Bernhard Welte and the "Place" of Nothingness

A perspective for the dialogue between West and East

Abstract

Can Western thought and that of the East encounter one another in the “locus” of Nothing? As the product of a master’s thesis in Trinitarian Ontology at Sophia University Institute, this article explores such a possibility starting from the re-semanticization of Nothing in Bernhard Welte’s thought, drawing from his sources in Thomas Aquinas’s apophatic theology, in Meister Eckhart’s mysticism and in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. The Weltian synthesis proposed in Religionsphilosophie taps into the mystery of God starting from the mystery of Nothing, identifying personality and divinity in relationship with revelation in Jesus Christ; in Das Licht des Nichts, the possibility of an encounter with the oriental tradition is opened up in the daoist wu 無 which is expressed in the wuwei 無為 (non-action).