Nothingness without Reserve: Fred Moten contra Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling

ABSTRACT Contemporary critical theory and black studies have witnessed a surge in theoretical accounts of “blackness” as “nothingness”. Drawing on the work of the poet and cultural theorist Fred Moten, this article offers a reading of this recent postulation of blackness as “nothingness” in light of some of the similar theoretical endeavors in post-Kantian European philosophy. By comparing Moten’s “paraontological” conception of nothingness to Heidegger’s self-nihilating nothing, Sartre’s relative nothingness, as well as Schelling’s notion of absolute nothingness, this article argues that Moten’s paraontology presents a more robust and systematic conception of nothingness than those of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling. By way of this comparison with these “canonical” accounts from European philosophy, this article highlights not only the unique features of Moten’s sophisticated formulation of nothingness, but also some of unacknowledged presumptions and prejudices of traditional metaphysics which Moten’s work calls into question.

In his landmark work Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon (2008, 1, 82) strikingly asserts that "the black is not a man" and that "ontology … does not permit us to understand the being of the black man".Fanon's ontological account of the difference between black and white human existencewhich Frank Wilderson (2010, 57) later posits as "the unbridgeable gap between Black being and Human life"has prompted much interest among contemporary critical theory and black studies in questions of ontology and metaphysics and how they may inform one's understanding of the notion of "blackness" (see Hart 2020;Sharpe 2016;Chandler 2014).With this growing interest in ontology, a number of black critical theorists have turned to Heidegger's critique of metaphysics as a source of inspiration to develop "ontological" critiques of "anti-blackness" (see Warren 2018;Jackson 2020).For if the human being (Dasein) isas Heidegger submitsthe being who has a unique relation to Being itself, and that the very notion of "human"as Wilderson arguesis premised on anti-blackness, then the discourse of Being itself is to be associated with "anti-blackness". 1 Accordingly, just as traditional ontology or "metaphysics" is to be understood as a philosophical expression of antiblackness insofar as the notion of "Being" is normatively associated with "anti-blackness", "blackness" is to be construed in terms of "nothingness". 2  However, while the recent "ontological turn" in black studies has received much attention in the humanities as well as the broader academy, there has been relatively little traditional philosophical engagement with the distinctiveness and significance of these bold metaphysical and ontological claims. 3Drawing on the influential works of the leading black studies theorist and poet Fred Moten and particularly his programmatic essay "Blackness and Nothingness" (Moten 2013a), this article offers a reading of the postulation of blackness as nothingness in recent black studies not merely as a rhetorical effort to present social and cultural critiques through metaphysical terminology, but as a speculative philosophical endeavor which presents an affirmative conception of "nothingness" at a level of theoretical sophistication comparable to the celebrated accounts in recent continental philosophy. 4While Moten's scholarly work is developed partly in conversationand in continuationwith notably non-European intellectual traditions such as the Black Radical Tradition and the Kyoto School (see esp.Moten 2003;2016, 21-22;2018b, 205-7, 213-4), as this article demonstrates, his "paraontological" construal of blackness as nothingness can very much be understood as a critical response to the conceptions of "nothingness" in post-Kantian European philosophy. 5By comparing Moten's articulation of nothingness to a number of "canonical" accounts in the history of philosophy, particularly those of Heidegger (section one), Sartre (section two), and Schelling (section three), this article not only presents a formal systematic philosophical reading of Moten's "paraontology". 6It moreover seeks to highlight the unique insights 1 Following conventional (post-)Heideggerian philosophical terminology, "Being" is capitalized throughout this article when it pertains to the Being of beings. 2 See Moten (2018a, 21): "Blackness is … nothingness … Blackness names what is not (there)."See also Sharpe (2016); Silva (2017); Warren (2018). 3See Sharpe (2012): "For some people in and outside of the U.S. academy black studies is, still, the antithesis of theory, the antithesis of thinking."See also Warren (2017, 220): "Fred Moten's work has become central in discussions of blackness, esthetics, and sociality, but very rarely do scholars engage his work as philosophy." 4 For a discussion of the ontological accounts of nothingness in recent continental philosophy, see Leung (2021).  Cf.Moten's (2018a, 1-32) engagement with Kant. 6Given that Moten engages directly with Heidegger in a number of his work, and Sartre was one of Fanon's central conversation partners in Black Skin, White Masks, which is a key influence for Moten, it is not surprising that there are certain philosophical affinities not only between Moten and Heidegger, but also between Moten and Sartre.As noted by Schelling scholars such as Gardner (2008), Frank (2004), and Andrew Bowie (1993, esp. 25, 63, 111-12, 151-52), there are also some remarkable parallels between Sartre's and Schelling's philosophies: that despite Sartre's unfamiliarity with Schelling's work, "Sartre's attempt to build a counter-ontology to Hegel's … involves an unwitting discovery of Schelling's alternative path of development of German idealism" (Gardner 2008, 263).By extension, even if Moten does not explicitly engage with Schelling, his post-Fanonian reflections on "nothingness" may similarly involve "an unwitting discovery" of Schelling's counter-Hegelian idealism.Additionally, Schelling's post-Kantian metaphysical speculation of that which is "in itself" also resembles Moten's interest in Kant's understanding of "the black and the thing (das Ding)" as "antior ante-intentional" structures which disrupt the laws of understandingthat "blackness" is something akin to an "animaterial, metaphysical thing in itself [Ding an sich] that exceeds itself" (Moten 2018a, 15-16).
