Nihilism – Wikipedia

Philosophy antithetical to concepts of meaningfulness

Nihilism (; from Latin nihil'nothing') is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence,[1][2] such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning.[3][4] The term was popularized by Ivan Turgenev, and more specifically by his character Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.

There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities do not exist or are meaningless or pointless.[5][6]

Scholars of nihilism may regard it as merely a label that has been applied to various separate philosophies,[7] or as a distinct historical concept arising out of nominalism, skepticism, and philosophical pessimism, as well as possibly out of Christianity itself.[8] Contemporary understanding of the idea stems largely from the Nietzschean 'crisis of nihilism', from which derive the two central concepts: the destruction of higher values and the opposition to the affirmation of life.[9][5] Earlier forms of nihilism, however, may be more selective in negating specific hegemonies of social, moral, political and aesthetic thought.[10]

The term is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence or arbitrariness of human principles and social institutions. Nihilism has also been described as conspicuous in or constitutive of certain historical periods. For example,[11] Jean Baudrillard[12][13] and others have characterized postmodernity as a nihilistic epoch[14] or mode of thought.[15] Likewise, some theologians and religious figures have stated that postmodernity[16] and many aspects of modernity[17] represent nihilism by a negation of religious principles. Nihilism has, however, been widely ascribed to both religious and irreligious viewpoints.[8]

In popular use, the term commonly refers to forms of existential nihilism, according to which life is without intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose.[18] Other prominent positions within nihilism include the rejection of all normative and ethical views (Moral nihilism), the rejection of all social and political institutions (Political nihilism), the stance that no knowledge can or does exist (Epistemological nihilism), and a number of metaphysical positions, which assert that non-abstract objects do not exist (Metaphysical nihilism), that composite objects do not exist (Mereological nihilism), or even that life itself does not exist.

The etymological origin of nihilism is the Latin root word nihil, meaning 'nothing', which is similarly found in the related terms annihilate, meaning 'to bring to nothing',[5] and nihility, meaning 'nothingness'.[19] The term nihilism emerged in several places in Europe during the 18th century,[7] notably in the German form Nihilismus,[20] though was also in use during the Middle Ages to denote certain forms of heresy.[21] The concept itself first took shape within Russian and German philosophy, which respectively represented the two major currents of discourse on nihilism prior to the 20th century.[20] The term likely entered English from either the German Nihilismus, Late Latin nihilismus, or French nihilisme.[22]

Early examples of the term's use are found in German publications. In 1733, German writer Friedrich Leberecht Goetz used it as a literary term in combination with noism (German: Neinismus).[23] In the period surrounding the French Revolution, the term was also a pejorative for certain value-destructive trends of modernity, namely the negation of Christianity and European tradition in general.[7] Nihilism first entered philosophical study within a discourse surrounding Kantian and post-Kantian philosophies, notably appearing in the writings of Swiss esotericist Jacob Hermann Obereit in 1787 and German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in 1799.[24] As early as 1824, the term began to take on a social connotation with German journalist Joseph von Grres attributing it to a negation of existing social and political institutions.[25] The Russian form of the word, nigilizm (Russian: ), entered publication in 1829 when Nikolai Nadezhdin used it synonymously with skepticism. In Russian journalism the word continued to have significant social connotations.[26]

From the time of Jacobi, the term almost fell completely out of use throughout Europe until it was revived by Russian author Ivan Turgenev, who brought the word into popular use with his 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, leading many scholars to believe he coined the term.[27] The nihilist characters of the novel define themselves as those who "deny everything", who do "not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in", and who regard "at the present time, negation is the most useful of all".[28] Despite Turgenev's own anti-nihilistic leanings, many of his readers likewise took up the name of nihilist, thus ascribing the Russian nihilist movement its name.[29] Nihilism was further discussed by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who used the term to describe the Western world's disintegration of traditional morality.[30] For Nietzsche, nihilism applied to both the modern trends of value-destruction expressed in the 'death of God', as well as what he saw as the life-denying morality of Christianity.[31][32] Under Nietzsche's profound influence, the term was then further treated within French philosophy and continental philosophy more broadly, while the influence of nihilism in Russia arguably continued well into the Soviet era.[33]

Religious scholars such as Altizer have stated that nihilism must necessarily be understood in relation to religion, and that the study of core elements of its character requires fundamentally theological consideration.[34]

The concept of nihilism was discussed by the Buddha (563 B.C. to 483 B.C.), as recorded in the Theravada and Mahayana Tripiaka.[35] The Tripiaka, originally written in Pali, refers to nihilism as natthikavda and the nihilist view as micchdihi.[36] Various sutras within it describe a multiplicity of views held by different sects of ascetics while the Buddha was alive, some of which were viewed by him to be morally nihilistic. In the "Doctrine of Nihilism" in the Apannaka Sutta, the Buddha describes moral nihilists as holding the following views:[37]

The Buddha further states that those who hold these views will fail to see the virtue in good mental, verbal, and bodily conduct and the corresponding dangers in misconduct, and will therefore tend towards the latter.[37]

The culmination of the path that the Buddha taught was nirvana, "a place of nothingnessnonpossession andnon-attachment[which is] the total end of death and decay."[38] Ajahn Amaro, an ordained Buddhist monk of more than 40 years, observes that in English nothingness can sound like nihilism. However, the word could be emphasized in a different way, so that it becomes no-thingness, indicating that nirvana is not a thing you can find, but rather a state where you experience the reality of non-grasping.[38]

In the Alagaddupama Sutta, the Buddha describes how some individuals feared his teaching because they believe that their self would be destroyed if they followed it. He describes this as an anxiety caused by the false belief in an unchanging, everlasting self. All things are subject to change and taking any impermanent phenomena to be a self causes suffering. Nonetheless, his critics called him a nihilist who teaches the annihilation and extermination of an existing being. The Buddha's response was that he only teaches the cessation of suffering. When an individual has given up craving and the conceit of 'I am' their mind is liberated, they no longer come into any state of 'being' and are no longer born again.[39]

The Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta records a conversation between the Buddha and an individual named Vaccha that further elaborates on this. In the sutta, Vaccha asks the Buddha to confirm one of the following, with respect to the existence of the Buddha after death:[40]

To all four questions, the Buddha answers that the terms "reappears somewhere else," "does not reappear," "both does and does not reappear," and "neither does nor does not reappear," do not apply. When Vaccha expresses puzzlement, the Buddha asks Vaccha a counter question to the effect of: if a fire were to go out and someone were to ask you whether the fire went north, south, east or west, how would you reply? Vaccha replies that the question does not apply and that an extinguished fire can only be classified as 'out'.[40]

hnissaro Bhikkhu elaborates on the classification problem around the words 'reappear,' etc. with respect to the Buddha and Nirvana by stating that a "Person who has attained the goal [nirvana] is thus indescribable because [they have] abandoned all things by which [they] could be described."[41] The Suttas themselves describe the liberated mind as 'untraceable' or as 'consciousness without feature', making no distinction between the mind of a liberated being that is alive and the mind of one that is no longer alive.[39][42]

Despite the Buddha's explanations to the contrary, Buddhist practitioners may, at times, still approach Buddhism in a nihilistic manner. Ajahn Amaro illustrates this by retelling the story of a Buddhist monk, Ajahn Sumedho, who in his early years took a nihilistic approach to Nirvana. A distinct feature of Nirvana in Buddhism is that an individual attaining it is no longer subject to rebirth. Ajahn Sumedho, during a conversation with his teacher Ajahn Chah, comments that he is "Determined above all things to fully realize Nirvana in this lifetimedeeply weary of the human condition and[is] determined not to be born again." To this, Ajahn Chah replies: "What about the rest of us, Sumedho? Don't you care about those who'll be left behind?" Ajahn Amaro comments that Ajahn Chah could detect that his student had a nihilistic aversion to life rather than true detachment.[43]

The term nihilism was first introduced to philosophy by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (17431819), who used the term to characterize rationalism,[44] and in particular the Spinoza's determinism and the Aufklrung, in order to carry out a reductio ad absurdum according to which all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to nihilismand thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some type of faith and revelation. Bret W. Davis writes, for example:[45]

The first philosophical development of the idea of nihilism is generally ascribed to Friedrich Jacobi, who in a famous letter criticized Fichte's idealism as falling into nihilism. According to Jacobi, Fichte's absolutization of the ego (the 'absolute I' that posits the 'not-I') is an inflation of subjectivity that denies the absolute transcendence of God.

A related but oppositional concept is fideism, which sees reason as hostile and inferior to faith.

Sren Kierkegaard (18131855) posited an early form of nihilism, which he referred to as leveling.[46] He saw leveling as the process of suppressing individuality to a point where an individual's uniqueness becomes non-existent and nothing meaningful in one's existence can be affirmed:

Levelling at its maximum is like the stillness of death, where one can hear one's own heartbeat, a stillness like death, into which nothing can penetrate, in which everything sinks, powerless. One person can head a rebellion, but one person cannot head this levelling process, for that would make him a leader and he would avoid being levelled. Each individual can in his little circle participate in this levelling, but it is an abstract process, and levelling is abstraction conquering individuality.

Kierkegaard, an advocate of a philosophy of life, generally argued against levelling and its nihilistic consequences, although he believed it would be "genuinely educative to live in the age of levelling [because] people will be forced to face the judgement of [levelling] alone."[47] George Cotkin asserts Kierkegaard was against "the standardization and levelling of belief, both spiritual and political, in the nineteenth century," and that Kierkegaard "opposed tendencies in mass culture to reduce the individual to a cipher of conformity and deference to the dominant opinion."[48] In his day, tabloids (like the Danish magazine Corsaren) and apostate Christianity were instruments of levelling and contributed to the "reflective apathetic age" of 19th-century Europe.[49] Kierkegaard argues that individuals who can overcome the levelling process are stronger for it, and that it represents a step in the right direction towards "becoming a true self."[47][50] As we must overcome levelling,[51] Hubert Dreyfus and Jane Rubin argue that Kierkegaard's interest, "In an increasingly nihilistic age, is in how we can recover the sense that our lives are meaningful."[52]

From the period 18601917, Russian nihilism was both a nascent form of nihilist philosophy and broad cultural movement which overlapped with certain revolutionary tendencies of the era,[53] for which it was often wrongly characterized as a form of political terrorism.[54] Russian nihilism centered on the dissolution of existing values and ideals, incorporating theories of hard determinism, atheism, materialism, positivism, and rational egoism, while rejecting metaphysics, sentimentalism, and aestheticism.[55] Leading philosophers of this school of thought included Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Dmitry Pisarev.[56]

The intellectual origins of the Russian nihilist movement can be traced back to 1855 and perhaps earlier,[57] where it was principally a philosophy of extreme moral and epistemological skepticism.[58] However, it was not until 1862 that the name nihilism was first popularized, when Ivan Turgenev used the term in his celebrated novel Fathers and Sons to describe the disillusionment of the younger generation towards both the progressives and traditionalists that came before them,[59] as well as its manifestation in the view that negation and value-destruction were most necessary to the present conditions.[60] The movement very soon adopted the name, despite the novel's initial harsh reception among both the conservatives and younger generation.[61]

Though philosophically both nihilistic and skeptical, Russian nihilism did not unilaterally negate ethics and knowledge as may be assumed, nor did it espouse meaninglessness unequivocally.[62] Even so, contemporary scholarship has challenged the equating of Russian nihilism with mere skepticism, instead identifying it as a fundamentally Promethean movement.[63] As passionate advocates of negation, the nihilists sought to liberate the Promethean might of the Russian people which they saw embodied in a class of prototypal individuals, or new types in their own words.[64] These individuals, according to Pisarev, in freeing themselves from all authority become exempt from moral authority as well, and are distinguished above the rabble or common masses.[65]

Later interpretations of nihilism were heavily influenced by works of anti-nihilistic literature, such as those of Fyodor Dostoevsky, which arose in response to Russian nihilism.[66] "In contrast to the corrupted nihilists [of the real world], who tried to numb their nihilistic sensitivity and forget themselves through self-indulgence, Dostoevsky's figures voluntarily leap into nihilism and try to be themselves within its boundaries.", writes contemporary scholar Nishitani. "The nihility expressed in 'if there is no God, everything is permitted', or 'aprs moi, le dluge', provides a principle whose sincerity they try to live out to the end. They search for and experiment with ways for the self to justify itself after God has disappeared."[67]

Nihilism is often associated with the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who provided a detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture. Though the notion appears frequently throughout Nietzsche's work, he uses the term in a variety of ways, with different meanings and connotations.

Karen L. Carr describes Nietzsche's characterization of nihilism as "a condition of tension, as a disproportion between what we want to value (or need) and how the world appears to operate."[31]:25 When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis.[68] Nietzsche asserts that with the decline of Christianity and the rise of physiological decadence,[clarification needed] nihilism is in fact characteristic of the modern age,[69] though he implies that the rise of nihilism is still incomplete and that it has yet to be overcome.[70] Though the problem of nihilism becomes especially explicit in Nietzsche's notebooks (published posthumously), it is mentioned repeatedly in his published works and is closely connected to many of the problems mentioned there.

Nietzsche characterized nihilism as emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. This observation stems in part from Nietzsche's perspectivism, or his notion that "knowledge" is always by someone of some thing: it is always bound by perspective, and it is never mere fact.[71] Rather, there are interpretations through which we understand the world and give it meaning. Interpreting is something we can not go without; in fact, it is a condition of subjectivity. One way of interpreting the world is through morality, as one of the fundamental ways that people make sense of the world, especially in regard to their own thoughts and actions. Nietzsche distinguishes a morality that is strong or healthy, meaning that the person in question is aware that he constructs it himself, from weak morality, where the interpretation is projected on to something external.

Nietzsche discusses Christianity, one of the major topics in his work, at length in the context of the problem of nihilism in his notebooks, in a chapter entitled "European Nihilism."[72] Here he states that the Christian moral doctrine provides people with intrinsic value, belief in God (which justifies the evil in the world) and a basis for objective knowledge. In this sense, in constructing a world where objective knowledge is possible, Christianity is an antidote against a primal form of nihilism, against the despair of meaninglessness. However, it is exactly the element of truthfulness in Christian doctrine that is its undoing: in its drive towards truth, Christianity eventually finds itself to be a construct, which leads to its own dissolution. It is therefore that Nietzsche states that we have outgrown Christianity "not because we lived too far from it, rather because we lived too close."[73] As such, the self-dissolution of Christianity constitutes yet another form of nihilism. Because Christianity was an interpretation that posited itself as the interpretation, Nietzsche states that this dissolution leads beyond skepticism to a distrust of all meaning.[74][31]:412

Stanley Rosen identifies Nietzsche's concept of nihilism with a situation of meaninglessness, in which "everything is permitted." According to him, the loss of higher metaphysical values that exist in contrast to the base reality of the world, or merely human ideas, gives rise to the idea that all human ideas are therefore valueless. Rejecting idealism thus results in nihilism, because only similarly transcendent ideals live up to the previous standards that the nihilist still implicitly holds.[75] The inability for Christianity to serve as a source of valuating the world is reflected in Nietzsche's famous aphorism of the madman in The Gay Science.[76] The death of God, in particular the statement that "we killed him", is similar to the self-dissolution of Christian doctrine: due to the advances of the sciences, which for Nietzsche show that man is the product of evolution, that Earth has no special place among the stars and that history is not progressive, the Christian notion of God can no longer serve as a basis for a morality.

One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche calls passive nihilism, which he recognizes in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine, which Nietzsche also refers to as Western Buddhism, advocates separating oneself from will and desires in order to reduce suffering. Nietzsche characterizes this attitude as a "will to nothingness", whereby life turns away from itself, as there is nothing of value to be found in the world. This mowing away of all value in the world is characteristic of the nihilist, although in this, the nihilist appears inconsistent: this "will to nothingness" is still a form of valuation or willing.[77] He describes this as "an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists":

A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists.

