Unable to both affirm and deny.
Between them, there is nothing.
Between them, there is I.
- Kara no Kyoukai 4: Void Shrine
The Tetralemma is a spiral that closes in on itself, and dissolves reality with it, and in the process only then can Ultimate Knowledge be known, or the lack of it. A Tetralemma is a Buddhist mental scape, starting with a Proposition, and expounds on the possible truth-values of such propositions. Commonsensically a Proposition has only two truth-values, that of Truth and Falsity. There are two more. The value that verifies both Truth and Falsity, and the value that denies both. The negative Tetralemma, then, is the spiral that, after dissolving reality, wraps around on itself, and extinguishes itself into the more than unknown.
We can consider Kara no Kyoukai, and for that matter the works of Kinoko Nasu, to be based around a Tetralemmic structure of reality, which compounds into an Aegis that denies the postulate while simultaneously affirming it. The form, for example, of Male and Female, juxtaposed onto each other into monstrosity, then it acts upon itself to deny itself of the Male, and returns to the Female. But there is a side that denies both, and that is the Boundary of Emptiness, oblivion, and the deep hole of Nothingness that lies on the other side.
Likewise the Tetralemma, the self-denying spiral, that takes its roots between affirming and denying itself, balances the world, although, as many in their cowls and robes would state, the entirety eventually falls into that state of Sunyata which none can escape and the no-self is the reign. Any concrete truth, as Araya is soon to realize, is a falsity, even the one that states that concrete truth has to be denied. That is the nature of the Tetralemmic consumption. Which is why a Counter-Force acts against Araya, even though the latter seeks to affirm the Tetralemma.
We need to keep in mind that the Tetralemma is a self-destroying structure, which in a paradox, hinges on the self. Which means the realization of the Tetralemma can only be conceived on in a self. Likewise Tomoe Enjou only realizes his own non-self, after developing a self by striking out at not just the paradox of the apartment complex, but also the paradox of his ennui-stricken life. In other words, through dependency on others, in a form of dependent becoming, could he realize the self that would negate itself.
One wonders what madness stricken deluges overcame Kinoko Nasu, who took unto himself to derive this complicated matrix of a system, full of tetralemmic inconsistencies, and verities of power, with walking non-souls that drift in and out of Noir-ridden city streets, and talk about haunted concepts, and strive forward towards apexes of nothing. The master’s eyes shines with secrets. He has made a world of puppets that essentially are aware that they are puppets, and in doing so become more aware than non-puppets about their own natures.
It is impossible to grasp at the true root of Nasu without beholding oneself to that Tetralemmic figure of knowledge, the knowledge that seeks to state that every knowledge is both falsity, and truth, and perhaps neither.
