THE PEDAGOGY OF NOTHING

Abstract

In Le possible et le réel, Bergson says that there are two troubling problems in metaphysics: the first has produced theories of being, the second theories of knowledge. Both problems, however, have the same form: they ask why there is something instead of nothing. Using the example of some key mo­ments in the history of Western metaphysics (and a fairytale written by Gianni Rodari), the aim is to show that the contingency of being, far from being an intuitive proof, is in fact the fruit of inference and the result of specific training. Thanks to this ‘pedagogy’, an ‘adult’ subject is in fact generated and one emerges from that ‘mystical infancy’ which, instead, for Bergson of the Deux Sources, constituted the model of the new philosophy.

Key Words: Henri Bergson. Metaphysics. Nothing.