Arendt Considering Nihilism
In the essay I am working on right now ("Thinking and Moral Considerations," which I will quote extensively from), Arendt addresses nihilism in two different instances. First, is the concern by the "defenders of metaphysics" of the "danger of nihilism" that arises through recent philosophical contributions by the likes of Nietzsche. In the second instance, she addresses the real possibility that "thinking" will coincide with nihilistic "knowledge." I believe these two instances relate back to each other, and they are helpful in understanding the interconnectedness and implications of her theories on thinking, willing and judging.
I do not plan on explaining Arendt's theory of "thinking" here, but I do plan soon on a large post on Thinking, Willing, and Judging, the tripartite division that was to organize her last work on the vita contemplativa in The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately she died before its completion and never got to the Judgment section, which was probably the most important of the three because it proposes a solution to the problem formed by the first two sections (and in my opinion by the Nietzsche and post-structuralism problems). Fortunately, for my sake, her theory of judgment can be well gathered by an intense study of several essays touching on the issue, but I will not go into that now either.
For the purposes of this post you need only know that "thinking," according to Arendt, is a purposeless activity, it does not aim at producing anything. In fact, "thinking" is inherently destructive and even self-destructive, because when one thinks, one is always thinking anew. Thinking challenges "concepts," which are described as knowledge or "thoughts frozen by language, the medium of thinking." So when I mentioned earlier that thinking can coincide with nihilism, it would be wrong to gather that thinking "produces" nihilism because thinking does not produce anything. Production of knowledge is what "knowing" does (based on a distinction b/w "knowing" and "thinking" Arendt believes she has found in Kant), and thinking is characterized by the act which challenges knowing or knowledge. Thinking is where we take prejudicial categories of knowledge and turn them around, question them, ultimately destroy them.
The first instance where Arendt discusses nihilism in "Thinking and Moral Considerations" is with regard to the end of the distinction between the sensual and supersensual worlds and their hierarchical ordering given in traditional metaphysics. She points to the "cries of the defenders of metaphysics," urging that the collapse of this distinction poses the threat of the onset of nihilism. Arendt suggests that their concerns are well placed because "once the supersensual realm is discarded, its opposite, the world of appearance...is also annihilated." Arendt then points out that nobody knew this better than Nietzsche.
For a perfect example of this collapse and its effect, one need not look further than Nietzsche's alleged assassination of God in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Arendt suggests this oft-quoted and misunderstood passage was later clarified by Nietzsche in The Twilight of Idols where he stated that "God" was used to symbolize the supersensual realm as understood by traditional metaphysics. In this instance Nietzsche uses the term "true world" instead of "God" (as in the true world of things-in-themselves versus the "world as it appears"), and Arendt quotes him saying, "We have abolished the true world. What has remained? The apparent one perhaps? Oh no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one." The "death" of the "God" of traditional metaphysics does not affect "our ability to think" or "the sheer fact that man is a thinking being," it only means that the inclination to think does not need to be raised/confined by the traditional questions of metaphysics (as Kant believed). Unfortunately Arendt moves from here directly into another topic, and we are left momentarily unsatisfied with the fears of "the defenders of metaphysics."
The second instance can be related back to the first to complete a more satisfying picture of the existence of nihilism and its relationship to "thinking." In this section of the lecture Arendt has posed Socrates as the "example" of a thinker "thinking" (there is a role in "judgment" to be played by ideal types, examples or "exemplary thought" which will not be addressed here, one must only know that "example" has a specialized meaning). Socrates, like "thinking," does not propose results or truth. Socrates only incites reflection or thought as an activity of intrinsic value. We are reminded of the charges levied by the Athenians against Socrates for "corrupting the youth," etc., and of Socrates reply in the Apology. Socrates was guilty of challenging the traditional values of the city because thought is inherently destructive of received or unreflected categories, but Socrates never posed results as evidenced by the arguments in the dialogues, which are always "aporetic," either circular or without end. So what Socrates reveals is that "once roused from your sleep...you will see that you have nothing in your hand but perplexities, and the most we can do with them is share them with each other" ("each other," here may be the "me and myself" of the "thinking dialogue," it need not be "others" literally).