Nietzsche's relation to the problem of nihilism is a complex one. He approaches the problem of nihilism as deeply personal, stating that this predicament of the modern world is a problem that has "become conscious" in him.[78] According to Nietzsche, it is only when nihilism is overcome that a culture can have a true foundation upon which to thrive. He wished to hasten its coming only so that he could also hasten its ultimate departure.[69]

He states that there is at least the possibility of another type of nihilist in the wake of Christianity's self-dissolution, one that does not stop after the destruction of all value and meaning and succumb to the following nothingness. This alternate, 'active' nihilism on the other hand destroys to level the field for constructing something new. This form of nihilism is characterized by Nietzsche as "a sign of strength,"[79] a willful destruction of the old values to wipe the slate clean and lay down one's own beliefs and interpretations, contrary to the passive nihilism that resigns itself with the decomposition of the old values. This willful destruction of values and the overcoming of the condition of nihilism by the constructing of new meaning, this active nihilism, could be related to what Nietzsche elsewhere calls a free spirit[31]:4350 or the bermensch from Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Antichrist, the model of the strong individual who posits his own values and lives his life as if it were his own work of art. It may be questioned, though, whether "active nihilism" is indeed the correct term for this stance, and some question whether Nietzsche takes the problems nihilism poses seriously enough.[80]

Martin Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche influenced many postmodern thinkers who investigated the problem of nihilism as put forward by Nietzsche. Only recently has Heidegger's influence on Nietzschean nihilism research faded.[81] As early as the 1930s, Heidegger was giving lectures on Nietzsche's thought.[82] Given the importance of Nietzsche's contribution to the topic of nihilism, Heidegger's influential interpretation of Nietzsche is important for the historical development of the term nihilism.

Heidegger's method of researching and teaching Nietzsche is explicitly his own. He does not specifically try to present Nietzsche as Nietzsche. He rather tries to incorporate Nietzsche's thoughts into his own philosophical system of Being, Time and Dasein.[83] In his Nihilism as Determined by the History of Being (194446),[84] Heidegger tries to understand Nietzsche's nihilism as trying to achieve a victory through the devaluation of the, until then, highest values. The principle of this devaluation is, according to Heidegger, the will to power. The will to power is also the principle of every earlier valuation of values.[85] How does this devaluation occur and why is this nihilistic? One of Heidegger's main critiques on philosophy is that philosophy, and more specifically metaphysics, has forgotten to discriminate between investigating the notion of a being (seiende) and Being (Sein). According to Heidegger, the history of Western thought can be seen as the history of metaphysics. Moreover, because metaphysics has forgotten to ask about the notion of Being (what Heidegger calls Seinsvergessenheit), it is a history about the destruction of Being. That is why Heidegger calls metaphysics nihilistic.[86] This makes Nietzsche's metaphysics not a victory over nihilism, but a perfection of it.[87]

Heidegger, in his interpretation of Nietzsche, has been inspired by Ernst Jnger. Many references to Jnger can be found in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche. For example, in a letter to the rector of Freiburg University of November 4, 1945, Heidegger, inspired by Jnger, tries to explain the notion of "God is dead" as the "reality of the Will to Power." Heidegger also praises Jnger for defending Nietzsche against a too biological or anthropological reading during the Nazi era.[88]

Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche influenced a number of important postmodernist thinkers. Gianni Vattimo points at a back-and-forth movement in European thought, between Nietzsche and Heidegger. During the 1960s, a Nietzschean 'renaissance' began, culminating in the work of Mazzino Montinari and Giorgio Colli. They began work on a new and complete edition of Nietzsche's collected works, making Nietzsche more accessible for scholarly research. Vattimo explains that with this new edition of Colli and Montinari, a critical reception of Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche began to take shape. Like other contemporary French and Italian philosophers, Vattimo does not want, or only partially wants, to rely on Heidegger for understanding Nietzsche. On the other hand, Vattimo judges Heidegger's intentions authentic enough to keep pursuing them.[89] Philosophers who Vattimo exemplifies as a part of this back and forth movement are French philosophers Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida. Italian philosophers of this same movement are Cacciari, Severino and himself.[90] Jrgen Habermas, Jean-Franois Lyotard and Richard Rorty are also philosophers who are influenced by Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche.[91]

Gilles Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche's concept of nihilism is different - in some sense diametrically opposed - to the usual definition (as outlined in the rest of this article). Nihilism is one of the main topics of Deleuze's early book Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962).[92] There, Deleuze repeatedly interprets Nietzsche's nihilism as "the enterprise of denying life and depreciating existence".[93] Nihilism thus defined is therefore not the denial of higher values, or the denial of meaning, but rather the depreciation of life in the name of such higher values or meaning. Deleuze therefore (with, he claims, Nietzsche) says that Christianity and Platonism, and with them the whole of metaphysics, are intrinsically Nihilist.

Postmodern and poststructuralist thought has questioned the very grounds on which Western cultures have based their 'truths': absolute knowledge and meaning, a 'decentralization' of authorship, the accumulation of positive knowledge, historical progress, and certain ideals and practices of humanism and the Enlightenment.

Jacques Derrida, whose deconstruction is perhaps most commonly labeled nihilistic, did not himself make the nihilistic move that others have claimed. Derridean deconstructionists argue that this approach rather frees texts, individuals or organizations from a restrictive truth, and that deconstruction opens up the possibility of other ways of being.[94] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, for example, uses deconstruction to create an ethics of opening up Western scholarship to the voice of the subaltern and to philosophies outside of the canon of western texts.[95] Derrida himself built a philosophy based upon a 'responsibility to the other'.[96] Deconstruction can thus be seen not as a denial of truth, but as a denial of our ability to know truth. That is to say, it makes an epistemological claim, compared to nihilism's ontological claim.

Lyotard argues that, rather than relying on an objective truth or method to prove their claims, philosophers legitimize their truths by reference to a story about the world that can't be separated from the age and system the stories belong toreferred to by Lyotard as meta-narratives. He then goes on to define the postmodern condition as characterized by a rejection both of these meta-narratives and of the process of legitimation by meta-narratives. This concept of the instability of truth and meaning leads in the direction of nihilism, though Lyotard stops short of embracing the latter.[citation needed]

In lieu of meta-narratives we have created new language-games in order to legitimize our claims which rely on changing relationships and mutable truths, none of which is privileged over the other to speak to ultimate truth.[citation needed]

Postmodern theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote briefly of nihilism from the postmodern viewpoint in Simulacra and Simulation. He stuck mainly to topics of interpretations of the real world over the simulations of which the real world is composed. The uses of meaning were an important subject in Baudrillard's discussion of nihilism:

The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference ... all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency.

From the 20th century, nihilism has encompassed a range of positions within various fields of philosophy. Each of these, as the Encyclopdia Britannica states, "denied the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejected the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserted the ultimate meaninglessness or purposelessness of life or of the universe."[97]

The term Dada was first used by Richard Huelsenbeck and Tristan Tzara in 1916.[110] The movement, which lasted from approximately 1916 to 1923, arose during World War I, an event that influenced the artists.[111] The Dada Movement began in the old town of Zrich, Switzerlandknown as the "Niederdorf" or "Niederdrfli"in the Caf Voltaire.[112] The Dadaists claimed that Dada was not an art movement, but an anti-art movement, sometimes using found objects in a manner similar to found poetry.

This tendency toward devaluation of art has led many[who?] to claim that Dada was an essentially nihilistic movement.[113] Given that Dada created its own means for interpreting its products, it is difficult to classify alongside most other contemporary art expressions. Due to perceived ambiguity, it has been classified as a nihilistic modus vivendi.[111]

The term "nihilism" was actually popularized in 1862 by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons, whose hero, Bazarov, was a nihilist and recruited several followers to the philosophy. He found his nihilistic ways challenged upon falling in love.[114]

Anton Chekhov portrayed nihilism when writing Three Sisters. The phrase "what does it matter" or variants of this are often spoken by several characters in response to events; the significance of some of these events suggests a subscription to nihilism by said characters as a type of coping strategy.

The philosophical ideas of the French author, the Marquis de Sade, are often noted as early examples of nihilistic principles.[115]

The frequently self-destructive and amoral tendencies of a nihilistic worldview can be seen in many of today's mediums, including movies and TV shows.

Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty is portrayed as a high-functioning alcoholic burdened with knowledge. In his self-proclaimed genius, he adapts an existential nihilistic understanding that there is little to no reason to live.

Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho and 2000 film adaptation, displays both moral and existential nihilism. Throughout the film, Bateman does not shy away from murder or torture to accomplish his goals. As he realizes the evil in his deeds he tries to confess and take on the punishment for his acts of crime.[116]

Phil Connors in the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day, develops existential nihilistic tendencies near the middle of the film. As he lives the same day an unspoken countless number of times he slips into a depression and attempts to commit suicide in a variety of different ways. He will also resort to kidnapping Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog to which he credits his looping days, and drives off a cliff, killing both of them.[117]

Vincent, the main antagonist of the 2004 film Collateral believes that life has no meaning because that human nature is intrinsically evil, and that deep down, people care only about themselves.

In the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once, the lead antagonist, Jobu Tupaki, comes to an existential nihilistic conclusion that the infinite chaos of the multiverse means that there is no reason to continue to exist. She manifests her nihilism by creating a black hole-like "everything bagel" in which she will destroy herself and the rest of the multiverse. Her mother Evelyn is briefly persuaded by her logic but then refutes it in favor of a more positive outlook based on the value of human relationships and choice.[118]

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Nihilism - Wikipedia

Nihilism | Definition & History | Britannica

nihilism, (from Latin nihil, nothing), originally a philosophy of moral and epistemological skepticism that arose in 19th-century Russia during the early years of the reign of Tsar Alexander II. The term was famously used by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe the disintegration of traditional morality in Western society. In the 20th century, nihilism encompassed a variety of philosophical and aesthetic stances that, in one sense or another, denied the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejected the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserted the ultimate meaninglessness or purposelessness of life or of the universe.

The term is an old one, applied to certain heretics in the Middle Ages. In Russian literature, nihilism was probably first used by N.I. Nadezhdin, in an 1829 article in the Messenger of Europe, in which he applied it to Aleksandr Pushkin. Nadezhdin, as did V.V. Bervi in 1858, equated nihilism with skepticism. Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov, a well-known conservative journalist who interpreted nihilism as synonymous with revolution, presented it as a social menace because of its negation of all moral principles.

It was Ivan Turgenev, in his celebrated novel Fathers and Sons (1862), who popularized the term through the figure of Bazarov the nihilist. Eventually, the nihilists of the 1860s and 70s came to be regarded as disheveled, untidy, unruly, ragged men who rebelled against tradition and social order. The philosophy of nihilism then began to be associated erroneously with the regicide of Alexander II (1881) and the political terror that was employed by those active at the time in clandestine organizations opposed to absolutism.

If to the conservative elements the nihilists were the curse of the time, to the liberals such as N.G. Chernyshevsky they represented a mere transitory factor in the development of national thoughta stage in the struggle for individual freedomand a true spirit of the rebellious young generation. In his novel What Is to Be Done? (1863), Chernyshevsky endeavoured to detect positive aspects in the nihilist philosophy. Similarly, in his Memoirs, Prince Peter Kropotkin, the leading Russian anarchist, defined nihilism as the symbol of struggle against all forms of tyranny, hypocrisy, and artificiality and for individual freedom.

Fundamentally, 19th-century nihilism represented a philosophy of negation of all forms of aestheticism; it advocated utilitarianism and scientific rationalism. Classical philosophical systems were rejected entirely. Nihilism represented a crude form of positivism and materialism, a revolt against the established social order; it negated all authority exercised by the state, by the church, or by the family. It based its belief on nothing but scientific truth; science would be the solution of all social problems. All evils, nihilists believed, derived from a single sourceignorancewhich science alone would overcome.

The thinking of 19th-century nihilists was profoundly influenced by philosophers, scientists, and historians such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Charles Darwin, Henry Buckle, and Herbert Spencer. Since nihilists denied the duality of human beings as a combination of body and soul, of spiritual and material substance, they came into violent conflict with ecclesiastical authorities. Since nihilists questioned the doctrine of the divine right of kings, they came into similar conflict with secular authorities. Since they scorned all social bonds and family authority, the conflict between parents and children became equally immanent, and it is this theme that is best reflected in Turgenevs novel.

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Nihilism | Definition & History | Britannica

Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themesepistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessnesshave preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.

It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilisms impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. Its helpful to note, then, that he believed we couldat a terrible priceeventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind.

Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. It appears in the verb annihilate, meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Jacobi used the word to negatively characterize transcendental idealism. It only became popularized, however, after its appearance in Ivan Turgenevs novel Fathers and Sons (1862) where he used nihilism to describe the crude scientism espoused by his character Bazarov who preaches a creed of total negation.

In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (C.1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. In his early writing, anarchist leader Mikhael Bakunin (1814-1876) composed the notorious entreaty still identified with nihilism: Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all lifethe passion for destruction is also a creative passion! (Reaction in Germany, 1842). The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge and individual freedom as the highest goal. By rejecting mans spiritual essence in favor of a solely materialistic one, nihilists denounced God and religious authority as antithetical to freedom. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy, and by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination.

The earliest philosophical positions associated with what could be characterized as a nihilistic outlook are those of the Skeptics. Because they denied the possibility of certainty, Skeptics could denounce traditional truths as unjustifiable opinions. When Demosthenes (c.371-322 BC), for example, observes that What he wished to believe, that is what each man believes (Olynthiac), he posits the relational nature of knowledge. Extreme skepticism, then, is linked to epistemological nihilism which denies the possibility of knowledge and truth; this form of nihilism is currently identified with postmodern antifoundationalism. Nihilism, in fact, can be understood in several different ways. Political Nihilism, as noted, is associated with the belief that the destruction of all existing political, social, and religious order is a prerequisite for any future improvement. Ethical nihilism or moral nihilism rejects the possibility of absolute moral or ethical values. Instead, good and evil are nebulous, and values addressing such are the product of nothing more than social and emotive pressures. Existential nihilism is the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and it is, no doubt, the most commonly used and understood sense of the word today.

Max Stirners (1806-1856) attacks on systematic philosophy, his denial of absolutes, and his rejection of abstract concepts of any kind often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. For Stirner, achieving individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed. Even beyond the oppression of the state, though, are the constraints imposed by others because their very existence is an obstacle compromising individual freedom. Thus Stirner argues that existence is an endless war of each against all (The Ego and its Own, trans. 1907).

Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the faades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent. Every belief, every considering something-true, Nietzsche writes, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world (Will to Power [notes from 1883-1888]). For him, nihilism requires a radical repudiation of all imposed values and meaning: Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts ones shoulder to the plough; one destroys (Will to Power).

The caustic strength of nihilism is absolute, Nietzsche argues, and under its withering scrutiny the highest values devalue themselves. The aim is lacking, and Why finds no answer (Will to Power). Inevitably, nihilism will expose all cherished beliefs and sacrosanct truths as symptoms of a defective Western mythos. This collapse of meaning, relevance, and purpose will be the most destructive force in history, constituting a total assault on reality and nothing less than the greatest crisis of humanity:

What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end. . . . (Will to Power)

Since Nietzsches compelling critique, nihilistic themesepistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessnesshave preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Convinced that Nietzsches analysis was accurate, for example, Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1926) studied several cultures to confirm that patterns of nihilism were indeed a conspicuous feature of collapsing civilizations. In each of the failed cultures he examines, Spengler noticed that centuries-old religious, artistic, and political traditions were weakened and finally toppled by the insidious workings of several distinct nihilistic postures: the Faustian nihilist shatters the ideals; the Apollinian nihilist watches them crumble before his eyes; and the Indian nihilist withdraws from their presence into himself. Withdrawal, for instance, often identified with the negation of reality and resignation advocated by Eastern religions, is in the West associated with various versions of epicureanism and stoicism. In his study, Spengler concludes that Western civilization is already in the advanced stages of decay with all three forms of nihilism working to undermine epistemological authority and ontological grounding.

