Beyond Nihilism

One of the effects of the current pandemic has been the calling into question of a general silence on the “ultimate questions.” The nihilistic vision of life, which was made famous by Nietzsche’s philosophy and has frequently returned in updated versions, considers such questions definitively outdated and meaningless. According to this philosophical approach, the truth cannot be attained, because there are no stable values. This is a consequence of the death of God and a fragmented vision of time and history.[1] Therefore, people can only attend to their momentary, experience of present circumstances, renouncing the fundamental questions.

A recent book by Costantino Esposito, looking at the main existential themes of our time, notes how they have a common thread in an irrepressible demand for stability at various levels (cognitive, ethical and emotional), which challenge point by point the assumptions of nihilism.[2] In the approaches taken into consideration, there emerges a longing for a fullness and a faith in the meaning of reality, which are indispensable to be able to continue living meaningful lives.

He deals with many themes (understanding of reality, affections, happiness, corporeality, gratitude, truth, mystery, etc.), as well as areas of reference (literature, philosophy, TV, cinema, computer science). We can see in them the presence of a beyond, irreducible to  current circumstances and yet in line with the deep desires which emerge in the course of living one’s life, which could be summarized in the famous questions Immanuel Kant posed in closing his Critique of Pure Reason: “What can I know? What should I do? What am I allowed to hope for?”[3]

Reread 240 years later, these questions retain their provocative relevance, because they have to do with the “sapiential” dimension of existence, which involves the investigation of the supreme realities, of the origin of human life, and of what can give flavor and taste to life, in order to recognize and choose in the concrete situation the good to be done. Nihilism has confronted these questions without being able to answer them, declaring humanity’s inability to answer the ultimate questions. But subsequent thought has not stopped confronting them, and has overturned the presumptions of those advocating nihilism.

What is worth knowing?

The huge amount of data available, increasing exponentially (so-called Big Data), brings back the need for selection, for an end to serve as a discriminating criterion in order not to be overwhelmed, thus making any research useless. The purpose for which research is undertaken refers to the classical themes of meaning and intelligence, understood as intus-legere, that is, as the ability to discriminate between what is essential and what is secondary. Human intelligence has an affective approach to reality, is closely linked to the body, and makes choices that shape the personality. These are characteristics disregarded by the “instrumental” conception of reason, shown earlier by the famous analyses of Martin Heidegger, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, up to the prophets of the cyborg. They, envisaging a merely technical, unemotional and anonymous approach to knowledge, hypothesize a gradual but unstoppable process of replacement of people by machines.[4]

In this way, the question about the ends, the values, the moral meaning of what is being achieved is considered superfluous: “The machine has thrown the driver to the ground, and runs blindly through space. At the height of the rationalization process, reason has become irrational and stupid. The theme of our time is that of the preservation of the ego, while there is no longer any ego to be preserved.”[5]

On the contrary, an increase in knowledge and research has shown that technology cannot cancel out the human, but rather reclaims its irreplaceable dimension: “In all our actions, in every relationship with things and people, we move only if we understand what there is for us in the world. Is it not true that our experience as conscious and free people is increased when we discover that reality – faces, objects, encounters, events – comes toward us and touches us, provokes us, asks about us, waits for our response?”[6] Unlike machines, people feel the wonder and pain of being alive, of being in the world, the attitude that for Aristotle is at the origin of philosophy; it is the knowledge that makes people beautiful and the life we lead beautiful.

Today’s crisis has also shown that reality is not an undifferentiated whole, where every possible experience and every piece of information is to be placed on the same plane of relevance. Knowledge is not a naive toy that can be put aside when it gets boring, but it is a matter of life and death. If one investigates the conditions for the possibility of a rigorous knowledge, the question that animated Kant’s research always refers, as its indispensable presupposition, to the possibility of accessing the truth, and above all of realizing that one is capable of error. The advent of Covid-19 has shown how dangerous it can be to ignore the truth of things.

