3min chapter

New Books in Buddhist Studies cover image

Nothing Matters: About the Idea of "Emptiness"

New Books in Buddhist Studies

CHAPTER

The Problem With Nihilism

Shunyata doesn't mean nothingness in the Aristotelian sense of non-being. Instead it means that things and people don't have any being or existence on their own. In other words, all objects and beings depend on each other to exist. For many European thinkers wrestling with nihilism in the 19th century, this Buddhist idea seemed more compatible with the emerging scientific worldview than Christianity was.

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