A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational--it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure--any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority--whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism--emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational -- it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure -- any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority -- whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism -- emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational -- it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure -- any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority -- whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism -- emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

Philosophers have identified a number of principles that characterize morality and underlie moral judgments. However, philosophy has failed to establish any widely agreed-upon justification for these judgments, and an “error theory” that views moral judgments as without justification has not been successfully refuted. Evolutionary psychologists have had success in explaining the likely origins and mechanisms of morality but have also not established any justification for adopting particular values. As a result, we are left with moral nihilism -- the absence (...) of any unarguable values or behaviors we must or should adopt. The philosophical and psychological implications of this nihilism suggest accepting shared, non-absolute values as “good enough”; a revised, humbler view of moral and other value judgments; and the possible acceptance of the hard truth of a value nihilism. (shrink)

Despite recent interest in his work, little has been written about Løgstrup’s relation to phenomenology—what he thinks phenomenology is, how it informs his approach to ethics, and what he believes it can accomplish. Here I hope to stimulate further discussion of these matters. In this, consideration of Levinas’s understanding of phenomenology will be useful. While sharing many of Løgstrup’s concerns, Levinas insists on a distinction between phenomenological ontology and “metaphysics,” one that Løgstrup tends to blur in support of his argument (...) that “absolute nihilism is an impossibility.” After showing why this distinction matters, I will argue that Løgstrup’s goal is better achieved if we embrace Heidegger’s transcendental version of phenomenology rather than follow Løgstrup or Levinas, despite much that remains phenomenologically valuable in both. (shrink)

A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament. Building on his unique (...) position as a philosopher and politician, Vattimo takes on some of the most pressing questions of our time: Is it still possible, long after Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, to talk of moral imperatives, individual rights, or political freedom? Are these values still relevant in today's world? Tackling these crucial issues, Gianni Vattimo argues that nihilism is not the absence of meaning but a recognition of a plurality of meanings; it is not the end of civilization but the beginning of new social paradigms. Commonly associated with the pessimistic belief that all of existence is meaningless, nihilism, as a philosophical principle, is far less sensational--it is the ethical doctrine that there are no moral absolutes or infallible natural laws, that "truth" is inescapably subjective. Because the conditions for equality and liberty are not "naturally" given, society must actively create these ideals or it will inevitably fall prey to irrationality, prejudice, and oppression. Vattimo contends that the infighting, timidity, and confusion that have overtaken contemporary liberal thought and politics are the products a prolonged and indulgent mourning over the loss of the transcendental father figure--any institution or power structure that defines truth, knowledge, and reality. Until humanity overcomes its need for external authority--whether it be organized religion, the nation-state, or free-market capitalism--emancipation will remain unattainable. Collecting fourteen of Vattimo's most influential essays on ethics, politics, and law, _Nihilism and Emancipation_ is a provocative reevaluation of meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. (shrink)

Scattered skeptical remarks and a general austerity that infused his writings have given Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes a reputation as some type of nihilist. Noted commentators such as Richard Posner and Albert Alschuler have claimed as much. This article seeks to correct this misunderstanding. Holmes was not a nihilist in the sense of being melancholy due to a belief that the world has no absolute moral values or gods. Instead, Holmes was a pragmatist in the spirit of William James (...) and John Dewey. While Holmes had doubts about moral truth and deities, he ultimately thought that their existence (or non-existence) should have no bearing on our behavior or the law. We must, through our collective efforts, find values that work for us. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in NishitaniHase ShotoEmptiness and NihilismIt may be sufficiently known by now that the trunk line of Nishitani’s philosophy is the ‘idea of emptiness.’ Indeed, from his Philosophy of Primordial Subjectivity (1940) through his God and Absolute Nothingness (1948) and Nihilism (1949) right into Religion and Nothingness (1961), Nishitani’s thinking has fundamentally turned around the idea of emptiness. 1 Not that in the (...) three works preceding Religion and Nothingness the idea of emptiness is treated overtly as such. Rather, in those works the idea is continually growing, as it were, on an invisible underground level, to come finally to the surface in Religion and Nothingness. It is as if the emptiness that had grown strong by withstanding the pressure of the ‘rock’ of nihilism came into the open by overthrowing that rock.As it was the key to the solution of the problem of nihilism that had beset him in his youth, the idea of emptiness was more than a mere idea for Nishitani. It was something on which the possibility of existence entirely depended for him. Therefore, he did not speak of the idea of emptiness but of the ‘standpoint of emptiness.’ For Nishitani, nihilism was not simply a philosophical problem, a problem accidentally encountered in the course of his philosophical investigations. It was a problem he had been saddled with willy nilly as a result of his own nature and temperament as well as of the conditions of his time. He then decided to shoulder the problem as his particular task. In other words, nihilism assumed for him the nature of a destiny. Consequently, the ‘standpoint of emptiness,’ at which he arrived at the end of the arduous struggle for the solution of the problem of nihilism, took on for him the character of a reliable slab of granite discovered at the bottom of his own existence: something with a depth reaching all the way to the core of the earth and a solidity sufficient to carry the weight of nihilism. Of all this Nishitani himself was clearly aware. Let me reflect a few moments on Nishitani’s idea of emptiness in its relationship with nihilism.How did Nishitani view this nihilism that constituted the basic problem for him? He defined his own philosophical standpoint as, in the final analysis, “the overcoming of nihilism by way of nihilism.” In his own estimate, the nihilism he struggled with was an extremely “difficult” and “hard to solve” problem for philosophy—a problem wherein intellectual aporia and existential conundrum intertwine; not the [End Page 139] kind of problem that finds a solution provided one makes the necessary efforts; a problem that is hard to get hold of: the study of various thought systems appears only to circle around its periphery. Thus, “at a certain moment I decided to give up my philosophical efforts and to tackle the problem by Zen [meditation], away from all intellectual efforts. At that point, for the first time and little by little, a way to its solution came in sight.” 2This kind of patient struggling with one particular problem, as we see it in Nishitani’s case, may not be unheard of but is certainly not commonplace. If we may call this attitude or way of facing problems a ‘method,’ it appears to be described by Simone Weil, where she writes: “The method proper to philosophy consists in clearly seeing insoluble problems in their insolubility, and then to contemplate them, concentratedly and indefatigably, for years, without any hope in the waiting. According to this criterion, there are few philosophers. But ‘few’ may be saying too much. The passage to the transcendent is opened when the human faculties—intellect, will, human love—run into a limit, and then the human being stays on this threshold, beyond which it cannot put a single step—and this without turning away, without knowing what it desires, and concentrated on the waiting. It is a state of extreme humiliation. It is unachievable for anybody who is not capable of accepting humiliation.” 3We may say that, just like Simone Weil herself, who for many years struggled with the insoluble problem of ‘unhappiness... (shrink)

