by Ștefan Bolea
The earliest philosophical reference to the term ‘nihilism’ appears in Jacobi’s 1799 letter to Fichte, in which Jacobi asserts that Fichte’s transcendental idealism results in a form of nihilistic absolute egoism. Why is that? Because “it allows the existence of nothing outside or apart from the ego and the ego is itself nothing but a product of the ‘free power of imagination’” (Critchley Very Little… Almost Nothing, 2004, 3-4). Jacobi argues that we must choose between Fichte’s nihilism qua idealism, which is locked in the chamber of ego’s projections, and his own ‘chimerism’, which contends in a Pascalian fashion that “God is the essence of reason without being able to demonstrate this rationally” (Ibid., 4).
But the human being has such a choice, this single one: Nothingness [das Nichts] or a God. Choosing Nothingness, he makes himself into a God; that is, he makes an apparition [Gespenst] into God because if there is no God, it is impossible that man and everything which surrounds him is not merely an apparition [Gespenst]. I repeat: God is, and is outside of me, a living being, existing in itself, or I am God. There is no third. (Jacobi qtd. in Critchley 2004, 4).
Put differently, the choice lies between nihil and God. Choosing nihil, two things happen: the human being becomes God, while the ‘quicksand’ God turns into a ghost. Because if God is dead, the entire world of the human being is hallucinatory. Therefore, either God is an external, living being, consistent in itself [außer mir, ein lebendiges, für sich bestehendes Wesen] or I am God. But if I am God, I am (God of) nothing. Does the death of God signify my self-transcendence—or my own demise? That is the (nihilistic) question. Critchley (2004, 5) argues that Jacobi’s perspective prefigures Dostoevsky’s depiction of Kirilov’s ‘logical suicide’:
Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear … He who conquers pain and fear will himself be a god. And that other God will not be … Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything will be new. Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from the annihilation of God to … the physical transformation of the earth and man. Man will be god. He’ll be physically transformed … Everyone who desires supreme freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself has learnt the secret of the deception. Beyond that there is no freedom; that’s all, and beyond it there is nothing. He who dares to kill himself is a god. Now every one can make it so that there shall be no God and there shall be nothing. But no one has done so yet. (Dostoyevsky, The Devils, 1972, 126)
Becoming nothing is, in Kirilov’s view, a shortcut to theosis [deification]. We have seen that from Jacobi’s standpoint, Fichte’s conception of the absolute ego evolves into a deity, only to ultimately become an ‘apparition.’ Similarly, Dostoevsky’s character contends that an individual who undertakes ‘rational’ suicide—acting in accordance with the dictates of reason—assumes the role of a god, thereby overcoming both pain and fear. Fichte’s ego experiences divinity as nothing, since the ascension to deity is simultaneous with self-nihilation, prefiguring Cioran’s aphorism: “Isn’t God the ego mode of the void?” (Twilight of Thought, 131). Conversely, Kirilov experiences nothing as God: daring to approach self-nihilation from a ‘rational’ perspective, ‘trampling’ over pain and fear, turns the suicide into a (self-)god.
Camus’s formalization of Kirilov’s argument is helpful here: “The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed” (Camus, The Rebel, 105). The first premise[1] (¬G → K) is based on the pre-Nietzschean pattern: “God is dead, I am God”. Kirillov and Zarathustra feel exuberant enough to replace divinity. In the second premise (¬G → S) God’s absence entails suicide. If God is dead, I either become God or I kill myself. We have the scheme of Jacobi’s reasoning once again: we must choose between nothing and God. Because if God doesn’t exist, we ourselves become the ghostly God of nothing. Kirilov’s conclusion (S ∧ (S → K) → K) asserts that suicide is the key to self-deification. The argument reflects a psychological reinterpretation of the God complex, intertwined with a troubling preoccupation with self-destruction. From the assumption “God does not exist” (¬G), all conclusions become permissible: Kirilov’s conflation of divinity with self-murder becomes the allegory of an age marked by the destruction of meaning and the specter of extinction.
# Note
[1] Let’s define the propositions in the following manner:
G = God exists
¬G = God does not exist
K = Kirilov is God
S = Kirilov must kill himself.