Nihilism and Metaphysics

The Third Voyage

Vittorio Possenti, Daniel B. Gallagher

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781438452067, 9781438452074
• eBook ISBN: 9781438452081
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

Challenging the idea that nihilism has supplanted metaphysics, Vittorio Possenti finds in this philosophical turn the grounds for a mature renewal of metaphysics. Possenti takes the reader on a "third voyage" that goes beyond the "second voyage" indicated by Plato in the Phaedo. He traces the ascendancy of nihilism in philosophy, offering critical examinations of Nietzsche, Gentile, Heidegger, Habermas, Husserl, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Vattimo. With penetrating accounts of philosophical movements such as hermeneutics and logical empiricism, rich with both historical and theoretical insights, Possenti provides a compelling defense of the power of human reason to apprehend the most obvious but also the most profound aspect of things: that they exist. By exploring the ubiquity of nihilism and probing its philosophical roots, Possenti clears the way for a fresh reformulation of metaphysics.

CHAPTER 1

The Question of Nihilism and the Knowledge of Being

Jünger, Nietzsche, and Heidegger on Nihilism

The aim of the present chapter is to determine the character or nature of (theoretical) nihilism. To do this, we will have to take up some complex questions concerning being and knowledge. We will touch upon both of them, and then seek to broaden and deepen our understanding in the following chapters of this first part.

Can nihilism be considered the “normal” condition of humanity today? Rather than trying to give a complete answer to this question, I intend to focus on a fundamental dimension of nihilism: namely, the theoretical one. Despite the myriad of analyses, can we really say that the essence of nihilism is immediately clear for us? This is highly doubtful. On the other hand, E. Jünger makes the particularly germane observation that “[d]efining nihilism is not unlike identifying the cause of cancer. The identification of the cause is not itself a cure but is preliminary to a cure. … To a large degree, to understand nihilism means to understand it as a historical process.”¹ Jünger makes several notable assertions here: there is still no adequate definition of nihilism; a definition needs to be sought; perhaps nihilism is a sickness akin to cancer, but hopefully can be cured; and its process is historical and universal.

Heidegger’s diagnosis is drastic inasmuch as he claims that metaphysics has always failed in its attempt to individuate the nature of nihilism: “Nietzsche never recognized the essence of nihilism, like every other metaphysics before him.”² Heidegger’s position only appears similar to Jünger’s, insofar as he claims to have already reached what Jünger only hopes to attain: the nature of nihilism. We thus find ourselves asking the unavoidable question: What is nihilism? And is there such a thing as theoretical or speculative nihilism? If so, what is its essence? If such a thing does exist then the question as to whether it constitutes, in the final analysis, the decisive element of every nihilism—that element which casts a wide and decisive shadow over all reality—must remain open.

At first, we must point out that in our own time, “nihilism” is usually taken to mean a philosophical-cultural complex marked with at least some of the following characteristics: (1) the destruction of every sure foundation (Nietzsche’s announcement that “God is dead” expresses the crumbling of every meaningful foundation); (2) the denial of any finality of man or the cosmos, such that reality appears as a variable mixture of meaningless horizons: existence has no goal, the energy of life tends to nothing, and becoming has no final end; (3) the reduction of the subject to mere functionality; (4) all judgments of value are equally valid (such an assertion can easily be twisted to mean the following: every value judgment is invalid—or rather, value shows no connection to being anymore, but rather emerges from the obscure depths of subjective freedom). Nihilism thus has several aspects. But even in its last form as moral nihilism—a form that seems to tower over the cultural scene, both in the “moderate and urbane” version according to which all moral values are subjective and chosen only on the basis of individual preference, and in the radical version according to which any distinction between good and evil is effaced—reveals only a few elements that help determine nihilism’s essence. In fact, moral nihilism would not be possible without an underlying theoretical nihilism. When the vehement critique of all morals, as well as the will to power, made their appearance, nihilism’s dialectic had already passed through various stages and made most of its major decisions. K. Löwith offers a similar analysis in less speculative and more historical-spiritual terms in his book European Nihilism. Reflections on the Spiritual Antecedents of the European War (Laterza: C. Galli ed., 1999). If metaphysics searches for and formulates a response to the question of being and truth, then delving into speculative thought cannot but lead to the realm of morals. It would be a mistake for us to think that we have reached the heart of nihilism if we fail to reestablish contact with the central questions of metaphysics.