Another serious risk of the flattening of knowledge theorized by nihilism is to confuse reality with one’s own subjective perceptions, in line with Nietzsche’s famous assertion that there are no truths, only interpretations.[7] Such a conception of knowledge leads to heavy consequences at the political, economic and social levels. Esposito reports a survey conducted by IPSOS (a multinational market research firm), according to which Italy and the USA are among the countries in which the tendency to distort perceptions on issues of great national and international importance (crime, immigration, health) is most relevant, giving rise to populist tendencies and favoring the manipulation of consciences for electoral purposes, and also – as in the case of the USA – lead to very serious decisions in terms of international politics, such as the implementation of military actions on the basis of motivations that later turned out to be false.

This is the well-known issue of fake news, at the basis of scandalous and immoral events such as economic speculation and the manipulation of consent.[8] When the lie is justified as equivalent to the truth, human dignity is corrupted, making all sorts of aberrations possible.[9] By reducing the question of truth to a question of DIY, nihilism not only undermines confidence in knowledge, but has lost the sense of the beauty of relationships, of the desire to know and to seek, to experience “the joy of discovery.”[10]

The theme of fake news, with its consequences, refers to the ethical dimension of truth and knowledge, because evil is also the fruit of an impoverished intelligence, and to the relationship between knowledge and affection,  which should not be considered as parallel worlds or in opposition to each other.

What must I do?

The ethical scope of the truth of things is a further confirmation that the cognitive problem cannot be reduced to a mere dialectical exercise left to those who have no other duties to attend to. And even in this area the axe of nihilism has fallen heavily, not only in the philosophical field. Let us consider the deconstructive criticism made by the “masters of suspicion” (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), of morality considered as an obstacle to desire and freedom, and the cause of alienation and neurosis. But this criticism, Esposito observes, is actually addressed to a precise moral position, the morality elaborated by Kant. Kant tried to realize the dream of modernity, to establish a rigorous foundation of morality, regardless of any possible subjective factors. But in this perspective happiness cannot be considered a motivation for moral action, which would be reduced to a mere selfish and petty calculation, impinging on the dignity of the value to be chosen for itself, and not in view of something else. It is the famous setting of “you must because you must,” duty as the absolute sovereign of the virtuous choice.

Subsequent thought has been able to show that in this setting reason sacrifices life and, along with it, the world of affection and the desire for satisfaction, of which happiness is precisely the culmination: “If we detach reason from happiness we probably risk losing both: one reduced to a cost/benefit planning mechanism, the other reduced to a violent or disillusioned dream.”[11]

The importance of feelings for leading a moral life often emerges in the media as well. The Pixar film Inside Out (2015) presents emotions as colored spheres that run through the mind. Depending on their number and the place they occupy, they have a decisive influence on decision and action. The film proposes an interpretation that is certainly not new to the moral debate. The philosopher David Hume expressed himself in similar terms when speaking of the promotion of one emotion over another in evaluation. The subject, the “I,” is nothing more than “a bundle of emotions,” the “stage” where they are represented and to which reason can only submit supinely.[12]

Considering emotions and reason as antithetical worlds in perpetual conflict is another undisputed assumption that has united modern thought. The difference between individual authors lies in identifying who is really in charge, whether reason (Descartes, Spinoza, Kant) or emotions (Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche). This involves surrendering to the impossibility of elaborating a moral code. Since the position of each cannot be justified, decisions are made on the basis of the emotion of the moment.[13] Recognizing instead their possible interrelationship means giving back centrality to the theme of corporeality and freedom.

Inside Out examines in an apparently light-hearted manner classic anthropological themes: “Is our reason an abstract faculty that is added as a guide to our emotions, or is it from the beginning embodied in our bodies and feelings? Are the latter only instinctive mechanisms, or do they already have in themselves the trace of a judgment of meaning, like a point of personal freedom within the conditioning of emotion?”[14] These are questions that the contemporary era has returned to, as found in the media, in neuroscience, neurosurgery, biology and psychology (Frijda, Damasio, Dawkins, Dennett, Searle, Siegel).