In 1927, Martin Heidegger, to cite another example, observed that nihilism in various and hidden forms was already the normal state of man (The Question of Being). Other philosophers predictions about nihilisms impact have been dire. Outlining the symptoms of nihilism in the 20th century, Helmut Thielicke wrote that Nihilism literally has only one truth to declare, namely, that ultimately Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless (Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer, 1969). From the nihilists perspective, one can conclude that life is completely amoral, a conclusion, Thielicke believes, that motivates such monstrosities as the Nazi reign of terror. Gloomy predictions of nihilisms impact are also charted in Eugene Roses Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age (1994). If nihilism proves victoriousand its well on its way, he arguesour world will become a cold, inhuman world where nothingness, incoherence, and absurdity will triumph.

While nihilism is often discussed in terms of extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the 20th century it has been associated with the belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itselfall action, suffering, and feelingis ultimately senseless and empty.

In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life (1994), Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning. The Skeptic Empedocles observation that the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life, for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesias of Cyrene. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide. Centuries later during the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarized the existential nihilists perspective when, in this famous passage near the end of Macbeth, he has Macbeth pour out his disgust for life:

Out, out, brief candle!Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more; it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

In the twentieth century, its the atheistic existentialist movement, popularized in France in the 1940s and 50s, that is responsible for the currency of existential nihilism in the popular consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartres (1905-1980) defining preposition for the movement, existence precedes essence, rules out any ground or foundation for establishing an essential self or a human nature. When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom but also existential horror and emotional anguish. Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being thrown into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning. Its a situation thats nothing short of absurd. Writing from the enlightened perspective of the absurd, Albert Camus (1913-1960) observed that Sisyphus plight, condemned to eternal, useless struggle, was a superb metaphor for human existence (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness, and they expended great energy responding to the question of whether surviving it was possible. Their answer was a qualified Yes, advocating a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism. In retrospect, it was an anecdote tinged with desperation because in an absurd world there are absolutely no guidelines, and any course of action is problematic. Passionate commitment, be it to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Enter nihilism.

Camus, like the other existentialists, was convinced that nihilism was the most vexing problem of the twentieth century. Although he argues passionately that individuals could endure its corrosive effects, his most famous works betray the extraordinary difficulty he faced building a convincing case. In The Stranger (1942), for example, Meursault has rejected the existential suppositions on which the uninitiated and weak rely. Just moments before his execution for a gratuitous murder, he discovers that life alone is reason enough for living, a raison dtre, however, that in context seems scarcely convincing. In Caligula (1944), the mad emperor tries to escape the human predicament by dehumanizing himself with acts of senseless violence, fails, and surreptitiously arranges his own assassination. The Plague (1947) shows the futility of doing ones best in an absurd world. And in his last novel, the short and sardonic, The Fall (1956), Camus posits that everyone has bloody hands because we are all responsible for making a sorry state worse by our inane action and inaction alike. In these works and other works by the existentialists, one is often left with the impression that living authentically with the meaninglessness of life is impossible.

Camus was fully aware of the pitfalls of defining existence without meaning, and in his philosophical essay The Rebel (1951) he faces the problem of nihilism head-on. In it, he describes at length how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilism, characterized by profound hatred, pathological destruction, and incalculable violence and death.

By the late 20th century, nihilism had assumed two different castes. In one form, nihilist is used to characterize the postmodern person, a dehumanized conformist, alienated, indifferent, and baffled, directing psychological energy into hedonistic narcissism or into a deep ressentiment that often explodes in violence. This perspective is derived from the existentialists reflections on nihilism stripped of any hopeful expectations, leaving only the experience of sickness, decay, and disintegration.

In his study of meaninglessness, Donald Crosby writes that the source of modern nihilism paradoxically stems from a commitment to honest intellectual openness. Once set in motion, the process of questioning could come to but one end, the erosion of conviction and certitude and collapse into despair (The Specter of the Absurd, 1988). When sincere inquiry is extended to moral convictions and social consensus, it can prove deadly, Crosby continues, promoting forces that ultimately destroy civilizations. Michael Novaks recently revised The Experience of Nothingness (1968, 1998) tells a similar story. Both studies are responses to the existentialists gloomy findings from earlier in the century. And both optimistically discuss ways out of the abyss by focusing of the positive implications nothingness reveals, such as liberty, freedom, and creative possibilities. Novak, for example, describes how since WWII we have been working to climb out of nihilism on the way to building a new civilization.

In contrast to the efforts to overcome nihilism noted above is the uniquely postmodern response associated with the current antifoundationalists. The philosophical, ethical, and intellectual crisis of nihilism that has tormented modern philosophers for over a century has given way to mild annoyance or, more interestingly, an upbeat acceptance of meaninglessness.

French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes postmodernism as an incredulity toward metanarratives, those all-embracing foundations that we have relied on to make sense of the world. This extreme skepticism has undermined intellectual and moral hierarchies and made truth claims, transcendental or transcultural, problematic. Postmodern antifoundationalists, paradoxically grounded in relativism, dismiss knowledge as relational and truth as transitory, genuine only until something more palatable replaces it (reminiscent of William James notion of cash value). The critic Jacques Derrida, for example, asserts that one can never be sure that what one knows corresponds with what is. Since human beings participate in only an infinitesimal part of the whole, they are unable to grasp anything with certainty, and absolutes are merely fictional forms.

American antifoundationalist Richard Rorty makes a similar point: Nothing grounds our practices, nothing legitimizes them, nothing shows them to be in touch with the way things are (From Logic to Language to Play, 1986). This epistemological cul-de-sac, Rorty concludes, leads inevitably to nihilism. Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have the ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989). In contrast to Nietzsches fears and the angst of the existentialists, nihilism becomes for the antifoundationalists just another aspect of our contemporary milieu, one best endured with sang-froid.

In The Banalization of Nihilism (1992) Karen Carr discusses the antifoundationalist response to nihilism. Although it still inflames a paralyzing relativism and subverts critical tools, cheerful nihilism carries the day, she notes, distinguished by an easy-going acceptance of meaninglessness. Such a development, Carr concludes, is alarming. If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. Worse still, the banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies. Its a conclusion that dovetails nicely with Nietzsches, who pointed out that all interpretations of the world are simply manifestations of will-to-power.

It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilisms impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. Its helpful to note, then, that he believed we couldat a terrible priceeventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind:

I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilisms] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength. It is possible. . . . (Complete Works Vol. 13)

Alan PrattEmail: pratta@db.erau.eduEmbry-Riddle UniversityU. S. A.

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Nihilism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Existential nihilism – Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Theory that life has no inherent meaning

Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.[1] With respect to the universe, existential nihilism suggests that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. According to the theory, each individual is an isolated being born into the universe, barred from knowing 'why'. The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective 'meaning' or 'purpose'. Of all types of nihilism, existential nihilism has received the most literary and philosophical attention.[2]

The idea that meaning and values are without foundation is a form of nihilism, and the existential response to that idea is noting that meaning is not 'a matter of contemplative theory,' but instead, 'a consequence of engagement and commitment.'

In his essay Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote "What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself." Here it is made clear what is meant by Existentialists when they say meaning is "a consequence of engagement and commitment".

The theory purports to describe the human situation to create a life outlook and create meaning, which has been summarized as, "Strut, fret, and delude ourselves as we may, our lives are of no significance, and it is futile to seek or to affirm meaning where none can be found."[3] Existential nihilists claim that, to be honest, one must face the absurdity of existence, that they will eventually die, and that both religion and metaphysics are simply results of the fear of death.[2]

According to Donald A. Crosby, "There is no justification for life, but also no reason not to live. Those who claim to find meaning in their lives are either dishonest or deluded. In either case, they fail to face up to the harsh reality of the human situations."[3]

Existential nihilism has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition since the Cyrenaics, such as Hegesias of Cyrene.[citation needed] During the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarised the existential nihilist's perspective through Macbeth's mindset in the end of the eponymous play.[4] Arthur Schopenhauer, Sren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche further expanded on these ideas, and Nietzsche, particularly, has become a major figure in existential nihilism.

The atheistic existentialist movement spread in 1940s France. Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness and Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus discussed the topic.[1] Camus wrote further works, such as The Stranger, Caligula, The Plague, The Fall and The Rebel.[5] Other figures include Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. In addition, Ernest Becker's Pulitzer Prize-winning life's work The Denial of Death is a collection of thoughts on existential nihilism.

The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness, and they expended great energy responding to the question of whether surviving it was possible. Their answer was a qualified "Yes," advocating a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism.

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Existential nihilism - Wikipedia

Nihilism – AllAboutPhilosophy.org

Nihilism Abandoning Values and KnowledgeNihilism derives its name from the Latin root nihil, meaning nothing, that which does not exist. This same root is found in the verb annihilate -- to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief which:

Nihilism A Meaningless WorldShakespeares Macbeth eloquently summarizes existential nihilism's perspective, disdaining life:

Nihilism Beyond NothingnessNihilism--choosing to believe in Nothingness--involves a high price. An individual may choose to feel rather than think, exert their will to power than pray, give thanks, or obey God. After an impressive career of literary and philosophical creativity, Friedrich Nietzsche lost all control of his mental faculties. Upon seeing a horse mistreated, he began sobbing uncontrollably and collapsed into a catatonic state. Nietzsche died August 25, 1900, diagnosed as utterly insane. While saying Yes to life but No to God, the Prophet of Nihilism missed both.

Beyond the nothingness of nihilism, there is One who is greater than unbelief; One who touched humanity (1 John 5:20) and assures us that our lives are not meaningless (Acts 17:24-28).

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Nihilism - AllAboutPhilosophy.org

Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism – Foreign Affairs Magazine

Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete. Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change. A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.

Discussions of democracy often begin with the ancient city-states of Greece. According to the Athenian legend of origin, the deities Poseidon and Athena offered gifts to the citizens to win the status of patron. Poseidon, the god of the sea, struck the ground with his trident, causing the earth to tremble and saltwater to spring forth. He was offering Athenians the power of the sea and strength in war, but they blanched at the taste of brine. Then Athena planted an olive seed, which sprouted into an olive tree. It offered shade for contemplation, olives for eating, and oil for cooking. Athenas gift was deemed superior, and the city took her name and patronage.

The Greek legend suggests a vision of democracy as tranquility, a life of thoughtful deliberation and consumption. Yet Athens had to win wars to survive. The most famous defense of democracy, the funeral oration of Pericles, is about the harmony of risk and freedom. Poseidon had a point about war: sometimes the trident must be brought down. He was also making a case for interdependence. Prosperity, and sometimes survival, depends on sea trade. How, after all, could a small city-state such as Athens afford to devote its limited soil to olives? Ancient Athenians were nourished by grain brought from the north coast of the Black Sea, grown in the black earth of what is now southern Ukraine. Alongside the Jews, the Greeks are the longest known continuous inhabitants of Ukraine. Mariupol was their city, until the Russians destroyed it. The southern region of Kherson, where combat is now underway, bears a Greek name borrowed from a Greek city. In April, the Ukrainians sank the Russian flagship, the Moskva, with Neptune missilesNeptune being the Roman name for Poseidon.

As it happens, Ukraines national symbol is the trident. It can be found among relics of the state that Vikings founded at Kyiv about a thousand years ago. After receiving Christianity from Byzantium, the Greek-speaking eastern Roman Empire, Kyivs rulers established secular law. The economy shifted from slavery to agriculture as the people became subject to taxation rather than capture. In subsequent centuries, after the fall of the Kyiv state, Ukrainian peasants were enserfed by Poles and then by Russians. When Ukrainian leaders founded a republic in 1918, they revived the trident as the national symbol. Independence meant not only freedom from bondage but the liberty to use the land as they saw fit. Yet the Ukrainian National Republic was short lived. Like several other young republics established after the end of the Russian empire in 1917, it was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, and its lands were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Seeking to control Ukraines fertile soil, Joseph Stalin brought about a political famine that killed about four million inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. Ukrainians were overrepresented in the Soviet concentration camps known as the gulag. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitlers goal was control of Ukrainian agriculture. Ukrainians were again overrepresented among the civilian victimsthis time of the German occupiers and the Red Army soldiers who defeated the Germans. After World War II, Soviet Ukraine was nevertheless subjected to a slow process of Russification in which its culture was degraded.

When the Soviet Union came to an end in 1991, Ukrainians again seized on the trident as their national symbol. In the three decades since, Ukraine has moved, haltingly but unmistakably, in the direction of functional democracy. The generation that now runs the country knows the Soviet and pre-Soviet history but understands self-rule as self-evident. At a time when democracy is in decline around the world and threatened in the United States, Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression provides a surprising (to many) affirmation of faith in democracys principles and its future. In this sense, Ukraine is a challenge to those in the West who have forgotten the ethical basis of democracy and thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, ceded the field to oligarchy and empire at home and abroad. Ukrainian resistance is a welcome challenge, and a needed one.

The history of twentieth-century democracy offers a reminder of what happens when this challenge is not met. Like the period after 1991, the period after 1918 saw the rise and fall of democracy. Today, the turning point (one way or the other) is likely Ukraine; in interwar Europe, it was Czechoslovakia. Like Ukraine in 2022, Czechoslovakia in 1938 was an imperfect multilingual republic in a tough neighborhood. In 1938 and 1939, after European powers chose to appease Nazi Germany at Munich, Hitlers regime suppressed Czechoslovak democracy through intimidation, unresisted invasion, partition, and annexation. What actually happened in Czechoslovakia was similar to what Russia seems to have planned for Ukraine. Putins rhetoric resembles Hitlers to the point of plagiarism: both claimed that a neighboring democracy was somehow tyrannical, both appealed to imaginary violations of minority rights as a reason to invade, both argued that a neighboring nation did not really exist and that its state was illegitimate.

In 1938, Czechoslovakia had decent armed forces, the best arms industry in Europe, and natural defenses improved by fortifications. Nazi Germany might not have bested Czechoslovakia in an open war and certainly would not have done so quickly and easily. Yet Czechoslovakias allies abandoned it, and its leaders fatefully chose exile over resistance. The defeat was, in a crucial sense, a moral one. And it enabled the physical transformation of a continent by war, creating some of the preconditions for the Holocaust of European Jews.

By the time Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II, Czechoslovakia no longer existed, and its territories and resources had been reassigned according to German preferences. Germany now had a longer border with Poland, a larger population, Czechoslovak tanks, and tens of thousands of Slovak soldiers. Hitler also now had a powerful ally in the Soviet Union, which joined in the destruction of Poland after invading from the east. During Germanys invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 and during the Battle of Britain later that year, German vehicles were fueled by Soviet oil and German soldiers fed by Soviet grain, almost all of which was extracted from Ukraine.

This sequence of events started with the easy German absorption of Czechoslovakia. World War II, at least in the form that it took, would have been impossible had the Czechoslovaks fought back. No one can know what would have happened had the Germans been bogged down in Bohemia in 1938. But we can be confident that Hitler would not have had the sense of irresistible momentum that gained him allies and frightened his foes. It would certainly have been harder for the Soviet leadership to justify an alliance. Hitler would not have been able to use Czechoslovak arms in his assault on Poland, which would have begun later, if at all. The United Kingdom and France would have had more time to prepare for war and perhaps to help Poland. By 1938, Europe was emerging from the Great Depression, which was the main force attracting people to the political extremes. Had Hitlers nose been bloodied in his first campaign, the appeal of the far right might have declined.

Unlike Czechoslovak leaders, Ukrainian leaders chose to fight and were supported, at least in some measure, by other democracies. In resisting, Ukrainians have staved off a number of very dark scenarios and bought European and North American democracies valuable time to think and prepare. The full significance of the Ukrainian resistance of 2022, as with the appeasement of 1938, can be grasped only when one considers the futures it opens or forecloses. And to do that, one needs the past to make sense of the present.