How does this destructive and purposeless activity possibly coincide with nihilism? Well, we can see for example certain members of Socrates circle, particularly Alcibiades and Critias, who, having been "aroused" by Socrates, "changed the nonresults of thinking into negative results." Alcibiades and Critias decide that since they cannot know what piety is, they shall be impious, and this is, by Arendt's account, "pretty much the opposite of what Socrates had hoped to achieve by talking about piety." We are warned that thinking, which "relentlessly dissolves and examines anew...doctrines and rules," can "turn against itself...produce a reversal of old values." See for instance Nietzsche, who seems to have forgotten while reversing Plato that "reversed Plato is still Plato." These negative results that coincide with the thinking activity will only serve to be the next set of dogmatically received values. Nihilism, according to Arendt, is simply the other side of conventionalism, negations of the current. Since thinking must go through a stage of at least hypothetical negation there is a tendency to try to "know" negated values, but "knowing" and "production" are not ends of thinking, which has no aim and is an end in itself.
What she seems to be suggesting here is not far off from Nietzche's criticism of "European Nihilism" in the first section of The Will to Power. Where nihilism is fallable, and inherently circular, is in its demand to hang to, or posit, ideas that exist only in relation to other ideas which it has recognized as destroyed. I am working from memory now, but I believe Nietzsche describes this as the person who denies values and then blames those very values for no longer existing, this is the error of nihilism. Nihilism always tries to hold to the shadows of things that it refuses to believe still exist.
This notion of nihilism relates to the Arendtian idea of "thinking," because thinking is supposed to be what is left when "values" can no longer be relied on (along with Willing and Judging). When thinking is blocked by "knowing" we reach an unreflective state where human beings simply apply, "sleepily," conventions or general rules to particulars with little regard for their substance. Its the "having a rule" that matters, and this explains why it is so easy to "transvaluate" or replace old rules with new rules. The flaw is in relying exclusively on concepts or rules, "determinative judgment" as Kant called it, in getting too used to "never making up [one's] mind." Nihilism is, as I believe Arendt would suggest, still holding to this flawed methodology but inverting, altering, or exploiting its arbitrary or contingent substance (she is relying heavily on Nietzsche here I think).
In conclusion, it appears the nihilistic threat posed by the collapse of the two-world metaphysics of traditional philosophy is rooted in this need for new categories. The collapse should have introduced the slippery nature of categories, the reality that concepts tend to "move about." Instead, it has simply led to a grasping for a new set of slippery concepts to hold to, since it is this "holding to" that really matters to most people. To Arendt, I think, the collapse of the two-world metaphysics did not demonstrate the flaw of this knowledge but the flaw of knowing itself. "What has remained?" asks Nietzsche. Arendt would perhaps answer "thinking, willing, and judging." I am not well acquainted with nihilism beyond Nietzsche's criticism of it and Arendt here, which I believe to be closely related to Nietzsche. I would be interested in knowing what those of you more acquainted with nihilism think since it will help my organization of Arendt for research purposes.
I do not plan on explaining Arendt's theory of "thinking" here, but I do plan soon on a large post on Thinking, Willing, and Judging, the tripartite division that was to organize her last work on the vita contemplativa in The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately she died before its completion and never got to the Judgment section, which was probably the most important of the three because it proposes a solution to the problem formed by the first two sections (and in my opinion by the Nietzsche and post-structuralism problems). Fortunately, for my sake, her theory of judgment can be well gathered by an intense study of several essays touching on the issue, but I will not go into that now either.
For the purposes of this post you need only know that "thinking," according to Arendt, is a purposeless activity, it does not aim at producing anything. In fact, "thinking" is inherently destructive and even self-destructive, because when one thinks, one is always thinking anew. Thinking challenges "concepts," which are described as knowledge or "thoughts frozen by language, the medium of thinking." So when I mentioned earlier that thinking can coincide with nihilism, it would be wrong to gather that thinking "produces" nihilism because thinking does not produce anything. Production of knowledge is what "knowing" does (based on a distinction b/w "knowing" and "thinking" Arendt believes she has found in Kant), and thinking is characterized by the act which challenges knowing or knowledge. Thinking is where we take prejudicial categories of knowledge and turn them around, question them, ultimately destroy them.
The first instance where Arendt discusses nihilism in "Thinking and Moral Considerations" is with regard to the end of the distinction between the sensual and supersensual worlds and their hierarchical ordering given in traditional metaphysics. She points to the "cries of the defenders of metaphysics," urging that the collapse of this distinction poses the threat of the onset of nihilism. Arendt suggests that their concerns are well placed because "once the supersensual realm is discarded, its opposite, the world of appearance...is also annihilated." Arendt then points out that nobody knew this better than Nietzsche.
