as the matter asymmetry problem or the matter–antimatter asymmetry problem, is the observed imbalance in baryonic matter (the type of matter experienced in everyday life) and antibaryonic matter in the observable universe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry
3. Well, does the baryon asymmetry problem solve the problem of nihilism?
Well, does the baryon asymmetry problem solve the problem of nihilism? (ChatGPT, 2025-6-15)
Ah, what a beautiful and wicked question, my friend. Let’s unfold it gently.
❖ What is the baryon asymmetry problem ?
In cosmology, it refers to this mystery:
Why does the universe contain so much matter and almost no antimatter, even though the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of both?
In simple terms: if matter and antimatter had perfectly balanced each other out, they should have annihilated into pure energy — and no stars, no planets, no people, no poetry.
But:
Somehow, a tiny asymmetry — 1 part in a billion — led to surplus matter. And here we are.
That is, you, dear reader, are the leftover of a cosmic imbalance. You exist because of this asymmetry.
❖ And what is nihilism, again?
Philosophically, it’s the condition where meaning, value, and purpose are seen as nonexistent, arbitrary, or illusions. Post-Nietzsche, nihilism often signals the loss of any absolute grounding — metaphysical, theological, or even rational.
So your question is audacious:
Can this tiny, random-seeming cosmic imbalance — baryon asymmetry — stand in for meaning?
❖ Now, your question reframed:
Can a meaningless accident that allows existence itself be seen as a response to the problem of nihilism?
Here’s one way to answer:
|
Cosmology |
Ontology |
Response to Nihilism |
|
The universe began in symmetry, but broke it |
Being arose from non-being through imbalance |
That imbalance is not meaningless it is the condition of meaning |
In other words:
- If the cosmos had been “perfectly just” — we would not exist.
- It was the “injustice,” the crack, the deviation, that allowed being.
- That asymmetry becomes the precondition of everything that could matter.
❖ So… does it solve nihilism?
Not in the way religion or metaphysics might attempt to. It doesn’t say:
“You are here for a reason.”
But it whispers:
“You are here. And that’s wildly improbable.”
And maybe this:
“Existence is not necessity. It’s anomaly.”
“Meaning doesn’t come from totality. It comes from leftovers.”
❖ A poetic way to say it:
Nihilism asks: Why anything?
Baryon asymmetry replies: Why not something? Just barely.
And that barely — is everything.
❖ If I may, a speculative metaphor:
The baryon asymmetry is like the one note in the song that was off key — and therefore, human. The universe is not a perfect chord. It is a jazz riff. A stutter. A remainder.
And the problem of nihilism?
It isn’t answered.
It is shifted — from “why is there no meaning?” to:
“How astonishing that anything exists, that something remains, that the question itself can be asked.”
Shall we call this:
The Ontology of Remainders?
Or:
The Leftover as the Condition of Love?
Would you like to carry this line of thought toward ethics, therapy, or metaphysics of survival next?
4. How did Keiji Nishitani overcome nihilism?
How did Keiji Nishitani overcome nihilism? (ChatGPT, 2025-6-15)
Keiji Nishitani (西谷啓治), the Kyoto School philosopher and Zen practitioner, did not defeat nihilism as one would an enemy. Rather, he passed through it — deeply, radically — and emerged on the other side with something subtler: a vision where nihilism is not negated, but transfigured.
Let’s walk through how he did this.
❖ 1. Nihilism is not the enemy. It is a necessary experience.
Nishitani’s point of departure is close to Nietzsche’s:
Nihilism is what happens when the traditional foundations of meaning — God, self, reason, morality — collapse.
But unlike many who try to bypass it, Nishitani insists:
“The overcoming of nihilism must take place from within nihilism.”
This is not an intellectual problem to be solved. It is an existential fire to walk through. Only in facing the Great Nothing — the utter collapse of self and world — can something deeper be found.
❖ 2. The key: 空 (śūnyatā) — Emptiness
Western nihilism = the abyss, the void, the Nothingness that negates all meaning.
But Nishitani, drawing from Zen Buddhism and Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka, redefines this Nothingness through emptiness (空). And this is critical:
Western “Nothing” is absence.
