The Vocative Nothingness: Ernst von Baader’s Theosophical Lexicon and the Impossibility of Pure Being
Among the lesser-frequented provincial corridors of German speculative theology stands the singular figure of Ernst von Baader (1765–1841), distinguished by his unyielding resistance to modernity’s march and by his spirited attempt to reconcile mystico-theosophical currents with the dialectic tradition inherited from Jakob Boehme and mediated through Neoplatonic and scholastic lenses. Often dismissed as merely an eccentric Catholic reactionary lost in the thickets of mystical enthusiasm, Baader’s oeuvre in fact reveals a profoundly intricate metaphysical system, pulsating with ontological innovations that demand careful excavation.
In the present essay, I endeavor to unearth a particularly subtle detail nestled within Baader’s metaphysical architecture: namely, his curious deployment of the vocative case as a metaphysical category, which surfaces most conspicuously in his treatment of divine Being—not as actuality, nor as potentiality, but as a relation whose mode of presence is essentially prayerful and invocative. This may initially appear trifling, a mere semantic flourish, but I argue that in fact it bespeaks a radical dismantling of the traditional ontological dichotomy between being and non-being, and constitutes a direct challenge to the univocity of Being presumed in both Thomistic metaphysics and post-Kantian idealism.
We must first recall that Baader rejected Cartesian autonomy and pure reason in favor of a participatory epistemology rooted in divine revelation. But his anti-rationalism was accompanied by a remarkable linguistic sensitivity rarely acknowledged by his commentators. His repeated use of the vocative in his philosophical German—”O Wesen!”, “Du Abgrund!”, “Heiliger Quell!”—is not merely rhetorical pathos. It demarcates, I contend, a precise mode of ontological orientation: Being is not a substance to be posited, but a Thou to be called upon. Baader thus reconfigures metaphysics as a grammar of address. Being is no longer a copula or attribute, but that which is evoked, one might even say awoken, through the act of invocation.
This yields a theolinguistic structure wherein Being is exterior to propositional knowledge, which Baader mistrusts,^1 and accessible only through the interpersonal mode of entreaty. Here lies the profound interstice: Baader embraces the idea that to know God—or Being—is not to grasp an object of cognition, but to enter into a dialogical modality with the Abgrund (abyss), a term he wrenches from Boehme but reorients toward a distinctly Christian anthropology grounded in mystical participation.
The most significant implication of this vocative ontology is Baader’s denial of the possibility of pure Being without relation. He writes in his “Fermenta Cognitionis”: “Es ist kein Sein außer im Rufen, und kein Rufen ohne Antwort” (“There is no being except in calling, and no calling without reply”).^2 From this, we may extract a provocative thesis: Being exists only insofar as it is summoned. Of course, this spoils entirely the Aristotelian schema of actuality and potentiality, depersonalizes the Hegelian Absolute, and reduces Heidegger’s later ‘Sein’ to mute oblivion beside Baader’s aching theophany.
In Baader’s linguistic-theological model, then, ontological emergence is not genesis ex nihilo in temporal causality, but a process of eternal co-relative address between Creator and creature. But this address is not linear nor logically deductive; it is erotic, pneumatic, vocative. The great error of metaphysical systems such as Spinoza’s was to congeal God into equivalence with Being, to define Deus sive Natura, and thereby solidify what in Baader’s view should remain ecstatic openness.
Particularly worth scrutinizing is Baader’s equation of invocation (Anrufung) with creation. This finds expression in his lesser-known commentary on Boehme, wherein he interprets the divine Fiat not as a command, but as a lamentation—“Let there be light” not as a sovereign decree but as a longing cry. Here the cosmos comes into being not through power but through the vocative wound. In Baader’s metaphysics, creation is an act of divine exposure and vulnerability. One might say his God suffers the universe into existence—a notion with dangerous resonance with later thinkers such as Simone Weil and Nikolai Berdyaev, though they never trace lineage to Baader, perhaps precisely because he dwells in too murky a theological night.^3
Now, from a strictly grammatical perspective, the vocative case is anomalous. It does not describe, predetermine, claim, or assert. It is pure address—without predicate, without attribute. In liturgical language, the “O” of “O Lord” is structurally empty, full only of yearning. If Baader’s ontology rests in this grammatical structure, one must regard his metaphysics not as a systematization but as a spiritual grammar.
Why has this gone unnoticed or unexamined? The neglect finds root perhaps in the metaphysical impatience of the modern academy, and in Protestant discomfort with the mystical consonances of self-emptying appeasement (Kenosis), which Baader emphasizes covertly almost to the point of heresy. The implications of Baader’s vocative model import not only theological instability but linguistic revolution. For if the vocative becomes ontologically primary, then indicative sentences—the domain of scientific and rational discourse—lose their regime of authority. One cannot observe or measure a Being that retreats behind “Du.” Truth becomes relational, not propositional.
Yet Baader is no relativist. He simply posits that relation precedes essence—the I-Thou (a term he foreshadowed nearly a century before Buber) is ontologically anterior to the I-It. The universe is not an object to be mastered but a name to be called. From this, ethics too must be rewritten: sin is not violation, but refusal to answer the divine Name.
This rich confluence of linguistic, metaphysical and theological detail within Baader’s work entitles him to serious reconsideration. If we follow the implications of his metaphysical grammar to their end, we arrive at an understanding of Nothingness—Nichts—not as an absence of being, but as the pure potentiality of call, silence pregnant with meaning yet unuttered. It is no coincidence that Baader often invokes silence as the highest form of speech.
In closing, let us return to the seemingly minor grammatical observation that set our inquiry in motion. What can be more trivial than a case in Indo-European grammar? And yet Baader turns linguistic dross into ontological gold. For by privileging the vocative, he uproots the metaphysical tower from its foundation and refits it upon a new cornerstone: relation, prayer, address. In an age where Being is treated either as bare phenomenon or reducible functionality, Baader’s archaic, even anachronistic, grammar offers a radical, even mystical, recentering of ontology in love and invocation.
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
ontology, German mysticism, grammar, theosophy, metaphysical linguistics, Jakob Boehme, relational being
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^1 Baader reserves his harshest criticisms for Enlightenment rationalism, often equating autonomous reason with pride, and opposing it to “faith-knowledge” (Glaubenserkenntnis), a synthesis of the heart with divine disclosure.
^2 Fermenta Cognitionis, Vol. II, §47.
^3 See Simone Weil’s “Gravity and Grace” and Berdyaev’s “The Destiny of Man”; while both articulate the idea that God suffers for or with humanity, Baader’s use of the vocative structure implies God suffers as humanity calls Him into mutual existence.