Plenitude and Lack: Longing as the Moving Cause of Manifestation
Wei Pang
September 30, 2026
Abstract
Why the One differentiates into the many is among the oldest questions in metaphysics. A long tradition, running from the Upanishads through Böhme to Schelling, answers: longing. Yet this answer faces a fundamental difficulty, which this paper calls the Paradox of Lack. Longing presupposes lack; lack presupposes a distinction between the one who wants and what is wanted; and the original One, by definition, contains no distinction. Longing therefore either cannot belong to the One, or presupposes an earlier differentiation. Either way, it cannot explain how differentiation begins.
This paper argues that the paradox rests on an unexamined assumption: that all longing is desire from lack. It distinguishes desire from lack from desire from plenitude, and proposes that longing takes three forms across the three levels of manifestation. In latent unity it is Overflow (溢, yì), an objectless tendency to pour forth. In manifest opposition it is Lack (缺, quē), each pole’s yearning for the other. In the relational state it is Union (合, hé), in which lack finds its response within relation. Because Overflow presupposes no distinction, the Paradox of Lack dissolves.
The paper further shows that Schelling, in the Freedom essay, ran into the same paradox. His Ungrund, conceived as absolute indifference, cannot bear longing, so he locates longing in the “ground,” which leaves the beginning of differentiation unexplained; the concept of Overflow fills precisely this gap. Schopenhauer’s pessimism, in turn, is diagnosed as a logical consequence of the lack model: if all longing is lack, satisfaction can only be negative, and the absence of Union is the root of his pendulum view of life. Finally, the paper responds to objections from anthropomorphism, mere relabeling, and the reification of a ground.
Keywords: longing; lack; plenitude; manifestation; Schelling; Schopenhauer; Ungrund; three-state ontology
1. Introduction
1.1 The Problem
In earlier work I proposed a three-state ontology of manifestation: reality unfolds, level by level, in a 2ⁿ pattern through the recursion of latent unity (U), manifest opposition (A/B), and the relational state (R) (Pang, 2025a, 2025b). This framework describes how differentiation occurs, but it does not answer why it occurs. Why would a wholly undifferentiated unity not simply remain a unity forever?
The question is not new. It is the Neoplatonic question of why the One produces anything other than itself, and the German Idealist question of why the Absolute goes out of itself. A recurring answer in these traditions is that the original unity contains some form of longing. In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, the primordial Self, finding no delight in being alone, longs for a second. Böhme’s Ungrund contains a desire to find and manifest itself. Schelling states outright that the eternal One feels a longing to give birth to itself.
1.2 The Difficulty
This answer, however, faces a difficulty that is rarely confronted directly. Longing is usually understood as longing for something one lacks, and lack requires that a distinction already exist between the one who longs and what is longed for. If the original One truly contains no distinction, it cannot long; if it can long, it already contains distinction. Longing thus either cannot belong to the original unity, or it presupposes the very differentiation it was meant to explain. I call this the Paradox of Lack.
1.3 Thesis
The central thesis of this paper is that the Paradox of Lack depends on an unexamined premise: that all longing is desire from lack. Once another kind of longing is recognized, a desire from plenitude that arises from fullness rather than deficiency, the paradox can be dissolved. More than this, longing does not take a single form but changes across the three levels of manifestation: in the latent state it is Overflow, in the manifest state it is Lack, and in the relational state it is Union.
1.4 Contributions and Structure
The paper makes three contributions. First, it states the Paradox of Lack explicitly and answers it with the distinction among Overflow, Lack, and Union (Sections 2–3). Second, it shows that Schelling’s Freedom essay encounters the same paradox without resolving it, and that the present distinction can be read as a remedy for his impasse (Section 4). Third, it diagnoses Schopenhauer’s pessimism as a logical consequence of the lack model and rebuts his thesis of the negativity of satisfaction through the phenomenon of Union (Section 5). Section 6 briefly locates the argument within a wider lineage, Section 7 answers the main objections, and Section 8 concludes.
2. The Problem of the Moving Cause and the Primacy of Affect
2.1 Three Answers and Their Shortcomings
There are roughly three answers to the question of why unity differentiates.
The contingency view holds that differentiation has no reason; it simply happened. This amounts to abandoning explanation, and rests the entire process of manifestation on an unintelligible event.
