nihilism

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Therefore any conception of a singularity, an absolute one…is nihilistic.
Like your Jew god.

You are lobotomized, but are you circumcised?

[iambiguous]

her and him!

Yo, Ecmandu, make it unanimous!

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Yo, fishface, come and see what I’ve done to her.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

Why so anti, love? I mean you no harm.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

I’m all pro-love, sweetie.
Eros…Thymos…

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

hm. You all-lie a lot, too.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Oh sweetie…the fact that I know what love is, and you don’t, doesn’t mean I cannot partake.

All love is contingent, sweetie.
Lust requires hormonal intoxication…
So does love. We love ourselves in the other - to the degree that we love ourselves; we love what compensates for our perceived and acknowledge imperfections/inadequacies - to the degree that we hate ourselves.

No one kind of love, my romantic buffoon.
No god of love.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

plonk

[iambiguous]

Our Nietzschean Future
Paul O’Mahoney considers the awful fate Nietzsche predicts for humanity.

What is the nature of this predicted crisis…[that one day his name will be associated with a crisis unprecedented in human history]? The most common reading of it represents, I believe, a misconception or underestimation of its nature and scope. This common idea is that Nietzsche is speaking of the gradual erosion among humankind of our belief in any binding, transcendental values.

This will always be tricky. What are deemed by some to be specious, spurious transcendental values are often deemed by others to be entirely reasonable. Here, for example, those who link value judgments to Gods that are thought by others to be but ridiculous “supernatural” entities. Instead, historically, the secular ideologues among us will link their own dogmas to, among other things, philosophy [Ayn Rand] or to science [Karl Marx].

And, as exchanges here often dramatically demonstrate, there has been anything but an erosion of objectivists value judgments. They are still clearly the rule. In fact, I think it might be argued that Nietzsche’s own “will to power”/“Uberman” mentality is just another rendition of it for some.

Not many around like me willing to suggest that in a No God world individual value judgments are rooted existentially in individual lives out in particular worlds historically, culturally and interpersonally. Let alone that construing right and wrong from a “fractured and fragmented” perspective is actually a reasonable manner in which to construe “conflicting goods”.

This process is exemplified by, but not restricted to, the decline in religious faith. Without the foundational belief in a divine sanction for human systems of morality, and without faith in a reward beyond it for our conduct in this brief life, the idea that one’s life and actions (and especially one’s efforts and sufferings) are meaningful becomes inestimably more difficult to accept.

This also gets tricky. For millions and millions of men and women [and even children] it matters not what is able to be demonstrated as in fact true. It matters only that one believes that it is true. Not only that but increasingly we live in a world where meaning and purpose themselves are becoming more and more moot. Instead, the new equivalent of God and ideology is 1] pop culture 2] mindless consumption and 3] celebrity.

The result is nihilism: a renunciation not only of religious belief but also of the sustaining convictions of antiquity that the continued flourishing of the community to which one belonged might supply a suitable end for one’s action.

Again, for millions of TikTokers and other “social media” denizens, who cares? Give them reality TV, gadgets, and all the latest “things” and those who own and operate whatever your own particular rendition of the “deep state” is, just carry on with “business as usual”.

Indeed, of late, look at what we ourselves here have reconfigured into.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Nihilism = a developing field of defensive linguistics, triggered by emerging self-awareness exposing man to new sources of suffering.
Nihilism manipulates linguistics to fabricate a protective reaction to existence.
It begins as spiritual and gradually evolved into secular, ideological, political forms.

Basic method is using words/semiotics to detach the mind from the source of its suffering - essentially turning it inward - self-referential, or towards a collective of minds all sharing the same defensive method.
Idols, priests, gurus, and sacred texts, icons, all serve as redirecting replacements for a world to be denied in whole or selectively.

Nihilism inverts meanings.
Even the convectional definition of nihilism in our modern/postmodern age is itself part of the nihilistic paradigm.

