Simon Critchley chooses the tenth of our best ideas of the century so far
tpm cover art by Felix Bennett
The most original feature of John Gray’s work is the way in which a traditional Burkean conservatism underpinned by a deep pessimism about human nature is fused with a certain strand of Taoism. As Gray points out in Black Mass, “Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning for life.” Gray believes that the great human delusion is that action – through the means of the will – can achieve a terrestrial salvation. Such political voluntarism has led to nothing but bloodshed, the great slaughter bench of millenarian history. Killer apes like us have to learn to give up the search for meaning and learn to see instead that the purpose of aesthetic or spiritual life is the release from meaning. If seeing one’s life as an episode in some universal, emancipatory narrative of meaning is a delusion – most recently, the delusion of Obamaism – then the cure consists in freeing oneself from such narratives.
Maybe we just have to accept illusions. What interests Gray in the subtle paradoxes of the greatest Taoist thinker, Chuang-Tzu, is the acceptance of the fact that life is a dream without the possibility or even the desire to awaken from the dream. If we cannot be free of illusions, if illusions are part and parcel of our natural constitution, then why not simply accept them? In the final pages of Black Mass, Gray writes, “Taoists taught that freedom lies in freeing oneself from personal narratives by identifying with cosmic processes of death and renewal.” Thus, rather than seek the company of utopian thinkers, we should find consolation in the words of “mystics, poets and pleasure-lovers.”
It is clear that for Gray, like the later Heidegger, the real source of human problems resides in the belief that action can transform the world. As Heidegger writes in a very important collection of post-war notes, published as Overcoming Metaphysics, “No mere action will change the world.” A statement that finds its rejoinder in the title of Heidegger’s posthumously published 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, “Only a God can save us.” Namely, we cannot save ourselves. Action simply provides a consolation for the radical insignificance of our lives by momentarily staving off the threat of meaninglessness.
At the core of Gray’s work is a defence of the ideal of contemplation over action, the bios theoretikos of Aristotle or the ataraxia of the Epicureans, the state of calm and tranquility of soul where we simply learn to see the mystery as such and do not seek to unveil it in order to find some deeper purpose within.
Schopenhauer, often read in abridged, aphoristic form, was the most popular philosopher of the 19th Century. Nothing sells better than epigrammatic pessimism. It gives readers reasons for their misery and words to buttress their sense of hopelessness and impotence. Few things give more refined intellectual pleasure than backing oneself into an impregnably defended conceptual cul-de-sac. Such is what Nietzsche called “European Buddhism”. John Gray is the Schopenhauerian European Buddhist of our age. What he offers is a gloriously pessimistic cultural analysis which rightly reduces to rubble the false idols of the cave of liberal humanism. Counter to the upbeat progressivist evangelical atheism of Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens – whom Terry Eagleton recently fused into one composite being called “Ditchkins” – Gray provides a powerful argument in favour of human wickedness that is consistent with Darwinian naturalism. It leads to the position that I call “passive nihilism”. This is an extremely tempting world-view, even if I think the temptation must be decisively refused.
The passive nihilist looks at the world from a certain highly cultivated detachment and finds it meaningless. Rather than trying to act in the world, which is pointless, the passive nihilist withdraws to a safe contemplative distance and cultivates his aesthetic sensibility by pursuing the pleasures of lyric poetry, yogic flying, bird-watching, gardening or botany, as was the case with the aged Rousseau (“Botany is the ideal study for the idle, unoccupied solitary,” he writes in the Reveries of a Solitary Walker). In a world that is rushing to destroy itself through capitalist exploitation or military crusades – which are usually two arms of the same killer ape – the passive nihilist withdraws to an island where the mystery of existence can be seen for what it is without distilling it into a meaning. In the face of the coming century, which in all likelihood will be defined by the violence of faith and the certainty of environmental devastation, Gray offers a cool but safe temporary refuge. Happily, we will not be alive to witness much of the future that he describes.
Further reading
Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings, John Gray (Allen Lane, 2009)
Simon Critchley is Chair and Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, New York, and the author of Infinitely Demanding (Verso)
Read all fifty ideas and more in the special 50th issue of tpm
I can’t see ‘passive nihilism’ catching on unless it rebrands itself! It reminds me of my reaction to Gillian Rosen’s book ‘Dialectic of nihilism’ - there is just no way I’m going to read something with a title like that, even though her ‘Hegel contra Sociology’ was well-spoken of.
Christianity in some forms promotes and theorises non-violent forms of action, though of course the just war theory compromises that.
“Rather than seek the company of utopian thinkers, we should find consolation in the words of ‘mystics, poets and pleasure-lovers’”…
Of course… if you have enough money. Nihilism is a middle-class philosophy.