The necessity view holds that unity must unfold into multiplicity as a matter of logic, as in the Hegelian self-movement of the concept. But if the unfolding is purely logically necessary, it is hard to explain why what exists is a concrete, qualitative world rather than merely a conceptual system. It should be noted that what this paper rejects is purely logical necessity, not necessity as such; Section 4.4 will argue that the paper accepts a necessity of nature, which differs from logical necessity.
The intentional view holds that unity differentiates because of some inner directedness, such as a “seeking of self-knowledge.” This paper follows that path, but observes that “seeking” is already an affective structure: a form of wanting. The deeper form of the intentional view is therefore the longing view.
2.2 From Directedness to Inner Directedness
An objector will say that attributing “wanting” to the most basic level of the cosmos is anthropomorphic projection. The response proceeds in two steps.
First, directedness is not a peculiarity of human minds. Contemporary powers metaphysics holds that the fundamental properties of nature are dispositional: the essence of a property lies in its tendency to produce a certain manifestation (Bird, 2007). Molnar (2003) argues further that such powers possess a kind of “physical intentionality”: they are directed toward their manifestations even when those manifestations are never realized. In other words, the structure of “being directed toward what does not yet exist” is already present in mindless nature.
Second, on this basis the paper advances a stronger metaphysical claim: the most basic directedness is not only dispositional but also proto-affective. The support for this step is a continuity argument. If directedness at the basic level had nothing in common with the affect of living beings, the appearance of affect in life would be an inexplicable qualitative leap; if the basic level already possesses a minimal, proto-affective character, biological affect can be understood as its elaboration (see Strawson, 2006). Whitehead’s notions of “subjective aim” and “feeling” are one formulation of this proto-affectivity (Whitehead, 1929).
Moving from “disposition” to “proto-affect” requires a bridge, and the paper builds it with Russellian monism. Russell observed that physics tells us only about the structure and dispositions of things, what they do, while remaining silent about what they intrinsically are (Russell, 1927). Dispositions must have some intrinsic nature that bears them, and the only intrinsic nature we know from the inside is our own experience. The most economical hypothesis, then, is that the intrinsic nature bearing basic dispositions is of the same kind as experience, only in an extremely primitive degree (see Goff, 2017). On this picture, disposition is structure described from the outside, and proto-affect is the same thing seen from within. It is in this sense that the paper speaks of “affectivity.”
It should be stressed that “affect” here does not mean that the cosmos feels joy or anger. It refers to a minimal structure: an inner tendency toward expression. The next section will show that this minimal structure, at the latent level, contains no lack.
3. The Paradox of Lack and “Overflow, Lack, Union”
3.1 Statement of the Paradox
The Paradox of Lack can be stated precisely as follows:
(Premise of lack) All longing is longing for something lacked.
(Premise of distinction) All lack presupposes a distinction between the one who longs and what is lacked.
(Premise of unity) The original unity contains no distinction.
From 1 and 2: all longing presupposes distinction.
From 3 and 4: the original unity cannot long.
Therefore, if longing is the moving cause of differentiation, it must appear after differentiation; but a moving cause cannot come after its effect. The longing view contradicts itself.
Premises 2 and 3 are nearly definitional and difficult to deny. The strategy of this paper is to reject Premise 1.
3.2 Two Models of Longing
Premise 1 expresses what has been the dominant lack model in Western thought. Its classic form appears in Plato’s Symposium: Eros is the child of Poros (Resource) and Penia (Poverty), and he longs for beauty and goodness precisely because he does not possess them. Schopenhauer pushed this model to its extreme, holding that all willing springs from want, and therefore from suffering (Schopenhauer, 1969, §57).
But the history of thought contains another model, which this paper calls the plenitude model. Plotinus describes the One as perfect and lacking nothing, and says that precisely because it is perfect, it overflows and produces everything below it (Enneads V.2.1). The overflowing is not in order to gain something; it is the outpouring of perfection itself. In psychology, Maslow distinguished “deficiency motivation” from “growth motivation”: the former aims at removing a lack, the latter at expression and realization, and when satisfied it does not subside but intensifies (Maslow, 1968).
The two kinds of longing can be distinguished phenomenologically:
The crucial point is that desire from plenitude does not presuppose a distinction between the one who longs and what is lacked, because “what is lacked” is not a structural element of it at all. Premise 1 is therefore false, and the Paradox of Lack fails at its first step.
