BtZ42 Section 9 (pp 53-60): the price of nihilism

[Mark Kohut]

after Turgenev popularized the term with Bazarov in Fathers & Sons :In the
story, Turgenev sets up a conflict between the older generation of fathers
who believe in art and other irrational activities, and the
nihilists—scientific
materialists like Bazarov who accept nothing. Bazarov is very critical of
anything that ..(an old favorite I recently listened to in audio),

also see:
https://books.google.com/books?id=cDbuAAAAMAAJ&pg=PR10&dq=Turgenev+%2B+nihilistic+characters&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY7t2DydzMAhVGPz4KHVkfAcgQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=Turgenev%20%2B%20nihilistic%20characters&f=false

read about the Pre-Nihilist Sophie, who speaks of the necessity of
'breaking the will"...(everything connects with geniuses)...
and this intro---by Edward Garnett---sees THAT as related to the Russian
sprite of self-sacrifice in some ways....

Dostoevsky took it in literature to new heights/depths (?) of understanding
in The Possessed (or The Demons). In which he has a nihilistic character
(or two) expressively push nihilism to what he saw as its logical
conclusion.

https://books.google.com/books?id=YFS4-k4qoH4C&pg=PA139&dq=dostoevsky+%2B+nihilism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv3svhxtzMAhVINj4KHQqoBqwQ6AEIPjAG#v=onepage&q=dostoevsky%20%2B%20nihilism&f=false

JM Coetzee dealt with this and more in Dostoevsky  in *The Master of
Petersburg*, a book that was one of the few non-Pynchon titles to have a
Group Read right here where you are reading. Political violence as a
nihilistic act was a theme.

Cheap Nihilism. I think Roger has jumped to seeing what Pirate says
as......enough rockets and only death results as
linked (by Pynchon)  to Pointsman's narrow deterministic outlook....The
logical conclusion of Nihilism is a lawless society ruled by
the power of a Pointsman-like controller. Maybe?




On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 10:59 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> P. 57:
>
> Wikipedia: The term nihilism [Latin *nihil*, nothing] was first used by
> Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819). Jacobi used the term to characterize
> rationalism and in particular Immanuel Kant's "critical" philosophy... [in
> Jacobi's view] all rationalism (philosophy as criticism) reduces to
> nihilism—and thus it should be avoided and replaced with a return to some
> type of faith and revelation.... With the popularizing of the word nihilism
> by Ivan Turgenev, a new Russian political movement called the Nihilist
> movement adopted the term. They supposedly called themselves nihilists
> because nothing "that then existed found favor in their eyes."
>
> ***
> Hardly the first time an idea or tendency has been christened by its
> opponents; see also the Cynics
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism_(philosophy)#Origin_of_the_Cynic_name
> Jacobi's objection was essentially that philosophy must have *some* firm,
> unquestionable ground better than a Cartesian *cogito, ergo sum* -- that
> faith or revelation set boundaries we need, while reason can in principle
> argue its way into anything (including the belief that reason is just a
> screen of rationalization).
>
> Note that in a Google Ngram, use of the capitalized (political) version
> peaked in the 1880s and 1890s, overlapping heavily with bomb-throwing
> anarchism, while the more general version (not so much philosophy as
> attitude) has been booming since -- surprise! -- World War 1.
>
> https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nihilism&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008
>
> ***
> Jacobi's objection was Anti-Enlightenment 101: that philosophy must have
> *some* firm, unquestionable ground better than a Cartesian *cogito, ergo
> sum;* that faith or revelation provide foundations/anchors we need, while
> reason can argue its way into anything (including the belief that reason is
> just a screen of rationalization).
>
> How fair is Pirate's characterization of Roger's "cheap nihilism"? In this
> context the latter amounts to a denial of any pattern or meaning beyond
> random fluctuation in where the rockets hit. Is nihilism really a "global"
> philosophical stance for Roger, or a specific, reactive stance to being
> surrounded by people who insist there *is* a pattern or meaning to be found.
>
>  NB that Pirate qualifies it (Roger is "paying" something -- he's not
> belittling others' rocket fears from a safe Olympus) and that Roger admits
> it but sees no alternative ("It is cheap. All right, but what does he want
> then") -- and spins a mock system in which people would be entitled to only
> so much nihilism as their circumstances and experience justify.
>
>
>
>
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