Author: M. Farahi Tojegi
The Evolution of Nihilism and Its Opposition to Religious Faith (part 10)
In the previous note, modern Renaissance nihilism was discussed; in the present writing, Enlightenment-era nihilism will be addressed.
Modern Enlightenment Nihilism
In common discourse and general understanding, nihilism is often taken to mean mere meaninglessness; indeed, modern nihilism reaches meaninglessness, nihilistic emptiness, and despair at a certain stage of its historical development. However, nihilism is not synonymous with meaninglessness.
Nevertheless, both cosmo-centric nihilism and theocentric nihilism, at particular stages of their development and transformation, became entangled in a degenerative crisis and revealed anxiety-laden and absurdist tendencies specific to themselves. Especially humanistic nihilism, in its postmodern degenerative phase and in the form of absurdism, has manifested and continues to manifest profound emptiness and a destructive despair.
Within cosmo-centric nihilism and theocentric negationism, there have been phases in which no prominent nihilistic manifestation of meaninglessness appeared; yet both forms of negationism, at certain stages of their expansion, displayed more or less signs of anxiety, despair, and absurdity.
Modern nihilism, in its second phase of development; namely the so-called Enlightenment nihilism, which may be termed value-positing and ideological nihilism; although it concealed within itself seeds of despair and meaninglessness, did not, in its dominant and primary mode of appearance, present itself as despair-ridden. Modern nihilism begins with a negating and critical, negative stance toward theocentric nihilism (in the form of Renaissance nihilism), but in the course of its development it reaches a stage of establishing values, institutions, and organizations aligned with humanistic aims. In the form of so-called Enlightenment nihilism, it objectifies and institutionalizes the animal will-to-power and the secular–humanistic expansionist approach in the guise of the modern technical system, other civilizational aspects of the modern West, moral value-systems, ideological frameworks, and other humanistic manifestations in both theory and practice.
So-called Enlightenment nihilism actualizes and objectifies the self-grounding, instinct-driven human will in the form of intellectual, ideological, and moral systems, cultural values, and concrete economic, political, and social structures. In humanistic negationism, the human being attains primacy and centrality as a profit-oriented, pleasure-seeking economic animal, and modern Enlightenment-era nihilism brings the most prominent aspects of this identity into appearance and actuality.
The nihilism associated with the Enlightenment, during its emergence, expansion, and dominance, sets forth a positive horizon for humanity within the framework of secular humanism. The modern secular–humanistic West, more than previous periods of Western history; the Greco-Roman West and the medieval West has been afflicted by a nihilistic veil and has moved further away, in a compounded manner, from divine guardianship.
Humanistic nihilism has produced a world which, even if it were to endure for centuries, is ultimately unstable, transient, and doomed to annihilation, like foam upon water; for it is the embodiment of falsehood and the tyrannical will of the modern egocentric subject. The spiritual wisdom of history teaches us that regimes, civilizations, and worlds that embody tyranny and polytheistic wills, being false, are fragile and impermanent like foam upon water. From the early seventeenth century, humanistic nihilism began its movement toward expansion by laying theoretical foundations and formulating the principles and components of modern science, juridical–political models, and various economic and civilizational systems.
The modern Western world, in its project of civilization-building, required the establishment of moral values and political–economic directives. Thus, secular–humanist ideologies, moral systems, and educational and pedagogical models took shape, and the modern West gradually attained an outward stability within its civilizational structure. It is, however, entirely evident that this constructed civilization no matter how complex or multilayered it may be, or how dominant it may appear through its magical lever of technology cannot remain stable, since it is built upon a ground of fundamental internal contradictions and fissures.
The signs of crisis, instability, and decline in the modern West gradually became apparent from the late nineteenth century, as the modern world entered a phase of degenerative crisis. The nihilistic humanist metaphysics of modernity, and consequently the modern Western world, contain within themselves a fundamental and crisis-generating contradiction: namely, that they displace the human being; who is a divine creation, whose perfection lies entirely in occupying the status of divine servitude, who is innately inclined toward and in need of servitude to God, and who seeks existential perfection through this divine servitude, actualizing and objectifying it through adherence to divine guardianship from his proper position. After forgetting and denying divine guardianship, they imprison and deform the human being within the cage of self-grounding autonomy.