3.3 Overflow, Lack, Union: Three Forms of Longing
Merely pointing out that “the original longing is desire from plenitude” is not enough, however. In the manifest world, longing plainly takes the form of lack in most cases. A complete theory must explain how the two kinds of longing relate. The answer here is that they are not two parallel kinds of longing, but forms of one and the same longing at different levels of manifestation.
Overflow (latent state, U): an objectless tendency to pour forth. The Chinese notion of shi (势, propensity) captures this well: a tendency not yet having direction or object, rather than an intention aimed at an object.
Lack (manifest state, A/B): once unity differentiates, each pole becomes an incomplete half. Only now does longing in the full sense, the yearning for the other pole, appear for the first time. Lack is not the cause of differentiation but its product.
Union (relational state, R): the two poles meet in relation, and lack finds its response. But Union is not a return to undifferentiated identity; the poles do not disappear. It is a union that preserves difference.
The three form a recursive cycle: Union, as a new unity, becomes the latent state of the next level and gives rise to a new Overflow.
This cycle also shows how Overflow, Lack, and Union relate to the 2ⁿ structure. The original Overflow is the undifferentiated one (2⁰). Its first manifestation produces two poles (2¹), each in a state of Lack. In Union the two poles form a new unity, which as a new latent state lets each pole overflow and differentiate again (2²), and so on, level by level. Overflow, Lack, and Union can thus be seen as the dynamic counterpart of 2ⁿ recursion: 2ⁿ describes the form of differentiation, while Overflow, Lack, and Union describe the force that drives it. A full formalization is left for a separate paper.
This structure has two important consequences. First, desire from lack is derivative and desire from plenitude is primary, so the Paradox of Lack no longer arises. Second, Lack is not in itself pathological; it is a necessary moment of manifestation. But if Lack hardens, no longer moving toward Union and no longer aware that it springs from Overflow, it becomes clinging. Sections 4 and 5 will show that this consequence corresponds closely to Schelling’s analysis of evil and supplies a diagnosis of Schopenhauer’s pessimism.
3.4 Where Does “Outside” Come From? Two Clarifications of Overflow
A deeper objection runs as follows. As soon as one speaks of “pouring forth” or of a “tendency,” one has already implied distinctions between inside and outside, source and flow, potentiality and actuality. On this view, Overflow has not removed distinction at all; it has merely moved it from the level of objects to the levels of topology and modality. This objection deserves careful attention.
First clarification (topological): Overflow is not movement into an already existing outer space. The “outside” does not exist prior to Overflow; Overflow is the very occurrence of the dimension of “outside.” In other words, Overflow does not move within difference; it is the dynamism by which difference comes to be. A physical analogy is that cosmic expansion is not expansion into some pre-existing space, but the expansion of space itself. This is only an analogy, but it shows that “outward” need not presuppose an already given “outside.”
Second clarification (modal): The paper grants that Overflow does involve a distinction between potentiality and actuality. But this distinction differs in kind from the one lack requires. Lack requires two real terms: one who longs and a thing lacked. Potentiality and actuality are not two things but two aspects of one and the same being. In scholastic terms, the former is a real distinction, the latter merely a formal distinction.
The premise of unity (Premise 3 in Section 3.1) must therefore be made precise: the original unity contains no real distinction. Under this precisification, the Paradox of Lack still holds against lack, since lack requires a real distinction; but Overflow requires only modal aspects within a single being and so is untouched by the paradox. This is a cost the paper must openly accept: the original unity is not an absolute indifference lacking even modal aspects. Section 4 will show that insisting on absolute indifference is exactly what led Schelling into his impasse.
3.5 Does Overflow Need Further Explanation?
One may press further: why must plenitude overflow? Does this not require yet another cause?
The answer is that the tendency to overflow is constitutive of plenitude, not a response to some external condition. A plenitude with no tendency whatsoever toward expression would be functionally indistinguishable from nothing. Asking “why does plenitude overflow?” is thus close to asking “why is being being?” Explanation stops here not because an answer is missing, but because a first principle has been reached.
The cost of this position is the admission that the original unity is not a “purely static identity” but a “potentiality charged with propensity.” The paper accepts this cost, and holds that it is more coherent than the two alternatives: “a static One that splits by chance,” or “longing that arises from nowhere after the fact.”