The classical notion of tyranny and the modern concept of fascism are both helpful in understanding the Putin regime, but neither is sufficient. The basic weaknesses of tyrannies are generic and long knownrecorded, for example, by Plato in his Republic. Tyrants resist good advice, become obsessive as they age and fall ill, and wish to leave an undying legacy. All of this is certainly evident in Putins decision to invade Ukraine. Fascism, a specific form of tyranny, also helps to explain todays Russia, which is characterized by a cult of personality, a de facto single party, mass propaganda, the privileging of will over reason, and a politics of us-versus-them. Because fascism places violence over reason, it can be defeated only by force. Fascism was quite popularand not just in fascist countriesuntil the end of World War II. It was discredited only because Germany and Italy lost the war.

Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, January 2020

Although Russia is fascist at the top, it is not fascist through and through. A specific emptiness lies at the center of Putins regime. It is the emptiness in the eyes of Russian officials in photographs as they look into a vacant middle distance, a habit they believe projects masculine imperturbability. Putins regime functions not by mobilizing society with the help of a single grand vision, as fascist Germany and Italy did, but by demobilizing individuals, assuring them that there are no certainties and no institutions that can be trusted. This habit of demobilization has been a problem for Russian leaders during the war in Ukraine because they have educated their citizens to watch television rather than take up arms. Even so, the nihilism that undergirds demobilization poses a direct threat to democracy.

The Putin regime is imperialist and oligarchic, dependent for its existence on propaganda that claims that all the world is ever such. While Russias support of fascism, white nationalism, and chaos brings it a certain kind of supporter, its bottomless nihilism is what attracts citizens of democracies who are not sure where to find ethical landmarkswho have been taught, on the right, that democracy is a natural consequence of capitalism or, on the left, that all opinions are equally valid. The gift of Russian propagandists has been to take things apart, to peel away the layers of the onion until nothing is left but the tears of others and their own cynical laughter. Russia won the propaganda war the last time it invaded Ukraine, in 2014, targeting vulnerable Europeans and Americans on social media with tales of Ukrainians as Nazis, Jews, feminists, and gays. But much has changed since then: a generation of younger Ukrainians has come to power that communicates better than the older Russians in the Kremlin.

The defense of Putins regime has been offered by people operating as literary critics, ever disassembling and dissembling. Ukrainian resistance, embodied by President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been more like literature: careful attention to art, no doubt, but for the purpose of articulating values. If all one has is literary criticism, one accepts that everything melts into air and concedes the values that make democratic politics possible. But when one has literature, one experiences a certain solidity, a sense that embodying values is more interesting and more courageous than dismissing or mocking them.

Creation comes before critique and outlasts it; action is better than ridicule. As Pericles put it, We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. The contrast between the sly black suits of the Russian ideologues and propagandists and the earnest olive tones of Ukrainian leaders and soldiers calls to mind one of the most basic requirements of democracy: individuals must openly assert values despite the risk attendant upon doing so. The ancient philosophers understood that virtues were as important as material factors to the rise and fall of regimes. The Greeks knew that democracy could yield to oligarchy, the Romans knew that republics could become empires, and both knew that such transformations were moral as well as institutional. This knowledge is at the foundation of Western literary and philosophical traditions. As Aristotle recognized, truth was both necessary to democracy and vulnerable to propaganda. Every revival of democracy, including the American one of 1776 with its self-evident truths, has depended on ethical assertions: not that democracy was bound to exist, but that it should exist, as an expression of rebellious ethical commitment against the ubiquitous gravitational forces of oligarchy and empire.

This has been true of every revival of democracy except for the most recent one, which followed the eastern European revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. At that point, as Russia and Ukraine emerged as independent states, a perverse faith was lodged in the end of history, the lack of alternatives to democracy, and the nature of capitalism. Many Americans had lost the natural fear of oligarchy and empire (their own or others) and forgotten the organic connection of democracy to ethical commitment and physical courage. Late twentieth-century talk of democracy conflated the correct moral claim that the people should rule with the incorrect factual claim that democracy is the natural state of affairs or the inevitable condition of a favored nation. This misunderstanding made democracies vulnerable, whether old or new.

The current Russian regime is one consequence of the mistaken belief that democracy happens naturally and that all opinions are equally valid. If this were true, then Russia would indeed be a democracy, as Putin claims. The war in Ukraine is a test of whether a tyranny that claims to be a democracy can triumph and thereby spread its logical and ethical vacuum. Those who took democracy for granted were sleepwalking toward tyranny. The Ukrainian resistance is the wake-up call.

On the Sunday before Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, I predicted on American television that Zelensky would remain in Kyiv if Russia invaded. I was mocked for this prediction, just as I was when I predicted the previous Russian invasion, the danger that U.S. President Donald Trump posed to American democracy, and Trumps coup attempt. Former advisers to Trump and President Barack Obama disagreed with me in a class at Yale University, where I teach. They were doing nothing more than reflecting the American consensus. Americans tend to see the war in Ukraine in the long shadow of the 9/11 attacks and the American moral and military failures that followed. In the Biden administration, officials feared that taking the side of Kyiv risked repeating the fall of Kabul. Among younger people and on the political left, a deeper unease arose from the lack of a national reckoning over the invasion of Iraq, justified at the time with the notion that destroying one regime would create a tabula rasa from which democracy would naturally emerge. The idiocy of this argument made a generation doubt the possibility that war and democracy could have something to do with each other. The unease with another military effort was perhaps understandable, but the resemblance between Iraq and Ukraine was only superficial. Ukrainians werent imposing their own vision on another country. They were protecting their right to choose their own leaders against an invasion designed to undo their democracy and eliminate their society.

The Trump administration had spread cynicism from the other direction. First Trump denied Ukraine weapons in order to blackmail Zelensky. Then he showed that a U.S. president would attempt a coup to stay in power after an electoral defeat. To watch fellow citizens die in an attempt to overthrow democracy is the opposite of risking ones life to protect it. Of course, if democracy is only about larger forces and not about ethics, then Trumps actions would make perfect sense. If one believes that capitalist selfishness automatically becomes democratic virtue, and that lying about who won an election is just expressing an opinion like any other, then Trump is a normal politician. In fact, he brazenly personifies the Russian idea that there are no values and no truth.

Americans had largely forgotten that democracy is a value for which an elected officialor a citizen, for that mattermight choose to live or die. By taking a risk, Zelensky transformed his role from that of a bit player in a Trump scandal to a hero of democracy. Americans assumed that he would want to flee because they had convinced themselves of the supremacy of impersonal forces: if they bring democracy, so much the better, but when they dont, people submit. I need ammunition, not a ride was Zelenskys response to U.S. urgings to leave Kyiv. This was perhaps not as eloquent as the funeral oration of Pericles, but it gets across the same point: there is honor in choosing the right way to die on behalf of a people seeking the right way to live.

For 30 years, too many Americans took for granted that democracy was something that someone else didor rather, that something else did: history by ending, alternatives by disappearing, capitalism by some inexplicable magic. (Russia and China are capitalist, after all.) That era ended when Zelensky emerged one night in February to film himself saying, The president is here. If a leader believes that democracy is just a result of larger factors, then he will flee when those larger factors seem to be against him. The issue of responsibility will never arise. But democracy demands earnest struggle, as the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said. Ukrainian resistance to what appeared to be overwhelming force reminded the world that democracy is not about accepting the apparent verdict of history. It is about making history; striving toward human values despite the weight of empire, oligarchy, and propaganda; and, in so doing, revealing previously unseen possibilities.

On the surface, Zelenskys simple truth that the president is here was meant to undo Russian propaganda, which was claiming that he had fled the city. But the video, shot in the open air as Kyiv was under attack, was also a recovery of the meaning of freedom of speech, which has been forgotten. The Greek playwright Euripides understood that the purpose of freedom of speech was to speak truth to power. The free speaker clarifies a dangerous world not only with what he says but by the risk he takes when he speaks. By saying the president is here as the bombs fell and the assassins approached, Zelensky was living in truth, in the words of Vaclav Havel, or walking the talk, as one of my students in prison put it. Havels most famous essay on the topic, The Power of the Powerless, was dedicated to the memory of the philosopher Jan Patocka, who died shortly after being interrogated by the communist Czechoslovak secret police. Putin, a KGB officer from 1975 until 1991, extends the sadistic tradition of interrogators: nothing is true, nothing is worthy of sacrifice, everything is a joke, everyone is for sale. Might makes right, only fools believe otherwise, and they should pay for being fools.

After 1991, the nihilism of late communism flowed together with the complacent Western idea that democracy was merely the result of impersonal forces. If it turned out that those forces pushed in different directions, for example, toward oligarchy or empire, what was there then to say? But in the tradition of Euripides or Havel or now Zelensky, it is taken for granted that the larger forces are always against the individual, and that citizenship is realized through the responsibility one takes for words and the risks one takes with deeds. Truth is not with power, but a defense against it. That is why freedom of speech is necessary: not to make excuses, not to conform, but to assert values into the world, because so doing is a precondition of self-rule.

In their post-1989 decadence, many citizens of North American and European democracies came to associate freedom of speech with the ability of the rich to exploit media to broadcast self-indulgent nonsense. When one recalls the purpose of freedom of speech, however, one cares less about how many social media followers an oligarch has and more about how that oligarch became wealthy in the first place. Oligarchs such as Putin and Trump do the opposite of speaking truth to power: they tell lies for power. Trump told a big lie about the election (that he won); Putin told a big lie aboutUkraine (that it doesnt exist). Putins fake history of eastern Europe, one of his justifications for the war, is so outrageous that it provides a chance to recall the sense of freedom of speech. If one of the richest men in the world, in command of a huge army, claims that a neighboring country does not exist, this is not just an example of free expression. It is genocidal hate speech, a form of action that must be resisted by other forms of action.

In an essay published in July 2021, Putin argued that events of the tenth century predetermined the unity of Ukraine and Russia. This is grotesque as history, since the only human creativity it allows in the course of a thousand years and hundreds of millions of lives is that of the tyrant to retrospectively and arbitrarily choose his own genealogy of power. Nations are not determined by official myth, but created by people who make connections between past and future. As the French historian Ernest Renan put it, the nation is a daily plebiscite. The German historian Frank Golczewski was right to say that national identity is not a reflection of ethnicity, language, and religion but rather an assertion of a certain historical and political possibility. Something similar can be said of democracy: it can be made only by people who want to make it and in the name of values they affirm by taking risks for them.

The Ukrainian nation exists. The results of the daily plebiscite are clear, and the earnest struggle is evident. No society should have to resist a Russian invasion in order to be recognized. It should not have taken the deaths of dozens of journalists for us to see the basic truths that they were trying to report before and during the invasion. That it took so much effort (and so much unnecessary bloodshed) for the West to see Ukraine at all reveals the challenge that Russian nihilism poses. It shows how close the West came to conceding the tradition of democracy.

If one forgets that the purpose of free speech is to speak truth to power, one fails to see that big lies told by powerful people weaken democracy. The Putin regime makes this clear by organizing politics around the shameless production of fiction. Russias honesty, the argument goes, consists of accepting that there is no truth. Unlike the West, Russia avoids hypocrisy by dismissing all values at the outset. Putin stays in power by way of such strategic relativism: not by making his own country better but by making other countries look worse. Sometimes, that means acting to destabilize themfor instance, in Russias failed electoral intervention in Ukraine in 2014, its successful digital support of Brexit in the United Kingdom in 2016, and its successful digital support of Trump in 2016.

This philosophical system enables Putin to act but also to protect himself. Russians can be told that Ukraine is the center of the world and then that Syria is the center of the world and then again that Ukraine is the center of the world. They can be told that when their armed forces intervene in Ukraine or Syria, the other side starts killing its own people. They can be told one day that war with Ukraine is impossible and the next that war with Ukraine is inevitable, as happened in February. They can be told that Ukrainians are really Russians who want to be invaded and also Nazi satanists who must be exterminated. Putin cannot be backed into a corner. Because Russian power is equivalent to control over a closed media system, he can simply declare victory and change the subject. If Russia loses the war with Ukraine, he will just claim that he has won, and Russians will believe him or pretend to do so.

For such a regime to survive, the notion that democracy rests on the courage to tell the truth must be eliminated with violence if it cannot be laughed out of existence. Night after night, Kremlin propagandists explain on television that there cannot be a person such as Zelensky, a nation such as Ukraine, or a system such as democracy. Self-rule must be a joke; Ukraine must be a joke; Zelensky must be a joke. If not, the Kremlins whole story that Russia is superior because it accepts that nothing is true falls to pieces. If Ukrainians really can constitute a society and really can choose their leaders, then why shouldnt Russians do the same?

Zelensky at an event commemorating fallen Ukrainian soldiers, Lviv, August 2022

Russians must be deterred from such thoughts by arguments about Ukraine that are as repulsive as they are untrue. Russian war propaganda about Ukraine is deeply, aggressively, deliberately false, and that is its purpose: to make grotesque lying seem normal and to wear down the human capacity to make distinctions and check emotions. When Russia murders Ukrainian prisoners of war en masse and blames Ukraine, it is not really making a truth claim: it is just trying to draw Western journalists into reporting all sides equally so they will ignore the discoverable facts. The point is to make the whole war seem incomprehensible and dirty, thereby discouraging Western involvement. When Russian fascists call Ukrainians fascists, they are playing this game, and too many others join in. It is ridiculous to treat Zelensky as part of both a world Jewish conspiracy and a Nazi plot, but Russian propaganda routinely makes both claims. But the absurdity is the point.

Democracy and nationhood depend on the capacity of individuals to assess the world for themselves and take unexpected risks; their destruction depends on asserting grand falsehoods that are known to be such. Zelensky made this point in one of his evening addresses this March: that falsehood demands violence, not because violence can make falsehood true, but because it can kill or humiliate people who have the courage to speak truth to power. As the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin has observed, to live inside a lie is to become the tool of someone else. To kill or die inside a lie is even worse, in that it enables a regime such as Russias to reconstitute itself. Killing for lies has generational consequences for Russia, even beyond the tens of thousands of dead and mutilated young citizens. An older Russian generation is forcing a younger one through a gauntlet, leaving the political terrain so slippery with blood that the young can never advance, and the old can hold their places until death. Ukraine is already governed by a generation that is accustomed to choosing its own leaders, an experience Russians have never had. In this sense, too, the war is generational. Its violence, in all its forms, is meant to eliminate the Ukrainian future. Russian state media has made Moscows genocidal aspiration plain, over and over again. In occupied territories, Russians execute male Ukrainian citizens or force them to go and die at the front. Russians rape Ukrainian women to prevent them from wishing to have children. The millions of Ukrainians forcibly deported to Russia, many of them women with young children or of child-bearing age, have to accept what they know to be false to avoid prison and torture. Less dramatic but still significant is Russias deliberate destruction of Ukrainian archives, libraries, universities, and publishing houses. The war is fought to control territory but also wombs and mindsin other words, the future.

Russia embodies fascism while claiming to fight it; Russians commit genocide while claiming to prevent it. This propaganda is not entirely ineffective: the fact that Moscow claims to be fighting Nazis does distract many observers from the fascism of Putins regime. And before North Americans and Europeans praise themselves for winning the battle of narratives, they should look to the global South. There, Putins story of the war prevails, even as Asians and Africans pay a horrible price for the war that he has chosen.

Putins propaganda machine, like the rest of his regime, is funded by revenue from oil and gas exports. The current Russian order, in other words, depends for its existence on a world that has not made the transition to sustainable energy. Russias war on Ukraine can be understood as a kind of preview of what uncontrolled climate change will look like: petulant wars waged by mendacious hydrocarbon oligarchs, racial violence instead of the pursuit of human survival via technology, shortages and famine in much of the world, and catastrophe in parts of the global South.