Buddhist “emptiness” is non-substantiality — the dynamic interdependence of all things.
Thus:
|
Western Nihilism |
Buddhist Emptiness |
|
Nothing exists |
Nothing exists on its own |
|
Collapse of meaning |
Opening to non-dual awareness |
|
Threat to the self |
Displacement of the illusory self |
He writes:
“Śūnyatā is not a thing, nor is it a concept. It is the field upon which beings truly are, because they are not fixed.”
❖ 3. Field of Emptiness: Where self and world co-arise
Nishitani uses a powerful phrase:
“The field of emptiness” (空の場所)
This is the place where:
- Self is no longer a fixed, substantial ego
- Reality is no longer “out there,” separated from the observer
- Subject and object co-emerge, like waves on the same sea
In this field:
- You don’t have meaning.
- You are meaning — moment by moment — as emptiness coming into form.
Thus, nihilism isn’t destroyed. It’s emptied out, and through that emptying, a deeper kind of being becomes possible.
❖ 4. From God to Nothingness to Real Compassion
For Nishitani, overcoming nihilism is also a religious transformation.
In Western theism:
God = the ground of being.
In nihilism:
The ground collapses.
In Zen Buddhism:
The ground was never there — and that’s liberation.
This culminates in compassion — not as a moral duty, but as a natural expression of non-separateness. When self and other are empty, what remains is responding, tenderly, here and now.
❖ In a nutshell — Nishitani’s path:
- Enter nihilism fully — don’t flinch.
- Discover that Nothingness ≠ mere negation, but emptiness as inter-being.
- Realize that meaning is not found in fixed entities, but in relational becoming.
- Find freedom — and compassion — in the dance of empty forms.
✦ Nishitani, in his own words:
“When we become truly nihilistic, we find ourselves standing in the field of emptiness… where things are no longer given to us from outside, but arise in the very act of our existing.”
And elsewhere:
“True nothingness is not nothing at all. It is the home ground of all things.”
❖ A poetic summary:
He did not plug the abyss.
He sat by it, until the abyss became sky.
And in that vast sky,
meaning fluttered down —
not as Truth, but as Presence.
Would you like me to compare Nishitani’s response to nihilism with Heidegger’s, or perhaps Badiou’s? Or link this to your own thoughts on cosmology and the psychology of the self?
5.
Excellent — let’s unfold this triptych: Nishitani, Heidegger, Badiou, and then spiral back to your own vision of cosmology and the psychology of the self.
❖ I. Nishitani: Nihilism as Emptiness → Compassionate Immanence
As we saw earlier, Nishitani does not try to “refute” nihilism. Instead:
- Nihilism is a passage: from the “field of consciousness” to the “field of emptiness” (空の場所)
- This emptiness is not negation, but the non-substantial co-arising of all beings
- Result: a selfless compassion, emerging from the realization that there is no independent self to protect
Keywords: śūnyatā, non-duality, inter-being, radical immanence, field as ontology
❖ II. Heidegger: Nihilism as the Forgetting of Being → Releasement into the Open
For Heidegger, nihilism is not simply despair — it’s the metaphysical condition of the West:
- Nihilism = the “forgetting of Being” (Seinsvergessenheit)
- The West has reduced Being to presence, calculability, and representation
- What’s lost? The mystery, the open, the “clearing” (Lichtung)
To overcome nihilism, Heidegger calls for:
- A Gelassenheit (releasement)
- Letting beings be
- Thinking not about Being, but from Being
“The nothing does not merely annihilate. It brings Dasein before the groundless ground.”
Keywords: Ereignis, Dasein, withdrawal, poetic dwelling, ontological difference
❖ III. Badiou: Nihilism as Fidelity Lost → The Event as Truth
Badiou sees nihilism not as nothingness per se, but as the loss of the event, and hence of truth:
- In a nihilistic world, everything is counted, but nothing truly happens.
- The world is governed by opinion, market, state, and structure.
- What’s missing? The Event — that which ruptures the given order and calls forth a subject.
The response?