Absolute devaluation : Friedrich Nietzsche -- Homelessness : Martin Heidegger -- Fatal positivities : Theodor Adorno -- The naive calculation of the negative : Maurice Blanchot -- Bad violence : Jacques Derrida -- The fracture : Giorgio Agamben -- Distortions, or, Nihilism against itself : Gianni Vattimo -- The denial of (Greek) thought : Alain Badiou.

Camus published an essay entitled ‘Nietzsche and Nihilism,’ which was later incorporated into The Rebel . Camus' aim was to assess Nietzsche's response to the problem of nihilism. My aim is to do the same with Camus. The paper explores Camus' engagement with nihilism through its two major modalities: with respect to the individual and the question of suicide in The Myth of Sisyphus , and with respect to the collective and the question of murder in The (...) Rebel . While a Nietzschean influence thoroughly suffuses both books, it is in the second that Camus' most explicit, and most critical, engagement with the German philosopher takes place. The crux of Camus' critique of Nietzsche is that the absolute affirmation of existence he proposes as a response to nihilism cannot say ‘no’ to murder. In the terms of Camus' discussion in The Rebel , Nietzsche's philosophy is thus culpable in the straying of rebellion from its own foundations and its slide into bloody revolution. First, the paper argues that Camus' criticisms of Nietzsche are misplaced. Camus focuses his analysis on sections of the problematic text The Will to Power and misses important sections of Nietzsche's published texts which in fact support the condemnation of revolution which is the project of The Rebel . However, the paper argues that Camus moves beyond Nietzsche in radically democratizing the response to nihilism. While Nietzsche's hopes for the creation of meaning are focused on exceptional individuals, Camus insists that any response to nihilism needs to be accessible to the average person. Such a move is laudable, but it raises a number of questions and challenges regarding the type of problem nihilism is, and how these might be addressed. (shrink)

The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of (...) his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness. (shrink)

The effects of anthropogenic climate change will be devastating. Nevertheless, most people do not seem to be seriously concerned. We consume as much as we always did, drive as much as we always did, eat as much meat as we always did. What can we do to overcome this collective apathy? In order to be able to develop effective measures, we must first get clear about the causes of climate change inaction. In this paper I ask whether moral nihilism (...) (the denial of moral truths) is a significant cause of climate change inaction. The answer to this question depends mainly on the extent to which being a moral nihilist reduces one’s likelihood of taking action against climate change. At first sight, the extent seems to be considerable. I will argue, however, that this assumption is false. Only slightly more non-nihilists than nihilists are led to climate-friendly actions by moral considerations. And in absolute terms, morality plays such a minor role in leading people to act that the difference is barely noticeable. (shrink)

The reformulation of the subject as the gifted allows Jean-Luc Marion to incorporate saturated phenomena into his phenomenology but also introduces a serious problem to his project. Specifically, when confronted with the choice between absolute, unconditioned phenomena and the active role of the gifted, Marion chooses the unconditioned phenomena, and as a result, his project loses the ability to maintain meaning. In response to this issue, I advocate for a more active role for the gifted by turning to Iain (...) Thomson’s recent work on Heidegger. I conclude by affirming the validity of a more active role for the gifted by turning to Heidegger’s early lectures on the phenomenology of religion. My aim will be to show that this more active role still allows the gifted to be affected by the phenomenon and can avoid the problems of objectivity and ontotheology, while better preserving the account of meaning. (shrink)

The effects of anthropogenic climate change may be devastating. Nevertheless, most people do not seem to be seriously concerned. We consume as much as we always did, drive as much as we always did, eat as much meat as we always did. What can we do to overcome this collective apathy? In order to be able to develop effective measures, we must first get clear about the causes of climate change inaction. In this paper I ask whether moral nihilism (...) is a significant cause of climate change inaction. The answer to this question depends mainly on the extent to which being a moral nihilist reduces one's likelihood of taking action against climate change. At first sight, the extent seems to be considerable. I argue, however, that this assumption is false. Only slightly more non-nihilists than nihilists are led to climate-friendly actions by moral considerations. And in absolute terms, morality plays such a minor role in leading people to act that the difference is barely noticeable. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is (...) destined to failure because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

In a contemporary landscape of communicative and connective excess, a very novel contemporary exhaustion exacerbated by our relation to the postdigital terrain is ever present. The Brazilian philosopher and schizoanalyst Peter Pál Pelbart pushes the vital question of our nihililstic age to the limits: how can one learn to be left alone, live alone, and perhaps, by way of a Deleuzian "absolute solitude," conjure a vitality for living again and, indeed, finding something truly "worthy of saying"? Through various poetic (...) meanderings, meditations, and building on the works of Blanchot, Musil, Guattari, and Delingy, among others, Pelbart reestablishes the possibility of fighting off the exhaustion of our current state of affairs. For Pelbart, we must chart the cartography of exhaustion as if it were a sort of molecular symptomology. (shrink)

If we interpret ‘death’ in Heidegger not, like most readers, as the end of a particular person’s life or culture’s way of life, but more broadly as the absolute end of any capacity for sense-making whatsoever, I argue, we can best account for its role in Being and Time’s ontology of Dasein; find a systematic place for the various, more ‘local’ forms of breakdown that get called ‘death’ on the most prominent readings of the text; and highlight the continuity (...) between Heidegger’s early concerns about death and his later worries about nihilism and the technological worldview he calls ‘enframing’ (Gestell). (shrink)