For a perfect example of this collapse and its effect, one need not look further than Nietzsche's alleged assassination of God in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Arendt suggests this oft-quoted and misunderstood passage was later clarified by Nietzsche in The Twilight of Idols where he stated that "God" was used to symbolize the supersensual realm as understood by traditional metaphysics. In this instance Nietzsche uses the term "true world" instead of "God" (as in the true world of things-in-themselves versus the "world as it appears"), and Arendt quotes him saying, "We have abolished the true world. What has remained? The apparent one perhaps? Oh no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one." The "death" of the "God" of traditional metaphysics does not affect "our ability to think" or "the sheer fact that man is a thinking being," it only means that the inclination to think does not need to be raised/confined by the traditional questions of metaphysics (as Kant believed). Unfortunately Arendt moves from here directly into another topic, and we are left momentarily unsatisfied with the fears of "the defenders of metaphysics."
The second instance can be related back to the first to complete a more satisfying picture of the existence of nihilism and its relationship to "thinking." In this section of the lecture Arendt has posed Socrates as the "example" of a thinker "thinking" (there is a role in "judgment" to be played by ideal types, examples or "exemplary thought" which will not be addressed here, one must only know that "example" has a specialized meaning). Socrates, like "thinking," does not propose results or truth. Socrates only incites reflection or thought as an activity of intrinsic value. We are reminded of the charges levied by the Athenians against Socrates for "corrupting the youth," etc., and of Socrates reply in the Apology. Socrates was guilty of challenging the traditional values of the city because thought is inherently destructive of received or unreflected categories, but Socrates never posed results as evidenced by the arguments in the dialogues, which are always "aporetic," either circular or without end. So what Socrates reveals is that "once roused from your sleep...you will see that you have nothing in your hand but perplexities, and the most we can do with them is share them with each other" ("each other," here may be the "me and myself" of the "thinking dialogue," it need not be "others" literally).
How does this destructive and purposeless activity possibly coincide with nihilism? Well, we can see for example certain members of Socrates circle, particularly Alcibiades and Critias, who, having been "aroused" by Socrates, "changed the nonresults of thinking into negative results." Alcibiades and Critias decide that since they cannot know what piety is, they shall be impious, and this is, by Arendt's account, "pretty much the opposite of what Socrates had hoped to achieve by talking about piety." We are warned that thinking, which "relentlessly dissolves and examines anew...doctrines and rules," can "turn against itself...produce a reversal of old values." See for instance Nietzsche, who seems to have forgotten while reversing Plato that "reversed Plato is still Plato." These negative results that coincide with the thinking activity will only serve to be the next set of dogmatically received values. Nihilism, according to Arendt, is simply the other side of conventionalism, negations of the current. Since thinking must go through a stage of at least hypothetical negation there is a tendency to try to "know" negated values, but "knowing" and "production" are not ends of thinking, which has no aim and is an end in itself.
What she seems to be suggesting here is not far off from Nietzche's criticism of "European Nihilism" in the first section of The Will to Power. Where nihilism is fallable, and inherently circular, is in its demand to hang to, or posit, ideas that exist only in relation to other ideas which it has recognized as destroyed. I am working from memory now, but I believe Nietzsche describes this as the person who denies values and then blames those very values for no longer existing, this is the error of nihilism. Nihilism always tries to hold to the shadows of things that it refuses to believe still exist.
This notion of nihilism relates to the Arendtian idea of "thinking," because thinking is supposed to be what is left when "values" can no longer be relied on (along with Willing and Judging). When thinking is blocked by "knowing" we reach an unreflective state where human beings simply apply, "sleepily," conventions or general rules to particulars with little regard for their substance. Its the "having a rule" that matters, and this explains why it is so easy to "transvaluate" or replace old rules with new rules. The flaw is in relying exclusively on concepts or rules, "determinative judgment" as Kant called it, in getting too used to "never making up [one's] mind." Nihilism is, as I believe Arendt would suggest, still holding to this flawed methodology but inverting, altering, or exploiting its arbitrary or contingent substance (she is relying heavily on Nietzsche here I think).
In conclusion, it appears the nihilistic threat posed by the collapse of the two-world metaphysics of traditional philosophy is rooted in this need for new categories. The collapse should have introduced the slippery nature of categories, the reality that concepts tend to "move about." Instead, it has simply led to a grasping for a new set of slippery concepts to hold to, since it is this "holding to" that really matters to most people. To Arendt, I think, the collapse of the two-world metaphysics did not demonstrate the flaw of this knowledge but the flaw of knowing itself. "What has remained?" asks Nietzsche. Arendt would perhaps answer "thinking, willing, and judging." I am not well acquainted with nihilism beyond Nietzsche's criticism of it and Arendt here, which I believe to be closely related to Nietzsche. I would be interested in knowing what those of you more acquainted with nihilism think since it will help my organization of Arendt for research purposes.