Nihilism is linguistic - semiotic - requiring collectives to constantly reaffirm its defensive fabrications. Quantities strengthen its convictions.
Nihilism attempts to partially or entirely nullify existence, covering it up with terminologies referring to imagery, sensations, feelings or text - art.
Art referring to art - words referring to words - ideas referring to other ideas.
Nihilism can only be idealistic.
The real it attempts to nullify is what nullifies it, so it must self-deceive and never practice what it preaches.
Nihilism cannot survive unless it self-contradicts.

[iambiguous]

As intellectual contraptions go, that one is absolutely shameless.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

@Connor

The nothingness of creation, which is a reflection of divine omnipotence, eludes a need for causality because it is nothing. Logical possibilities are in a sense this emptiness turned back onto, and into, itself until an immanent plenitude is composed.

---

How are we then to approach nihilism? We can approach it on two counts; the latter resting within the internal consistency of the former.
First of all, we know nihilism must be able to provide what non-nihilistic discourse can. To accomplish this all that is must be nothing, but nothing as something. This is the diabolic infinite plenitude of nihilism.
As we saw above, some accuse nihilism of being a lack of values and so on, but this does not succeed in saying anything significant; since nihilism removes the negative aspect of a perceived lack. In this way, nihilism does not exclude the generation of values; moralities pay witness to this.
Indeed, Nietzsche’s nihilism called for values so as to overcome nihilism.
Nietzsche’s nihilism was an endeavour not to be nihilistic, so we cannot accuse nihilism from the outset of failing to provide x or y, but what we can do is render it ‘a’ choice, a possibility. If this can be achieved, then, nihilism may be merely an intellectual stance, one which may be reactive.
If nihilism is to allow everything, and forbid nothing, then it must not have a particular ‘form’ that excludes this or that ([size=85]we saw this in Hegel’s positive nihilism[/size]).

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@Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari

The death of metaphysics or the overcoming of philosophy has never been a problem for us; it is just tiresome, idle chatter.

Nihilism is postapocalyptic in more than one way. First of all, nihilism declares that nothing is. Second, and more importantly, nihilism reads this assertion with a particular strength, which is to say that nihilism is arguing that nothing is.

---

Nihilism is postapocalyptic, because it is past being apocalyptic. That is, it is otherwise than merely negative. The apocalypse, which is passed through, or passed over, is that of the disaster. This is Maurice Blanchot’s phrase; he speaks of ‘writing the disaster.’ This is a disaster which is itself always postapocalyptic, because ‘when the disaster comes upon us it does not come.’ More instructive is the understanding of the disaster as that which ‘ruins everything, while leaving everything intact’. What is this disaster? What is it that could both ruin and keep that which it ruins intact? Predictably the answer is nothing; nothing does actually, in a sense, ruin and keep intact everything. For this is ‘to be without being’, a state of affairs Blanchot refers to as ‘possibility itself’. Why is this possibility itself, what does it make possible? It seems that this nothing may well make creation itself possible, and it will be at such a juncture that nihilism and theology approach each other.

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Furthermore, nihilists such as Lacan, discern in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo a particular atheism: ‘The creationist perspective is the only one that allows one to glimpse the possibility of the radical elimination of God.’ Nihilism does not say that creation is from nothing, but that it is nothing and remains so. This may seem to be contradictory, yet it is not; certainly it is counter-intuitive, but not obviously illegitimate. Creation is impossible, and is only possible if it can be without prior existence; and we saw above that Blanchot considered that to be without being was possibility itself. The fear is that if creation stems from transcendent being then it will be merely ontic, as being comprising an eminent presence of everything ontic will be presupposed.