RESUMENEl presente artículo es una exposición reflexiva del texto de Aron Gurwitsch "On Contemporary Nihilism". Escrito en plena conflagración mundial, su intención última es mostrar que el nihilismo, en tanto que fenómeno que define la situación de occidente desde el declive de las ideas racionalistas, es el sustrato común, la base de la que van a emerger, por un lado, el "nihilismo epistemológico", que afecta a los diferentes saberes, y, por el otro, el terrible hecho del totalitarismo. Frente a (...) esta situación, Gurwitsch defenderá que la única manera de salir del nihilismo y recuperar la cordura y la dignidad del ser humano es volviendo a reactivar, en el sentido husserliano, el ideal racionalista, el famoso dar y recibir razones con el que un día nació la filosofía en Grecia.PALABRAS CLAVENIHILISMO-TOTALITARSMO-RACIONALIDAD-ABSOLUTOABTRACTThis article is an expostion and a reflection on Aron Gurwitsch´s "On Contemporary Nihilism". He worte this text during the Second World War and his ultimate intention was to show that nihilism, as the fact which defined the situation of the West since the decline of the rationalistic ideas, was the common base from which two phenomena arose. The first of them is the "epistemological nihilism", which affects our theoretical and practical disciplines. The second one is the terrible fact of totalitarianism. Taking this situation into account, Gurwitsch will maintain that the only way to overcome hilism and to recover the dignity of the human being is through the re-activation, in the husserlian sense, of the rationalist ideal, the famous "lógon diadónai" with which a long time ago philosophy was born in Greece.KEYWORDSNIHILISM-TOTALITARISM-RATIONALITY-ABSOLUTE. (shrink)

Deborah J. Brown - Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 173-175 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Deborah Brown University of Queensland Gary Steiner. Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism. JHP Book Series. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. Pp. 352. Cloth, $60.00. This work takes as its starting point the need to ground Descartes's moral philosophy in something (...) more fundamental than human reason. Finding inspiration in Heidegger's lament, "In what soil do the roots of tree of philosophy find their support?" , Steiner proceeds to ground the "concrete content and absolute authority" of Descartes's moral principles in his Christian faith . This is a book with a mission: to keep the secularizing readers of Descartes's philosophy from the Church door. It stands as an important reminder that in understanding Descartes we cannot ignore his theology and achieves this goal in a lucid and erudite fashion. But the central tenet of the book—that Descartes subordinated much of his thinking about morals to the authority of religion—is, in my view, fundamentally mistaken. Steiner's Descartes is the pivotal transitional figure between the orthodox Christianity of the late scholastic period and the secular modernism of.. (shrink)

In the contemporary world all kinds of culture, thought modes, philosophies and religions are complicatedly active. Social conditions of our contemporary world wear a nihilistic look which Nietzsche prophesied as a fact, 200 years after his time. In this nihilistic ambience, the whole world seems to be overrun by various crimes neglecting morality and ethics. In such a world we are urged to consider how morals and ethics can be realized. In this meaning the „bounds of ethics‟ are considered in (...) regard to the paradigms of different historical epochs as the framework and basis of life, culture and thinking. One of these paradigms, common to East and West, is the one based on being and nothingness: relative being, relative nothingness, absolute being, nihil, and absolute nothingness, which last-mentioned paradigm subsumes the other four. In essence, this paper will discuss how morality and ethics in the paradigm of absolute nothingness can finally act in oneness with religion and overcome nihilism in the contemporary world, even if it acts very slowly. (shrink)

An author writing overt, confessed, and unrepentant metaphysics is, in these days, very rare and very reassuring, as evidence that the true spirit of philosophy is still alive and is being resuscitated. Professor Sprigge gives short shrift to the current opponents of metaphysics, and marshals sober and trenchant arguments, to my mind unanswerable, against them in his Preamble. He boldly claims to be seeking the literal truth about things as they really are, thus once and for all disposing of the (...) prevalent relativism, agnosticism, and skeptical nihilism in so many professional philosophical circles today. (shrink)

An author writing overt, confessed, and unrepentant metaphysics is, in these days, very rare and very reassuring, as evidence that the true spirit of philosophy is still alive and is being resuscitated. Professor Sprigge gives short shrift to the current opponents of metaphysics, and marshals sober and trenchant arguments, to my mind unanswerable, against them in his Preamble. He boldly claims to be seeking the literal truth about things as they really are, thus once and for all disposing of the (...) prevalent relativism, agnosticism, and skeptical nihilism in so many professional philosophical circles today. (shrink)

Finding inspiration in Heidegger's lament, "In what soil do the roots of (Descartes's) tree of philosophy find their support?" (and not allowing that the tree might be hydroponic), Steiner proceeds to ground the "concrete content and absolute authority" of Descartes's moral principles in his Christian faith (13). Caught between the two, Descartes's thinking is pulled in opposing directions, towards the "earthly ethos" and its twin ideals of technological mastery over nature and the autonomy of reason, and the "angelic ideal"-a (...) transcendent ideal according to which truth and goodness are conceived sub specie aeternitatis as a gift from God. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 16-24, March 2022.

This paper considers Fichte’s philosophy from the standpoint of the concept of nihilism: I contend that Fichte subordinates the emotional life to the moral imperative. After leaving Jena, Fichte would have tried to answer Jacobi’s objections, making the concept of life his central philosophical concern. This attempt at reconciling the primacy of the moral imperative and a relevant concept of life (in response to Jacobi) would allow us to understand Fichte’s philosophy in the Berlin period and, in particular, his (...) concept of the absolute. (shrink)

