“Nothingness”—A Comparative-Philosophical Interaction in the Field between East and West

Abstract

In our digital age, translation software has come a long way, and in the context of business correspondence the cultural differences between languages have been reduced. However, in the fields of culture, the humanities, religion and philosophies, such differences, and the problems they cause, have not been eliminated, because their truths cannot be expressed in quantitative terms, through equations and schematizations in mathematics, physics and statistics. Generally speaking, the discrepancies are broader in classical scriptures due to the following factors: syntactic differences, differences in the meaning of words in their semantic aspects, and differences in the semiotic aspects of using words and sentences. This article attempts to analyse the basic concepts of “nothingness” in a comparative-philosophical manner, using concepts from Plato, Kant, and Hegel, as well as Daoism, Nāgārjuna (an important exponent of Early Mahayana Buddhism in India), East Asian Zen Buddhism, and Nishida (the founder of the modern Kyoto School). This allows the philosophical concepts of “nothingness” in East and West to be critically but interactively considered in their fundamental aspects.