The search for a sense of achievement, for happiness, which guides thought and action, is a recognition of the speculative scope of emotion and, conversely, of the affective dimension of knowledge (“Nothing great has been accomplished, nor can be accomplished, without passion,” noted Hegel, an author who was rather reluctant to speak of the affections). After all, even the supporters of the human person as a mere bundle of emotions (such as Hume, and also Dennett) are forced to recognize that the image used (the “bundle” or the “stage”) still refers to an ego that encounters emotions and listens to the message; in other words, it refers to a personal identity irreducible to data, both emotional and cognitive. These data certainly contribute to shaping the subject, but the power to decide what to do with them always remains in their hands.[15]

Emotions contain a precious message in the moment in which they dialogue with reason and are educated by it: they refer not only to a subject, but speak of a fullness that is both known and absent, expressed by nostalgia, sadness, desire, and recognized in the fragmentary but valued experiences of joy, a theme present in ancient philosophy.[16]

Talking about feelings means above all talking about relationships, communities of belonging, historical and cultural roots, tradition. We are at the antipodes of individualism, of the self-made person, the ideal that has thus far prevailed throughout modernity, another myth that   postmodernism has radically challenged.[17] Duty is an inescapable aspect of morality, and it can find its place again when it is recognized as being anchored in the desire to belong, inherent in us from our earliest years, so that we confront ourselves not so much with abstract norms as with those with whom we have an emotional bond: “The root of duty is both a fascination and a belonging: a sonship, that is a society, a community.”[18]

What am I allowed to hope for?

This is the most important question, underlying the first two. Without hope, the sheer volume of information ends up blocking decision-making, and frenetic activity becomes a cover for the limitations of life of living.

The technical version of nihilism, made famous by Heidegger’s reflection, as a calculating approach to reality that forgets the mystery of being in order to reduce everything to the definable and quantifiable, to the entity, raises the question of hope. Heidegger’s own analysis requires it. What is the point of insisting on the “oblivion of being,” if it is the only possible outcome of civilization?[19]

And above all: how is it possible to notice such a forgetting if not because we continue to experience being here and now, in the modalities of anguish (explored in an exemplary way by Heidegger himself), in nostalgia and sadness (shown by Inside Out)? In such modes, the yearned-for fullness is shown in absence, in the experience of a place that remains desolately empty. Something that escapes us and at the same time we cannot fail to seek, as St. Augustine had acutely observed: “The game is bigger than we are, even if it could not happen, if it did not take the form of a call addressed to the human person […] from a different, possible awareness of what each of us ‘is’ in the face of the danger of this call.”[20]

This fullness cannot be guaranteed by technology, but only received as a gift, an appeal and a welcome. Heidegger had expressed this in the famous and controversial interview, published posthumously, “By now only a God can save us.”[21]

Kant had also understood that the question about hope goes beyond the speculative framework of the Critique of Pure Reason: hope, in fact, is essentially connected to faith, in the sense indicated by the Letter to the Hebrews (“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see,” Heb 11:1); in other words, what we cannot manage or master, but only welcome.

This is why the philosopher from Königsberg, in his later work, the Critique of Practical Reason, introduced the three famous postulates as a possible grounding of moral action: freedom, the immortality of man, and the existence of God. Walter Kasper sharply notes: “Kant naturally also recognized that it would be costly if, in the face of the evil present in the world, we renounced the idea of God. Indeed, human dignity must continue to subsist despite the experience of evil, but this is possible only if we hold to the idea of God as a postulate of practical reason. […] The idea of God contains within itself hope in the success of human freedom. To renounce this hope would be to renounce being human and to turn our gaze away from suffering with a shrug of the shoulders.”[22]

The necessity of hope as an irrepressible longing despite all possible denials is recalled by Esposito in the words of a novel by Michel Houellebecq, Serotonin, published in 2019. The protagonist, Florent-Claude, is a man who has squandered the possibilities that life has offered him, especially on the emotional side. Nevertheless, he warns that the search for something to hope for is not dead; on the contrary, it is further strengthened: “There are certain areas of the human psyche that remain almost unknown […], they can only be approached through the use of paradoxical and even absurd formulas, among which the expression hope against hope is the only thing that really manages to come to mind.”[23] This is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “Oh, out of that ‘no hope’ what great hope have you” (Act II, Scene 1, l. 240).