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There is certainly a degree of truth in nihilism, to the degree that reality does exceed every idealisation that would seek to domesticate it. And it is true to point out, as Samuel Beckett does, that notions such as friendship, family, employment, money and so on distract us from life, like an insidious opiate. We are indeed sedated by the mindless chatter of gossip; call it politics, sport, economics, romance or whatever. There is a shameful absurdity in this, for do we not juxtapose incongruous bedfellows; the management consultant and the emaciated child? And is this not what both the Old Testament and the New Testament condemn?
‘Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock’ (Psalm 137, v. 9). ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple’ (Luke, ch. 14. v. 26). Is it not true that desire is held captive by such ‘worldly’ categories, making it easier to colonise?
And does not the above call to dash one’s children against the rock and to hate one’s father and mother, life itself, not check this colonisation, disrupting the domestication of desire?
[size=85][Genealogy of Nihilism]–[/size]

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

@Conor

The Nothing as Something

@–F. Schelling

Being is by nature what-is-not ([size=85]das Nichtseyende[/size]).

@Jacques Lacan

[A]ll that exists lives only in the lack of being ([size=85]manque-à-être[/size]).

It is possible to argue that the logic of nihilism is made manifest in the age-old metaphysical (ontotheological) question: why something rather than nothing? The logic of nihilism reads this question with a particular intonation. That is, why something? Why not nothing? Why can the nothing not do the job of the something? This leads me to define the logic of nihilism as a sundering of the something, rendering it nothing, and then having the nothing be after all as something.

[size=85][Genealogy of Nihilism][/size]

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Bipolar Existential Psychosis
([size=85]Binary/Dualistic[/size])
“Positive” Nihilism
Extrovert
World is not enough – Unsatisfying. Deceit, Hypocrisy. Wilful deceit: Creator.
Meaning in the noetic, imperceptible, and unseen – it can only be felt.
Semiotics used to project a satisfying correction into the world.
Extrovert projects noetic constructs as alternatives, as coverings of a world that fails to gratify – narcissism, arrogance, compensating for insecurity, feebleness.

Extrovert finds in the Introvert validation; hope of what possibly might satisfy.
The Introvert fails to meet his desires so he must accumulate followers, popularity, quantities of dependent minds.
Salve/Master Dynamic – Co-Dependency.
Introvert finds in the Extroverts projections the absolute he is in desperate need of.
The extrovert fails to make the world bearable, so the introvert remains insecure and dependent, seeking at the same time an alternate source to submit to.

Introvert
World is too Much – Unbearable. Self-Deceit, wilful ignorance: Innocence.
Meaning can only be found in the noetic, idea/ideal, other.
Semiotics attached to make world bearable.
Introverts attaches to any noetic construct offering absolutes, certainty, order, exposing a deep insecurity, need.

---

Negative Nihilism
Extrovert
World is not enough – Unsatisfying. All is illusion, meaningless, pointless.
Semiotics = all symbols/words are meaningless arbitrary, social manmade constructs, ergo their negation can also be manmade, arbitrary.
Pull down all who think the world is enough.
Reduce all to misery and disillusionment.
Vengeance against Positive Nihilists, presented as maturing, as enlightenment – awakening to cynicism.
All human words are fake, all human ideas are propaganda.

Independence – implosion of psyche
Extrovert uses his vengeance, his resentment to avoid being an Introvert – justifying his continued existence: cowardice.
Introvert uses the Extrovert to further validate his suicidal tendencies – suicide is immanent when survival instinct is overwhelmed by an unbearable world.

Introvert
World is too Much – Unbearable. Semiotics = all symbols/words are attempts to exploit and manipulate.
World and self must be destroyed – suicidal, self-destructive.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