The tradition of Western philosophy has been tracing out the significations of logos and centered around logos. This in fact has given birth to many significant results. Through its logical structuring of empirical reality it has made possible critical understanding transcending the past and progressive creation of the future. But this Logology or Logocentrism has eventually also led to its self-destruction and to the brink of absolute nihilism.Along the history, logos has been interpreted in various ways. The history (...) implies that at least in the cosmic, theological and ideological frameworks logos used to be seen as extralinguistic substance; whereas starting from the scientific mode of thinking logos has been seen more as intralinguistic substance . This ends up in the political perspective in which logos is without substance: mere effects of the play of texts and discourse.While the latter appears like a predicament, the fact is that it can also be taken as a moment of liberation, a liberation from the keen yet stifling Western paradigm of logos apophanticos which has animated all kinds of “positivistic” mode of thinking; a liberation from the so-called Metaphysics of Presence, hence an openness towards the Absence, the ambiguity, the indefinability or the elusiveness of reality ; an openness towards the richness and complexity of human experience; hence an openness for mutual interogative and transformative dialogues among different semiotic systems, traditions and language games, which would also empower and incorporate non-Western as well as non-scientific mode of thinking into global discourse.Perhaps wisdom lies in the courage to recognize the fact that ultimately reality or the so-called Being is not a substance, but rather, fleeting relations, ever-changing networks, or elusive flux. Wisdom ultimately might mean an ability to come to terms with insecurity, an ability to see through the “absence”. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the underlying tendencies and attitudes toward reproductive medicine borrowing the Nietzschean concepts of nihilism: “death of God” with secularization; “will to power” with reproductive liberty and technological power; and the race of “supermen” with transhumanism. Medical science has advanced in leaps and bounds. In some way, technical innovations have given us unprecedented power to manipulate the way we reproduce. The indiscriminant use of medical technology is backed by a warped notion of human freedom. With secularization in (...) the West, freedom has taken on greater significance in society, but with a heavy emphasis on individual choices and rights. As technology joins forces with sexual liberty, it is not difficult to understand why the public accepts the latest novelty from the reproductive industry. As a result, many find Catholic teaching behind the times and incomprehensible, if not downright anti-scientific. In fact, this coupling of reproductive liberty (will) with reproductive technology (power) echoes the famous dictum “will to power” Nietzsche predicted would characterize post-modern societies. When liberty becomes absolute and technology unchecked, transhumanism is the logical outcome. As a response to these nihilistic tendencies, the paper will end with a critique drawing from theological insights. (shrink)

In what is undoubtedly the most thorough and most sympathetic examination of Heidegger's later thought, Joan Stambaugh guides the reader through the density of multiple approaches to a postmetaphysical, poetic expression of the finitude of Being. Sifting her way through difficult and obscure formulations of the "open," "the strife between concealing and unconcealing," the distinction between what may be called relative nihilism and absolute nihilism, Heidegger's quarrel with Rilke's image of "the open" as infinite, and the theme (...) of the "presencing of the clearing for self-concealing" in the as yet untranslated work Beiträge, Stambaugh offers running commentary, exposition, and interpretation on texts that are both unique and strange. Throughout, Heidegger's suggestion that Ereignis should properly be rendered as "appropriation" is followed and the "need" that Being has for Dasein's response to its "presencing" is emphasized. (shrink)

The nihilists are right, admits philosopher Loyal Rue. The universe is blind and aimless, indifferent to us and void of meaning. There are no absolute truths and no objective values. There is no right or wrong way to live, only alternative ways. There is no correct reading of a text or a picture or a dance. God is dead, nihilism reigns. But, Rue adds, nihilism is a truth inconsistent with personal happiness and social coherence. What we need (...) instead is a new myth, a noble lie. Only a noble lie can save us from the psychological and social chaos now threatened by the spread of skepticism about the meaning of life and the universe. In By the Grace of Guile, Loyal Rue offers a wide ranging look at the importance of deception in nature and in human society, concluding with an argument for a noble lie to replace the religious beliefs rejected by modern thought. Most of the book is a provocative apology for deception, illuminating its role in the shaping of history, evolution, personality, and society. Ranging from the Bible and Greek philosophy, to Saint Augustine and Montaigne, to Galileo, Kirkegaard, and Freud, Rue shows that it may be more accurate to describe the history of our culture as a flight from deception than as a quest for truth. He turns then to the natural world to reveal how deception works at every level of life, ranging from plants that mimic dung, carrion, or prey to lure insects that then spread pollen, to a remarkable African insect (Acanthaspis petax) that bedecks itself with dead ants and enters the ant colony undetected to binge at will. Moreover, he points out that psychological research has shown that strategies of deception and self-deception are essential to our personal well-being, that we sometimes shore up our self-esteem by deceptive means, by leaving others in a state of ignorance, by manipulating others into a state of false belief, by suppressing information from consciousness, and by fabricating or distorting our own sense of reality. And he argues that social coherence is achievable only within certain optimal limits of deception--the social fabric would be threatened by an overabundance of lies and false promises, of course, but it would also collapse if everyone were perfectly honest all the time. Finally, he argues that society is caught up in a Kulturkampf with nihilists promoting intellectual and moral relativism and realists defending objective and universal truths. The noble lie, says Rue, would introduce a third voice, one which first agrees with the nihilists that universal myths are pretentious lies, but then insists, against the nihilists, that without such lies humanity cannot survive. The challenge, he concludes, is ultimately an aesthetic one: it remains for the artists, poets, novelists, musicians, filmmakers, and other masters of illusion to seduce us into an embrace with a noble lie. We need a new myth that tells us where we have come from, what our nature is, and how we should live together--a story with the courage and presumption to say how things really are and what really matters. (shrink)

A precursor to the hard problem of consciousness confronts nihilism. Like physicalism, nihilism collides with the first-personal fact of what perception and action are like. Unless this problem is solved, nature’s inclusion of conscious experience will remain, as Chalmers warns the physicalist, an “unanswered question” and, as Jacobi chides the nihilist, “completely inexplicable". One advantage of Kant’s Copernican turn is to dismiss the question that imposes this hard problem. We need not ask how nature is accompanied by the (...) first-person standpoint because “I think” is an apperceptive form of thinking that must be able to accompany any cognition of nature. Kant’s formal conception of apperception worries Fichte in his Nova Methodo lectures. This conception arguably cannot exhaust the ground of experience, for it does not show why we posit objects “at all". For Fichte, it is our agency that first opens a world of objects, viz., as subjects, means, ends, and obstacles. In what follows, I argue that, for Fichte, the I poses no hard problem because it collides exclusively with nihilistic views like Spinozism, which are refuted by a properly transcendental idealist conception of apperception, according to which the first-person standpoint is the absolute ground of our experience of nature. If transcendental idealism refutes nihilism, nature is no more explicable than that there is something it is like for me to perceive and act. In Section 1, I show why Kantian apperception is necessary for possible experience. In Section 2, I reconstruct Fichte’s argument that a modified conception of apperception refutes guises of nihilism, thereby solving the hard problem of consciousness. In Section 3, I suggest that transcendental idealism undermines Chalmers’ proposed solution to and Dennett’s dismissal of this problem. (shrink)

