Is it possible for reality as a whole to be part of itself? Can the world appear within itself
without thereby undermining the consistency of our thought and knowledge-claims concerning more
local matters of fact? This is a question on which Markus Gabriel and Graham Priest disagree.
Gabriel argues that the world cannot exist precisely because it is understood to be an
absolutely totality. Priest responds by developing a special form of mereology according to
which reality is a single all-encompassing whole everything which counts itself among its
denizens. Their disagreement results in a debate about everything and nothing: Gabriel argues
that we experience nothingness once we overcome our urge to contain reality in an
all-encompassing thought whereas Priest develops an account of nothing according to which it
is the ground of absolutely everything. A debate about everything and nothing but also a
reflection on the very possibility of metaphysics.