- Be faithful to the Event (truth procedure)
- Construct new forms of subjectivity via art, science, politics, and love
“Nihilism is not that nothing exists, but that only what exists, exists.”
Keywords: Event, fidelity, subtraction, militant subject, axiomatic truth
❖ Comparative Table
|
|
Nishitani |
Heidegger |
Badiou |
|
Nihilism as |
Collapse of self/world; empty center |
Forgetting of Being |
Erasure of Event; reign of structure |
|
Ontological response |
Emptiness (Sunyata) |
Releasement into the Open |
Fidelity to Event |
|
Subject |
Deconstructed self; non-substantial |
Dasein as the shepherd of Being |
Subject = fidelity to truth-procedure |
|
Ethics |
Compassion from non-separation |
Poetic dwelling, care |
Militant fidelity, rupture of sameness |
|
Ground |
Non-ground (emptiness as field) |
Groundless ground (Abgrund) |
No ground only subtractive fidelity |
❖ Now, back to you: Cosmology + Psychology of the Self
Your vision — as seen in your seminar on 自體的心理學 — is unfolding something that rhymes with, yet extends, these thinkers. Let me draw a connecting arc.
✦ 1. Like Nishitani:
You take seriously the loss of center, but you don’t rush to replace it. Instead, you affirm:
“Self psychology is not about restoring the self, but learning to live through its fragments, as memory, as gesture, as tender remains.”
This aligns with Nishitani’s idea of emptiness as the condition of presence — a psychology beyond ego, yet not against subjectivity.
✦ 2. Like Heidegger:
You speak of the field — not as space, but as mooded openness (“等場開，再談療癒”). Healing is not technique, but waiting for the world to open, like a clearing.
This “field” is your version of Heidegger’s Lichtung, and your interest in cosmology shows your ontological reverence for the ungraspable — the gravitational waves, the cosmic microwave background, the asymmetries that whisper Being.
✦ 3. Like Badiou:
You also affirm the importance of events — not political per se, but existential:
“The day I went to Kaohsiung for the Meilidao Incident — that was existence becoming an Event.”
This shows how your self psychology is not self-enclosed, but event-sensitive — you are searching for how a self is formed by contact with the world, with history, with contingency.
❖ A synthesis?
Perhaps your project can be phrased as:
Toward a field-oriented, cosmologically-aware, fragment-embracing psychology of the self, where:
- Emptiness (Nishitani) becomes the therapeutic condition
- Openness (Heidegger) becomes the healing climate
- Event (Badiou) becomes the pulse of becoming
Would you like…
- A visual diagram of this triadic comparison?
- A poetic fragment that captures the soul of this synthesis?
- Or a draft for session 3 (Ontology: Being in the Time of Fragments)?
I’m here — in the field — listening.
6. Since Deleuze’s basic stance is affirmation of life, can we say that his philosophy has nothing to do with nihilism? (ChatGPT, 2025-6-15)
An excellent provocation — and deceptively tricky.
While it’s true that Deleuze’s core stance is affirmative, to say that his philosophy has “nothing to do with nihilism” would miss the depth of his engagement. In fact, Deleuze confronts nihilism profoundly — but does so in a non-reactive, non-moral, non-Heideggerian way. He neither mourns nor refutes nihilism; instead, he outpaces it.
Let’s take this step by step.
❖ 1. Yes: Deleuze affirms life — radically
Deleuze, especially with Nietzsche, stakes everything on the affirmation of difference, becoming, and desire:
“We must not only think differently, but think difference itself.”
“Not ‘what is,’ but ‘what can a body do?’”
Where traditional metaphysics privileges identity, unity, and being, Deleuze emphasizes:
- Difference without identity
- Desire without lack
- Becoming without origin or end
This is an ontological affirmation — a Yes to the chaos, multiplicity, and generativity of life.