4. Schelling: A Predecessor Facing the Same Problem
In the whole history of thought, Schelling’s 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom is the text closest to the thesis of this paper. This section argues that Schelling not only put forward the idea of a longing to give birth to itself, but in fact ran into the Paradox of Lack; his system already possesses the three-state structure, yet the way he characterizes the first state leaves the beginning unexplained.
4.1 Ground and Longing
Schelling distinguishes between God as existing and the ground of God’s existence. The ground is “nature in God”: inseparable from God, yet distinct from God himself. Schelling describes this ground as the longing felt by the eternal One to give birth to itself. This longing is not yet understanding but a dark, unruly surging; understanding and order are awakened and shaped out of it. Schelling adds that this unruliness never entirely disappears: it persists in all things as the incomprehensible basis of reality, an “indivisible remainder” that can never be resolved (Schelling, 2006).
This account is almost identical to the thesis of Section 2: longing is the moving force of manifestation. But one must attend to the position of longing within Schelling’s system. It belongs to the ground, and the ground is only one of two principles, standing over against that which exists. In other words, Schelling’s longing already sits within a dual structure.
4.2 The Ungrund and Love
Schelling was clearly aware that the duality of ground and existence required an earlier source. In the latter part of the essay he asks what must precede all ground and all that exists, and names it the “primal ground,” or more precisely the “non-ground” (Ungrund). The Ungrund is not the identity of the two principles but absolute indifference toward both.
Schelling goes on to say that the Ungrund divides into two equally eternal beginnings only so that the two, which could not exist together or be one within it, might become one through love; it divides itself only so that life and love may be (Schelling, 2006).
Here a clear three-state structure has already appeared:
The paper must acknowledge frankly that Schelling already has a “third state”: love as union. The distinctiveness of the present account therefore lies not in introducing the relational state, but in characterizing the first state differently.
4.3 Schelling’s Impasse
The problem is this: how can absolute indifference divide in order to achieve anything?
Schelling says the Ungrund divides “so that” love may be. But “so that” is a teleological expression; it presupposes some directedness, while absolute indifference by definition contains none. Schelling therefore faces a dilemma exactly isomorphic to the Paradox of Lack: either the Ungrund contains some tendency, in which case it is not pure indifference; or it contains no tendency, in which case its division cannot be explained.
Schelling’s placing of longing in the ground shows exactly this: longing appears only after differentiation and cannot explain differentiation itself. In the drafts of The Ages of the World (1811, 1813, 1815), Schelling rewrote “the beginning” again and again and never completed the work. In these drafts he describes the highest as “the will that wills nothing” and tries to explain how such a will passes over into a will that wills something. Many scholars read this incompleteness as a sustained struggle with the problem of the beginning (see Žižek, 1996; Wirth, 2003).
4.4 Overflow as a Remedy for Schelling’s Impasse
The concept of Overflow can be read as a revision of Schelling’s first state: replacing “absolute indifference” with “plenitude.”
Plenitude and indifference share one feature: neither contains internal real distinction, so both satisfy the premise of unity. But they differ in one crucial respect: indifference contains no tendency, while plenitude contains a propensity to overflow. Schelling’s “so that love may be” then ceases to be a purpose attached from outside and becomes the very structure of Overflow: overflowing needs a receiver, giving needs a response, so Overflow is inwardly directed toward Union.
In this sense, the “will that wills nothing” of The Ages of the World comes very close to Overflow: it has no object. The difference is that Schelling seems to need an additional primal act to turn the will that wills nothing into a willing will, whereas on the present account no such additional decision is needed, because “having no object” is not the same as “having no tendency.” A tendency without an object is precisely Overflow.
Necessity or freedom? A cost must be acknowledged here. Schelling preserves a “gap of freedom”: the beginning is a primal decision, not a necessary deduction. The present model gives up this gap: wherever there is plenitude, there is a propensity to overflow. Does this land the paper in the “necessity view” criticized in Section 2.1?
The answer has three parts.
First, what the paper accepts is a necessity of nature, not a logical necessity. Logical necessity means the many can be deduced from the concept of the One, so that the world becomes a conceptual system. Necessity of nature means only that plenitude tends by its nature toward expression, as light tends by its nature to illuminate. The former dissolves the concreteness of the world; the latter does not.
Second, what is necessary is only Overflow itself, not its specific forms. Overflow is an objectless, directionless propensity; it necessarily pours forth, but what differentiation it pours forth into, and where, is not determined by the concept of Overflow. Contingency does not vanish in this framework; it shifts from whether there is a beginning to how the unfolding proceeds.