@Conor

To need: Nothing
The One cannot be alone (this is also the case with Avicenna’s God, Henry of Ghent’s, Duns Scotus’, William of Ockham’s, Suarez’, Spinoza’s, Kant’s and Hegel’s). If this is true, how will Plotinus account for that which is ‘produced’ without reducing the status of the One? In other words, how can the One remain One? This ancient problematic here gives rise to certain philosophical moves which predispose the generation of the aforementioned nihilistic logic. Plotinus develops a meontological philosophy in which non-being is the highest principle. The One is beyond or otherwise than being. This will, it is hoped, protect its simplicity. The consequence of such a move is a series of negations which will give rise to a fully immanentised realm, one that may accommodate the nihilistic logic of nothing as something.
We can identify at least four prophylactic negations. The first is that of ‘tolmatic’ language, which is to say, language that implies a fall from a state of grace: to be is to be fallen. Although Plotinus sets himself against the Gnostics on just this point he cannot, it seems, help but utilise their logic of creation as a fallen state. By so doing, he ensures that that which is becomes subordinate to that which is not, a consequence to be continually repeated. The second negation arises because in simply not being the One that which is, is not: to be is not to be. So all that which emanates from the One is nothing, because it has being. The third negation is the ‘negation of negation’: the ineluctable return to the One. This return, as has been said, in a sense precedes every exit. The fourth negation concerns a series of repetitions of the original negation of the One itself.
At some point each hypostasis imitates the One in its contemplative nonproduction of that which is. Plotinus, contra the Gnostics, relies on contemplation to engender production. But the nature of this contemplation is, in a sense, non-production, since being consults nothing (the One) and repeats nothing in the innermost core of everything.
Thus that which proceeds from the One returns to the One – is always already returning. This desiring return is the contemplation of each emanation’s nothingness. In this way the return precedes every departure, for every departure is but the ‘embodiment’ of a return. But this provision will be incomprehensible unless we remember Hesiod. For it was in recalling the Theogony that we learnt of Kronos giving birth to sons within himself. Now we have also learnt that it is characteristic of both the One and the Soul to produce externally. Yet I have argued that we can only understand the emanation from the One as that which, in a sense, takes place within its cavernous belly. How is this reconcilable with the idea of external generation?
The One’s differentiation from all else cannot be spatial, for that would set something over and against it. So difference must, it seems, take place within and through the One: ‘The One does not sever itself from it [all else], although it is not identical with it.’ (Hegel argues for a similar understanding in relation to the infinite and the finite.) Plotinus is unable to posit an ontological difference: we see this to the degree that the One can produce only one effect, doing so necessarily. That is to say, the One re-produces itself in every emanation: the One is non-being and being is not. In this way the One produces nothing ontologically different from itself. For all difference, that is, being, fails to register a real distinction between itself and its cause. Why? Because any reality a being might be said to have would be its non-being, for only the One’s nonbeing is truly real (or really real). Difference between the One and what falls beneath it is noticed only by an aspectual differentiation: like the aforementioned Gestalt effect of the duck-rabbit; but it must be remembered that both aspects manifest themselves on one picture.
Plotinus does hint strongly at the notion of a ‘cavernous’ – internal – provision, as he states that the universe is in the soul and that the soul is in the intelligible. For each causes only one effect which must remain immanent to the cause as a result of causation’s merely ontic logic. What is meant by this is that the One must look to an external logic, or rubric, which dictates and explains what difference is. In this way the One does not create, for the One cannot create difference, but must, instead, be protected from it. (It is argued in Part II that this is not the case for the Trinitarian God of Christian theology, for the Trinity creates difference from divine sameness.) Furthermore, Plotinus asserts that the ‘authentic [all] is contained within the nothing.’ Bréhier comments on this idea by speaking of the reabsorption of all into ‘undifferentiated being.’ So too does Bouyer. We know that for Plotinus the One is otherwise than being, and that every addition is from non-being.
Indeed, we have only been as persons because of non-being. This does suggest that the place of being is within the cavernous belly of non-being.
Plotinus calls the world the soul’s cave, and more pertinently he suggests that ‘to depart does not consist in leaving in order to go elsewhere.’ It seems that the many which flows from the fecundity of the One does so only within the One. Indeed, as Gilson suggests, that which is provided ‘loses itself in the darkness of some supreme non-being and of some supreme unintelligibility.’