Moten's post-Kantian account of blackness as a supra-phenomenal or even metaphysical "in itself that exceeds itself" notably resonates with early Schelling's post-Kantian (and post-Fichtean) conception of Nature (which carries certain traits of his later notion of the Absolute) that is unconditioned and absolute in itself but nonetheless "exceeds itself".Indeed, for early Schelling, Nature "exceeds itself" since it is not inanimate but autonomous and productiveas Bowie (1993, 36) puts it: "The 'productivity' [of Nature] is not, then, a separate, inaccessible thing in itself (even though it is not an object of knowledge), because it is also at work in the subject, as that which moves the subject beyond itself."See Bowie (1993, 30-44, esp. 31-36).Note also the surprising parallel between what Bowie (1993, 47) calls "the resistance of the object world" in Schelling's early philosophy and Moten's (2003, 1-24, 233-254) account of blackness in terms of what he calls the "resistance of the object" (see especially the discussion of Kant's Ding in Moten 2003, 243-50).
Moten's work can offer to the perennial philosophical reflections on questions pertaining to Being and nothingness as well as some of the unacknowledged presumptionswhat Sartre (2003, 265) would call "intellectual prejudices"that underlie many traditional accounts of ontology within the European tradition.

The Ontological Priority of Nothingness over Being
At the heart of Moten's rendition of blackness as nothingness is what he calls the "paraontological distinction" between blackness and black beings, which is modelled after Heidegger's ontological difference between Being and beings (see Moten 2008aMoten , 1744;;2008b, 179-80). 7To quote Moten: The paraontological distinction between blackness and blacks allows us no longer to be enthralled by the notion that blackness is a property that belongs to blacks … but also because ultimately it allows us to detach blackness from the [ontological] question of (the meaning of) being.(Moten 2013a, 749-50) For Moten (2013b, 242), this demarcation between blackness and black people is a point where he diverges from the Afro-pessimism of Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton which has gained much traction in recent critical theory and cultural studies.However, Moten's thesis that blackness is distorted by traditional ontology is very much in continuation with Fanon's (2008, 82) aforementioned proposition that "ontology … does not permit us to understand the being of the black", which Wilderson (2010, 57-58) identifies as a key commitment of Afro-pessimism.Although Moten shares with Afro-pessimism this emphasis on the intricate relationship between blackness and ontology, as a professed "black optimist" he differs from the Afropessimist claim that the status of blackness as a "void" or "non-being" is produced and structured by the anti-blackness of a "new ontology" introduced through modern transatlantic slave trade (see Wilderson 2010, 17-18;Moten 2013a, 737-38, 742, 773-74, 778-79;cf. Moten 2008acf. Moten , esp. 1745-47)-47).As opposed to seeing blackness as an ontological status that is introduced or even produced by anti-blackness, Moten (2013a, 739) argues that "blackness is ontologically prior to the logistic and regulative power that is supposed to have brought it into existence".For Moten (2013a, 739), blackness is not only prior to the "new ontology" of modern slavery, but is in fact prior to all ontology: "blackness is prior to ontology … blackness is the anoriginal displacement of ontology, that it is ontology's anti-and ante-foundation, ontology's underground."In other words, blackness precedes anti-blackness, and must not be determined by any traditional "ontology" that is informed by the "intellectual prejudices" of anti-blackness.Because, in Moten's view, to do so would effectively be formally subordinating blackness to the traditional ontological discourse of Being qua antiblackness, thereby re-instating the anti-black normative gaze of the white man in which, as Fanon puts it, "not only must the black man be black; but he must be black in relation to the white man" (Fanon 2008, 82-83, emphasis added; see Moten 2016, 19-20).
