Graduation Year
2026
Date of Submission
4-2026
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Philosophy
Abstract
We use contrast to understand the characteristics of the world. Green is understood in contrast to the possibility of being red or blue, and your identity is understood against the possible background of being someone else. In the philosophy of Nishida Kitaro, he extends this approach to define a concept of absolute nothingness, the thing in contrast to which being itself can be understood. In Chapter I, this thesis reconstructs the argument for absolute nothingness, explains how it is situated in Nishida’s broad system, and explores how it entails a philosophical contradiction we ought to accept. I then move on investigating how common emotions constitutive of human experience reveal a deeper understanding of nothingness that is usually obscured by intimate first-person perspective of experience. In Chapter II, I claim that love is an act of self-dissolution in which we authentically adopt someone else’s ends, and that this divorce from personal perspective allows us to better understand absolute nothingness. In Chapter III, I connect to Heidegger’s conception of anxiety as a subject-less emotion that reveals the existence of nothingness, and remedy its flaws using Nishida. My argument highlights the value of Eastern philosophy where Western phenomenology and dualism fall short. a
Recommended Citation
Datta, Jasper, "Staring Into the Void: What Absolute Nothingness Reveals about Existence, Anxiety, and Love" (2026). CMC Senior Theses. 4079.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/4079