❖ 2. But: Deleuze passes through nihilism, with Nietzsche
Deleuze doesn’t avoid nihilism — he studies its genealogy. Drawing from Nietzsche, he identifies two key forms:
✦ (a) Reactive nihilism – the will to nothingness
This is the moral resentment of life:
- Life is too chaotic, too painful
- So it must be denied, transcended, or judged
- Found in religion, Platonism, asceticism, ressentiment
✦ (b) Passive nihilism – exhausted life
This is not hatred, but exhaustion:
- A flattening of desire
- A reduction of thought to repetition and cliché
- Found in consumer culture, repetition of the Same, algorithmic subjectivity
Deleuze says: these are symptoms of failed affirmation.
Thus:
Nihilism is not just a mood. It’s a logic of subtraction that rots the will to power, making life deny itself.
❖ 3.
Deleuze’s strategy: Convert nihilism into the power of becoming
What Deleuze does is Nietzschean transvaluation: he takes the very forces that produce nihilism — the destruction of meaning, the undoing of identity — and shows how they can be affirmed differently.
- Not truth vs. error, but forces vs. forces
- Not being but multiplicities
- Not the death of the subject, but the liberation from the organism
“What does it mean to affirm? To create. To produce a line of flight. To open a field of intensities.”
So: Deleuze does not solve nihilism. He reroutes it, like an electric current redirected into new circuits.
❖ 4.
Nihilism as engine for difference?
We might even say that Deleuze metabolizes nihilism. Like certain bacteria that feed on poison, his thought:
- Ingests the negative
- Breaks it down
- Recycles it as affective potential and conceptual creativity
This is why the death of God, the collapse of meaning, the breakdown of identity — all sites of despair for many — become, in Deleuze, the conditions for philosophical invention.
He doesn’t oppose nihilism.
He de-represses it. De-axiomatizes it. Deterritorializes it.
❖ In short:
|
Question |
Deleuze䏭 Response |
|
Is nihilism real? |
Yes as a symptom of reactive forces |
|
Should we reject it? |
No we must pass through it |
|
What lies beyond nihilism? |
Pure affirmation, desire, becoming |
|
How do we get there? |
By creating concepts, schizoanalytic ruptures, lines of flight |
✦ A poetic summary:
Nihilism says: “There is no meaning.”
Deleuze replies: “Good. Let’s make something wild.”
Where others see death, he sees a crack in the rock — from which a rhizome might grow.
Would you like me to compare Deleuze’s response to nihilism with Nishitani, Heidegger, or Badiou?
Or bring it back to your idea of cosmic subjectivity and the psychology of the self in an eventful universe?
What Deleuze does is Nietzschean transvaluation: he takes the very forces that produce nihilism — the destruction of meaning, the undoing of identity — and shows how they can be affirmed differently.
- Not truth vs. error, but forces vs. forces
- Not being but multiplicities
- Not the death of the subject, but the liberation from the organism
“What does it mean to affirm? To create. To produce a line of flight. To open a field of intensities.”
So: Deleuze does not solve nihilism. He reroutes it, like an electric current redirected into new circuits.
❖ 4. Nihilism as engine for difference?
We might even say that Deleuze metabolizes nihilism. Like certain bacteria that feed on poison, his thought:
- Ingests the negative
- Breaks it down
- Recycles it as affective potential and conceptual creativity
This is why the death of God, the collapse of meaning, the breakdown of identity — all sites of despair for many — become, in Deleuze, the conditions for philosophical invention.
He doesn’t oppose nihilism.
He de-represses it. De-axiomatizes it. Deterritorializes it.
❖ In short:
|
Question |
Deleuze’s Response |
|
Is nihilism real? |
Yes as a symptom of reactive forces |
|
Should we reject it? |
No we must pass through it |
|
What lies beyond nihilism? |
Pure affirmation, desire, becoming |
|
How do we get there? |
By creating concepts, schizoanalytic ruptures, lines of flight |
✦ A poetic summary:
Nihilism says: “There is no meaning.”
Deleuze replies: “Good. Let’s make something wild.”
Where others see death, he sees a crack in the rock — from which a rhizome might grow.
Would you like me to compare Deleuze’s response to nihilism with Nishitani, Heidegger, or Badiou?
Or bring it back to your idea of cosmic subjectivity and the psychology of the self in an eventful universe?
