Nothing and the experience of the sacred in Bernhard Welte’s philosophy of religion

Abstract

The article deals with the interpretation of Nothing in the writings of the Catholic religious thinker Bernhard Welte. The issue of Nothing is considered in the general context of Welte’s philosophy of religion and his concept of experience. The main points of experience – wholeness, immediacy and transformative character – are emphasized. The author demonstrates that for Welte a characteristic feature of religious experience in the modern era is the absence of religious experience. We analyze the treatment of the phenomenon of nihilism and show the crucial influence of the interpretation of Nothing in Heidegger’s existential analysis. Bernard Welte’s consideration of Nothing reveals a close relationship between Dasein and the Nothing. The key characteristics of Nothing include infinity and unconditionality. Bernard Welte’s understanding of Nothing is characterized by an emphasis on the positivity of Nothing. Such positivity is grounded in the correlation between the understanding of Nothing as a basic factor of human existence and the postulate of meaning. As a result, Nothing is understood not simply as negative destructiveness, but as the mysterious presence of an infinite meaning-making power, which Welte describes in terms of the sacred and the divine. We argue that the interpretation of not-being in Welte’s works is realized from within nihilism and reveals the possibility of transforming the constitutive experience of Nothing into a new religious experience.