The aim of the book is to bring together on the one hand the philosophical tradition of reflections on the void, from antiquity up to its contemporary developments, and on the other hand the problem of the void as it is posed in science, both historically and particularly in its present stage. There is the full recognition of the fact that the two languages, coming from the philosophical and the scientific side, are incommensurate, and the project doesn’t cater for any easy synthesis; but neither does it consent to the dialogue of the deaf. New questions about defining the void are posed by science itself, and the new ways in which philosophy can treat this one of its ancient problems can be brought to the point of a mutual clarification.
COBISS.SI-ID: 270731264
At the end of the legendary session on repetition, in his Seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan evokes, in a few condensed and enigmatic sentences, three terms of ancient philosophy, tyche, clinamen and den, indicating that the fate of idealism and materialism is there at stake. The implication, not quite explicit, is that the three terms have to be read together, that they intersect and designate a space where the question of materialism can be raised in its minimal form. The present paper takes up the two terms of clinamen and den, it traces their history and attempts to explore their implications for the concepts of object a, the signifier, repetition and ultimately the concept of being.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1623886