Third, Schelling’s free decision faces a difficulty of its own: a decision presupposes a decider and options to choose among, and that is precisely distinction. Within absolute indifference, who decides? Among which options? Schelling’s “gap of freedom” must therefore either presuppose distinction within the Ungrund, or merely give a name to something unintelligible. By comparison, the “necessity of nature” proposed here is more coherent logically, even though it pays the price of giving up freedom at the beginning.
4.5 Evil and Clinging: Corroborating Evidence
Schelling’s theory of evil provides independent corroboration for the present framework. For Schelling, the possibility of evil arises from the creature’s “self-will.” Self-will springs from the ground and ought to remain subordinate to the universal will; when it breaks away from the universal will and tries to make itself the whole, evil arises.
This matches strikingly the consequence drawn in Section 3.3: when one pole of the manifest state forgets that it is a pole of unity and takes itself to be a self-sufficient whole, Lack hardens into clinging. Both accounts understand pathology as the part usurping the place of the whole, rather than as desire as such. The difference is that Schelling’s theory of evil serves his theory of freedom, whereas here the concern is only with the morphology of longing.
5. Schopenhauer: A Will Without Union
If Schelling represents the branch of the longing view closest to this paper, Schopenhauer represents its most pessimistic branch. This section argues that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is not a neutral observation about the world but a logical consequence of the lack model.
5.1 Will and the Pendulum
Schopenhauer holds that the thing-in-itself of the world is will: a blind, aimless, never-ending striving, of which the world we see is the representation (Schopenhauer, 1969). On this point he shares a basic position with the present paper: desire precedes cognition and is the ground of the world.
But Schopenhauer’s characterization of desire is thoroughly lack-based. All willing arises from need, that is, from want, and therefore from suffering. Once a wish is fulfilled, a new one arises at once; if no new wish arises, boredom sets in. Life thus swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom (§57).
5.2 The Thesis of the Negativity of Satisfaction
This view of life is supported by an explicit thesis: all satisfaction is essentially negative. Satisfaction is nothing but the removal of pain or need; it is never anything positive in itself. We feel pain, but we do not feel painlessness (§58).
This thesis can be seen as a direct consequence of the lack model:
All longing is longing for something lacked (the premise of lack).
Satisfaction is the attainment of what is lacked, that is, the removal of lack.
The removal of lack is only a return to zero, not a rise above it.
Therefore, satisfaction can only be negative.
The inference is valid. To reject Schopenhauer’s conclusion, then, one must reject its first premise, and that is exactly what Section 3 has done.
5.3 Rebutting the Negativity Thesis: Energeia and Union
Rebutting the negativity thesis requires care. Schopenhauer’s will is a metaphysical principle, while flow and growth experiences are subjective phenomena studied by empirical psychology. Using the latter directly to refute the former would be a category mistake. The main argument here is therefore structural, and empirical phenomena serve only as illustrations.
The structural argument. Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of activity (Metaphysics Θ.6, 1048b18–35). One is kinēsis, motion or process, such as building a house: it has completion as its end, stops once complete, and is always incomplete until then. The other is energeia, actuality or activity, such as seeing, thinking, and living: it is complete at every moment, so that “seeing” is at the same time “having seen.” The former aims at its own cessation; the latter does not. Aristotle also notes that pleasure, like seeing, is complete at any moment rather than being a process tending toward completion (Nicomachean Ethics X.4).
The lack model recognizes only kinēsis-type longing: longing ends with the removal of lack, and satisfaction is the cessation of activity. But if energeia exists ontologically, there must be a kind of satisfaction that does not aim at removing lack. Overflow is precisely of the energeia type: its realization is not its ending but its continuation. The same holds for Union: when the two poles meet in relation, the relation does not thereby cease, but finds satisfaction within itself. Schopenhauer’s negativity thesis thus depends on overlooking energeia.
Empirical illustrations. In experience, deeply absorbed creative activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), the presence of a loved one, and generous giving can all serve as illustrations of energeia-type satisfaction. They are not proofs; they indicate what the structural argument refers to.