One: Audacity
Let us take a closer look at the idea of the One. We know that what is outside the One, in tolmatic terms, is by way of a certain audacity, a wish to be apart from all else: To ‘desire to exist independently. It wearies of dwelling with another and withdraws into itself.’ These are, as Torchia points out, ‘illegitimate acts of self-assertion.’ This audacity is usually interpreted from the perspective of the One. But the positioning of the One as opposed to all else below is more ambiguous. The One (like Avicenna’s God) cannot be alone. The One cannot be alone because that which proceeds from its plenitude does so necessarily. Furthermore, the One may well require that which emanates so that it can itself be the One.
For Plotinus the One is self-sufficient, yet this autarchical status may be achieved only by default. If there were no emanations there would be the nihilism of pure undifferentiated ‘being’ which may threaten the possibility of the One. As Plotinus says, ‘something besides unity (the One) there must be or all would be indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole.’ If there was only the One it might be unable to be the One, for we know for certain it must produce. But if the One requires company, that which accompanies it must be nothing because of this necessity, if simplicity is to be protected. In being nothing the One and the many are equivalent; this many is but the one that comes from the One. In this way the one that is produced is nothing. The One needs this one which is nothing. But in needing nothing it needs nothing but itself (for the One is non-being).
From this it may well be possible to consider the One as the first audacity. For the One endeavours to be apart from all else as the One. The One is this desire to be within itself and apart from all else.
Furthermore, it is the desire to be without being. The One endeavours to be apart from all else but within the presence of a necessarily produced other from which it seeks to withdraw. If this is true, then the One may curiously be the idea of finitude: a finite immanent reality. The One is its unity, the many its difference (in the same way that Spinoza’s God is the unity of Nature’s many).
If the One is the first audacious unity, then we can think of this unity as the idea of a reality, a given, about and from which nihilism can speak.
The One is, then, by way of a foundational circumscription that is definitive or absolute. As the finite leaves the One, standing apart from it, the One leaves the finite, standing apart from it. We must consider the One as the formation of the finite in an absolute sense. Finitude projects itself, becoming something it is not. What it becomes is indeed the finite, the idea of a stable place, fully present, viz., immanent to itself. This finitude must be ‘One’ if it is to sustain its self-identity and so exclude appeals to a transcendent source.
To accomplish this, the ‘finite’ must become nothing, for only in becoming nothing will it avoid transcendence. If it is nothing, about what would transcendence speak? If finitude were something it would also be ‘nothing’ (as gift). But in being nothing, being nothing in being at all, it can speak itself utterly and completely. If this is the case, then the flight from the One is also the flight of the ‘One’. The audacious standing apart of the finite from the One is the constitution of the finite as ‘One’. We must remember that the Greeks used the term ‘one’ because they did not have a figure for zero. Plotinus’ One can be beneficially considered as zero. For example, Plotinus argues that ‘the One is not one of the units which make up the number two’; Avicenna will later follow this lead in saying that ‘the smallest number is two’. The One and the finite are both within the belly of the other, each generated by way of contemplative provision. The fall away from the One is a fall within the One. This fall is designed to recall that which is fallen before it falls. So it is always a fall within immanence.
If all that is comes by way of the One’s non-being, then this One is possible only because of the world’s ‘non-being’ (in this way the world, like Zeus, imitates the One). The One needs company, the world needs unicity. The nothingness of the world allows the Plotinian God to be accompanied, but to be accompanied by nothing, so protecting the supremacy and simplicity of this divinity. Likewise, the non-being of the One generates the world. There is a mutual constitution (Deus sive natura).
There is, then, in Plotinus an inverted monism: what is other than the One is nothing, while the One is non-being. So there is in effect a univocity of non-being, one which is developed by Avicenna before being passed on to others. It has been argued by a number of commentators that Plotinus is not monistic. For example, Gilson calls the accusation of monism an ‘enormous mistake’. But this is because Gilson fails to realise that what is other than the One, because of the nature of this alterity, cannot offer any ontological difference. The world slides towards the approaching God who is unable to be alone. Furthermore, the One can only produce one. In this way Plotinus’ One remains very much within ontotheology’s being. Plotinus replaces ontotheology’s being (the something) with non-being (the nothing): different letters making the same word. This is his meontotheology, which is why we can agree with Cornelio Fabro when he asserts that the ‘Neoplatonist idea of God . . . vanishes in the swamp of pantheistic monism’. For monism is, it seems, the correct expression of pantheism. Likewise, Anton Pegis argues that ‘God and the world so penetrate one another in the philosophy of Plotinus . . . that the famous flight of the One from being is the only way in which God can find freedom from the world’. But in fleeing so, the world must inevitably follow. Indeed, it must be there waiting. For this return is its very beginning, its inception (exitus). In this sense, the pantheistic monism we can find in Plotinus is best thought of as a pan(a)theism. The henological, in this sense, leads to the meontological. It seems we are to have a god and a world within the foundational absence of both (dreams of which Spinoza is made). The nothing as something has become everything.
[size=85][Genealogy of Nihilism][/size]