The human being cannot and must not be regarded as the ultimate principle, nor should he traverse the illusion-laden world of subjectivism from the standpoint of self-grounding delusion. The human being is essentially poor and dependent by nature and cannot be the axis around which all matters revolve. If, based on humanistic illusion, he attempts to construct a world upon subjectivity, it will inevitably be an illusory world, more fragile than a spider’s web. This false, baseless, and tyrannical position is incompatible with human nature and truth and not only fails to elevate humanity but, since it amounts to a denial of human nature, results in the affirmation of an inflated and corrupt animality. (For animality should serve as the material for the form of humanity; and when humanity, due to neglect of nature, is removed from the position of form and actuality, animality becomes dominant. Since the true station of animality is not that of form and actuality, it becomes corrupted when placed in a rank, level, and domain that is not its proper place.)
The reality is that in the modern world, the specific form of the human species (the archetypal form of the modern human) appears and is actualized in the guise of the profit-seeking, pleasure-driven animal and the economic animal. In modern thought as well, the human being is defined by his animality. This is a matter that can be clearly observed in its various forms in the anthropological views of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Darwin, Spencer, and the entirety of the modern Western human sciences. The dominance of subjectivity (the placement of the human being in the position of the egocentric subject) constitutes the cornerstone of human alienation from himself and of human estrangement from one another.
The fundamental contradiction of the modern world reveals itself here: the human nature, as the locus that embodies the essence of human existence and the truth of humanity (the immutable archetype of humanity), reaches perfection solely and exclusively by occupying the station of divine servitude, worship, and devotion an actuality realized through adherence to divine guardianship; whereas the dominance of humanism distances the human being from his true reality and diverts him from the path of perfecting his existential essence. This, in turn, results in suffering, anxiety, disorder, and all manner of crises and disturbances for him.
Modern nihilism, by constructing the various aspects of the modern world and its values and patterns upon the basis of egocentric self-grounding, entangles all dimensions of this world in a fundamental, erosive, and reductive struggle. Of course, modern nihilism, relying on the overwhelming and striking achievements of technology and the loud slogans of “human rights,” “human freedoms,” and the like, attempts to conceal and neutralize this serious, fundamental, and destructive contradiction. The so-called Enlightenment nihilism, by exploiting the capacities produced by modern technique, and by promoting quantification, calculation, and profit-orientation within humanistic rationality, and by striving to impose an alienated humanistic image of the human being upon minds, has created a suffocating, despotic, machine-like discipline, and presents it under the title of human progress and freedom, the realization of human individuality, and as the ultimate end of human history.
In this way, it seeks to immerse the afflicted, ill-fated, and captive humanist human being in an illusion of freedom, progress, happiness, welfare, and other baseless claims, distracting him from his miserable condition, and by covering over the fundamental contradiction, preventing a great human uprising against the domination of the modern West.
In Renaissance nihilism, although positive aspects were present and influential, they did not manifest very prominently; what appeared more clearly were the critical and negative aspects toward medieval values. However, the nihilism of the Enlightenment period possesses a strong and active positive aspect. The so-called Enlightenment nihilism is value-producing and system-building, and it manifests and objectifies itself in the form of civilization. The so-called Enlightenment nihilism has various aspects and manifestations in terms of appearance and realization, some of which are mentioned here:
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One manifestation of Enlightenment nihilism appears in the form of modern science, which has an inherently quantitative character and emerges on the basis of a mundane, quantitative interpretation oriented toward subjective sensory-empirical perception of the world and the human being, seeking its ultimate end in the realization of human egocentric aims;
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One of the dimensions of the so-called Enlightenment nihilism is the domain of moral value-systems and the formulation of socio-political directives in the form of humanistic ideologies, which undertake the role of shaping theoretical-practical models in the course of the expansion of the modern West;
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One of the manifestations of Enlightenment nihilism appears in the form of modern technology and the modern technical system. The dominance of the modern technical system organizes the humanistic, ego-centered, domination-oriented approach on the basis of scientistic quantification and imposes a kind of mechanized, technocratic life upon human beings. This technocratic life forgets the existential ends and perfections of the human being and instead presents technical capability and material accumulation; inspired by the secular-humanistic “idea of progress” as the aim, end, criterion, and measure of human life. The dominance of technocracy imposes one of the worst forms and modes of alienation upon the human being.
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Bureaucratism and bureaucratic administrative and socio-political totalitarianism are among the other existential dimensions of the humanistic nihilism known as Enlightenment nihilism that have emerged, expanded, and come to dominate in the modern West. Bureaucratism is based on an ant-like order that is alien to the truth of the human being; it reduces the human being and human relations to an instrumental and objectified level, and by distancing the human being from the immutable essence of humanity and his existential perfection, it entangles him in deformation, pervasive suffering, and an existential anxiety that arises from his condition of self-groundedness.