Accordingly, we can see why Moten places much emphasis on the ontological priority of blackness/nothingnessan emphasis which finds much resemblance in Heidegger's notion of nothingness or "the nothing" (das Nichts) in his 1929 Freiburg inaugural lecture What is Metaphysics?.As Heidegger (1993, 97) notes in this much-debated lecture: Is the nothing given only because the "not", i.e. negation, is given?Or is it the other way around?Are negation and the "not" given only because the nothing is given?… We assert that the nothing is more original than the "not" and negation.
Just as blackness/nothingness is for Moten not the product of some operation undertaken by Being (e.g.negation), nothingness is for Heidegger not an outcome of the negation of beings but rather "more original" and indeed ontologically prior to negation.
Following this insistence that nothingness is not conditioned or produced by negation or anything else (but is rather the ground which makes negation possible), 8 Heidegger  (1993) controversially proposes that nothingness is constituted by nothing other than its very own sui generis operation of "nihilation": Without entering the debate over the meaning of Heidegger's thesis that "nothingness nihilates" (see Inwood 1999), it suffices here to note that Heidegger (1993) associates the self-nihilation of nothingness with "the Being of beings" insofar as "the originally nihilating nothing … makes possible in advance the revelation of beings in general" (103).To quote Heidegger one last time: Only on the ground of the original revelation of the nothing can human existence approach and penetrate beings … For human existence, the nothing makes possible the openedness of beings as such.The nothing does not merely serve as the counterconcept of beings; rather, it originally belongs to their essential unfolding as such.In the Being of beings the nihilation of the nothing occurs … The nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings.108) Insofar as there is this ontological coincidence of the nothing and the Being of beings, Heidegger notes that Hegel's proposition that "Pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same" (108) is correct (while explicitly dissociating himself from Hegel's argument from indeterminateness).
It is beyond the scope of this article to expound Heidegger's differences from Hegel, but it is worth observing here that Moten would take issue with Heidegger's and Hegel's formal identification of Being with nothingness.9Because for Moten (2013a, 749), as for the Afro-pessimists, the very point of speaking of blackness in terms of nothingness is to highlight the "unbridgeable" gulf between blackness and humanness/whiteness qua anti-blacknessa gulf so "unbridgeable" that it can only be understood in terms of the mutually exclusive dichotomy between nothingness and Being.This is of course not the only place where Moten differs from Heidegger's (notably) Eurocentric outlook.10But this divergence from Heidegger (and Hegel) is worth mentioning as it highlights some of Moten's key insights on the issue of the relation between Being and nothingness, which becomes clearer as we compare his paraontology to Sartre's phenomenological ontology in the following section.11

Between Relative and Absolute Nothingness
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre (2003) famously presents two ontological categories: being in-itself (en soi) and for-itself (pour soi), which are respectively Sartre's characterizations of "Being" and "consciousness".These notions are the two named in the title of Sartre's masterwork Being and Nothingness: Whereas "Being" corresponds to the in-itself, "nothingness" (néant) refers to consciousness or what Sartre calls for-itself.According to Sartre, his characterization of consciousness as nothingness is simply a definitional outworking of Husserlian phenomenology: "All consciousness, as Husserl has shown, is consciousness of something.This means that there is no consciousness which is not a positing of a transcendent object, or if you prefer, that consciousness has no 'content'" (7).To the extent that consciousness is by definition always conscious of something that is outside of itself, consciousness is structurally "nothing" because it does notand cannothave any substantial innate content: "Consciousness has nothing substantial … because it is a total void [vide] (since the world is outside it)" (12, translation modified).For Sartre, consciousness for-itself is always conscious of that which "is", what he calls the in-itself or sometimes simply "Being itself".12Given that consciousness is by definition always conscious of something that is outside of itself (i.e.conscious of something that is other than itself), Sartre argues that there is always an "original negation" underlying all acts of consciousness and the very constitution of consciousness for-itself: "the for-itself constitutes itself as not being the thing" (197, cf. 239).It is this negative relation between consciousness (the "for-itself") and the being which it is conscious of (the "in-itself") which underlies Sartre's entire ontological schema .