In Ukrainian history, political fiction accompanies political famine. In the early 1930s, when Stalin undertook what he called an internal colonization of the Soviet Union, much was expected of Ukraines fertile soil. And when his plan for rapid collectivization of agriculture failed, Stalin blamed a long list of ready scapegoats: first Ukrainian communists, then imaginary Ukrainian nationalists whom the communists supposedly served, then imaginary Polish agents whom the nationalists supposedly served. The Politburo, meanwhile, enforced requisitions and other punitive measures that ensured that about four million Ukrainians perished. Those abroad who tried to organize relief, including the Ukrainian feminist Milena Rudnytska, who happened to be of Jewish origin, were called Nazis. This list of fantasy enemies from 1933 is startlingly similar to Russias list today.

There is a larger historical pattern here, one in which the exploitation of the fruits of Ukrainian soil is justified by fantasies about the land and the people. In ancient times, the Greeks imagined monsters and miracles in the lands that are now Ukraine. During the Renaissance, as Polish nobles enserfed Ukrainian peasants, they invented for themselves a myth of racial superiority. After the Russian empire claimed Ukrainian territory from a partitioned Poland, its scholars invented a convenient story of how the two lands were one, a canard that Putin recycled in his essay last year. Putin has copied Stalins fantasiesand Hitlers, for that matter. Ukraine was the center of a Nazi hunger plan whereby Stalins collective farms were to be seized and used to feed Germany and other European territories, causing tens of millions of Soviet citizens to starve. As they fought for control of Ukrainian foodstuffs, Nazis portrayed Ukrainians as a simple colonial people who would be happy to be ruled by their superiors. This was also Putins view.

It appears that Putin has his own hunger plan. Ukraine is one of the most important exporters of agricultural goods in the world. But the Russian navy has blockaded Ukrainian ports in the Black Sea, Russian soldiers have set fire to Ukrainian fields, and Russian artillery has targeted grain silos and the rail infrastructure needed to get grain to the ports. Like Stalin in 1933, Putin has taken deliberate steps to risk the starvation of millions. Lebanon relies heavily on Ukrainian grain, as do Ethiopia, Yemen, and the fragile nations of the Sahel. Yet the spread of hunger is not simply a matter of Ukrainian food not reaching its normal markets. The anticipation of shortages drives up food prices everywhere. The Chinese can be expected to hoard food, driving prices higher still. The weakest and the poorest will suffer first. And that is the point. When those who have no voice die, those who rule by lethal spectacle choose the meaning of their deaths. And that is what Putin may do.

Whereas Stalin covered up the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s with propaganda, Putin is using hunger itself as propaganda. For months now, Russian propagandists have blamed a looming famine on Ukraine. The horror of telling such a lie to vulnerable African and Asian populations is easier to understand in light of the Putin regimes racist, colonial mindset. This is, after all, a regime that allowed an image of Obama fellating a banana to be projected onto the wall of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, and whose media declared the last year of the Obama administration the year of the monkey. Putin, like other white nationalists, is obsessed with demography and fears that his race will be outnumbered.

The war itself has followed a racial arithmetic. Some of the first Russian soldiers to be killed in battle were ethnic Asians from eastern Russia, and many of those who have died since were forcibly conscripted Ukrainians from the Donbas. Ukrainian women and children have been deported to Russia because they are seen as assimilable, people who can bolster the ranks of white Russians. To starve Africans and Asians, as Putin sees it, is a way to transfer the demographic stress to Europe by way of a wave of refugees fleeing hunger. The Russian bombing of Syrian civilians followed a similar logic.

Nothing in the hunger plan is hidden. At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022, Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of the state-run network RT, said that all of our hope lies in famine. As the skilled propagandist understands, the point of starving Africans and Asians is to create a backdrop for propaganda. As they begin to die, Ukrainians will be scapegoated. This might or might not work. All past fantasies about Ukraine and its foodstuffs were at one time believed by influential people. Russian propaganda today has an edge in the global South. In much of Africa, Russia is a known quantity, whereas Ukraine is not. Few African leaders have publicly opposed Putins war, and some might be persuaded to parrot his talking points. Across the global South, it is not widely known that Ukraine is a leading exporter of foodnor that it is a poor country with a GDP per capita comparable to that of the countries it feeds, such as Egypt and Algeria.

There is some reason for hope. Ukrainians have been trying to communicate the reality of their position to people in the global South, so that they can speak the truth about Moscows hunger plan and thereby make it impossible. And as Ukraine has gained better weapons from the United States and Europe, Russias hold on the Black Sea has weakened. In July, Ukraine and Russia signed agreements with Turkey that should, in principle, allow some Ukrainian grain to leave the Black Sea and feed Africans and Asians. Yet the day after it signed the agreement, Russia fired missiles at the port of Odessa, from which Ukraine ships much of its grain. A few days after that, Russia killed Ukraines leading agribusinessman in a missile strike. The only sure way to feed the world is for Ukrainian soldiers to fight their way through the province of Kherson to the Black Sea and to victory.

Ukraine is fighting a war against a tyranny that is also a colonial power. Self-rule means not just defending the democratic principle of choosing ones own rulers but also respecting the equality of states. Russian leaders have been clear that they believe that only some states are sovereign, and that Ukraine is nothing more than a colony. A Ukrainian victory would defend Ukrainian sovereignty in particular and the principle of sovereignty in general. It would also improve the prospects of other post-colonial states. As the economist Amartya Sen has argued, imperial famines result from political choices about distribution, not shortages of food. If Ukraine wins, it will resume exporting foodstuffs to the global South. By removing a great risk of suffering and instability in the global South, a victorious Ukraine would preserve the possibility of global cooperation on shared problems such as climate change.

For Europe, it is also essential that Ukraine win and Russia lose. The European Union is a collection of post-imperial states: some of them former imperial metropoles, some of them post-imperial peripheries. Ukrainians understand that joining the European Union is the way to secure statehood from a vulnerable peripheral position. Victory for Ukraine will have to involve a prospect of EU membership. As many Russians understand, Russia must lose, and for similar reasons. The European states that today pride themselves on their traditions of law and tolerance only truly became democracies after losing their last imperial war. A Russia that is fighting an imperial war in Ukraine can never embrace the rule of law, and a Russia that controls Ukrainian territory will never allow free elections. A Russia that loses such a war, one in which Putinism is a negative legacy, has a chance. Despite what Russian propaganda claims, Moscow loses wars with some frequency, and every period of reform in modern Russian history has followed a military defeat.

Most urgently, a Ukrainian victory is needed to prevent further death and atrocity in Ukraine. But the outcome of the war matters throughout the world, not just in the physical realm of pain and hunger but also in the realm of values, where possible futures are enabled. Ukrainian resistance reminds us that democracy is about human risk and human principles, and a Ukrainian victory would give democracy a fresh wind. The Ukrainian trident, which adorns the uniforms of Ukrainians now at war, extends back through the countrys traditions into ancient history, providing references that can be used to rethink and revive democracy.

Athena and Poseidon can be brought together. Athena, after all, was the goddess not only of justice but of just war. Poseidon had in mind not only violence but commerce. Athenians chose Athena as their patron but then built a fountain for Poseidon in the Acropolison the very spot, legend has it, where his trident struck. A victory for Ukraine would vindicate and recombine these values: Athenas of deliberation and prosperity, Poseidons of decisiveness and trade. If Ukraine can win back its south, the sea-lanes that fed the ancient Greeks will be reopened, and the world will be enlightened by the Ukrainian example of risk-taking for self-rule. In the end, the olive tree will need the trident. Peace will only follow victory. The world might get an olive branch, but only if the Ukrainians can fight their way back to the sea.

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Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism - Foreign Affairs Magazine

‘A bamboo toothbrush won’t save the planet’: Twiggy enlists cult cartoon Rick and Morty to sell green hydrogen – Crikey

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We would absolutely love to know how much Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Future Industries paid for What The Green Energy, a new website spruiking green hydrogen featuring Rick and Morty.

In a combination of words that has no right to make any sense, mining billionaire Andrew Twiggy Forrest has enlisted the help of Rick and Morty to educate the public about green hydrogen. For those whove forgotten, Rick and Morty is a cult cartoon that the most irritating people imaginable made their entire personality for a few months in 2017. Fortescue Future Industries, the green energy wing of Twiggys Fortescue, has put together a website called What The Green Hydrogen, using the main characters to put forward the idea of renewables. Its, well, about as strange as it sounds, filtering the surreal, nihilistic aesthetic of the show through PR speak for example:

Before we join forces to save the planet, theres something you should know about us.

Were owned by a mining company. A really big one. Called Fortescue.

News done fearlessly. Join us today and save 50%.

It is one of the largest iron ore extractors in the world, and it is also a heavy carbon emitter.

But the planet isnt going to be saved by a bamboo toothbrush company. Its a little late for that. Our only hope is change on an industrial scale.

Predictably, the website tones down the horrific gore and relentless nihilism of the show although there is a fight scene involving a giant worm, with a great snapping head of interlocking cavernous maws, which gets decapitated (if 12-second marketing videos made by mining companies require spoiler alerts then spoiler alert, I guess). The sequence sums up the weirdness of the whole enterprise. Rick is just there, fighting a big worm in a mechanised suit, which someone has clearly had a lot of fun putting together. But aside from depicting a battle to save the planet, were not sure were making the connection to the rest of the campaign.

We would give anything to know how much the company paid for all this though we note that while theyve sprung for the image, they havent secured the voice talents of Justin Roiland (as far as we can tell), who voices both characters. We guess even Twiggy money has its limits.

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Peter FrayEditor-in-chief

Charlie Lewis

Tips and Murmurs Editor @theshufflediary

Charlie pens Crikey's daily Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet. He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.

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'A bamboo toothbrush won't save the planet': Twiggy enlists cult cartoon Rick and Morty to sell green hydrogen - Crikey

Nuke your city with this interactive map – Big Think

Rare color photo of the first nuclear explosion at Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Ever since, we have been living in the Atomic Age. (Credit: National Nuclear Security Administration / Public domain)

We tend to remember only the good things. That is why most 1980s nostalgia is rose-tinted. Rarely mentioned about that decade was the constant sense of dread, the ever-present knot in your stomach. Why? Because you knew that everything and everyone you knew could be over in a flash. So what, exactly, was the point of anything?

The nihilism of that age was nuclear-inspired. At the tail end of the Cold War, East and West pointed vast arsenals of atomic missiles at each other, powerful enough to destroy global civilization several times over.

Hanging over the world like an atomic Sword of Damocles was the military doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction MAD for short, and mad in essence. Its rather shaky foundation was that only a lunatic would start a nuclear war.

MAD had a few obvious flaws. What if one side made the rational calculation that the other side would not be fast enough to strike back? What if there was a system malfunction resulting in an accidental launch? Or a radar glitch falsely showing an attack? And what if a lunatic actually did seize power?

But then Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank and the Soviet Union collapsed. With it, the nuclear nightmare vanished into thin air. Except that it didnt, really. Many happily confused the conclusion of the Cold War with the end of the Atomic Age. But that was wishful thinking. On July 16, 1945, when the first A-bomb went off in the New Mexico desert, humanity went nuclear, and we cant unring that bell.

We may not like to think about it, but the nuclear threat is here to stay. That became obvious after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Although as yet a conventional conflict, it has at least three atomic angles.

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First, there are Putins not-so-subtle hints that Russia may use nukes if the West gets too directly involved and/or the tide of war starts to turn against Moscow. Those threats may not be entirely credible, but nobody is in a hurry to find out. In other words, they have proved effective at limiting the shape and size of third-party responses to the war.

Second, there are the nuclear power stations on the front line being used as tactical chips in a high-stakes game of atomic poker. First Chernobyl, now Zaporizhzhia Europes largest such installation, reportedly used by Russians to store material and launch attacks, and which is regularly under fire (for which both sides hold the other responsible). A few days ago, according to Ukraines president Volodymyr Zelensky, a radiation accident was only narrowly avoided.

Finally, theres the sobering thought that this war might not have happened at all, had Ukraine not given up the nuclear stockpile it inherited from the Soviet Union. It did so in 1994, in return for security guarantees by the U.S., the UK, and Russia. Clearly, other countries now see what such guarantees are worth and may be considering going nuclear themselves as a precaution.

The worst solution to a seemingly intractable problem is to ignore it. A long, hard look is better at least the issue wont be trivialized, and perhaps there is hope behind the horror.

In that spirit, welcome to NUKEMAP. Using declassified info on the impact of various types of nuclear weapons, this web tool allows users to model a nuclear attack on a target of their choice. NUKEMAP was created in 2012 by Alex Wellerstein, a professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Professor Wellersteins particular field is the study of the history of nuclear weapons.

Talking to Newsweek, Professor Wellerstein said that NUKEMAP was meant to help people, himself included, understand the true impact of nuclear explosions: Some people think [nuclear bombs] destroy everything in the world all at once, some people think they are not very different from conventional bombs. The reality is somewhere in between.

He has described NUKEMAP as stomach-churning, but also as the most fun Ive had with Google Maps ever. Sounds a bit like your favorite rollercoaster ride, minus the long wait. Ready?

Go to NUKEMAP, pick a target location (the default is Lafayette Street in Manhattans Soho district), and then select your weapon of choice, with a variety of yields. The smallest is an unnamed North Korean weapon tested in 2006 (with a blast yield of a mere six tons that is, equivalent to six tons of TNT). You can also test the one that started it all, Little Boy (15 kilotons), which was dropped on Hiroshima, as well as the largest one, the Russian Tsar Bomba (100 megaton, but never used).

You can also pick whether youd like the bomb to explode in the air or on the ground and whether youd like to see the number of casualties and the fallout area (yes and yes, obviously). There are a bunch of more sophisticated settings, but by now your finger is itching to press DETONATE.

The effects are stomach-churning indeed: Large zones around ground zero are effectively vaporized. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions killed. Many more wounded.

Professor Wellersteins NUKEMAP has been around for more than a decade and has racked up more than 275 million detonations over that period. Unsurprisingly, there has been an uptick in visitor numbers since the start of the Ukraine War, with some days numbering more than 300,000 visitors.

But those visitors dont even see the worst effects of a potential nuclear war. Yes, they get a sense of the destruction and the casualties, but worse will come and were not even talking about radiation.

A recent study examining the climatic effects of nuclear war found that even a limited nuclear exchange say, an atomic war between India and Pakistan could send up enough soot into the atmosphere to reduce global calorie production by 50% and threaten more than two billion people with starvation. A worst-case scenario all out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would result in a 90% drop for up to four years, which could result in global famine killing more than five billion.

That feeling youve got now: thats what I call proper 1980s nostalgia.

Strange Maps #1167

Got a strange map? Let me know at [emailprotected].

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Nuke your city with this interactive map - Big Think

When Kanye threw shade on ‘that gang in Philly’ he was probably coming for Penn – Billy Penn

It was only a matter of time before Philadelphia found itself in the middle of some Kanye West beef.

The rapper-slash-entrepreneur-slash-infamous-shitposter on Thursday morning called out Adidas GM Daniel Cherry III in a now-deleted Instagram post. Im a nice person but Im starting to feel like not being nice, West wrote under a screenshot of Cherry from an article on comic book news website Bleeding Cool. And dont try to tell me what gang you used to role [sic] with in Philly this time.

The post, obviously, sent the internet into a spiral of confusion.

Who was Daniel Cherry III and what had he done to make West mad? Was he, in fact, gang-affiliated? And, as frequent Kanye collaborator Pusha T. wrote in a comment, are there even gangs in Philly?

Our take: This disagreement has nothing to do with gang affiliation and everything to do with the University of Pennsylvania and a failed business deal.

When Cherry lived in Philly during the 1990s, he wasnt in a gang. He was a student at Penn, where he majored in Africana and Urban Studies. During his time at the Ivy League university, Cherry was involved with the Black Student League and the Greenfield Intercultural Center, which works with students to create programming around cross-cultural understanding.

