The Evolution of Nihilism and Its Opposition to Religious Faith (part 13)

Author: M. Farahi Tojegi

The Evolution of Nihilism and Its Opposition to Religious Faith (part 13)

Nihilism and Postmodernity

Postmodern thought is one of the most recent approaches adopted by philosophers and historians in recent years, although some thinkers believe that its era has already come to an end and that the age of new theoretical frameworks has begun. Postmodernity arises from a critique of modernity. Although it initially took a literary form, it was introduced to the world by prominent French thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, as well as the American philosopher Richard Rorty, and more recently by the Italian thinker Gianni Vattimo. These thinkers themselves were influenced by Heidegger and, ultimately, by Nietzsche. Heidegger served as the connecting link between these intellectuals and Nietzsche, providing Western thinkers with the opportunity to re-examine and reinterpret Nietzsche’s ideas. His conceptual framework concerning nihilism significantly contributed to the growth of postmodernism.

They proposed new principles regarding the concepts of God, metaphysics, humanity, and history. They opposed absolutist and totalizing narratives. From their perspective, classical historiography was no longer a reliable foundation, and events required new forms of interpretation and judgment. Human beings were placed at the center of this reassessment. Platonic and neo-scholastic interpretations within religious traditions were subjected to the most profound critiques. Postmodernism rejected notions such as colonial history, Black history, women’s history, historical eternalism, and linear theories of progress. It regarded human beings as free and considered any form of teleology or end-oriented thinking in human action to be undesirable and irrational. Nevertheless, their own perspectives were also subjected to serious critiques, as they were ultimately compelled to adhere to rules and principles whose foundations had been laid by the modern and pre-modern worlds in order to justify the validity of their claims.

Postmodernity represents a period of decadent crisis within the modern world. In other words, with the completion of modernity, the modern world enters a phase of decline. At this stage, the fundamental pillars and essential dimensions of modern Western civilization are afflicted by profound anxiety and instability, and a pervasive crisis engulfs all existential domains of that world. The postmodern era is a time of anxiety, instability, decline, and self-destruction for modern Western civilization. During this period, the foundational theoretical assumptions of modern thought—largely codified and systematized within the so-called Enlightenment worldview—are subjected to doubt and denial, leading to the expansion and dominance of skepticism and relativism. The postmodern era is thus marked by the emergence of serious doubts regarding the core values and assumptions of modern thought and the loss of their credibility.

Postmodernity is both the stage of decadent crisis in modern Western civilization and the self-awareness of this crisis. This crisis-conscious and crisis-ridden self-awareness manifests and becomes actualized in the form of postmodernism (postmodern thought).

In the life of living beings and throughout their historical evolution, crises occur. These crises can be divided into two categories:

1. Decadent crises

2. Creative crises

Decadent Crises

Decadent crises occur at a stage in the life of a historical world in which all existential possibilities and potentials of that world have already been actualized, leaving no prospect other than the advent of death. Decadent crises follow a negative and regressive cycle and pave the way for the collapse and complete dissolution of the world in which they occur. Such crises emerge during the phase of aging and weakness of a system. A decadent crisis is the result of the expansion and development of a system and the product of the totality of its existential conditions and requirements. It signifies the exhaustion of a system’s capacities and potentials, which weakens the mechanisms that regulate internal conflicts and contradictions, thereby creating the conditions for its internal collapse.

Decadent crises possess a self-destructive character and activate a cycle of decline, decay, and ultimately extinction. When a living being becomes trapped in a decadent crisis, it enters a stage that may be described as one of lethargy, apathy, weakness, and incapacity. At this stage, the evolutionary movement of the living system no longer proceeds toward the manifestation and actualization of potentials and capacities; rather, it moves toward the intensification of internal conflicts and tensions, the weakening of internal unity, and the reduction of motivation, energy, and capacity for movement.

A decadent crisis in a living being becomes apparent when that being reaches a deadlock in terms of its existential outlook and the continuation of life, such that every movement brings it closer to complete extinction and inevitable death. The final anxiety loop mentioned earlier appears in the stage of decadent crisis in the form of nihilism. In fact, when a form of nihilism reaches its final phase and decadent crisis, its final anxiety loop emerges and becomes actualized. Humanistic nihilism, upon entering the postmodern era, becomes entangled in a self-destructive decadent crisis that constitutes the essence of this final anxiety loop. The postmodern decadent crisis paves the way for the definitive decline of the modern world. In the phase of decadent crisis, humanistic nihilism becomes trapped in its final anxiety loop and thus brings about its own ultimate demise along with that of the modern world. With the final collapse of the modern world, all latent capacities and potentials of the West as a historical entity are fully exhausted; therefore, with the complete extinction of the modern world, Western history itself reaches its ultimate end, culminating in total death and annihilation.

