The uncanniness of the visual blind spot: nothing is missing.

If you imagine what a blind spot is, you will likely conceive it in terms of sight, as a kind of darkness. In a sense this is true. Blindness and darkness are both conditions that prevent the seeing of objects. Here, however, the similarity ends. Darkness itself is seen; blindness is not. Blindness, though it pertains to sight, falls outside the terms of sight. Blindness is nothingness. There is no missing something; there is only nothing.

The only way to know what a blind spot is to experience it practically by performing an experiment and experiencing a deeper contrast. There is not-seeing for lack of light, and then there is not-seeing for lack of sight.

*

The uncanniness of the ontological blind spot: nothing is missing.

If you imagine what ontological blindness is, you will likely conceive it in terms of understanding, as a lack of knowledge. In a sense this is true. Ontological blindness and lack of knowledge are both conditions that prevent the knowing of information. Here, however, the similarity ends. Lack of knowledge itself is understood; ontological blindness is not. Ontological blindness, though it pertains to understanding, falls outside the terms of understanding: ontological blindness is nothingness. This means there is no missing something: as far as you know you’ve know everything you need to know. This is what is meant by “horizon”.

The only way to experience an ontological blind spot is to experience it practically by reading hermeneutically, and acquiring a new mode of understanding against which the non-understanding or (more likely) misunderstanding can be perceived, so you can experience a deeper contrast. There is not-knowing for lack of information, and then there is not-knowing for lack of understanding.

Such insight makes a person cautious and humble, not because he is scared and not because he thinks little of himself, but because he knows well what nothingness is like.

*

What if a person refuses to perform the blind spot experiment until someone explains to him precisely what he will learn from it?

What if a person refuses to listen and hear someone out until it is explained to him precisely what he will gain from the effort? What if everyone is like this? What if everyone has always been like this? It takes thousands of years to teach the world anything.