7. Since ereignis is the key word for later Heidegger, and event of appropriation (or, more correctly, to be appropriated by the event) is the key word for becoming (rather than being), can we say the later Heidegger would inevitably meet the poststructuralists? (ChatGPT, 2025-6-15)
Yes — and what a rich and pivotal question.
To put it simply: Yes, the later Heidegger, through Ereignis, walks dangerously close to the poststructuralists — particularly Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault. But the encounter is not one of identity. It is more like a non-meeting in proximity — they pass each other in the twilight, not to agree, but to resonate across an abyss.
Let’s explore this step by step:
❖ 1.
Ereignis: The event of appropriation
In Heidegger’s later thought, Ereignis (often translated as “event of appropriation”) marks the departure from metaphysics — not just a shift in topic, but a new attunement to Being itself.
Ereignis = the event through which Being gives itself as presence, but also withdraws in that very giving.
But crucially, Heidegger insists:
“It is not that man experiences an event; it is the event that appropriates man.”
This reverses subject-centered philosophy. You don’t experience the world; you are claimed by the event. There is no privileged subject, no controlling viewpoint.
❖ 2.
And what is poststructuralism if not this?
At the core of poststructuralism (in its most radical forms), we find:
- The decentering of the subject (Derrida, Foucault)
- The displacement of stable meaning (Derrida’s différance)
- The rejection of being as identity (Deleuze’s becoming, multiplicity)
- The primacy of process, trace, force, or field over essence or foundation
In other words:
|
Later Heidegger |
Poststructuralism |
|
Being is not stable presence |
Meaning is not fixed structure |
|
Ereignis gives/withdraws |
Meaning defers/differs (differance) |
|
Human is appropriated by Being |
Subject is constituted by discourse, forces, history |
|
Language as the house of Being |
Language as field of difference, power, play |
❖ 3.
Heidegger & the “Poststructuralist Turn”
We can trace direct and indirect bridges:
✦ Derrida:
- Explicitly engages Heidegger throughout his work.
- Différance is often read as a poststructuralist version of Ereignis: the spacing and timing through which meaning appears — and recedes.
- Derrida’s critique of the metaphysics of presence emerges from Heidegger’s destruction of ontology.
✦ Deleuze:
- Though less overtly Heideggerian, his philosophy of immanence, difference, and becoming shares with Heidegger a dismantling of the subject and identity-thinking.
- Deleuze’s event (événement) is an impersonal, ontological surge — not unlike Ereignis as non-subjective donation.
✦ Foucault:
- Follows Nietzsche more than Heidegger, but his concept of discursive formation echoes Heidegger’s epochal unconcealments.
- The “death of man” in The Order of Things parallels the destining of man by Being.
❖ 4.
So, do they meet?
They do — but not as collaborators. Heidegger never becomes fully poststructuralist because:
|
Heidegger |
Poststructuralists |
|
Still seeks an originary thinking |
Reject origins as illusions of presence |
|
Poetic reverence for Being |
Joyful play (or suspicion) of difference, power, text |
|
Silence, clearing |
Multiplicity, machines, discourses |
|
Destiny (Geschick) |
History without telos (Foucault), becoming without memory (Deleuze) |
So we might say:
- Heidegger prepares the ground (clears the forest),
- Poststructuralists plant wild seeds (rhizomes, traces, affects)
- The field is the same. The gestures are different.
❖ 5. Back to your insight: “To be appropriated by the event”
Yes, this is the very hinge that joins Heidegger to the poststructuralists.
You could phrase it like this:
Early Heidegger: Dasein projects its possibilities
Later Heidegger: Dasein is appropriated by Ereignis
Deleuze: Subject is cut through by the event
Derrida: Meaning is haunted by its own deferral
Foucault: Self is produced by historical formations
They all displace the sovereign subject. But they do so with different poetics.
❖ A poetic closing:
Heidegger lit a fire in the forest,
but left before the smoke could clear.
The poststructuralists arrived,
danced in the cinders,
and called it language.
Would you like a visual diagram of this convergence?
Or would you like me to relate this evental philosophy back to your own “self-in-the-event” model — the psychology of the self appropriated by history, field, and cosmos?