Is this right? -
“Rather than trying to act in the world, which is pointless, the passive nihilist withdraws …” etc.
An act by definition has an intention, point or purpose behind it. There are no actions in the world that are pointless. A pointless act isn’t an action, its an arbitrarily selected event.
Therefore, the passive nihilist does not act.
On the other hand, if the passive nihilist acts in the world but is always thwarted, then the pointlessness of his actions is a failure of his personal skill set, and not of the world.
I came to the same conclusion as Erik except I’ll suggest also retirees with modest tastes in wine.
Also . . .
“If we cannot be free of illusions, if illusions are part and parcel of our natural constitution, then why not simply accept them?”
We do have illusions about who we are. We’re unaware of them until they emerge over some disagreement in what we expect of our self and what actually occurs. Hopefully, by the time this happens the situation is not dire.
“ . . . human wickedness that is consistent with Darwinian naturalism.”
How in the world are the two (hw and Dn) related at all?
I presume, in the way we (or really, you philosophers) understand the expression “the meaninglessness of life,” it is generally accepted as true. Aside from some quibbling about the definition of “meaning” I should think it purposeless to go any further with the subject. John Cottingham in TPM’s previous posting tells us when he was a student the topic was “scathingly dismissed as nonsense.” Is the subject being over-mined?
This is from Wikipedia : “ . . . the devastating awareness of meaninglessness that Albert Camus claimed that ‘there is only one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide’ . . .”
In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus’ solution to the problem is against suicide. In fact, he concludes the essay saying Sisyphus must be happy because his struggle with the boulder “is enough to fill his heart.“
The existentialists seem to have come up with a solution to this awesome problem which sounds much like what the author of this essay suggests.
As Gray points out in Black Mass, “Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning for life.”
That statement in itself is deeply absurd. Phone poll a thousand people. Ask them what would secure a meaning for their life. It’s highly unlikely that any will respond by saying killing or dying. You might be lucky and catch Jihadist in. More likely you won’t.
Nihilism and pessimism are a little too clever for their own good. The for the pessimists position to stand they have to strip away evidence for optimism. The nihilist has to discount any meaning they see as insubstantial and superficial. So both analyses are dependent on removing evidence that doesn’t fit. Ask a nihilist the meaning of meaning, they’ll say ultimately, nothing. This is not true. Meaning has an ontological consistency in itself. It exists. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have a word for it. Its’ consistency is too intangible and unknowable for the nihilist, so the nihilist just says it doesn’t exist. Abra kedabra, gone in a puff of smoke. Similarly, existentialism makes assumptions it shouldn’t. Existentialism being something like nihilism with a bad conscience.
In Gray’s Black Mass there’s a glaring contradiction. Gray anatomises various apocalyptic cults throughout history. Then goes on to say we’re facing a man made environmental catastrophe that may wipe us all out. He doesn’t call this an apocalypse - but it is an apocalyptic vision. He either lacks the reflexiveness or intellectual honesty to note that right or wrong, the current popular theory of the world facing extinction through a looming man made environmental catastrophe closely resembles any other apocalyptic cult. He believes the theory. To be completely honest, it’s a bit like a “true believer” who says, well your apocalyptic cult is nonsense but my apocalyptic cult is true.
Eric Hoffer was at least brutally honest in his analysis. That we can’t trust ourselves not to be sucked into self delusion, and that many of our political ideas and beliefs are nonsensical. Apocalyptic cults, when they go hot, can manufacture their own catastrophes. They’re self fulfilling. Christianity is an apocalyptic cult, currently in a cold dormant state. David Koresh’s Branch Davidians,were an example of the possibilities of Christianity turning hot.
Hoffer’s answer to protecting and progressing a humane and liberal society is neither optimism or pessimism. Instead, it’s cynicism. A positive, reflexive cynicism that can see through itself as well as others. Nihilism, passive or active, is not truly cynical because it lacks a rigorously cynical view of itself. The passive nihilist is a serious threat to liberal society; they’ll sit on the fence when they’re needed. The active nihilist is far more dangerous; they’ll engage in destructive activity purely because they can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t. Tolerance of passive nihilism is dangerous, as its’ existence facilitates and encourages the active kind.
[...] to take a look at Havi Carel and Greg Tuck’s Film as Philosophy, and Simon Critchley’s Passive Nihilism (related to the topic of this year’s course). Chris Bertram wrote a nice piece on Global [...]
Most people are not intellectuals.
Most people are NOT nihilists.
Most people are distracted optimists.
Some middle class kids flirt with nihilism. Then they breed and the obligation to conform and believe in things fully takes over.
Not me mate. Im unique usually.