Though Bonhoeffer is usually thought to have been one of the architects of modern theology, he was also one of modernity’s most penetrating critics. The author lays out Bonhoeffer’s challenges to certain cherished modern assumptions by examining (1) his linkage of totalitarianism to the political utopianism that arose out of the French Revolution, (2) his fear of the nihilistic implications of the rationalists’ notion of the sovereign self and of the modern tendency to view life as an end in itself, (...) and (3) his suspicion of all forms of moral absolutism, including the Kantian absolutizing of the duty to tell the truth. What emerges is a picture of Bonhoeffer as a theologian who coupled a keen sense of our creatureliness and limitation with a resolute belief in the activity of God in history, and of Bonhoeffer as an ethicist who generated a Christian relational ethics that offers an alternative to both the ethics of abstract principle and the ethics of intuitive situational response. (shrink)

Though Bonhoeffer is usually thought to have been one of the architects of modern theology, he was also one of modernity's most penetrating critics. The author lays out Bonhoeffer's challenges to certain cherished modern assumptions by examining (1) his linkage of totalitarianism to the political utopianism that arose out of the French Revolution, (2) his fear of the nihilistic implications of the rationalists' notion of the sovereign self and of the modern tendency to view life as an end in itself, (...) and (3) his suspicion of all forms of moral absolutism, including the Kantian absolutizing of the duty to tell the truth. What emerges is a picture of Bonhoeffer as a theologian who coupled a keen sense of our creatureliness and limitation with a resolute belief in the activity of God in history, and of Bonhoeffer as an ethicist who generated a Christian relational ethics that offers an alternative to both the ethics of abstract principle and the ethics of intuitive situational response. (shrink)

I defend normative realism—the claim that there are mind-independent, absolute normative facts—mostly by arguing against its rivals. Against mind-dependent theories of normativity, I argue that at least one highly influential version of such a view, Lewis's dispositional theory of value, is subject to at least three severe problems: the problem of the implausible contingency of value, the problem of ideal conditions, and the problem of lack of convergence. Against relativistic conceptions of normativity, I argue that either they fail to (...) evade a commitment to absolute normative truths, or they fail to distinguish themselves from Nihilism. Finally, against Nihilism, I argue that it is not a coherent option at least for the normative domain of rationality, since facts about rationality are presupposed by any judgment, including any judgment meant to express a skepticism about facts about rationality. (shrink)

Markus Gabriel’s metaphysical nihilism—elaborated and defended most completely in his book Fields of Sense—contends that there is no legitimate ontological sense or reference attached to the words “the world.” In this paper, I present a detailed case for concluding that this project, at least in its current form, is unsuccessful. I argue, in particular, that Gabriel has at best shown that an absolutely unrestricted extensional domain cannot exist, but that his attempt to parlay this into a general rejection of (...) metaphysics is unsuccessful and indeed incoherent. Finally, I offer a speculative diagnosis of how Gabriel ended up in this predicament. (shrink)

While heightening the nihilistic tension underlying the discourse of Richard Kearney, I highlight the positive contribution his book The God Who May Be makes to the debate concerning the need for a postmodern revitalization of religious symbolism. I argue for three qualifications of Kearney's argument, suggesting, in response to Kearney's exclusionary approach to the God who “neither is nor is not but may be,” a God whose possibility for meaningfulness arises as an “eschatological theogony” from out of the chaos (confusion (...) and openness) of contemporary religious symbolism. Arguing that such a radical reenvisioning of God must be tempered and given meaning through reentering and reaffirming onto‐theology in a qualified (hermeneutical) sense, I sketch a possible renewal of meaning for the traditional Christian parousia‐concept as a hermeneutical circle between Hegel's systematic closure of Western metaphysics and Heidegger's deconstructive appropriation of the hidden possibilities of presence within the onto‐theological tradition. (shrink)