Cherry was a thoughtful, very kind, and very generous guy just an all-around engaged Penn student, his college roommate told Billy Penn over the phone, speaking on condition of anonymity (likely for fear of Kanyes wrath). He was not in a gang by any affiliation.

The Adidas head honcho recently opened up about his experience at Penn in a lengthy Linkedin post, where he reflected on what it meant for his oldest daughter to attend lacrosse and tennis camps on the Philadelphia campus.

[Visiting Penn] brought back a flood of memories for me, Cherry wrote. I had to leave my family, my friends, the only support system I had, and the entire world I knew in order to achieve my personal ambition in life which was at the time simply to escape poverty and a small-towns oppressive racism and nihilism.

So, why is West deciding to blow up this Penn grads spot? Because business is personal.

The former director of advertising for the mythic Philly-bred brand AND1, Cherry has made a career out of working at the nexus of entertainment, apparel, and sports culture.

When Cherry left his post as general manager at DC Comics after only 16 months, rumor had it he was headed to work with West on a new, unspecified venture. That obviously didnt pan out. Cherry hopped straight from DC Comics to his current role at Adidas.

Now here we are, watching West drag Phillys name through the mud just for the sake of a viral clapback.

The rapper continued to throw jabs at Cherry for the rest of Thursday afternoon. One post reads, If you not [sic] looking to work at Yeezy full time, Dont text me or nobody I know. Were not looking for help. Our personal favorite? The How to create an angry ye starter pack, which insinuates that Adidas has been copying Wests designs.

West himself is no stranger to the University of Pennsylvania. His cousin Devo Harris, the former co-founder of Kanyes G.O.O.D music label, attended the Wharton School of Business while John Legend was studying English, and the two roomed together before Harris introduced Legend to West.

When West referenced that gang you used to [roll] with in Philly, perhaps he was referring to the small subsection of Penn alums with street cred.

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When Kanye threw shade on 'that gang in Philly' he was probably coming for Penn - Billy Penn

Humanity Is Doing Its Best Impression of a Black Hole – WIRED

The one thing that all human civilizations have in common is that they end. For 10,000 years or so, that's been the common factor.

You can make an argument that civilizations tend not to last very long once they get to a certain level of tech. When they get to the point where they would be able to send probes out across the galaxy, or communicate at the speed of light, they don't last long in that stage. You've made a lot of technological advances, and with something like nuclear weapons or climate change, you start to be able to impact a planet as a whole. And once you get there, bad things start to happen.

With nuclear weapons, we could literally wipe ourselves out. And with the climate, anywhere close to the worst-case scenarios, if we keep going the way we're going, civilization will collapse. Large parts of the Earth will be unlivable. There are people around now who are going to experience a very different Earth. If they're still alive, which in the nuclear case, they probably won't be.

The entropy of the universe means that it gets increasingly disordered over long spans of time. But for civilization on Earth, this is not so much entropy as it is just collapse.

It's not a slow process. Entropy does its thingit wins in the end. But the time scales that are relevant for these processes, the physical time scales are very long. And what we're talking about here is very short.

For nuclear, at this moment, if someoneBiden or Putinjust decides theyve had enough, one person, one person decides, that's it. They can push a button. The way everything is structured, there's no way to countermand that, and it's done. In 30 minutes, we're all done. One person. What kind of civilization sets that up, so one person can wipe out everyone and take the entire planet down? Everything, all living things, everything. That's a little different from just entropy and historical progression.

I'm not trying to be depressing. It's a beautiful day here in Chicago. It's just very easy to get despondent. And then you go and you work on black holes, and it's uplifting in a very strange way. They're beautiful. As is the fact that we as a species can sit here and contemplate the age of the universe.

There seems to be a kind of creeping nihilism, because there's so much that's out of our control as individuals. Ive tried to spin my own version as a constructive nihilism. I am very down about our planetary happenings. But in thinking about the larger universe, there is, I think, a certain beauty in realizing our insignificance. I think the trouble there is the temptation to give upyou get complacent.

I know exactly what you're talking about, because I definitely do the same thing. It's so easy to get despondent. I do have this solace that it just doesn't matter. It's almost like I don't need to take it so personally. The universe is going to be fine.

But the planet really needs people to be engagedthat's clear. And it's not going to happen from enlightened politicians, unless everyone starts pushing for it. We do need enlightened politicians, we need enlightened corporate leaders. But we also need an enlightened citizenry that just says: Enough is enough. We can see what's happening to the planet now. It's what the scientists said would happenand they're telling us it's just going to get worse. This is not OK.

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Humanity Is Doing Its Best Impression of a Black Hole - WIRED

Machine Gun Kelly takes the wheel in gripping crime drama One Way – Boston Herald

MOVIE REVIEW

ONE WAY

Rated R. On VOD.

Grade B+

Gripping and clever, although not entirely, One Way tells the story of a fugitive on the run, or I should say, on a bus, trying to get away from a gang from which he has stolen cash and cocaine.

When this crime drama starts, Freddy (Colson Baker aka Machine Gun Kelly) and his two partners have already stolen the goods from Freddys lover and gang leader Vic (Drea De Matteo, The Sopranos). One of Freddys cohorts is already captured and is about to be killed. Another, a guy named JJ (Luis Da Silva Jr.), is in a car on the road following the bus and terrified. Freddy has a gun, the cash and coke. But he has been shot in the stomach, and hes bleeding out.

Also on the bus is the no-nonsense driver (the talented Thomas Francis Murphy); an underage girl named Rachel (Storm Reid, TVs Euphoria) texting with a man shes supposed to meet named Smokie; a pregnant woman on her own; and a social worker named Will (Travis Fimmel). Also in the mix are Freddys estranged, criminal father Fred Sr. (Kevin Bacon), Freddys estranged ex-wife Christine (Meagan Holder), who is a nurse, and Freddy and Christines daughter Lily (Casie Baker, who is MGKs real-life daughter).

In addition to its almost Shakespearean family ties (Freddys father was also Vics lover, making Freddys connection borderline incestuous), One Way pumps a hefty weight of metaphor, The bus ride is a symbol of Freddys life. How long before it might end at the Cairo, Ga., bus station? People get on and get off. A ghostly figure appears to a hallucinating Freddy. Is he the Banquo of One Way?

Directed by Irishman and Roger Corman school of filmmaking graduate Andrew Baird and written by Irishman Ben Conway, both making their feature film debuts (Baird has another film awaiting release), One Way is steeped in morbid nihilism. Freddy cannot stop the bleeding. But that doesnt stop him from getting to know Rachel after she asks to borrow one of his phones. She notices that he has two and assumes he is a gang banger. Will suspiciously intervenes to make sure Freddy isnt trying to take advantage of the girl. The pregnant woman spies on the others. The bus driver might be a Southern-fried Charon ferrying his passengers to the underworld.

With his nose ring and bleached locks, Freddy might be a rock star. Freddy has a desperate plan to get JJ to drive him to a vet to get stitched up. Later, he plans to meet Christine in a parking lot and let her do it. In desperation, Freddy takes a few heavy snorts of coke.

In many ways, One Way is a modern-day re-imagining of the masterful Carol Reed thriller Odd Man Out (1947) with James Mason as a wounded Belfast gunman on the run from the police and increasingly cornered. Both films have a powerful nightmarish element.

Baker, who has played leads twice before, is not yet a great actor. But he is a reasonably good one, and he has charisma and screen presence. In one of the films more Shakespearean twists, Freddy has a rare blood type and needs his father to donate his blood to survive.

As you might expect for a movie starring a musician, the music by British composer Raffertie (I May Destroy You) is a strong element. Also noteworthy are singles by Zachary Stephen Selwyn, including the suitably titled tune New Suit for My Hangin.

One Way contains violence, profanity and mature themes.

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Machine Gun Kelly takes the wheel in gripping crime drama One Way - Boston Herald

Joe Lycett trolls Liz Truss again after becoming next PM: ‘Smashed it babe’ – PinkNews

Joe Lycett sarcastically congratualted Liz Truss for the win. (Getty)

Joe Lycett has continued his satirical reign of terror after Liz Truss was confirmed as Britains next prime minister.

Lycett made the front page of the Daily Mail on Monday morning (5 September), hours before Truss was confirmed as the new Tory leader and incoming PM, over his sarcastic appearance on the BBCs Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

After Truss was interviewed by Kuenssberg, Lycett left the host stunned by insisting that while left-wing voices might dismiss Truss as the backwash of the available [Tory] MPs, he would never say that because he is incredibly right-wing.

He continued his bit afterTruss win was announced, excitedly congratulating her in a tweet so tongue-in-cheek he could have poked a hole through his lip.

Yes [Liz Truss] absolutely smashed it babe! he wrote, and fans revelledin the passive-aggression.

Some users took the chance to lambast the newly-appointed Conservative leaders victory speech, in which she promised voting members that we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver, and we will deliver a great victory for the Conservative Party in 2024.

Im feeling like she will deliver, one user wrote. Maybe deliver some more and then deliver after that. Not sure what shes delivering. But Im guessing it will be like when a Royal Mail person pops a red card in the door, yet hasnt actually knocked.

While many gleefully played along with Joe Lycetts hilarious concept of being a Liz Truss supporter, the nihilism of having a Conservative leader who has failed to produce any plans on the cost of living crisis and has denied trans women are womenseemed too overwhelming to fake.

Smashed what? The economy? Workers rights? Hope? Our futures? one user said, while another added: And now shes going to smash the country. Yay.

It comes after Joe Lycetts jabs at the Conservative party during a guest spot on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.

After Truss gave her only interview of the leadership race to Kuenssberg, Lycett was heard cheering on the soon-to-be prime minister.

He later explained, with an air of irony so thick you could barely see the coy grin forming on his face:I know theres been criticism in theThe Mail on Sunday today about leftie liberal wokie comedians on the BBC.Im actually very right wing and I love it. I thought she gave great clear answers. I know exactly what shes up to.

After the Mail dedicated its front page to criticising his appearance on the show, Lycett responded in a tweet, saying: Ill be off to the framers in the morning.

Since then, right-wing outrage has been in full force over Lycetts jokes. Daily Express political editor Sam Lister reportedly wrote an enraged piece calling out the British comedian for the television spot, calling him a loose cannon comedian.

Meanwhile, GB News commentator Darren Grimes tweeted his own outrage, saying: The BBC offered us the opinions of comedian Joe Lycett and Emily Thornberry for the launch of their flagship political programme this morning. Riiiiiiiiight.

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Joe Lycett trolls Liz Truss again after becoming next PM: 'Smashed it babe' - PinkNews

Children of Men Is the Movie We Need to Get Us Through Turbulent Times – Goalcast

After I saw Children of Men in the theater as a sixteen-year-old in 2006, I fell into a depression and cried in my room for three days.

While that may not exactly be a glowing review, the movie both touched and unnerved me deeply.

Its beautiful cinematography was at once breathtaking and heart-rending, with the camera slowly panning over a landscape of a broken society scrambling both for survival and humanity.

The images I saw on screen felt like a premonition.

Set in a not-so-distant future in which the human race has become infertile, the film opens on a scene of the protagonist, with social and political themes already dominating headlines.

Between the threats of environmental degradation, fossil fuel wars, the then-prominent narrative of terrorist hostility toward the U.S., and resulting animosity toward immigrants and minorities, I couldnt help but feel as though what I saw in the film was more than fiction.

It was like looking into a crystal ball and seeing the future. As a thoughtful and sensitive person, I felt so little hope about the world I was inheriting.

And yet

In her book, Hope in the Dark, writer Rebecca Solnit characterizes hope as giving ones self to the future, thus making the present inhabitable. Good thing, because our present reality is often times nearly uninhabitable.

Our children are killed in their schools. Innocent people face police brutality for their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Womens rights are being openly threatened in industrialized nations in a way they havent been since the work of the suffragettes. People are getting sicker. Food is getting scarcer. Our world is getting hotter.

It would be so easy to excuse ourselves as we fall into despair. Yet some of us hope, if only to make the present inhabitable.

Hope stems from a darkness as much of the womb as of the grave, Solnit writes. To hope is to balance on the edge between symbolic birth and death, to assert existential freedom as well as the recognition of infinite variability.

As real people in a real world, this means that, yes, we may now find ourselves plunged into darkness. Butwe are the ones who choose what we see when we turn on the light.

Solnits description of dual-natured hope resembles Nietzsches concept of nihilism. Nihilism for Nietzsche was a response to the inevitable contradiction of the Christian-Moral worldview: a will to truthfulness that eventually finds its metaphysical foundation to be untrue. This realization culminates in the onset of metaphysical uncertainty; the death of God.

For us, we sense intrinsically that the direction weve been going, the assumptions weve been making, dont hold the promise ascribed by our predecessors. Although we feel this awareness subtly gnawing at our consciousness, we are afraid to stop, turn, and look it in the face. To do so would be very literally to look in the face of death.

What would we see there? The corpse of manifest destiny? Of industry? Of unending growth and prosperity, every man the master of his castle? The death of a vision of perpetual convenience and ease? The official death knell of monotheism and the comforts we still cling to in its wake?

Fundamentally, Nietzsche argued that we would see the death of our identity itself. No longer can we be passive receivers of culture, resources, and ontology. There is no one above us manufacturing it for us. Our truths are no longer self-evident.

Modern individuals are thrust into a central antagonism in that we are notto esteem what we know, and not to beallowedany longer to esteem the lies we should like to tell ourselves (10). That is, we are so frightened by the sudden realization that we are masters of our own reality instead of subject to the omnipotent paternal figure on whom we previously relied that we are temporarily barred from social and moral agency.

This is the stage of paralysis we face when the lights have just gone out.

For Nietzsche, this is nihilism.

In its most positive form, nihilism is a coping stage, a mourning period in which we pine for the metaphysical certainty of unconscious devotion to divine will. We can see this so clearly in the schism in American politics; one side clings to order and meaning, the other eschews it, offering nothing to replace it but relativism.

This stage can be a path into despair and further existential paralysis, or it can be the jumping-off point for engaging in the creation of a transformative, emancipatory, and participatory reality.

In other words, not God, not government, but we as the collective creative consciousness determine our fate. If a movie can communicate this much wisdom, its seriously worth a watch.

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Children of Men Is the Movie We Need to Get Us Through Turbulent Times - Goalcast

What is the Vaccine for Political Nihilism? – Harvard Political Review

From the point each of us checks into the political arena, we are vulnerable to, what I call, political nihilism. It is born out of the insurmountability of our current bleak political, economic and societal situation. The prospect of almost incomprehensible odds alongside the back-to-back catastrophes weve all endured I imagine, has the capacity to put any sane person in a state of political nihilism: A mode of thinking that perceives politics as a meaningless endeavor.

A symptom of this virus is an increasing amount of hopelessness. No hope to solve ecological devastation; no hope to acknowledge, let alone heal, harshly infected wounds of injustice; no hope for people to take political and economic power from multinational corporations to foster democratic rule.

Those of us who are politically active are always under threat of succumbing to political nihilism and the intractable despair with which it infects us. Activists, year after year achieving only smaller and smaller victories, are constantly hounded by this feeling that a genuine social transformation is simply not possible. Similarly, when we ourselves harbor the belief that reform is implausible, we put ourselves on track to check out of the political arena.

Logically, the ultimate outcome of political nihilism is political apathy: complete indifference toward the current political system. A survey following the 2020 presidential race concluded that twice as many non-voters than voters agree that It makes no difference who is elected president. Despite record turnout that year, 80 million Americans stayed home, even in the face of a pandemic requiring a decisive governmental response, economic collapse, and several police murders. Non-voters were also more likely to say that the media cares more about profit than the truth, that the economy is rigged for the wealthy, and that the majority of issues discussed in D.C dont affect them personally.

