Ontological Emptiness as Reflected by the Basque Huts: An Ontolinguistics of Śūnyatā?

Abstract

Ontological emptiness, as the “active vacuity or emptiness” that acts as the hypostasis of existence, is at the core of relevant world philosophies. The emptiness ontology based on such an assumption, mostly developed in Eastern philosophies and their empiricism, was almost completely lost in Europe, especially after the so-called “scientific revolution.” However, Basque, an old pre-Indo-European language of Western Europe, keeps the term Huts or “emptiness” to define “nature, identity, purity” of things and beings, in what seems to be a good example of it. This paper discusses such a possibility. After recalling the ontological emptiness and one of its most precise formulations, the Buddhist Śūnyatā and the Heart Sutra, it presents the Basque Huts as an “emptiness/identity” contranym. A cognitive bridge and an ontolinguistic test are carried out to verify that it is not a casual homonym, but a correlated polysemy and a meaningful contranym. Accordingly, whether Śūnyatā and Huts are actually commensurable or not is discussed. And finally, Huts as an appropriate ontolinguistics of Śūnyatā and as an emptiness ontology is concluded.