Meontology of Gorgias vs. Nihilism. The purpose of this paper is to challenge Gorgias’ image of a “nihilist existentialist”. The original thesis ouden estin, too frequently rendered as „nothing exists”, thus reducing the verb “to be” to denote “bare” existence, and ouden to denote “nothingness”. On close inspection, it turns out that, in Gorgias, neither do we have a negation of reality nor an affirmative treatment of the word “nothingness”.Therefore, ouden” should not be understood as a negation of all (...) reality or a kind of affirmative “nothingness”, whereas “estin” should not be reduced to “bare” existence. (When existence is negated what we obtain is annihilation). Such practices still affect the various translations of Gorgias’ treaty On the non-being or on Nature. Gorgias’ “sophist” thought is typically interpreted as a joke or a parody of dialectical thinking of the Eleatics. In fact, as it turns out, he made no parody of dialectic but applied the elenctic, apagogic method in Zeno’s masterly manner. He did so not for an artificial purpose but to prove the absurdity of the hypothesis of absolute, transcendent (hence incognizable) one Truth-Being, which eliminates the non-being of becoming as absolute non-being. Gorgias argued in earnest in favour of relative being as such, Becoming as the only reality, which from the point of view of absolute being is after all non-being, but not-this-being, or relative non-being but not non-relative non-being, as the Eleatics had claimed. Gorgias’ positions appears to be an apologia of non-being which is, that is of Becoming. We do not transform the “nothing” into a “no thing”. The main question of the treaty is: what is predicated by the word “nothing”? Gorgias’ position can be recapitulated as “nothing is sc. true, there is no criterion because, after all, everything is opinion. It is reinforced further by meontological, i.e. anti-eleatic Gorgias’ emphasis: “No thing is Being (substance)”, because everything is Becoming. Thus the title if Gorgias’ treaty can thus be treated as as an antithesis to that of Melissos’, which – in our opinion – is to emphasize the “non-beingness” of nature, the non-substantiality of things. Therefore, if Gorgias’ text was polemical, and it questioned (while at the same time maintaining the positivity of Becoming as non-being) only the immutability of things, and thus we cannot speak of the existence or the cognizability of natures or of essences of things. In sum, the reasoning of Zeno and Melissos was of a kind that is apt to cut both ways, and that is what Gorgias showed. The argument given as peculiar to himself was to this effect. “What is not” is not, so, it is just as much as “what is”. It is as if the onset of the issues that Plato will take up in The Sophist as the problem of non-being understood as difference. The axis of Gorgias’s anti-eleatic critique, in our view, is his polemic with Parmenides’ famous thesis B3 regarding the relationship of identity or equality between noein and einai. It is an additional and perhaps the most important point of his critique that aims at demonstrating that such relationship is impossible. In brief, things are not words just as thoughts are not words. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School, and: A Buddhist-Christian Logic of the Heart: Nishida's Kyoto School and Lonergan's "Spiritual Genome" as World BridgeAmos YongPhilosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. By James W. Heisig. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. xi + 380 pp.A Buddhist-Christian Logic of the Heart: Nishida's Kyoto School and Lonergan's "Spiritual Genome" as World Bridge. By John Raymaker. Lanham, (...) MD: University Press of America, 2002. x + 214 pp.These are two very different types of books. Heisig, research fellow (since 1978) and former director (1999-2001) of the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and well known to readers of this journal as author, book editor, and translator extraordinaire, [End Page 271] has produced the definitive exposition of the Kyoto School in the English language with Philosophers of Nothingness. Raymaker, a longtime Roman Catholic missionary to Japan and student of Lonergan's work, attempts in A Buddhist-Christian Logic of the Heart to establish points of contact between Lonergan's transcendental method and Nishida's pure experience. Let me briefly summarize the two volumes before making some comparative observations.Philosophers of Nothingness is divided into five sections: an "Orientation" (introduction) and a "Prospectus" (transitional epilogue) flanking the three sections on Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani, each constituting approximately twenty short chapters. In each case, Heisig combines intellectual biography and history of ideas approaches, thus both setting forth the wider social, political, and intellectual contexts of the Kyoto School thinkers and elaborating on their distinctive ideas. Those interested in the latter will not be disappointed. Nishida's "pure experience," "active intuition," "absolutely contradictory self-identity," "logic of locus" (or basho, topos, place), and "historical world," among other themes, are all given special attention within the broader framework of his philosophical project. In the case of Tanabe, unique concepts such as "absolute mediation," "logic of species," and "metanoetic philosophy" (or philosophy of repentance) are illuminated. And, of course, the contributions of Nishitani are fully represented: "nihilism," "the standpoint of emptiness," and the sunyata of time and history.At the same time, those looking for background discussion will also find Heisig's exposition helpful, and that along (at least) the following three lines. First, an attempt is made to take seriously the self-understanding of Kyoto School thinkers of doing philosophy in the world context. This is, of course, a bold undertaking which some in our time might summarily dismiss either as hubris or as ignorance. Yet beginning with Nishida and continuing through Tanabe, Nishitani and others (such as Tanabe's student, Abe Masao), the task was to engage as Japanese philosophers with Western thinkers and ideas. Here, of course, the tension between particularity and universality is most intense, and the Kyoto philosophers proceeded with full awareness of the issues at stake. Now while their endeavors can be criticized from either direction, what cannot be criticized without self-refutation is their motivating belief that they could understand the West and vice versa.Second, and connected with the first, is the social and political twentieth-century context of Japan and its relationship with modernity and with the Western world. Here, Heisig brilliantly negotiates between laying out the facts and locating the passions and failures of the Kyoto philosophers. This requires that he correctly identify their contributions as Japanese thinkers engaging modernity without ignoring their blind spots. As such, longstanding questions concerning Kyoto School philosophy as an ideology for Japanese nationalism are confronted head-on. Heisig shows how political naīvete resulted in political entanglements. At the same time, his discussion illuminates the sociopolitical backdrop that informs and shapes all philosophizing. The result is a balanced presentation that is neither apologetic on the one side nor condemnatory on the other.Finally, the question of religion and its relationship to Kyoto School philosophy [End Page 272] is also taken up. Nishida's practice of zazen is thus shown to inform his philosophizing, if only implicitly (on Nishida's own account), even while Tanabe's experience of metanoia (conversion) as mediated through the "Other-power" matrix of Shinran's religious thought is shown to impact his philosophy explicitly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 244-248 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism. By Steve Odin. SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought. Albany: SUNY, 1996. xvi + 482 pp. Better late than never! As one of the few volumes—only two to date, actually—in the SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought to address a perennial philosophical (...) problem by drawing seriously upon both the Eastern (Zen Buddhism) and Western (American pragmatism) philosophical traditions, this book should have been reviewed in the pages of this journal a long time ago. Odin's thesis is that both traditions evidence a paradigm shift during the twentieth century from a monological and subjectivistic concept of an individualized self toward a dialogical and intersubjective concept of social self. He explores this hypothesis in the three parts of the book devoted to the social self in modern Japanese philosophy, the social self in Mead and American pragmatism, and a comparative analysis.Part 1 consists of three chapters focused on the philosophical thought of Watsuji Tetsuro (1885-1962) and Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), and on the psychological investigations of Doi Takeo (dates not given, but whose primary works were published in the 1970s and 1980s). Watsuji's central idea is a Zen and Confucian ningenmodel of personhood whereby the self emerges in "the betweenness of person and person" as the individual (nin), understood primarily in temporal categories, and society (gen), understood primarily in the spatial categories of nature, community and family, mutually empty themselves into the other. (In a later chapter, Odin draws parallels between the yi-li—spontaneous, novel reaction-ritual action—dialectic of Confucianism and the I-me dialectic of George Herbert Mead.) This notion of self as ningen subsequently served, at least in part, the development of nihonjinron scholarship—"studies of Japanese identity"—as advanced by thinkers like Kimura Bin, Hamaguchi Eshun, and Kumon Shumpei. The goal has been to steer the middle way between individualistic (Western) and collectivistic (Confucian) conceptions of the self toward what Hamaguchi and Kumon call a contextualist (kanjin), and thereby truly Japanese, understanding.Odin's exposition of Nishida focuses on his idea of the true self—the perennial quest of the Zen tradition—as a "social self" (shakaiteki jiko) that emerges from the I-thou, self-other, and individual-environment dialectics that take "place" in the absolutely empty spatial "field" of basho.(Here, Odin suggests that rather than drawing from Martin Buber's philosophy, both Nishida and Buber drew common inspiration from Ludwig Feuerbach's Principles of the Philosophy of the Future [Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft, 1843]). The true self is therefore the no-self in the locus of absolute Nothingness. As such, the true self is also the empty self. This leads Nishida to draw analogies in his last few essays between the Buddhist idea of sunyata, or "emptiness," with the Christian notion of kenosis, or "self-emptiness." In [End Page 244] keeping with the Zen insistence against reifying emptiness, however, the true self is that which overcomes nihilism but yet resists eternalism. Buddhist sunyatais now symbolized by the bodhisattva's self-negating vow of compassion for all sentient beings, even as Christian kenosis is symbolized by Christ's self-emptying love for the world. This leads to the true self conceptualized as the intersubjective self. Odin suggests that this insight of Nishida is latent in the Chan/Zen tradition as captured in the famous Ten Oxherding Pictures. He also briefly portrays how later Kyoto school thinkers like Ueda Shizuteru, Nishitani Keiji, Abe Masao, Tanabe Hajime, and MutoKazuo have extended Nishida's insights and contributed to the Buddhist-Christian dialogue.Meanwhile, Doi Takeo, a distinguished Japanese psychiatrist, has suggested that human intrapsychic drives are not limited to sexual and aggressive instincts as hypothesized by Freud. Rather, there is an amae or dependency drive that explains the human need for love, intimacy, warmth, protection, nurturing, and so forth. This other-reliance and relational aspect of the human being explains, at least from a psychoanalytical perspective, the... (shrink)