This ontological opposition between the in-itself and for-itselfor indeed between "Being" and "nothingness"provides the basis for Sartre's critique of Heidegger's aforementioned assertion that "nothingness nihilates itself": We can not grant to nothingness the property of "nihilating itself".For although the expression "to nihilate itself" is thought of as removing from nothingness the last semblance of being, we must recognize that only Being can nihilate itself; however it comes about, in order to nihilate itself, it must be.But Nothingness is not.If we can speak of it, it is only because it possesses an appearance of being, a borrowed being … Nothingness does not nihilate itself, Nothingness "is nihilated".(Sartre 2003, 46) Following a philosophical position that can be traced back to Parmenides' assertion that "for it is for Being, but nothing is not", 13 Sartre holds that since Being and nothingness are two incompatible and mutually exclusive categories, it is not possible for nothingness (which is not) to nihilate itself, for only Beingsomething that iscan nihilate itself" (see Leung 2020).
While Moten would agree with Sartre's postulation of an unbridgeable gap between Being and nothingness, he would presumably object to Sartre's account of nothingness as possessing "a borrowed being".For whereas Moten (2013a, 739) insists that nothingness is "ontologically prior to" Being as its ground or foundation, Sartre (2003) argues that: Being is prior to nothingness and establishes the ground for it.By this we must understand not only that Being has a logical precedence over nothingness but also that it is from Being that nothingness derives concretely its efficacy … nothingness, which is not, can have only a borrowed existence, and it gets its being from Being.(40) For Sartre, not only does nothingness exist only by way of a borrowed existence from Being, nothingness qua consciousness for-itself is more specifically "defined ontologically as a lack of being" (586).Insofar as nothingness is defined as a "lack" or indeed a "privation" of being (638), Sartre's account of nothingness is always understood in relation to Being: nothingness qua consciousness for-itself always exists in relation toindeed it exists for (pour)the in-itself that it is conscious of (112, 182, 475).To this extent, Sartrean nothingness is what one would call a relative nothingness, as opposed to an absolute nothingness like the one advanced by Moten (see Frank 2004, 157-59;cf. Moten 2013a, 741-73, 749-751;Moten 2018a, 26, 244).
Indeed, as Moten (2016, 21-22) writes: "Relative nothingness is the nothingness we usually associate with Existentialism, with Camus or Sartre.Sartre's Being and Nothingness is concerned with … relative nothingness."As opposed to Sartre's "relative" account of nothingness as a "lack" or "void", Moten (2017, 241) insists that "blackness [is] misunderstood if it is merely understood as void; nothingness [is] misunderstood if it is understood as relative" and not absolute. 14According to Moten, the distinction between "relative" and "absolute" nothingness is what fundamentally distinguishes his paraontology from Afro-pessimism: Nothingness is [often] too simply understood to (as if it were some epidermal livery) (some higher) being and is therefore relative as opposed to absolute … From [this commonly] assumed position, blackness is nothing, that is, the relative nothingness of the impossible, pathological subject and his fellows.I believe it is from that standpoint that Afro-pessimism identifies and articulates the imperative to embrace that nothingness which is, of necessity, relative.(Moten 2013a, 755, 741;cf. 2018a, 197) But if blackness or nothingness is indeed "ontologically prior to" Being or anti-blackness, then it must not be defined in relation to Being as a relative nothingness (à la Fanon's critical remark on how black existence "must be black in relation to the white man" [Fanon 2008, 82-83, emphasis added]).Thus, as opposed to "the condition of relative nothing" which Fanon (in Moten's reading) "takes to be the white man's manufacture of the black" (Moten 2013a, 751), Moten (2018a, 26, 244) maintains that blackness must be understood in terms of absolute nothingness, as "what Fanon refers to as 'absolutely nothing'a nothingness without reserve" (Moten 2013a, 761;citing Fanon 2008, 12).