Schopenhauer could reply that these supposedly positive experiences still rest on a micro-tension of “wanting to express while expressing,” and are therefore at bottom a micro-level cycle of lack and filling. Such a redescription is always possible. But precisely because it is always possible, it is no longer an empirical finding; it is merely the premise of the lack model repeated in the explanation, since any positive experience can be redescribed as micro-level lack and filling. This shows that the phenomena themselves cannot decide between the two models; the decision must be made at the ontological level, that is, it depends on whether energeia is a real mode of being. The position of this paper is that it is.
Schopenhauer himself acknowledges one exception: in aesthetic contemplation, a person is temporarily freed from the drive of the will. But he characterizes this state as release from the will, and so as still negative. Union differs from this: it is not the cessation of desire but the fulfillment of desire within relation.
5.4 Diagnosis: An Ontology Lacking the Third State
A structural diagnosis follows. Schopenhauer’s system is essentially two-tiered: will and representation. It has no relational state, so desire has no real place of fulfillment, only temporary subsidence. In the language of this paper, Schopenhauer describes a world containing only Lack: with no Overflow as its source and no Union as its fulfillment.
This also explains Schopenhauer’s doctrine of salvation. Since the essence of desire is lack, the only way out is the denial of the will to live (§68). The present paper holds instead that the way out lies not in denying desire, but in letting Lack move toward Union, and in recognizing that it springs from Overflow.
It is worth noting that this paper agrees with Schopenhauer on compassion. Schopenhauer holds that compassion rests on seeing through individuation and recognizing that the other and oneself are one at the level of will. This paper likewise holds that empathy is possible because the affects of different individuals share a single source at the latent level. The disagreement lies not in the recognition of this identity but in its evaluation: for Schopenhauer it is a suffering will; for this paper it is an overflowing plenitude.
6. Locating the Argument in the Wider Lineage
Beyond Schelling and Schopenhauer, the longing view has a longer lineage. This section offers only a brief positioning, to show how the distinction among Overflow, Lack, and Union applies to it.
This comparison reveals a pattern. In these traditions, those that characterize the original longing as lack have difficulty explaining the beginning (the Upanishads, Böhme); those that characterize it as plenitude often lack an account of Union, so that differentiation becomes a descent (Plotinus). Schelling’s system has all three states but characterizes the first as indifference. The claim of this paper can be summarized as follows: the first state is plenitude rather than indifference; the lack of the second state is derivative; and the union of the third state is the fulfillment of longing, not its cessation.
The case of Buddhism needs separate comment. Buddhism regards craving as the root of suffering, which seems opposed to this paper’s positive evaluation of longing. But in terms of the present distinction, what Buddhism criticizes is chiefly Lack that has hardened into clinging, while the compassionate vow affirmed by the Mahāyāna is a motive force that finds its satisfaction in giving and lacks nothing. The paper acknowledges that this reading is closer to the tathāgatagarbha strand of the Mahāyāna and cannot represent the Madhyamaka or Theravāda positions; the Madhyamaka critique is discussed in Section 7.
7. Objections and Replies
7.1 Objection One: Overflow Is Merely a New Name
Objection: Overflow is simply a new label for what remains unexplained. Saying “plenitude contains a propensity to overflow” is no different in substance from saying “unity contains a tendency to differentiate”; the problem has merely been renamed.
Reply: The distinction is not empty, because it has testable consequences. First, it separates two kinds of satisfaction, negative subsidence and positive intensification (Section 3.2), a distinction that has independent support in phenomenology and psychology. Second, it offers a concrete diagnosis of Schopenhauer’s pessimism and, by means of Aristotle’s concept of energeia, exposes the structural premise of his negativity thesis (Section 5.3). Third, it explains a specific difficulty in Schelling’s system (Section 4.3). A concept that merely renamed the problem would not yield these distinct consequences.
7.2 Objection Two: Anthropomorphism
Objection: Attributing “longing” to the most basic level of the cosmos projects human psychology onto nature.
Reply: First, the Overflow defended here is a minimal structure: an inner tendency toward expression, not a feeling with content. Second, powers metaphysics has already shown that the structure of being directed toward a not-yet-realized manifestation is pervasive in mindless nature (Molnar, 2003; Bird, 2007). What this paper adds is only the further step supported by the continuity argument: that such directedness is continuous with biological affect. That step can be disputed, but it is not naive anthropomorphism; it is a position with explicit arguments behind it in the panpsychist tradition.
7.3 Objection Three: Stopping the Explanation Is Arbitrary
Objection: The paper stops inquiry at Overflow and declares it a first principle. But any theory could halt inquiry this way; it is arbitrary dogma.