Creative Crises

Creative and generative crises are crises that serve as a prelude to growth and transition from one stage or level to a higher one. The pressure and pain they impose resemble the pain of childbirth. They occur at a stage in the life of a living being in which possibilities, capacities, latent potentials, and prospects for growth still exist. Although creative crises are accompanied by temporary suffering, pressure, and tension, they generally lead to the realization of new forms of possibilities and capacities within a system and actualize a new stage or mode of its expansion. The defining characteristic of creative crises is that they ensure the continuation of life for a living system. Importantly, this continuation occurs along the path of unfolding the system’s intrinsic potentials and actualizing its latent capacities. Generative and creative crises are characteristic of beings and systems that have not yet reached completion in their evolutionary process and that still possess an open and potential horizon. The emergence of a creative crisis provides the conditions necessary for movement from potentiality to actuality and for the realization of these capacities and possibilities.

Following the completion of modernity, the modern West has entered the postmodern era. The postmodern era is characterized by pervasive decadent crises, and within postmodernity, the modern world generally does not experience creative crises; rather, the nature and cycle of its crises are predominantly decadent. Postmodernity represents the stage of comprehensive decadent crisis in modern Western civilization, in which the final anxiety loop of humanistic nihilism becomes actualized, and the modern world turns toward self-negation. This decadent crisis of the modern West is also reflected in its self-consciousness. Postmodern nihilism, which becomes concrete and actualized in the course of the expansion of the modern world and during its decadent crisis within the postmodern context, is self-destructive and leads this historical world—and Western history as a whole—toward annihilation.

Postmodern nihilism is a manifestation of modern humanistic nihilism, just as the postmodern era itself represents a stage in the expansion of the modern West. Postmodern thought is, in essence, humanistic; however, it constitutes the form in which modern thought appears at the point of modernity’s completion. Consequently, it is characterized by instability and crisis and, in certain respects, engages in the denial of the assumptions of modern thought. In some of the most significant approaches within postmodern thought, subjectivism, the idea of progress, and the primacy of Cartesian and Kantian subjectivist rationality are subjected to serious critique and doubt. No trace of the optimism of the so-called Enlightenment worldview can be found in postmodern thought.

In postmodern thought, modern Western thinking rises, in a sense, to negate itself, just as postmodern nihilism exhibits a self-destructive orientation toward modern nihilism. In reality, postmodern nihilism represents the final anxiety loop of humanistic nihilism, which, at the end of its historical expansion and evolution, turns toward self-destruction. In postmodern nihilism, humanistic nihilism—and beyond that, nihilism as the inner essence of the West—reaches the culmination of its historical actualization and expansion.

Postmodern nihilism manifests in various forms and expressions, and absurdity constitutes its core essence. In fact, it can be said that the primary form of postmodern nihilism is realized in the guise of absurd nihilism, and it is even permissible, with some leniency, to refer to postmodern nihilism as absurd nihilism.

Postmodern nihilism negates many of the principal and significant aspects of the so-called Enlightenment’s ideological nihilism and, consequently, negates many of the foundational dimensions of the modern Western world. In postmodern nihilism, all fixed and absolutist moral systems—even those of a humanistic nature—as well as any possibility of attaining truth, and even the existence of an absolute and fixed truth, are denied. Within postmodern nihilism, modern subjectivity is confronted with profound and fundamental doubt and denial, becoming severely destabilized. Gradually, an anxious and skeptical relativism comes to dominate all aspects of the modern world, giving rise to a serious crisis in the relationships between the “individual,” the self, and others within the sphere of liberal capitalist society. The continuation of this condition leads to the expansion of various ethical and identity crises and to the emergence of a particular personality type shaped by these crisis-ridden conditions.

The dominant and essential form of postmodern nihilism is absurd nihilism, whose identity can be described and explained under the concept of absurdity. With the emergence and expansion of postmodern nihilism, absurdity increasingly permeates all domains and aspects of culture, ethics, economics, social and human relations, politics, art, literature, and other dimensions of modern societies. Ultimately, the crisis-ridden postmodern city comes entirely under the dominance of absurdity and becomes fully actualized in that form.

Continues…

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