This virus of political nihilism flourishes in the debt economy. The average American holds a little over $90,000 in debt. Whether it be credit card delinquencies, student loans, or mortgage payments, such debts have shackled everyday people since the mid-20th century rise of American neoliberalism a political philosophy that characterizes the private marketplace as the fundamental source of national prosperity. Consequently, for 40 years, the U.S political economy has been dominated by military spending, privatization, and tax cuts, prioritizing the whims of wealthy elites while leaving everyday Americans overburdened with the inflated expenses of life. In doing so, neoliberalism neglects issues that might improve quality of life, including those that could bring Americans back into politics.

Furthermore, neoliberalism is more than just a political or economic system: It is an ideology motivated only by profit maximization. As such, corporations and businesses often have little regard for the financial capacity of everyday people, inevitably contributing to the debt spiral in which many Americans find themselves. The result? Widespread social misery. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that debt burden increases the risk of attempted suicide. Student loans are discouraging young people from buying homes and having children. Unsecured debt has also been implicated as a correlate of voter disengagement. It is, thus, clear that the debt economy is amplifying a new culture of despair that puts the future on the backburner.

So, what is the vaccine for political nihilism? One of the most prophetic voices of our time, brilliant scholar and public intellectual Dr. Cornel West, describes himself as a prisoner of hope. As Dr. West puts it, Hope is a verb, not a noun, its motion and movement, its active. Blind optimism without action is purposeless, but blind despondency has the potential to cause irrevocable damage. We must, instead, West claims, adopt actionable hope.

Cornel West comes from the Black prophetic tradition. He prides himself on coming from the same vein of thought as Fredrick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, Ida B Wells, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These figures never needed empirical evidence to decide whether they wanted to take a stand against illegitimate power structures. These figures did their work not by checking the polls but rather by listening to those who were suffering. After all, the condition of truth is to allow that suffering to speak.

The remedy of active hope is being proposed today. Dr. Joanna Macy, faculty member at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Dr. Chris Johnstone MD are rereleasing a revised version of their book Active Hope in the summer of 2022. They define active hope as finding, and offering, our best response to global issues, especially in this moment of crisis. When our responses are guided by the intention to act, it draws a semblance of meaning essential to our well being.

Some inchoate modern social movements have chosen to take this vaccine of active hope. Fifteen to 26 million people in the U.S. participated in George Floyd protests. Medicare For All rallies swept 50 of the nations cities on July 24, 2021. Most recently union workers at Kellogg, John Deere, and student workers on university campuses straightened up their backs for better conditions. Whether or not we check out, struggles like these will always push for progress.

Such efforts are overlooked as soon as the media lets go of the story. But it is of utmost importance that we as journalists, activists, and citizens constantly wrestling in the political arena prevent the struggle for change from falling out of the social consciousness. Recognizing rising cynicism and despair while simultaneously responding with active hope is the most difficult existential dilemma we face.

Active hope is a great catalyst and inspiration to involve ourselves in the struggle. However, to be a hope takes a deep commitment; to be a hope takes tremendous fortitude. Political battles will include political losses, many of which will cut deep. But daring to struggle is daring to win. And if we dare not to struggle, we dont deserve to win. Active hope implies that peace and justice only are as possible as our willingness to fight for it.

We must acknowledge that our societys quest for revolutionary transformation is inseparable from a radical tradition of faith. Moving headstrong exclusively in the direction of the rational or logical will only lead us down the rabbit hole of political nihilism, especially in a profit-motivated society that feeds debt and precipitates despair. If there is any chance at a better world, it will not be because the numbers are in our favor, but because of the durability of our perseverance. Only one question remains: Are we up for the challenge?

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What is the Vaccine for Political Nihilism? - Harvard Political Review

Bodies Bodies Bodies Review: Euphoria With Knives – The New York Times

Perhaps best known for releasing jaw-dropping original films like Moonlight and Midsommar, the film distributor A24 is also in the business of glamorizing youthful nihilism. Its co-produced HBO series Euphoria, where teenage sex bombs dress up their thousand-yard stares in glittery eye shadow, is an easy example. Now so is Bodies Bodies Bodies, a horror film directed by Halina Reijn thats bloated with pompous irony. This is a movie perfectly tailored to one of A24s key demographics: bougie 25-year-olds who value branding over substance.

Its not that Bodies Bodies Bodies is bad. Its visually appealing and nicely acted. But this film is not special, and like its shallow characters, it is persistently unaware of its own inanity. Stocked with fresh talent Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm), Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby) and Chase Sui Wonders (Generation) are among the glitzy cast this could be a scathing satire. Instead, Bodies Bodies Bodies is so intent on oozing cool-kid apathy that it serves up a whole lot of nothing.

If youre a fan of slashers, youll recognize the plot: Young, hot people get trapped in a remote locale and are picked off one by one. The hotties in question are a group of twenty-somethings embittered by lifelong friendship (save a Tinder date played by the tragically underutilized Lee Pace); the locale is a faraway mansion. Fresh out of rehab, the flighty Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) is eager to show off her new love, Bee (Bakalova), to her estranged besties.

Unfortunately for Bee, Sophies friends and probably Sophie herself are heinous. Sophies sobriety gets a tepid Yay! before her buds glug down champagne and snort up coke. Petty arguments and egoism underscore every interaction. David (Pete Davidson), whose parents own the estate, is particularly bothered by Paces character, Greg, who he insists is not, like, that hot. (Spoiler alert: He is.) The film gets its name and premise from a game the gang plays, a sort of manhunt-meets-mafia that kicks off with everyone taking a shot and hitting the person next to them in the face. In case you didnt get it, these are not good people.

The only thing that really sets Bodies Bodies Bodies apart is its place in the A24 hype machine, where it doubles as a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage and Charli XCXs latest single. Overused Twitterspeak like the words toxic, narcissist and gaslighting have been lampooned in plenty of other projects, as has the fragility of well-heeled young people. There are certainly other slashers in this vein. The genre persists, in part, because audiences love to watch fat cats go splat.

These privileged prats get their comeuppance, sure, but the moral lands with a whimper rather than a bang. This is little more than a movie about terrible rich people that was made so other rich people could laugh at it and think, Thank God Im not terrible. Everyone else will just have to stomach the cost of the movie ticket.

Bodies Bodies BodiesRated R for bodies, bodies, bodies. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.

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Bodies Bodies Bodies Review: Euphoria With Knives - The New York Times

Port: The most patriotic thing you could do today? Stop listening to idiots – Grand Forks Herald

MINOT, N.D. On a recent episode of Stephen Colbert's talk show, Jon Lovett, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama who is today one of the hosts of a wildly popular left-wing podcast, said Republicans support "a bunch of terrible stuff that makes life worse and shorter for a lot of people."

He said the Republican slogan for the midterms ought to be, "We'll make life worse and shorter."

Meanwhile, across the widening chasm that is America's political and cultural divide, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during a recent broadcast of his nightly show, accused Democrats of having "given up on the country and given up on the people who live here."

Democrats believe there's "no future worth having," he ranted.

"They don't care about you at all," he said.

Are these men right?

Is American politics dominated by Republicans, who want us to be miserable and die, and Democrats, who have descended into nihilism?

Well, no. That's not right at all. And yet, millions upon millions of us listen to people like these men who fill up television screens and social media threads and hours of podcasts hurling invective across the political divide.

They're evil.

We're good.

No wonder our nation is dysfunctional.

Another example is the recent kerfuffle over the PACT Act , which saw Democrats and Republicans at odds over funding for medical care for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. It should have been an easy bill to pass, even despite debates over the amount of funding and whether or not that funding out to be discretionary or nondiscretionary.

Grownups should be able to resolve those sort of differences easily. Instead, we got Jon Stewart cursing at people on television while Republicans and Democrats jockeyed to convince Americans that their opponents want veterans to die slow, cruel deaths from cancer.

There is no "loyal opposition."

Dissent, in a democracy, should be considered a form of patriotism (except when motivated by rank partisanship). In today's politics, disagreeing with one side just means you're evil to them.

And here you readers are, nodding along, thinking I'm basically right, in a quaint sort of way, but maybe also thinking that Carlson has it right (or Lovett, depending on your biases), and that somehow today's Democrats (or Republicans!) are different. That they really are horrendous, uncaring troglodytes.

Carlson and Lovett and the legions of other hate-spewing pundits thrive off of people like you. It's how they make their living.

Yet they're wrong. And you're wrong, if you believe them.

Democrats haven't given up on America. Republicans don't want people to be miserable or dead. Conservatism isn't bigotry, liberals aren't trying to turn your children into transgender communists, and nobody stole the 2020 election.

Most of us, whatever our politics, have universal goals, mostly concerning peace and prosperity, and only differ on the paths we ought to take to get there.

I'm not even sure that the braying reactionaries who package and sell this stuff to you really believe it, though they sure believe in the paychecks, and they believe it will get your attention. They believe it will draw your ears and your eyes and perhaps your votes, and they care very little that what they're saying is tearing our society apart.

If there are nihilists in American politics, it's them.

The only thing we have to do to improve things is to stop listening. Stop tuning in. And stop imputing to anyone who disagrees with you the worst possible motivations.

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Port: The most patriotic thing you could do today? Stop listening to idiots - Grand Forks Herald

Rental unit: Out of the Blue dir. by Dennis Hopper – Style Weekly

I first saw this 1980 film on a grainy old VHS copy from Video Fan on Strawberry Street when I was in high school, and remember being a little depressed by it, while also thinking it was a low budget mess. My how times change.

For so long this movie was lost and hard to find, but after a recent 4k scan restoration championed by actresses Natasha Lyonne and Chlo Sevigny, the film looks better than it ever has. I found myself enjoying (and often laughing) at the brave improvisational acting and oddball writing and editing choices, which director and star Dennis Hopper later said were inspired by Abstract Expressionism and the video work of his friend, artist Bruce Conner. Critics called the movie a spiritual successor to Hoppers early megahit, Easy Rider, showing how hippie optimism plunged into addiction and late 70s nihilism. But I mostly think of it as a coming-of-age, punk rock classic and tomboy actress Linda Manz finest moment, which is plenty enough reason to check out the new version.

Some back story: The project originally started out as an afterschool TV special being shot in Vancouver with Canadian tax shelter funds. It was about a runaway teen played by the spunky child actress, Manz (the memorable narrator who improvised her lines in Terrence Malicks Days of Heaven) and starring Raymond Burr as her therapist. However, the original director and writer got fired two weeks into the production, and thats when things got whacky. Enter the wild-eyed, Hollywood exile, Hopper, still in the throes of a major drug-and-alcohol addiction of bejeezus-belt proportions and not having directed since his underrated box office bomb, The Last Movie (1971). If you dont know much about Hopper, he was a brilliant still photographer with a great eye, had superb taste in collecting modern art, and could be a supremely talented actor when focused. But he was also known in Hollywood as a difficult human trainwreck, exhibiting a feral, almost Charlie Manson-like intensity, especially during the 70s.

Intrigued by the natural acting abilities of Manz, one of films greatest tomboys, Hopper rewrote the script over the weekend while wearing out his friend Neil Youngs album, Rust Never Sleeps, which is where the new title Out of the Blue comes from; the song My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" also would be quoted years later in Kurt Cobains suicide note. By the time Hopper was finished, the story had been transformed into a bleak meditation on youthful alienation and the burgeoning punk rock ethos, with fuddy-duddy Raymond Burrs part cut out almost entirely and repeated violent, flashback scenes of a drunken Hopper, playing Manz father, driving a semi-truck into a school bus full of howling children. Hopper somehow managed to shoot and cut the film in around 10 weeks.

Manz plays CeBe, a street-smart young girl who acts tough to hide her insecurity and despair about her alcoholic, ex-con father, Hopper, just released from prison for killing the schoolbus kids, and her junkie mom (Shannon Farrell). CeBe idolizes Elvis Presley and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols and late at night, chants mantras into the otherworldly CB radio of her dad's mangled truck, saying things like subvert normality and kill all hippies. A juvenile delinquent, she roams the streets getting accosted while finding her sense of family within the punk scene, jamming along with real Vancouver punk/New Wave band, Pointed Sticks, who get a nice cameo. But there are also scenes in the film that are truly weird and disturbing; Hopper often appears to not be acting as he incoherently rambles, his eyelids half-open, or rages like King Lear in close scenes with Manz that can feel like revelatory improvisation exercises by two method actors.

As a director, Hopper shows his underlying talent not only with the gritty photography (his early black-and-white photos are some of the best of the 60s) but also by a displaying real trust in his young actress to inhabit the part. The real power of "Out of the Blue" is in Manz disassociated performance, which feels utterly authentic. She would later say the role was very close to who she was as a person; she grew up on the streets of New York, her single mother working as a maid in the World Trade Center. Sadly, this would be her only lead role (as an adult, she had a supporting role in Harmony Korrines Gummo) yet she always shows great instincts and comedic timing, as well as the uncanny ability to express honest emotion onscreen, from rage and grief-stricken loneliness to the giddiness of childhood play. Here, her characters embroidered, jean-jacket look feels like a perfect time capsule; its a shame nobody ever made a movie back then pairing Manz and Jackie Early Haley, whose Bad News Bears character Kelly feels like a spiritual cousin to CeBe. Manz died from lung cancer in 2020.

Another thing that really jumped out this time was how much the films controversial closing scene [too explicit to describe here] foreshadows Hoppers role as Frank Booth in David Lynchs masterpiece, Blue Velvet. Its all right there. No wonder Hopper begged Lynch to give him the role of the psychotic killer, allegedly telling the director, You have to let me play Frank Booth. I am Frank Booth! Somehow by dredging up his dark personal demons onscreen, which he already seems to be doing in Out of the Blue, Hopper managed to sober up and resurrect his career as one of the great villains in Hollywood history in Blue Velvet.

Out of the Blue competed for the Palme dOr at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival, but mostly its been a VHS cult classic shared among friends for years. This new 4K Blu-ray restoration finally gives it the deluxe treatment. Not only does the cleaned-up, 35 mm print look and sound exponentially better (Neil Youngs lonely solo music has rarely been used to better effect in a movie, aside from Jarmuschs Dead Man) but there are over 15 hours of extra features included. Among these is a long, fascinating interview with Hopper conducted by Tony Watts in 1984; the 40th anniversary restoration premiere Q&A with Julian Schanbel, Natasha Lyonne and others; Gone But Not Forgotten: Remembering Linda Manz, a featurette featuring Lydia Lunch and Leif Garrett among others; a short film by original writer Leonard Yakir; a radio spot by Jack Nicholson, who called the film a masterpiece; extended interviews with admirers Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Philippe Mora, Schnabel and others, that look to have been filmed during the pandemic by videoconference; Dealing with Demons, Brian Cox on acting with Dennis Hopper; an interview with director Alex Cox (Repo Man); more interviews with 11 original cast and crew from the film the list just keeps on going and going, its truly remarkable the wealth of content. Its nice to see one of the most memorable cult films of the '80s finally get its due -- and then some.

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Rental unit: Out of the Blue dir. by Dennis Hopper - Style Weekly

Harry V. Jaffa and Allan Bloom: The Contested Legacy of Leo Strauss – Public Discourse

This essay is part of Public DiscoursesWhos Who series, which introduces and critically engages with important thinkers who are often referenced in political and cultural debates, but whose ideas might not be widely known or understood. The series previously considered the life and work of Antonio Gramsci, Jacques Maritain, and Michael Oakeshott.

On the surface of things, there might be little to connect Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015) and Allan Bloom (1930-1992). Bloom was a cosmopolitan sophisticate, having lived and taught in Europe for many years and his passion was for philosophy at the highest level. He was not open about his sexual orientation, his political interventions were vigorous rebuttals of feminism, and he mounted a spirited defense of both the differences and the complementarity of men and women. We might say he was more interested in the philosophic life than political contests.

Jaffa, on the other hand, was briefly a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, for whom he wrote that extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. He was an American patriot whose overwhelming interest was the American regime, in both its original founding and its rebirth under Abraham Lincoln. Unlike the seemingly apolitical Bloom, Jaffa courted controversy, for instance, in his very public opposition to gay marriage in California. Yet the problem on the surface of things does get to the heart of things.

