THE POST- ONTOLOGICAL THOUGHT AND THE ABYSS OF NOTHINGNESS — ALEXIS KARPOUZOS

The meta-ontological thought of Alexis Karpouzos is constituted at a level where the traditional distinction between ontology and nihilism collapses. The nothing, as it appears in this context, is neither the opposite of Being nor its limit, but the groundless condition of its appearance. It is a nothing that is not conceived metaphysically as lack, negation, or absence, but corresponds to the mathematical zero: neither positive nor negative, non-polar, and at the same time capable of encompassing all possible values without identifying with any of them. This nothing does not negate the world; it makes possible its indeterminate genesis.

The abyss of nothingness, thus understood, is neither chaos nor void, but an open set of possibilities, a non-closed, non-exhausted, and non-completed set. It is not governed by necessity but by indeterminacy. This indeterminacy is not ignorance nor temporary ambiguity, but a structural condition: the real is not fully determinable because it has no foundation. The world is not constituted upon a stable substrate, but hovers above a field of possibilities that cannot be exhausted nor completed.

Consciousness, however, is unable to experience this openness directly. In order to constitute itself as an ego, it requires determinations, boundaries, and distinctions. Thus, the indeterminacy of nothingness is translated into oppositional categories: life and death, being and non-being, order and chaos. The first and deepest of these categories is the distinction between life and death, which functions as a primary mechanism of stabilization in the face of the abyssal openness of the real. Life is conceived as a positive value, death as negative, even though both are merely different manifestations of a unified transformative dynamic.

At the meta-ontological level, however, prior to the observation of consciousness, there are neither positive nor negative values. There are not even values. There is an invisible rhythm, which operates like the indeterminate variability of a mathematical field before any measurement. This rhythm does not choose, does not direct, and does not hierarchize. It coordinates without regulating, it transforms without deciding. It is the way in which the open set of possibilities is temporarily articulated into forms.

When consciousness intervenes, the rhythm does not cease to function. It simply ceases to be perceived as such. The oppositions that appear are not real fissures in the world, but polar complexes that arise from the process of observation. Just as in the mathematical field the zero permits both positive and negative values without identifying with any, so too the abyss of nothingness allows the emergence of opposites without grounding them as absolute. The opposites do not clash; they co-transform.

The notion of atemporal time becomes necessary here. Atemporal time is neither a transcendent duration nor an eternal presentness. It is the regime within which transformation occurs without being determined by succession. Just as in the field of indeterminacy there is no privileged value, so in atemporal time there is no privileged moment. Life and death do not come one after the other; they coexist as different forms of articulation of the same potential field.

The claim that the human being is simultaneously alive and dead thus acquires a strict, non-metaphorical meaning. Every moment of experience is already the result of a selection of form from an infinite set of possibilities and, at the same time, the exclusion of countless others. Life does not precede death; it is accomplished together with it as a process of selection and withdrawal of forms within the open field of nothingness.

From this perspective, domination, property, and conquest are revealed as attempts to impose closure upon an essentially open system. Property presupposes stable values and clear boundaries. Yet in a world governed by indeterminacy, where every form is a temporary choice from the abyss of possibilities, nothing can belong definitively. The negation of property is not a political slogan, but the logical consequence of a meta-ontology that recognizes nothingness as an open set and not as lack.

Knowledge, finally, is not the representation of a stable world, but participation in a process of determination that never completes itself. Karpouzos' meta-ontological endeavor does not seek to fill the abyss of nothingness with meaning, but to show that meaning emerges only because the abyss remains gaping and open.

Thus, nothingness is neither threat nor salvation. It is the condition of the freedom of the real. Not because it promises infinite possibilities, but because it imposes none. The invisible rhythm does not transcend nothingness; it operates within it, just as variability operates within indeterminacy. And within this ungrounded condition, the world is not explained — it simply transforms.

Excerpt from a lecture at the University of Berlin in the Autumn of 2025