5 Comments:
just short response for now, im not sure if i will have more to say when i look at it more closely.
but when you and arendt say that nihilism is a reversal of conventions, or as you helpfully say, a lingering on to their shadow, this is absolutely right and it shows that arendt has a good grasp of the idea.
it's best to think of it as the flip-side of religion. my interest in nihilism has led pretty directly into different forms of religious thought, particularly Calvinism and Scholastic theology.
the key to all of these systems is the diminishment of man in the face of God/the universe/what have you. this tendency kind of culminates in schopenahuer and cioran. we "are" not of our "own" volition or to our "own" purposes. the best we can do is refuse to play the game.
if you read gillespie's "Nihilism Before Nietzsche" you'll find a tendency in philosophy to stake out a claim for meaning in the face of IT (the abyss, meaninglessness) and a repositioning of a humanist context for our experience.
death, it must be remembered, makes life meaningless. to be dead is to have never been. i read a lot of post-kantian philosophy as an attempt, as said above, to create a humanist framework for a meaningful life from out of life itself, and not from "Categories"--this is circularity as well i think and it makes the problem, in my mind at least, intractable. (hence my retreat to cioran and schopenhauer)
im not decided how post-structuralism fits in here. in the absence of categories (i mean to REALLY accept that there is not a basis for any action is not something most people ever really do) most action is impossible we would agree. so post-struct and things like it develop plans of action based on contingency and the life, a kind of activity based on "being in the moment" rather than any particular ends, since we know all to well particular ends are oppressive and dangerous.
this is basically what people do anyway. i go to the store to get food to eat to stay alive to....
it goes on. so the contingency is never really followed all the way because we CAN'T follow it all the way. to go about anyway is, to me, just doing it to do it, and im not sure yet how i want to distinguish it from nihilism (which is more like a frame of mind that DENYS contingency rather than simply accepting it--think of buddhists and the maya, the world of appearances that ultimately means nothing--passive nihilism is an almost mystical state of attempted non-being. see hamlet.)
so im not sure i totally understand Arendt when she claims, as you imply, that thinking and willing and judging are left (i mean think of the schopenahuarian context for "willing"!). sure they take place, but so what? why not saying shitting and eating strawberries are left? (dont mean to sound flippant, this is interseting stuff)
in closing i must add my own concept of nihilism is undergoing a lot of changes due to mr. heidegger at the moment so what i wrote may not all be consistent.
this reminds me a great moment in a woody allen movie where a young boy refuses to do his homework because he has just found out that the universe will just keep expanding forever. "what's the point?" he asks. it's funny as hell.
it's also worth remembering the moment in a woody allen film where he finds the meaning of life in the Marx Brothers.
my response to contigency has, up to this point in my life, been to simply ask "What else is there to do?" i think this actually works in a way because it avoids the question of value, which nietzsche i think runs into by valuing human existence in some abstract way (gillespie claims nietzsche simply reverses schopenhauer's reversal of fichte, a paradigmatic romantic philospher.)
i wanted to add one thing. my little project of witnessing, that i have told you about a little bit, is related to these ideas. it's kind of about holding contingency outside you, looking at it. to what end? i dont know!
Just a quick response because my head is fried from reading examples of international business documentary sales! I urge that thise will all be a little clearer when I do my post on thinking, judging, and willing because they really are quite brilliant in how they interrelate and pose a solution, at least in theory, to the endpoint that nietzsche created. Post-structuralism is really just a rigorous and expounded opening of the whole Nietzsche tore into philosophy (whose seams lay bare after Kant inadvertantly "crushed" all future metaphysics in the critical project). I was mostly just concerned with what you thought of her statements to help me understand where I am. I will make it all more clear soon, but I will quickly say that for philosophy there is a very big distinction between things like "thinking, willing, and judging" and things like defecation and eating strawberries. The death of philosophy has little to do with the latter since philosophy never had much to say about them. If Arendt can move beyond this "death" in those three categories then perhaps we can move forward. It is like we were saying the other day, if you do not deal with what Nietzsche has done and you just move forward as if he were not there, or you revert to something before, then you are really not being intellectually honest. For me, Nietzsche and what he has done to philosophy is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room!
well get on that post dude all depends on it!!!
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