“I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth “

Mar 5, 2011 by

Ray Brassier interviewed by Marcin Rychter

I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth

KRONOS: Nihilism is one of the most ambiguous philosophical concepts. What is your idea of it? Would you consider yourself a nihilist? Does nihilism totally exclude religion? What about Meillassouxs nihilistic faith fuelled by the inexistence of God?

RB: Very simply, nihilism is a crisis of meaning. This crisis is historically conditioned, because what we understand by ‘meaning’ is historically conditioned. We’ve moved from a situation in which the phenomenon of ‘meaning’ was self-evident to one in which it has become an enigma, and a primary focus of philosophical investigation. The attempt to explain what ‘meaning’ is entails a profound transformation in our understanding of it; one that I think will turn out to be as far-reaching as the changes in our understanding of space, time, causality, and life provoked by physics and biology.

via KRONOS – english – I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth – metafizyka – kultura – religia.

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  • Nat

    “in which the phenomenon of ‘meaning’ was self-evident”

    When in the history of philosophy was meaning self-evident? The Socratic inquiry, as presented in Plato’s dialogues, was and is an inquiry into the meaning of (the nature of) certain concepts (such as justice, truth, etc.) we take for granted or assume we know.

    “attempt to explain what ‘meaning’ is entails a profound transformation”

    Maybe, maybe not. there are certainly thinkers (Quine, Wittgenstein) whose work undermines the contention that meaning-qua-meaning is anything other than a tautology, hence Quine’s scepticism about semantics and Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use” argument.

  • Bamurphy

    Nat I think on the first issue it is helpful to think this historically, which no doubt you are doing but I would say almost outside of typical ‘continental’ assumptions. So, first meaning because increasingly non-self-evident after or around the times of the big three hermeneutics of suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud. Freud in such a reading made us suspicious of our own thoughts and desires, Nietzsche of our morals, ethics, and religious sentiments, and Marx of our economic structures, political situations, and social life. And of course, there’s Darwin, who made us suspicious of our origins and our importance and distinction amongst the animals. If one reads each time I deploy “suspicious of” as “suspicious of the pre-established meaning/significance of”, then I think one can glean pretty clearly what Brassier is talking about.

  • Nat

    There’s understanding and there’s disagreement, and to the extent that I understand him I disagree: in part b/c I think there’s incoherence there about the idea that meaning as such is somehow more problematic now than before, and to that extent I am quite ok with going against typical ‘continental’ assumptions. Socrates represents a radically modern position of “suspicion” in my opinion, and the three thinkers you mention (and yes I’ve seen them grouped this way before) are only applying his method (broadly construed) to other fields of inquiry. We need to re-discover what is radical about the Socratic inquiry.