The total denial of meaning is very difficult to sustain to the end, because every project presupposes the possibility of being able to achieve it: directly or indirectly, it expresses the hope of an improvement in the situation and desires of those who seek to improve it. The same word, deprived of meaning, would be reduced to a useless sound.

The protest in front of failure can be made because in some way one has experienced the sense and can claim it as indispensable for one’s life: “Desire, hope, uncertainty itself are real signs of an objective sense embedded in our flesh, in the very flesh of the world […]. If we have not lost the sense, it is the Sense itself, in flesh and blood, that seeks us.”[24]

Hope invokes a presence that is not available to us, but is placed beyond, present and absent at the same time. It is the irruption of transcendence in the sphere of daily life: every time thought tries to deny it, it is forced to reaffirm it under another guise. This is expressed, for example, by Martha Nussbaum, who speaks of love in terms of “internal transcendence,” aimed at guaranteeing the aspiration to the best possible form of life in the face of the awareness of structural limits and failure.[25]

The experiences of alienation and discomfort are, after all, also a plea for salvation that cannot be disregarded.

Beyond Nihilism

The aporias of nihilism, shown in an obvious way during the current global uncertainty, force us to recognize the need for a series of goods that give meaning to ordinary daily life and that perhaps too easily have been considered obvious. These are not only material goods, but also desires, relationships, projects, the search for a beautiful life, one worth living. Without them, even once we emerge from the emergency, it will not be possible to heal the most insidious virus, the evil which is part of life.

Esposito begins his reflection on the post-nihilist era by discussing a novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006), which takes its cue from a situation that is in some ways similar to the present one: a planetary catastrophe. Despite the desolation and destruction that he sees around him, the protagonist does not give up; he feels that he cannot leave the last word to nothing: he is alive and above all he has his son beside him, who encourages him not to give up hope. And he understands that life must be simply accepted, gathering the knowledge that comes from the most ordinary beings, such as the fish that he sees splashing in a river. The strange marking they have on their skin is a sign of what is given, which man can destroy, but is unable to remake: “On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again.”[26]

There is a sense inherent in things that cannot be produced, but only recognized: “The genius of mankind lies precisely in this ability to interpret reality without wanting to and without ever being able to “put it in place,” to “arrange” it in our schemes. Reality cannot be readjusted, that is, simply aligned with our intentions, because it precedes us and exceeds us […]. Only an attentive gaze can realize the mysteriousness – because it is not taken for granted – of the things of our time.”[27]

DOI: La Civiltà Cattolica, En. Ed. Vol. 5, no. 7 art. 5, 0721: 10.32009/22072446.0721.5

\[1].    Cf. G. Cucci, “Desacralized Myths: Crisis of narrative and narrative of crisis”, in Civ. Catt. En. Jan. 2021, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/desacralized-myths-crisis-of-narrative-and-narrative-of-crisis/

[2].    Cf. C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo. Una cronaca, Rome, Carocci, 2021. As stated in the preface, the book takes its cue from some articles on the subject published in L’Osservatore Romano.

[3].    I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Penguin, London, 2008, 784 pp.

[4].    Cf. M. Heidegger, “La questione della tecnica”, in Id., Saggi e discorsi, Milan, Mursia, 1976, 5-27; M. Horkheimer – T. W. Adorno, Dialettica dell’illuminismo, Turin, Einaudi, 1966.

[5].    M. Horkheimer, Eclisse della ragione, ibid., 1969, 113.

[6].    C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 24. Cf. G. Cucci, “Per un umanesimo digitale”, in Civ. Catt. 2020 I 27-40; Id., “Uomo e robot: la relazione ideale?”, ibid. 2020 I 427-438.

[7].     “Truths are illusions, the illusory nature of which has been forgotten; they are metaphors that have become worn out and lost all sensible force; they are coins whose image has worn out and are taken into consideration only as metal, not as coins” (F. Nietzsche, Su verità e menzogna in senso extramorale, in Id., Opere 1870/1881, Rome, Newton Compton, 1993, I, 96). This theme returns in many other writings of Nietzsche: see, for example, La visione dionisiaca del mondo, ibid., 60-73; La nascita della tragedia, ibid., 111-187; La filosofia nell’età tragica dei greci,, ibid., 203-243.