Reply: Every metaphysics must stop inquiry somewhere; the question is where stopping is more coherent. “A static One that splits by chance” leaves an unintelligible event at the stopping point; “longing that arises only after differentiation” falls into circularity. “A plenitude charged with propensity” leaves at the stopping point a structure that is intelligible in itself: plenitude overflows because a plenitude that did not overflow would be indistinguishable from nothing. The paper does not claim this is a proof, but holds that it is the more economical option by comparison.
7.4 Objection Four: The Madhyamaka Critique
Objection: Positing a “latent unity” as the ground of everything is a reifying attachment. Nāgārjuna’s emptiness denies precisely any ultimate ground possessing its own nature.
Reply: This is the most serious criticism the paper faces. The paper does not attempt to force latent unity into alignment with Madhyamaka emptiness; instead it states its own position clearly.
The chapter on going and coming in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā shows that “going” and “the one who goes” are mutually dependent: apart from a goer there is no going, and apart from going there is no goer. By this logic, if Overflow possesses its own nature, it is a reified propensity; if Overflow is likewise dependently arisen and without own-nature, it cannot serve as a first moving cause. The paper accepts this dilemma and makes an explicit choice: its framework belongs to constructive metaphysics, and in lineage stands closer to tathāgatagarbha and original-awakening thought than to the thoroughgoing deconstruction of Madhyamaka.
From a thoroughgoing Madhyamaka standpoint, any original beginning and any first moving cause is conceptual proliferation (prapañca). The domain of this paper is different: it seeks to build a positive metaphysical system that explains the concrete structure of a differentiated world, and such a system must posit some starting point. The paper posits this starting point as “a potentiality charged with propensity,” and acknowledges that, from the Madhyamaka perspective, this posit is still something to be let go of. The disagreement is not an oversight in argument but a difference in philosophical task: one aims to deconstruct every posit, the other to construct an explanation.
7.5 Objection Five: Unfalsifiability
Objection: The paper’s thesis cannot be empirically falsified and is therefore not knowledge.
Reply: The thesis is metaphysical, and metaphysical theories are evaluated not by falsifiability but by coherence, explanatory scope, and fit with the phenomena. The paper makes specific claims on all three counts: it dissolves an explicitly stated paradox, explains specific difficulties in the systems of Schelling and Schopenhauer, and agrees with phenomenological descriptions of satisfaction. Each of these claims is open to criticism and testing.
8. Conclusion
This paper began from an ancient question: why does the original unity differentiate? A long tradition answers: because of longing. The paper has shown that this answer faces the Paradox of Lack: longing presupposes lack, lack presupposes distinction, and the original unity contains no distinction.
The paper’s response is that the paradox arises from understanding all longing as desire from lack. Once desire from plenitude is recognized, and longing is seen to take three forms across the levels of manifestation, as Overflow, Lack, and Union, the paradox dissolves. The original longing is Overflow, which presupposes no distinction; longing in the sense of lack is a product of differentiation, not its precondition; and Union is the fulfillment of longing, not its cessation.
This distinction has concrete explanatory power in the history of thought. It shows that Schelling’s system, though it already has a three-state structure, cannot explain the beginning because it characterizes the first state as absolute indifference; replacing “indifference” with “plenitude” fills this gap. It also shows that Schopenhauer’s pessimism is a logical consequence of the lack model: in a world containing only Lack, satisfaction can only be negative, and life can only be a pendulum.
The paper leaves two open questions. First, can a constructive metaphysics such as this one find a deeper point of dialogue with Madhyamaka deconstruction than “different tasks”? Second, can the morphology of Overflow, Lack, and Union be further formalized to account for the recursion of manifestation and its 2ⁿ structure? The latter will be the task of a separate paper.
If the argument of this paper holds, then the ground of the world is neither a suffering will nor a static identity, but a plenitude that tends to give itself. Differentiation is not a fall from perfection; it is perfection going out of itself in order to be answered.
References
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Dà zhìdù lùn (Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra), fascicle 27.
Nāgārjuna. Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Chapter 2 (Examination of Going and Coming).
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The author’s earlier works (publication details to be added)
Pang, W. (2025a). The Tapestry of Time.
Pang, W. (2025b). The Nth Power of Two: Unity Theory of the Manifest and Hidden.