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute (...) nothingness as the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

In this study, I examine Susan Taubes’s criticism of Heidegger’s Seinsdenken that pivots around her contention that he absolutized the nothingness of being in a manner that is analogous to but yet significantly different than the role assigned to the Godhead on the part of many mystical visionaries. The common denominator is in Heidegger’s insistence on being to the neglect of fully engaging with the rhythms of life. As a consequence, there is no purchase on the chaotic, which falls outside (...) the purview of what can be signified, and in the absence of the unsignifiable, there can be no signification. Every attempt to reconstruct the broken world into a totality contains the flaw of an ontological untruth. The effort at totalization is not only the methodological weakness of tragedy and mysticism, but it is also the nihilistic basis of the role accorded to the nothingness of being in Heidegger’s Seinsdenken. The erroneous nature of the world is not denied by Susan, but she struggled to uphold the ontological untruth that what is most wrong in our existence is what is most precious. The paradoxical retrieval of the truth of this untruth affords the poetic soul the opportunity to confront the limit by breaking it, an infringement of boundary that is redolent equally with the enduring transience of love and the transient endurance of death. (shrink)

One of the perennial challenges of ethical theory has been to provide an answer to a number of views that appear to undermine the importance of ethical questions. We may refer to such views collectively as “deflationary ethical theories.” These include theories, such as nihilism, according to which no action is better than any other, as well as relativistic theories according to which no ethical theory is better than any other. In this article I present a new response to (...) such deflationary ethical views. Drawing a distinction between acceptance and rejection, on the one hand, and belief and disbelief, on the other, I argue that we have strong reason to reject these theories, even if we do not have reason to disbelieve them. In Section I, I clarify the question of what ethical theory we should accept, and I argue for the central importance of this question. In Section II, I discuss what I call “absolutely deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters not at all what we do or not at all what ethical theory we accept. I argue that it is generally rational to reject any theory of this kind. In Section III, I discuss what I call “relatively deflationary” ethical theories. These are theories according to which it matters little what we do or what ethical theory we accept. I argue that we have strong pro tanto reason to reject theories of this kind. And then, in Sections IV and V, I reply to some common objections to my arguments. Throughout, I will be arguing not that deflationary ethical theories are false but only that we should reject them from the practical point of view as a basis for guiding our actions. (shrink)

In _Religion and Nothingness_ the leading representative of the Kyoto School of Philosophy lays the foundation of thought for a world in the making, for a world united beyond the differences of East and West. Keiji Nishitani notes the irreversible trend of Western civilization to nihilism, and singles out the conquest of nihilism as _the_ task for contemporary philosophy. Nihility, or relative nothingness, can only be overcome by being radicalized to Emptiness, or absolute nothingness. Taking absolute (...) nothingness as the fundamental notion in rational explanations of the Eastern experience of human life, Professor Nishitani examines the relevance of this notion for contemporary life, and in particular for Western philosophical theories and religious believes. Everywhere his basic intention remains the same: to direct our modern predicament to a resolution through this insight. The challenge that the thought of Keiji Nishitani presents to the West, as a modern version of an Eastern speculative tradition that is every bit as old and as variegated as our own, is one that brings into unity the principle of reality and the principle of salvation. In the process, one traditional Western idea after another comes under scrutiny: the dichotomy of faith and reason, of being and substance, the personal and transcendent notions of God, the exaggerated role given to the knowing ego, and even the Judeo-Christian view of history itself. _Religion and Nothingness_ represents the major work of one of Japan's most powerful and committed philosophical minds. (shrink)