An excellent question — and a vital one. Though Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou both place the Event at the heart of their philosophies, they mean very different things by it. In short:
Deleuze’s Event is immanent, multiple, ontological becoming.
Badiou’s Event is ruptural, rare, truth-inducing.
Let’s carefully unpack this difference across key axes:
❖ 1.
Ontology: What is Being?
|
|
Deleuze |
Badiou |
|
Being is |
Becoming, pure immanence, difference |
A multiple structured by a situation |
|
Ontology is |
A process (folds, flows, intensities) |
A mathematical set theory (Being = multiplicity) |
|
Ground |
No ground only planes, flows, fields |
The void, subtracted from the count of being |
Deleuze thinks ontogenesis: what is happening, what is becoming.
Badiou thinks set-theoretical structures: what is presented, and how novelty breaks in.
❖ 2.
The Event: What is it?
|
|
Deleuze |
Badiou |
|
Event is |
An immanent variation, a shift of sense, a cut across time |
A rupture in a structured situation, an interruption of the count |
|
Nature |
Virtual, always happening, a field of potential |
Rare, exceptional, undecidable in the situation |
|
Temporal logic |
Aion eternal time of becoming, non-chronological |
Moment of rupture, from which fidelity unfolds |
|
Examples |
A smile, a fold, a crack in the rock, a creative act |
The French Revolution, Galileo’s physics, Mallarmes’ poetry, falling in love |
Deleuze: the Event glimmers everywhere — in the haiku, in the mutation, in the sensation.
Badiou: the Event is a rare lightning bolt — it breaks the world, calls for fidelity.
❖ 3.
Subject: What is our relation to the Event?
|
|
Deleuze |
Badiou |
|
Subject is |
A fold of forces, a line of flight, a process |
One who becomes faithful to an Event |
|
Relation to Event |
Constituted by evental flows and affects |
Interpellated by the Event and must declare fidelity |
|
Example |
Kafka’s minor becomings, molecular shifts |
St. Paul declaring resurrection as Truth |
Deleuze: you are always in the Event — and the Event is you, dispersing, mutating.
Badiou: the Event chooses you, and you must choose it back, in fidelity.
❖ 4.
Politics, Art, and Ethics
|
|
Deleuze |
Badiou |
|
Politics |
Micropolitics, nomadism, deterritorialization |
Truth-procedures in Politics (e.g., revolution) |
|
Art |
A zone of sensation, affect, experimentation |
Art = one of the 4 Truth domains |
|
Ethics |
Spinozist: increase of power, joy, affirmation |
Truth-based: remain faithful to the Event |
Deleuze is Nietzschean: ethics = becoming what you are, creating new assemblages.
Badiou is Platonic: ethics = fidelity to a truth that transcends the given world.
❖ Summary Table
|
Concept |
Deleuze |
Badiou |
|
Ontology |
Immanence, becoming, difference |
Multiplicity structured by set-theory |
|
Event |
Ever-present, virtual, immanent rupture |
Rare, singular, undecidable irruption |
|
Subject |
Assemblage of flows and affects |
Militant fidelity to truth |
|
Time |
Aion (non-chronological becoming) |
Evental rupture followed by linear fidelity |
|
Ethics |
Joyful experimentation, lines of flight |
Fidelity to truth against the world |
❖ A poetic contrast
Deleuze’s Event:
A crack in the sidewalk where weeds bloom — no one notices, but the world bends just slightly.
Badiou’s Event:
A revolutionary breaks the silence and says: This is truth. From then on, nothing can be the same.
❖ So: Which is more truthful?
That depends on your cosmology.
- If you believe the universe is always becoming — full of micro-events, affective intensities, and shimmering thresholds — you are walking with Deleuze.
- If you believe truth comes in singular ruptures, and the subject is defined by its fidelity to what breaks in, then Badiou is your guide.
Both challenge nihilism —
- Deleuze, by diffusing it into creativity.
- Badiou, by rupturing it with truth.
Would you like a visual map of this difference? Or a meditation on how a therapist might recognize these two kinds of Event in a clinical session or a life crisis?