While there is considerable agreement among various descriptions of the symptoms and effects of nihilism, a search for its roots opens room for many disagreements that will have a decisive effect on discussions about how to overcome it. Any attempt to overcome an occurrence whose causes are unknown is futile. Jünger’s assessment at least puts us on the right methodological path—a path trodden previously by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger. While the two most remarkable strains of nihilism in contemporary culture proceed from Nietzsche and Heidegger, we must remember that not only are there other thinkers who reflected on the essence of nihilism, but there are those who show a nihilistic bend or who build their philosophy on an implicitly nihilistic foundation. Gentile’s philosophy is worth mentioning in this regard.³

It is worth noting that for Nietzsche nihilism means devaluing the supreme values that belong to the supersensible world of Platonic metaphysics (from which the entire metaphysics of the West draws its inspiration), insofar as those values are no longer capable of informing history and must be replaced by a new set of values arising from the will to power (active nihilism). The old metaphysics was viewed from the perspective of “value” which should now be replaced with the will to power. According to Nietzsche, the division between the sensible world and the supersensible one (or “true world”) is not only the essence of Platonism but of all metaphysics. Through this division, the supersensible world, God, ideas, moral laws, truth, etc. are progressively eliminated in an epochal dialectic forged with the sledgehammer of the will to power—which is part of being itself—and with the counterforce of life-values. At the root of this dialectic is the nihilistic idea that there is no response to the question “why.” Inasmuch as truth—which is now dissolved into an infinite number of interpretations—does not exist anymore, and the intellect is incapable of offering an adequate response, a new experiment is called for. Perhaps humanity will be doomed by it, Nietzsche observes, adding: “Oh well. Let it be!”—since nihilism might be humanity’s last chance. Perhaps this experiment might reach an active, affirmative, and complete nihilism. In order for this to happen, nihilism must be extreme, asserting itself as the paradigm of the spirit’s highest power: a “divine” way of thinking according to the dictates of Dionysius.

For Heidegger, metaphysics is inherently incapable of thinking “being” and “ontological difference.” Metaphysics itself is nihilism, because it turns to the question of ens rather than “being” (esse). It is only onto-logy: “Oblivious of being and of its own truth, Western thinking since its beginning has constantly thought beings as such. … This thinking that has remained oblivious of being itself is the simple and all-bearing (and for that reason enigmatic and unexperienced) event of Western history, which meanwhile is about to expand itself into world-history. … The interpretation of the supersensory world, the interpretation of God as the highest value is not thought on the basis of being.”⁴ All of metaphysics, as metaphysics, has forgotten being; its history, therefore, insofar as it is the history of the truth of ens, is the very essence of nihilism: “Nowhere do we meet a thinking that thinks the truth of being itself and thererby truth itself as being. … The history of being begins—necessarily begins—with the forgottenness of being.”⁵ Consequently, nihilism, which was a necessary companion along the metaphysical journey, “is the fundamental movement in the story of the West,” finding its highpoint in the “Nietzsche problem.” Nietzsche’s thought is understood as the final stage of the entire Western metaphysical enterprise: “[S]ince metaphysics, through Nietasche has deprived itself of its own essential possibility in certain respects, and therefore to that extend other possibilities of metaphysics can no longer become apparent. After the metaphysical reversal carried out by Nietzsche, all that is left to metaphysics is to be inverted into the dire state of its non-essence.”⁶ In Heidegger’s estimation, metaphysics is in error because it has not reflected on the truth of being. This error, however, is to some extent necessary as being escapes and hides: “In its essence metaphysics would be the unthought—because withheld—mystery of being itself.”⁷