As we further consider what Moten envisions as "absolute nothingness" in the next section, let us turn to Schelling's metaphysics to see how his conception of the Absolute Ungrund can help us further appreciate the rigor and robustness of Moten's paraontological articulation of blackness as nothingness.
Nothingness as the "Antiand Ante-Foundation" of Being Schelling's speculative metaphysics is notoriously complicated and difficult; instead of examining the various complex philosophical systems he produced over his long career which spans over 60 years, this section focuses on works of his middle period, offering snippets from his famous Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) and Ages of the World (1811-15) as points of comparison to explicate Moten's paraontology.Although Schelling is not a name that appears in Moten's published work, a number of the conceptual structures and motifs of his speculative account of nothingness of his middle period are very much echoed by some of the metaphysical claims of Moten's paraontology.For instance, across a number of his works, including his 1810 Stuttgart seminars delivered between composing Of Human Freedom and Ages of the World, Schelling speaks of two kinds of nothingness following the ancient Greek distinction between "ouk on" and "mē on",15 which may be understood respectively in terms of "absolute" and "relative" nothingness. 16According to Schelling, whereas relative nothingness or non-being [das Nichtseyende] (mē on) exists only as a privation in relation to a being that is (or even to Being itself), absolute nothingness [das Nichts] (ouk on) is absolutely nothing in and of itself. 17Perhaps Schelling's most striking account of absolute nothingness (das Nichts) is found in his 1815 draft of Ages of the World, where he describes the Absolutewhich he also names "the pure Godhead"as an absolute nothingness that is above and beyond all being: It certainly is nothing, but in the sense that the pure Godhead is nothing [das Nichts] … it is above all nothingness because it itself is everything [über allem Nichts, weil sie alles selbst ist].(Schelling 2009, 23-24) According to Schelling (2009, 25), the Absolute is said to be "nothing yet everything" because it is beyond all oppositions and distinctionsincluding the very dichotomy between Being and non-being, for it is an absolute nothingness that is not (negatively) defined by "Being" or "everything" by being its opposite or its negation. 18lthough the formulation of the Absolute as "nothingness" is not exactly found in Of Human Freedom, the Absolute is described by Schelling as "non-ground" or indeed an "un-ground" (Ungrund) in this much-celebrated earlier work: There must be a being before all ground and before all that exists, thus generally before any duality-how can we call it anything other than the original ground [Urgrund] or the unground [Ungrund]?(Schelling 2006, 68-69, original emphasis) 19To the extent that Schelling's (2006, 69) "unground" is one "that precedes any ground", this formulation of the Absolute clearly resembles Moten's (2013a, 739) paraontological account of black nothingness as the "antiand ante-foundation" of Being.For the Absolute is not only the "ante-foundation" that is "before all ground and before all that exists" (Schelling 2006, 69), as the "unground" of all being it is moreover an absolute nothingness (Nichts) or even "not-Being" (Nichtseyn) which operates as an "anti-foundation" that groundsand simultaneously ungrounds or anti-grounds -Being itself. 20n light of these parallels between Moten's paraontology and Schelling's metaphysics, we can see how Moten appears to go beyond Schellingand also Heidegger and Sartrein his postulation and affirmation of the primacy of nothingness. 21Whereas Schelling (2006, 69) still describes the Absolute here as "a being"as opposed to a "nothing" or nothingnessthat is "before all ground and before all that exists" which suggests an inadvertent prioritization of Being over nothingness, 22 Moten explicitly posits blackness qua nothingness as both the ur-ground and the un-ground of Beingor indeed what he calls the "(under)ground" of all things: "Blackness is the in/audible, in/visible, subterranean, and submarine focal point" that is "the ground, the earth, the dirt, under the feet and the institutions" of the ontological discourse of Being qua anti-blackness; yet at the same time it is also "the buried, hidden, underground that undermines what it is supposed to uphold" (Moten 2018a, 14;cf. 2013a, 739).With this formal identification of nothingness with blackness and of Being with anti-blackness, Moten's paraontological outlook not only maintains an axiomatic opposition between Being qua anti-blackness and blackness qua absolute nothingness, with the latter as the anti-foundation or unground (Ungrund) of former. 23Moten's black nothingness is moreover also the primal ground (Urgrund) or ante-foundation of Being itself: It is Being qua anti-blackness that is defined byand relation toblackness qua nothingness, and not vice versa (à la Sartrean relative nothingness).
