Nature and Nothingness: An Essay in Ordinal Phenomenology

by Robert S. Corrington

Overview

In this book, an ordinal phenomenological description of four modes of nothingness in nature is made that becomes sharply open to Spinoza’s great divide between nature naturing and nature natured. The former term refers to nature’s unconscious dimension, while the latter term denotes the innumerable orders of the world. Four types of nothingness are described as they interact with the human process. An important theme is the correlation between certain kinds of religion and their built-in tendency toward extreme forms of violence. Analyses of the psychoanalytic elements that make this connection almost inevitable are made using the work of C.G. Jung, and Wilhelm Reich. Otto Rank’s work is used to describe the phenomenon of genius as it creatively works with the community of interpreters. A case study of Beethoven and his manic-depressive disorder completes the analysis of Genius. Finally, the works of Karl Jaspers and Nāgārjuna are utilized to shed light on the deepest form of nothingness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498545198
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	10/15/2018
Pages:	186
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.68(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Robert S. Corrington is Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Philosophical Theology at Drew University.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Religion, Violence, and Nature
Chapter Two: Horror and Totalizing Nothingness
Chapter Three: Nature’s Psyche
Chapter Four: Art, Barbarism, and Civilization
Chapter Five: Naturing Nothingness
Chapter Six: Encompassing Nothingness

Editorial Reviews

In this ground-breaking books, Corrington’s insight that the depth of nature as all that is is nothingness is mediated by the American intellectual tradition of interpretation which is the Peircean semiotics. Partly due to his depth language, Corrington has been an unsung hero for the American intellectual tradition. With this book, Corrington at last reaches at the East Asia. This ground-breaking work is a big progress for ecstatic naturalism and American intellectual tradition in that ecstatic naturalism now comes to be an intellectual partner with East Asian thought as well as Buddhism.

Iljoon Park

With Nature and Nothingness: An Essay in Ordinal Phenomenology, Robert Corrington continues his audacious and at times lyrical inquiry into the dynamic plenitude and potencies of the Orders of Nature, the world we live in. Extending and deepening our understanding of Ecstatic Naturalism and Deep Pantheism, deftly bridging the traditional gaps between American, Continental, and Asian thought, this work demonstrates how much of substance and significance the concept of Nothingness can yield.

Robert W. King

This book is an important continuation of Robert S. Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism and further expands his thesis on the dangers of tribalism and dogmatic religion within the context of the nothingness that individuals and communities encounter in nature. Corrington’s signature aptitude for drawing on a broad range of philosophical, theological, and psychoanalytic thinkers to inform his ideas is especially pronounced in this book, which is one in a series of works on Ecstatic Naturalism that focuses on the inherent challenges and potencies of the Selving process. Nature and Nothingness is a must-read for anyone who is interested in gaining a keener insight into the semiotic richness of the realm of nature that is often underestimated or simply ignored.

Abigail T. Wernicki

With a deep contemplation of nature as betweenizing nature naturing and nature natured, Robert S. Corrington offers this brilliant masterpiece of nothingness and nature as marvelous logarithmic spirals that generates spatio-temporal holes in nature. In Nature and Nothingness: An Essay in Ordinal Phenomenology, Corrington unfolds the complex spirals of nature like a series of panoramic circles of nothingness. Through God-ing/ Selving process, Corrington’s nothingness realizes the whole encompassing nothingness without overlooking nature’s dukkha (suffering), rupture, tragedy, shadow, horror, and himsa (violence). Totalizing nothingness of religion is being stripped and urged a turning back, involution to naturing nothingness. This dramatic process toward encompassing nothingness takes a comparative methodology via Buddhist-Daoist-Ecstatic Naturalist dialogues. Presenting an ethic of nothingness, the ‘how’ of nature, this book is Corrington’s most practical to date.

Jea Sophia Oh