[8].    Cf. K. Steinmetz, “How Your Brain Tricks You Into Believing Fake News”, in Time, August 9, 2018; G. Cucci, “Il ritorno del realismo”, in Civ. Catt. 2011 IV 131-140.

[9].    Pope Francis, speaking about fake news in his Message for the 52nd World Day of Social Communications, quoted a passage from The Brothers Karamazov: “People who lie to themselves and listen to their own lie come to such a pass that they cannot distinguish the truth within them, or around them, and so lose all respect for themselves and for others. And having no respect, they cease to love, and in order to occupy and distract themselves without love they give way to passions and to coarse pleasures, and sink to bestiality in their vices, all from continual lying to others and to themselves” (Francis, Message for the 52nd World Day of Social Communications: “The truth will make you free [Jn 8:32]. Fake News and Journalism for Peace”, No. 3).

[10].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 28.

[11].   Ibid., 66.

[12].   Cf. D. Hume, A Treatise on Human Nature, Penguin, London, 1985.

[13].   “The most singular feature of contemporary moral expression is that so large a part of it is used to manifest disagreements; and the most singular feature of the debates in which these disagreements are manifested is their interminability […]. It seems that there are no rational means of securing agreement in our culture” (A. MacIntyre, Dopo la virtù. Saggio di teoria morale, Rome, Armando, 2007, 35).

[14].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 91.

[15].   “Even if we accepted the challenge of not presupposing any ‘subject’ per se with respect to its functioning, and started only from this function of his, would not the latter indicate the imminence and finally the entry of an unknown guest? The guest of the ‘I’ in ourselves, an ‘I’ that surprises us, almost takes us unawares, attested by our own perceptions” (C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 93f).

[16].   Aristotle had recognized the constant link between happiness and a specific activity, contemplation: “As far as contemplation extends, so also does happiness extend, and in those in whom there is greater contemplation there is also greater happiness: and this happens not by chance, but because of contemplation” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1178b 28-32).

[17].   Cf. G. Cucci, “‘Fragile’. A new imagery of progress”, in Civ. Catt. En. Feb. 2021, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/fragile-a-new-imagery-of-progress

[18].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 88; cf. 102-107.

[19].   “Already always man sticks first and only to the being; and even if, when representing the being as a being, thought actually refers to being, in truth it always thinks only of the being as such and never the being as such” (M. Heidegger, Lettera sull’“umanismo”, in Id., Segnavia, Milan, Adelphi, 1987, 285).

[20].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 115; cf. Augustine, Confessions, X, 18, 27. A line of thought very similar to that noted by Pope Francis: “Truth reveals itself to those who open themselves to it. In its Greek meaning aletheia, truth, is what is manifested, what is revealed. The corresponding Hebrew noun emet, on the other hand, connects truth to fidelity, to that which is certain, which does not deceive and does not disappoint […]. Opening ourselves to this kind of certainty requires humility in our thinking, that is, leaving room for the satisfying encounter with the good, the true and the beautiful” (Francis, Ritorniamo a sognare, Milan, Piemme, 2020, 63f).

[21].   M. Heidegger, Ormai solo un Dio ci può salvare, Milan, Guanda, 1998.

[22].   W. Kasper, Misericordia. Concetto fondamentale del vangelo – Chiave della vita cristiana, Brescia, Queriniana, 2013, 191. Cf. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Bari, Laterza, 1966, 249.

[23].   M. Houellebecq, Serotonin, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2019, Cf. C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 21f.

[24].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 22. In this regard, the author refers to the ending of Houellebecq’s novel: “In reality, God takes care of us, thinks about us at every moment, and sometimes gives us very precise directives […], inexplicable if we consider our biological nature” (M. Houellebecq, Serotonin, op. cit., 332).

[25].   Cf. M. Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, 379.

[26].   C. McCarthy, The Road, Picador, 2006.

[27].   C. Esposito, Il nichilismo del nostro tempo…, op. cit., 17.