Indeed, Moten's (2013a, 739) assertion that blackness/nothingness is "ontologically prior to the logistics and regulatory power" of Being qua anti-blackness is directly opposed to the traditional position of Sartre's (2003, 40) aforementioned insistence that "Being is prior to nothingness and establishes the ground [ fond] for it".As though reversing Sartre's formulation of nothingness as a relation to Being (and echoing Fanon's aforementioned critique of the ontological definition of "black[ness] in relation to the white man"), according to Moten (and Stefano Harney), "Whiteness is nothing but a relation to blackness" (Harney and Moten 2013, 55, emphasis added).Being qua anti-blackness can only be as a negation of blackness itself; without blackness, Being would not be at all because it would no longer exist as "anti-blackness"as the negation and product of blackness.What we find in Moten's paraontology is thus a reversal of the traditional metaphysical or even onto-theological privileging of Being over nothingness, where nothingness becomes the center or even "ground" of everything.Being only "is" by virtue of being in an antithetic relation with absolute nothingness; it only exists as "anti-nothingness" (as anti-blackness) or what Schelling calls "not non-being" (nicht nicht Seyenden).In other words, Being as anti-blackness is always merely relative, whereas blackness qua nothingness is absolute: as if echoing Schelling's speculative notion of the Absolute, blackness is what Moten (2013a, 751) calls "the absolute, or absolute nothingness".

Conclusion
This article has sought to offer a philosophical reading of Fred Moten's construal of blackness as nothingness in light of the ontologies of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling.Where Heidegger's postulation of "the Nothing" as the "ground" makes possible the "essential unfoldings" or "revelation" of beings involves a fundamental identification of Being and nothingness, Moten maintains that nothingness is not and cannot be identical to Being, but remains ontologically prior to Being.While Moten's commitment to the non-identity of Being and nothingness is shared by Sartre, contrary to Sartre's "relative" account of nothingness as a privation of Being, Moten's post-Fanonian outlook presents a more robust and affirmative account of nothingness where Being is understood in relation to nothingness, and not versa: it is Being that is relative and nothingness that is absolute.In this regard, Moten's paraontological conception of "a nothingness without reserve" not only resembles the account of "absolute nothingness" in Schelling's speculative metaphysics, but his characterization of nothingness as the "antiand antefoundation" of Being also echoes Schelling's conceptions of the Ungrund and Urgrund.However, in comparison to Schelling's account of the Absolute Ungrund as "a being" which reflects an implicit ontological prioritization of Being over nothingness, Moten's explicit conception of nothingness as the "antiand ante-foundation" of Being upholds the ontological priority of nothingness in a more rigorous and consistent manner.To this extent, Moten not only goes beyond Schelling (and Sartre) in his development of a more systematic and affirmative account of absolute nothingness as the ground of Being.Moreover, Moten's paraontology can be seen as taking a further step beyond Heidegger's attempt to overcome metaphysics by calling into question the presumed "onto-centric" character or prejudice of traditional ontological reflection (including Heidegger's) which places Being in a privileged metaphysical position akin to the divine in an onto-theological manner. 24 The foregoing focus on the formal aspects of Moten's rendition of blackness as nothingness is of course not a comprehensive analysis of Moten's rich and multifaceted work which, as mentioned in the introduction, draws on a diverse range of intellectual traditions beyond modern continental philosophy. 25This article's reading of Moten's paraontology in light of Heidegger's, Sartre's, and Schelling's celebrated accounts of nothingness is by no means intended to portray Moten asor indeed reduce Moten toa thinker who is derivative of post-Kantian European philosophy (which itself cannot be reduced to the works of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling).Instead, by bringing his work into conversation with these "canonical" accounts of metaphysics from the history of European philosophy, this article has sought to highlight how Moten's paraontology presents a vision of "nothingness" which is arguably more affirmative and theoretically rigorous than the accounts of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling.Indeed, if Moten's theoretical construal of nothingness is, as this article has argued, more robust and creative than those of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling, then it may be said that this article is not an exercise in situating Moten's work "in relation to" the works of these white philosophers in a problematic manner