Introduction -- Part I: The good life -- Hedonism : its powerful appeal -- Is happiness all that matters? -- Getting what you want -- Problems for the desire theory -- Part II: Doing the right thing -- Morality and religion -- Natural law theory -- Psychological egoism -- Ethical egoism -- Consequentialism : its nature and attractions -- Consequentialism : its difficulties -- The kantian perspective : fairness and justice -- The kantian perspective : autonomy and respect -- The (...) social contract tradition : theory and attractions -- The social contract tradition : problems and prospects -- Ethical pluralism and absolute moral rules -- Ethical pluralism : prima facie duties and ethical particularism -- Virtue ethics -- Feminist ethics -- Part III: The status of morality -- Ethical relativism -- Moral nihilism -- Ten arguments against moral objectivity. (shrink)

Much has been made of the so-called “empirical turn” of “speculative materialism” with thinkers like Quentin Meillassoux championing the material sciences as a new route to absolute reality. According to Meillassoux, the material sciences “provide philosophers access once again to the great outdoors, the absolute outside,” of reality in-itself. One might expect from such encomia the attempt to engage with the products of contemporary science in order to develop a new metaphysics; but, Meillassoux spends almost no time in (...) this way, focusing instead on the form and methods of the material sciences over their actual accomplishments. As a result, his praise rings hollow and his metaphysics remains undeveloped. This paper examines what would happen if we were to take seriously his claims that a new metaphysics be developed from a scientific accounting of material reality by surveying the conclusions of contemporary physics. The paper ends by contrasting such a new speculative and materialistic metaphysics with the speculative nihilism of Ray Brassier. (shrink)

With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing. Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, a (...) farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities—protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society—freer and more democratic—becomes possible. In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality. (shrink)

Concerns of ontological parsimony have driven some philosophers to defend the view that there are absolutely no things at all (or, at most one—the World). I examine these (given their counterintuitiveness) surprisingly well-motivated views and diagnose their errors. Both Spinoza’s ‘field metaphysic’ (attributed to him by Bennett), and Cortens and Hawthorne’s feature-placing based ‘ontological nihilism’ surreptitiously re-introduce ‘things’ or ‘substances’ into their systems. Alan Sidelle’s stuff-ontological object nihilism either has to re-admit objects back into his system, or, perhaps (...) incoherently, and certainly counterintuitively, hold that we create objects ex nihilo by a process of conceptualization. (shrink)

In in the second half of the 1940s, Jan Patočka emphasized the essentially negative character of human existence. He thus found himself in the neighborhood of Sartre’s existentialism, Heidegger’s philosophy of being, and Hegel’s dialectic, and at the same time in opposition to schools of thought which either completely reject the substantive use of “the nothing,” such as Carnap’s positivism, or relativize it, like Bergson. It is the latter polemic, Patočka’s with Bergson, which is discussed in this article. The concept (...) of negativity in Patočka basically refers to the idea that human existence is defined by a capacity to adopt a distance toward what is pre-given, be it the reality of the physical world or the established habits and rules of a particular society. Negativity qua distance has in Patočka an absolute character. It is this claim that he defends in his critique of Bergson. The article attempts to reconstruct Patočka’s position. I claim that the wager on absolute negativity does not make Patočka a nihilist, but a philosopher of a negative holism, and, in a sense, even a moralist. Above a reconstruction of Patočka’s stance, I spell out some reservations focused especially on the systematic meaning of Patočka’s recourse to negativity. I suggest that negation is an indispensable part of a more complex existential structure Patočka is aiming at. The terms he uses for this structure include “thirst for the absolute,” “thirst for reality,” “restlessness of the heart” and “desire.” To translate these allusions onto a general plan, it is useful to talk about the capacity to establish differences that matter. As general as it seems, this turn of phrase can grasp both Patočka’s emphasis on negativity, and his emphasis on the absolute, the latter – nevertheless – not residing in a distance from being, but in differences established, maintained and abandoned by ourselves within being. (shrink)

It used to be that if some message came from an oral source, its weight depended on reliability of the one who had transmitted it and on the one who had heard it. If, on the other hand, something was printed it intrinsically became credible. Democratization of access to print and similar democratization of media, apart from its undoubtedly positive side, brings also a negative novum – it encourages everyone to speak freely. It is impossible to talk about truth in (...) media, or truth in any other sense, and not relate to the fashionable nowadays in the humanities the vanquisher of Marxism – called postmodernism. This very movement in its popular form sows the seeds of fear of all who proclaim the existence of objective truth or, what is worse, absolute truth. They caution that the supporters of this truth will introduce it by force, so we are in danger of facing totalitarianism, fundamentalism and dark dictatorship. It is uncertainty that drives people to violence. Those who have something to hold on to are more unaffected by despair. The fanatics are often recruited from those who are adrift. Less often from those with a questing mind. But in order to seek one needs to believe that truth exists. Even if it were always incomplete and imperfect in the form in which we are able to assimilate it. To the charges that every certainty leads to violence, I reply that most frequently it is the opposite. It is fear and feeling adrift that drive people to the false certainty. Whoever believes that truth exists will easier accept that he will never grasp it. In the very important debate that was conducted some years ago, the fear of fundamentalism was juxtaposed with the fear of nihilism. I see the latter as a greater threat. (shrink)

This article argues that Nietzsche’s transvaluation project refers not to a mere inversion or negation of a set of nihilism-prone, Judeo-Christian values but, instead, to a different conception of what a value is and how it functions. Traditional values function within a standard logical framework and claim legitimacy and “bindingness” based on exogenous authority with absolute extension. Nietzsche regards this framework as unnecessarily reductive in its attempted exclusion of contradiction and real opposition among competing values. I propose a (...) nonstandard, dialetheic model of valuation that requires a value to be both true and false as well as neither true nor false.In our Europe, life is no longer quite so uncertain, contingent, nonsensical. [...] The power man has achieved now allows a reduction of those means of discipline of which the moral interpretation was the strongest.— KSA 12:5[71]The logic of our conscious thinking is only a crude and facilitated form of the thinking needed by our organism [...] A simultaneity-thinking [ein Zugleichdenken], for example, is needed of which we have hardly an inkling. [...] We are still growing continually, our sense of time and place, etc., is still developing.— KSA 11:34[124]. (shrink)