The connectionand the conflictbetween Bloom and Jaffa is based on different interpretations of the work of Leo Strauss, the twentieth-century political philosopher who taught them both. In essence, Strauss can be said to have promoted two significant ideas. First, the idea that there is a fundamental break between ancient and medieval philosophy, on the one hand, and modern philosophy, on the other. Second, the idea that philosophers throughout history, perhaps less so as modernity progressed, wrote in an esoteric manner. Esoteric writing is the practice of speaking to two different audiences at the same time and saying different things with the same words. Arthur Melzer has written an exhaustive treatment of the subject, but parents of small children will also be familiar with the practice.

Jaffa described Strauss as the Socrates of our millennium, a characterization Bloom never had an opportunity to affirm or deny. Yet in his obituary of his teacher, Bloom wrote, those of us who knew him saw in him such a power of mind, such a unity and purpose of life, such a rare mixture of the human elements resulting in a harmonious expression of the virtues, moral and intellectual, that our account of him is likely to evoke disbelief or ridicule from those who have never experienced a man of this quality. For both Jaffa and Bloom, their encounter with Strauss was the turning-point in their lives, akin to the escape of the prisoners from Platos cave.

Two Approaches to Strauss

The clever if somewhat unfortunate title of his last book, The Crisis of the Strauss Divided, plays upon Jaffas second and most famous work, a study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates entitled The Crisis of the House Divided, and gets to the heart of the difference between these two figures. With Jaffa at Claremont in California and Bloom at Cornell, Toronto, and Chicago, the consequences of that division turned into East Coast and West Coast Straussianism. Jaffa and Bloom represent the two ways of understanding Strausss devotion to political philosophy, specifically with respect to esotericism and natural right, as I will discuss below. In other words, ought one to accentuate the philosophical or the political in that term?

Jaffa, the former boxer, was by far the more political of the two men, Bloom the more philosophical. Jaffas work on Lincoln, the Constitution, and his very public debates with other scholars and even Supreme Court nominees were legendary for their acrimony. William F. Buckley, Jr. famously said, If you think Harry Jaffa is hard to argue with, try agreeing with him. It is nearly impossible. Jaffa was a political animal through and through. Bloom, by contrast, fled Cornell for the University of Toronto as an escape from the political radicalization of American campuses, returning to his beloved University of Chicago only much later.

Blooms scholarly work consisted mostly of translations and close commentaries on the same. He cultivated an urbane and detached style, seemingly uninterested in day-to-day politics. But this was not entirely true. He had a steady stream of phone conversations with well-placed graduates in Washington, DC, keeping him up to date on even the most intricate details. Saul Bellow, the American novelist, detailed these conversations in his fictionalized biography of his friend, Ravelstein. While some of the accounts are exaggerated for dramatic effect, it is clear that Bloom delighted in politics, or at least in the great issues of war and peace, though one could never imagine him campaigning.

If we consider their first works of scholarshipJaffas on Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, Blooms on the ancient rhetorician Isocratesthe picture becomes more blurred. Whats more, Bloom did write on the American Constitution, and Jaffas pugnacity was born of a devotion to the truth at least as strong as that of any philosopher. The one did not simply take up the political side of Strauss and the other the philosophical, so much as develop his legacy and establish each his own by means of emphasis. And regarding that legacy, all hinged on the idea of classical natural right.

Classical natural right was Strausss attempt at capturing the difference between premodern political philosophy and the modern emphasis on individual rights. Modern rights (always in the plural) attach to an individual from the state of nature or, in the rarefied version of John Rawls, the original position. These rights are not even political insofar as they are not up for debate or negotiation. Classical natural right, by contrast, looks to the organizational principles of the society or the regime, as Strauss preferred. As Aristotle put it in the Politics: Justice is a political matter; for justice is the organization of a political community, and justice decides what is just. Classical natural right did not rely on pre-political fictions to understand politics, but looked to the best of human nature to orient the political order. As we will see, Blooms reading of Strauss emphasized the need to decipher the esoteric meaning of texts, which might not entail any consideration of natural right, while Jaffa believed that following Strauss back to premodern philosophy required an intense focus on natural right.

Overcoming Orthodoxies

For Allan Bloom, the role of the teacher is to free a young mind from the reigning orthodoxies of the day, the stories told by the city. In his phenomenally successful Closing of the American Mind, he decried the influence of German philosophy on the students he was encountering in the classroom. These young men and women had absorbed a soft nihilism or relativism through the general culture and were, as a result, unteachable. Since they believed nothing, there was nothing from which the teacher could turn their eyes. According to Bloom, relativism has extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life. What good is it to turn someones eyes from shadows if they wont open them?

Bloom pursued zetetic philosophy, in which the search is more important than the discovery because philosophy is less a doctrine than a way of life. Socratic skepticism is not nihilism, however. The philosophic life is an adventurous struggle out of Platos cave. To join Bloom on this adventure meant he was going to offer signposts, not conclusions. And so we find his scholarship consisting mainly of commentaries on works he translated, most notably on Platos Republic and Rousseaus Emile. What he sought in these works and offered to careful readers and students was adamantly not to reduce philosophy to a set of definitions and easy-to-remember formulae.

Given that Bloom thought philosophy must question all considered judgments, it is no surprise that his criticism of John RawlssA Theory of Justice was so spirited. Bloom asks, Is he a seeker after truth, or only the spokesman for a certain historical consciousness? Rawls, as he notes, ignored the history of political philosophy, as if the nihilism of Nietzsche, the historicism of Hegel and Marx, or the penetrating examination of the soul in Platos dialogues never happened. For Rawls, life is easy to understand and its fulfillment an easygoing eudaimonianisma life of simple pleasure. A thoroughgoing student of Rawls could never produce great literature. There would be no dilemma for Hamlet, no dagger floating before Macbeth.

In a section of the review entitled The Misuse of Aristotle, Bloom pointed out that Rawls used Aristotles authority to claim something the philosopher never stipulated. According to what Rawls called the Aristotle principle, humans want to develop their capacities, and societies that allow and encourage them to do so are, on balance, betterthat is to say, they would be chosen from the original position. But Aristotle never said any such thing, and the passage Rawls cited to suggest that he did points in another direction. According to Bloom, the argument from the Nichomachean Ethics teaches that philosophy is the only way of life that can properly be called happy. Indeed, Bloom goes on to say much more: The philosopher is not as such a social man; Aristotle never even says that the moral virtues, including justice, are necessary to the philosopher in order to philosophize. This open questioning of the utility of the moral virtues to the philosopher was the source of contention between Bloom and Jaffa.

The Examined and Examining Life

One of Jaffas most direct responses to his younger contemporary was in a review of Blooms bestseller. According to Jaffa, Bloom was unable to understand the American mind because he was too preoccupied with philosophy and too uninterested in politics. As Jaffa put it, no one can comment instructively on the relationship between political life and the philosophic life who does not know what political life is. It is a fair comment, but was it fair to Bloom? Consider Blooms thoughtful appreciation of Raymond Aron, one of the greatest political minds of the twentieth century, or his own book Confronting the Constitution. Jaffa goes on, several pages later: For Bloom the question is not, What is Justice? It is, Which book about justice do you like best? Jaffas complaint was that Bloom was more concerned with philosophical texts than philosophical truth or, more to the point, natural right.

Indeed, the charge of nihilism underlies the whole review. For instance, Jaffa suggests Bloom was more concerned that his students relativism was dclassthan that it was wrong: One might say that American relativism is comic in its blandness and indifference to the genuine significance of human choice, whereas in its German version fundamental human choices take on the agonized dignity of high tragedy. Yet elsewhere in the same review Jaffa writes what could have come from the pen of the man he was criticizing. According to Jaffa, The life lived in accordance with the knowledge of ignorancethe truly skeptical life, the examined and examining lifeis, by the light of unassisted human reason, the best life. The next sentence, though, gets to the heart of their disagreement: The regime that is best adapted to the living of this life is the best regime. Again, Bloom would probably agree, but might argue that it is a non sequitur. Once one has discovered the best life, pursue it, and dont engage in politics.

What would Strauss say? The question arises because both laid claim to his legacy. In his review of Closing, Jaffa writes, One can only conclude that if Bloom says that the one thing needful is the study of the problem of Socrates, and yet makes no mention of Strausss study of the problem of Socrates (or of Greek philosophy), then he cannot think that Strausss study is the needful one. For Jaffa, following Strauss back to premodern philosophy meant devoting oneself to classical natural right. For Bloom, it meant uncovering the esoteric meaning of texts, which might be indifferent to natural right altogether. Although he never says it, there is a strong suggestion throughout this review and other pieces that Jaffa considered Bloom to be Strausss Alcibiades.

Productive Tension

The contest between Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom over the legacy of Leo Strauss has passed to their students with generally much less acrimony. But that tension, like the one between Athens and Jerusalem that Strauss so often returned to, has produced some of the finest scholarship of the last half century or more. From the students of Bloom, translations and commentaries have added to the treasury of works we have to study. From the students of Jaffa have come some of the most penetrating studies of American politics. When the streams cross and the West Coast turns to philosophical texts or the East to American politics, especially to the work of Tocqueville that Jaffa never fully appreciated, the divisions are blurred and the results are invigorating.

It would not be too much to say that the students of Bloom and Jaffa are producing the most interesting work in political philosophy, broadly understood. Blooms students include Thomas Pangle, Catherine and Michael Zuckert, and Francis Fukuyama. Jaffa taught Thomas G. West, John Marini, and Hillsdale Colleges president, Larry P. Arnn. Indirectly, Jaffa and Bloom influenced Harvey C. Mansfield, Pierre Manent, Daniel J. Mahoney, and Charles Kesler. While only a partial list, their scholarship would be the foundation for a far better education in political wisdom and statesmanship, as well as literature, than any reading list produced by the American Political Science Association.

Understanding political philosophy far more broadly than it usually is may be the most important legacy of Bloom and Jaffa. The only project they worked on together, a study of Shakespeares political thought, opened for their students and others the body of great literature as a source of political wisdom. Freed from the reigning orthodoxies of our day, theirs are often alone among students of literature who can see that the tedious categories of race, class, and gender are mere shadows dancing on the wall.

Whatever might have divided them, Harry Jaffa and Allan Bloom both found in Leo Strausss classroom an approach to philosophy that changed their lives. Their own students found the same in their classrooms, and so unto the third and fourth generations. There are real and important differences in what they experienced and, more importantly, how they understood it, just as with Socrates students. If Strauss really was the Socrates of our millennium, Bloom and Jaffa are the best evidence for this claim.

Source for Allan Bloom photo: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf7-00081, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

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Harry V. Jaffa and Allan Bloom: The Contested Legacy of Leo Strauss - Public Discourse

The Catastrophic Decline in Religious Faith And What To Do About It – Patheos

Is That All There Is? Disaffiliation From Religion Increases

Perhaps one of the least liked of Jesuss parables is that of the wealthy man who reaps a great harvest, puts up extra barns, believes he should eat, drink and be merry, and finds himself dead that night. What a downer. Im reminded of Peggy Lees fabulous song Is That All There Is? thinking that those would be the last words of the wealthy man.

Exceptan awful lot of people think that is enough. They are satisfied with whatever the world can give; if they die, they die. Such is the nihilism afflicting the nones, the disaffiliated from religion folks. Statistics tell of a catastrophic decline in religious faith among those in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, but particularly among those who are younger. Each generation is less religious, and that fact is radically changing society. Most observers throw up their hands in confusion and despair, unsure why this is happening. However, the fact is we know why it is occurring. Its complicated, but we can understand.

Just a few factors in this decline include lack of religious practice in childhood, disaffiliation in high school and decline of the two-parent family, pluralism in religious belief, a politically conservative identification with religion., the absence of religious experience, and the inability of religion to answer big questions. There are other reasons, but these are the most important.

Two things mitigate a vibrant return to religious faith. First is the fact that the disaffiliated were never that connected to religious faith to begin with. Their parents and grandparents had begun the gradual disconnection decades before. Second, the growing isolation of individuals is directly connected to the decline in religious faith, which was the major player in community and civic life. Even now, those with the most connection to religious faith are the most involved in civic affairs and community practices.

Yet, a few things can be done to change all this:

Religious researchers point out that in the recent past, those who left religion were likely to come back as older adults. These researchers now say dont expect the disaffiliated to return. Not really having left much, they are not motivated to come back to something that never really fed them. I am not that pessimistic. The Church has always been able to talk to the culture, though it almost always is late to the table. Its time for the Church and those who think religious faith is important to step up. The modest proposals above wont completely deal with the nihilism gripping our world. But successful implementation of these suggestions might nudge the worldly from an eat, drink, and be merry way of approaching life to finding an answer to Peggy Lees soulful musical question, Is That All There Is?

***For clarity of reading, I deliberately left out footnoting the research as it is easily available on Google from the Pew Research Center, NPR, and other outlets.

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The Catastrophic Decline in Religious Faith And What To Do About It - Patheos

Vengeance: Conspiracy Theory – Fort Worth Weekly

Its a plot as old as plots: a city slicker comes to the countryside with preconceived notions about the rural folk and then finds that theyre smarter and better than his city friends (or, alternatively, that theyre just as venal as the people he left behind). Short-statured sitcom actor B.J. Novak portrays this city slicker in his directing debut Vengeance, a movie that transports him to West Texas, and if this satire isnt entirely successful, theres more than enough to suggest he has talent as a filmmaker.

Novak stars as Ben Manalowicz, who has secured his place as a staff writer for The New Yorkerand now thinks of branching out into podcasting. His boss (Issa Rae) pointedly asks him what yet another middle-aged white guy could possibly have to say. His answer comes in the form of a distraught phone call from Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), whose sister Abilene (Lio Tipton) has died in her small town a five-hour drive from the Texas city she was named after. Ben and Abby slept together a few times while she was in the Big Apple pursuing dreams of music stardom, and she made it seem to her family that the two of them were much closer than they were. When Ben is guilted into traveling to Texas to attend her funeral, Ty seriously tells him that she didnt die of an opioid overdose like the authorities say but was murdered by a conspiracy of Mexican drug cartels, pedophiles, and the deep state. A podcast is born, initially with the insensitive title Dead White Girl.

Speaking of insensitive, Ben plays along with the fiction that he and Abby were practically engaged, because he means to make fun of the paranoid rednecks or at least hold them up to ridicule while he investigates what makes them tick. His disillusionment plays out in humor that is admirably specific to the region: When Ben asks whether the city of Abilene is near Dallas, he receives the curt reply, Dallas aint Texas. Later on, at his literal first rodeo, he gives a big cheer for the University of Texas and quickly finds out hes deep in Tech country. A local music producer (Ashton Kutcher, going for understatement for once) gestures at the blasted desert landscape and tells Ben, People here have creative energies and nowhere to plug them in. It goes into conspiracy theories, drugs, and violence. (The movie was actually filmed in the Albuquerque area, since youre wondering.)

Yet the script doesnt set out to absolve the Texans, either. For all the Christian paraphernalia in their house, the Shaws call Abbys youngest brother El Stupido (Eli Bickel), and Ben is the only one who addresses the boy by his given name of Mason. The boy, in turn, gives him a vital piece of information that cracks the mystery. The family conceals an important piece of information from Ben, and the New Yorker finally explodes at them in that most Texas of locations, a Whataburger parking lot. To Tys defense that they followed their hearts, Ben says, You follow your heart, the world is flat, and vaccines contain microchips.

If only that line hadnt come in the midst of a much longer speech. Novak the director lets Novak the writer go on for too long. The climactic confrontation with the villain of the piece really needed pruning, even if Im chilled by nihilism of the bad guys thesis that America is the way it is because were all going to die someday and our social-media hot takes will be the only proof that we were ever here. Vengeance has more than a few amusing moments and was significantly better than I expected, but it still feels like the work of a beginner who has more to learn.

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Vengeance: Conspiracy Theory - Fort Worth Weekly