parallel to what Moten (following Fanon) critically sees as defining black existence "in relation to the white man", but rather one which situates the "onto-centric" philosophies of the white men "in relation 24 While Schelling's association of the Absolute with God could certainly be seen as a kind of "onto-theology" (Gardner 2008), Schelling's critique of previous metaphysics as "negative" philosophy in his final period of work on "positive" philosophy could be seen as an attempt to overcome traditional metaphysics with a particular emphasis on the relation between Being and nonbeing: For the later Schelling (2007, 137), negative philosophy can only have a "a negative concept of that which Being itself is … it has no concept of the being that Is other than that if what is not nonbeing". 25As mentioned above, one inspiration for Moten's account of absolute nothingness is Nishida Kitarō's Kyoto School philosophy, particularly his account of "the contradictory identity of objectivity and subjectivity" which leads to absolute nothingness within what Nishida calls "the paradoxical logic of the Prajnaparamita Sutra" (Nishida 1987, 95-96;cited in Moten 2013a, 750-51).It is undoubtedly beyond the scope of this article to engage with Moten's interpretation of Nishida as well as Nishida's very own interpretation of Buddhist logic (not to mention their relation to Schelling's account of the absolute identity of subject and object).However, reading Moten's account of blackness as nothingness with reference to Nishida and the Buddhist logic of dependent origination may highlight further ways in which Moten's paraontology departs fromand calls into questionthe unacknowledged presumptions of traditional western metaphysics.I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for this important insight.
to" Moten's reflections on blackness and nothingness.Accordingly, re-reading the "canonical" ontological outlooks of Heidegger, Sartre, and Schelling in relation to Moten's inversion of the traditional privilege of Being over nothingness can not only highlight the theoretical sophistication as well as unique insights of Moten's conception of nothingness.It can moreover expose some of the unacknowledged presumptions or what Sartre (2003, 265) calls "intellectual prejudices" of traditional metaphysics and ontology, such as the philosophical prioritization of Being and the existent and the corresponding widespread intellectual prejudice against the non-existent, the absent, and indeed nothingness (cf.Morris 2008, 46-48). 26 In her reading of Sartre, Katherine Morris (2008, 52, 55-56) suggests that intellectual prejudices are comparable to everyday prejudices such as racism since they cannot be addressed simply by rational arguments or other traditional philosophical modes of reasoning.Perhaps this is one reason why Moten (2018b, x) does not adhere to traditional forms and norms of philosophical argument or presentation in his attempt to articulate blackness as absolute nothingness "outside the proper philosophical enclosure", beyond the conventional confines or "intellectual prejudices" of traditional ontology which he associates with "anti-blackness".Indeed, Moten's "paraontological" construal of blackness as nothingness is not simply a philosophical or metaphysical thesis, but also pertains to social life, cultural practices, and other issues and areas that are often not directly considered within the traditional theoretical study of ontology and metaphysics. 27In this way, although Moten's highly rhetorical style and markedly interdisciplinary approach to theorization may not conform to academic philosophical conventions, engaging traditional metaphysics and ontological inquiry with Moten's innovative workand with contemporary black studies more broadlycan not only foster further reflections on the relation between traditional speculative metaphysics and social critique but also between European philosophy and contemporary black studies.Moreover, it can call into question the different intellectual (or even everyday) prejudicesnot least anti-blackness and various forms of racismthat may have inadvertently shaped and influenced traditional ontological inquiry, and in turn uncover new imaginative ways of approaching perennial philosophical questions of metaphysics and ontology.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
King-Ho Leung http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5551-7865 [T]he action of the nothing … is the essence of the nothing: nihilation.It is neither an annihilation of beings nor does it spring from a negation.Nihilation will not submit to calculation in terms of annihilation and negation.The nothing itself nihilates [Das Nichts selbst nichtet].(103)

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T]he highest is exclusively above all being … What then could be thought above all being [über allem Seyn], or what is it that neither has being nor does not have being [weder seyend sei noch auch nichtseyend]?And they answer themselves modestly: Nothing [das Nichts].