The Nature of Nihilism

Two incommensurable analyses of the nature of nihilism emerge from our considerations so far: nihilism as the devaluation of supreme values and as the forgetting/oblivion of being. Our considerations thus lead to a further question: Have the depths of the problem of nihilism been completely plumbed by Nietzsche and Heidegger? Has its nature been truly grasped and its foundation understood? To answer these questions we will have to engage in a radical determination of the problem, which involves the nature of thought as well as the questions of being and metaphysics. The methodological principle from which we begin our reading of nihilism is summed up with the idea that its determination is a theoretical act, because only on the basis of a knowledge of the truth of being can we establish the nature of nihilism. This is the first step we must make: a step all the more important when we consider that the contours of nihilism are still vague.

The task of philosophy, as repeatedly proposed since ancient times, can be summarized as the attempt to answer a question: What is being? (Aristotle made this observation, even though he maintained that the question could be reduced to another: namely, “What is substance?” In asking this question about being as such, we are seeking the truth in the sense that the original and primary essence of truth lies in its relation to being and its manifestation of being.) On the other hand, our investigation revolves around the essence of speculative nihilism, which in every time and place has been precisely what it is today. So if we hold up to our mind’s eye the term nihilism and focus on it, we know that it alludes to “nothing,” and perhaps more precisely to a “rendering into nothing” or “annihilation.” And what is annihilated in theoretical nihilism if not the truth of being? Speculative nihilism therefore concerns the process of annihilating the truth of being, which can occur to various degrees until it culminates in a final and complete negation. Nihilism proceeds by the forgetting of being, which is connected to the abandonment of real knowledge: that is, to an antirealist paradigm. The result of this process is summed up (cf. chapter 15) in the crisis of the doctrine of epistemic knowledge, as well as in the substitution of contemplative freedom directed at truth—whose aim is knowledge—with the will to power and utility.

Realism and antirealism are determinations of thought, not of being. They both concern the spirit in its quest to relate to and to attain knowledge of the real. Thought is ultimately measured by that which stands in front of it. To exist in the presence of being and to be grounded in the transparency of knowing it: this is realism. Its opposite is theoretical nihilism. The starting point of any misguided theory of cognition—which occurs whenever we presume to reach being by starting with the abstract, the logical, or with a priori forms—is found precisely in our failure stay connected with reality. These initial suggestions will suffice for the moment to clarify why we assign a quite different meaning to “nihilism” than those used by Nietzsche or Heidegger. Do we call it “nihilism” because through it being falls into nothingness? Do we call it “nihilism” because it seeks to reflect on the nature of nothingness? Or do we call it “nihilism” because it leaves Leibniz’s above-quoted question unanswered? No matter how fundamental these questions are, none of them comes into play in the reflection upon theoretical nihilism. Rather, our interest is the ontological-gnoseological problem of the truth of being and our knowledge of it. Hence, I intend to use the expression “speculative nihilism” explicitly in its connection to the denial of realism through a process that seeks to clarify the “pathological” (i.e., nihilism) in light of the “normal” (i.e., realism) and vice versa.

If nihilism, the forgetting of being, and antirealism constitute a triad where each member is implied by the other, we still need to determine more thoroughly both the noetic-ontological process through which they are woven together and the process that refuses to embrace being as the highest good of the intellect. It seems that the latter is related to a deviation from the normal way we intend knowledge and the relationship between thinking and being (and, in the final analysis, the very essence of truth). It eschews the intellect’s orientation toward the object, its true homeland, and thus falls into a forgetting of being. By referring to the concept of truth, we place ourselves at the center—or rather at the height—of nihilism, because its apex consists precisely in the abandonment of the notion of truth as conformity of thought and things: in other words, the idea that there is no structure in things by which thought can measure itself because of an unsurpassable chasm between thought and being. This was the step which Nietzsche took and Heidegger repeated, for both of them, in different ways, inherited modern dualism and representationalism.