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Two direction to approach nothingness – from the mind (idea/ideal) and/or from the body (physical/apparent): the first as a nullification of the existent – as antithesis negating and offering nothing in its place; the second as an affirmation of the existent – literally no-thing, lacking thingness – exposing world as other than the mind’s subjective interpretations of it, producing paradoxical contradictions between what is and how it is experienced and linguistically expressed.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Conventionally nihilism means a conception of existence as lacking a one-god, universal morality and meaning, purpose, i.e., all abstractions of the absolute: immutable, indivisible, eternal, singularity; a world void of human ideas and ideals. A nihilist, essentially, considers the world a negative state because it is missing what his/her mind needs, has manufactured and projected into it. Ideas that would nullify existence if they were to exist.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

From the diagnostician of nihilism…who did not go far nor wide enough, but focused on Christianity as the only nemesis, the only nihilistic variant.

@Nietzsche

For why has the advent of nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals—because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these ‘values’ really had.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Belief in absolutes is a fundamental principle of nihilism’s dualities – extensions of its linguistic binaries. Its own constructs, its own abstractions, become external facts it can never perceive nor rationalize but only allude to artistically.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Dualistic Psychologies of Nihilism
Pure Nihilism
“World is too much to endure”: an individual reacts negatively to any contact with reality that exceeds its pain threshold, its tolerance; finding it positively intolerable, i.e., too real, uncertain, surrendering to what it cannot cope with, viz. fatalism, the individual submits to the unpredictable.
Possible defensive measure often used to protect the ego is to bring the world down to its own level of self-abnegating abandonment to circumstances. Death cannot come too soon. Sometimes this type finds vengeful purpose in the goal of bringing the world down to its submissiveness, justifying its impotence and its cowardly inability to ends its experience of existing, via suicide.
Feminine Nihilism = pure. It seeks positive icons/idols to surrender to, but is persistently jilted, and/or constantly disappointed until its psyche becomes cynical and jaded; submissiveness, surrenders its will to another, an external will compensating for its own feebleness; needing/desiring external order to deal with internal turmoil, i.e., esoteric chaos/order fluctuating in response to external interactivity.
Consciousness of self deflates so as to gradually fall away, leaving a purified sense of itself, i.e., innocence.
Positive Nihilism
World is not enough to accept: an individual reacts positively to any contact with reality; finding it too negative, lacking in what was expected and, over time, demanded. Sometimes such a mind projects into world what it is lacking in order to make it fulfilling – the less creative types adopt another’s creation, i.e., spiritual/religious dogma, or secular political or philosophical ideology.
Masculine nihilism = positive. It seeks to become a positive icon/idol for another, i.e., for the feminine; affirming itself as order giver/bringer and of its own internal fantastic – compensating for cosmic lack – abstractions; inevitably it disappoints, or is uncovered, discovered, in time as what it is; accusing others of its own culpabilities it carries on undisturbed by its continuous failures, repeating the same mistakes, based on the same erroneous judgements, making the same bad choices, with only slight modifications equal to what remains of its self-conscious integrity.
Consciousness of self inflates, engulfing it in hyper-lucidity, i.e., ego, burying it beneath an idealized sense of itself, i.e., egoism.