I would thus offer the following analysis: the essence of speculative nihilism consists (and has its origin) in the incapacity to reach being through eidetic-judicative visualization. This fundamental event is strictly tied to the metaphysical crisis of the intellect (intellectus/nous) and hence to the abandonment of intellectual intuition: the intellectual intuition of being reached through judgment. According to the picture I have sketched—the details of which chapter 3 will fill in—the intellect, the highest level of man’s cognitive faculty (even higher than discursive activity, which belongs to reason [ratio]), is understood as a faculty of being and of first principles, or as an “ontological sense” radically diverse from Kant’s a priori faculty which is not perceptive but rather synthetic-constructive.⁸ The decisive question hinges upon the issue of whether intelligere is understood as intus legere or inter-ligare. The first term alludes to a noetic apperception of reality in which the intellect celebrates its marriage with the being of things and actualizes itself in contact with the nucleus of intelligibility and the mystery contained in being. Otherwise, if we follow Kant’s critique, the intellect works only as a connective faculty, imposing a priori forms onto sensible material: consequently, the process of cognition is divided into sensible intuition and the constructive, formative operation of the intellect which is never intuitive on its own. (It is relevant to observe here that this completely transforms the idea of truth: “truth” remains a kind of conformity but not a conformity between intellect and thing: it is rather the conformity of a representation with the laws of a priori unification of the spirit.)

From this emerges a further determination of theoretical nihilism which I would like to explain: once the immediate intentional relationship between thought and being is obscured, we cut ourselves off from the noetic apprehension of things so that it is no longer possible to answer the question “why.” Hence, we deprive the intellect of one of its principal tasks. It seems to me that the refusal to admit even a partial immediacy is typical of most philosophical positions today. We can even say that such a denial is the very entryway into the dominions of both fallibilistic epistemology and the hermeneutics of infinite interpretation. The importance of immediacy, however, concerns not interpretation but perception. The phenomenon attests to itself. It “gives a reason” for itself, as Husserl rightly maintains: “This is the principle of all principles: that every intuition originally offering itself is a legitimate source of knowledge—that everything which offers itself to our ‘intuition’ in an original way (in its flesh-and-blood reality, so to speak)—is to be accepted just as it gives itself” (Ideas, I, §24).

The nature of speculative nihilism is therefore defined most rigorously as the forgetting of being, antirealism, and the denial of the notion of truth as conformity of the mind with the thing. This seems to culminate in the complete abandonment of the intellect in favor of the will (Nietzsche), in the resolution of the entire process of reality into a pure act or “autoctisis” (“auto-creation” or “self-constitution”) of the transcendental ego (Gentile), and in the destruction of the concept of truth as adaequatio or conformity (Heidegger). The reduction of knowledge to a never-ending interpretation, the absolute conventionalism of opting for axioms and language, the fallibilism that dissolves every philosophical assertion, and finally the unconditional self-certitude of calc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Translator’s Introduction and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Question of Nihilism and the Knowledge of Being
• 2. Metaphysical Knowledge of Existence
• 3. Being, Intellect, and Abstractive Intuition
• 4. The Status of First Principles
• 5. Speculative Nihilism
• 6. Heidegger
• 7. Eight Theses on Postmetaphysical Thinking
• 8. The Two Roads of Hermeneutics
• 9. Logical Empiricism and Analytic Philosophy
• 10. Consequences of Nihilism
• 11. Toward the Determination of Practical Nihilism
• 12. Progress in Philosophy?
• 13. The Third Voyage
• 14. Ontological Humanism and the Person
• 15. Between the Present and the Future
• Appendix 1: Antirealism and the Schism between Man and Reality
• Appendix 2: Texts of Thomas Aquinas without Comment
• Appendix 3: Intellectual Intuition, “Anticipation,” and Judgment in Karl Rahner
• Appendix 4: More on Intellectual Intuition
• Appendix 5: The Appeal to the Experience of Self as a Type of Natural Mysticism
• Appendix 6: The Critique of Onto-theology
• Appendix 7: What Is Nihilism? A Look at the Encyclical Fides et Ratio
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover