by\u00a0\u0218tefan Bolea<\/p>\n
The earliest philosophical reference to the term \u2018nihilism\u2019 appears in Jacobi\u2019s 1799 letter to Fichte, in which Jacobi asserts that Fichte\u2019s transcendental idealism results in a form of nihilistic absolute egoism. Why is that? Because \u201cit allows the existence of nothing outside or apart from the ego and the ego is itself nothing but a product of the \u2018free power of imagination\u2019\u201d (Critchley Very Little… Almost Nothing, <\/em>2004, 3-4). Jacobi argues that we must choose between Fichte\u2019s nihilism qua <\/em>idealism, which is locked in the chamber of ego\u2019s projections, and his own \u2018chimerism\u2019, which contends in a Pascalian fashion that \u201cGod is the essence of reason without being able to demonstrate this rationally\u201d (Ibid., 4).<\/p>\n But the human being has such a choice, this single one: Nothingness [das Nichts<\/em>] or a God. Choosing Nothingness, he makes himself into a God; that is, he makes an apparition [Gespenst<\/em>] into God because if there is no God, it is impossible that man and everything which surrounds him is not merely an apparition [Gespenst<\/em>]. 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).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Put differently, the choice lies between nihil<\/em> and God. Choosing nihil,<\/em> two things happen: the human being becomes God, while the \u2018quicksand\u2019 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 [au\u00dfer mir, ein lebendiges, f\u00fcr sich bestehendes Wesen<\/em>] or I am God. But if I am God, I am (God of) nothing. Does the death of God signify my self-transcendence\u2014or my own demise? That is the (nihilistic) question. Critchley (2004, 5) argues that Jacobi\u2019s perspective prefigures Dostoevsky\u2019s depiction of Kirilov\u2019s \u2018logical suicide\u2019:<\/p>\n Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear \u2026 He who conquers pain and fear will himself be a god. And that other God will not be \u2026 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 \u2026 the physical transformation of the earth and man. Man will be god. He\u2019ll be physically transformed \u2026 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\u2019s 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, <\/em>1972, 126)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Becoming nothing is, in Kirilov\u2019s view, a shortcut to theosis<\/em> [deification]. We have seen that from Jacobi\u2019s standpoint, Fichte\u2019s conception of the absolute ego evolves into a deity, only to ultimately become an \u2018apparition.\u2019 Similarly, Dostoevsky\u2019s character contends that an individual who undertakes \u2018rational\u2019 suicide\u2014acting in accordance with the dictates of reason\u2014assumes the role of a god, thereby overcoming both pain and fear. Fichte\u2019s ego experiences divinity as nothing, since the ascension to deity is simultaneous with self-nihilation, prefiguring Cioran\u2019s aphorism: \u201cIsn\u2019t God the ego mode of the void?\u201d (Twilight of Thought,<\/em> 131). Conversely, Kirilov experiences nothing as God: daring to approach self-nihilation from a \u2018rational\u2019 perspective, \u2018trampling\u2019 over pain and fear, turns the suicide into a (self-)god.<\/p>\n Camus\u2019s formalization of Kirilov\u2019s argument is helpful here: \u201cThe 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\u201d (Camus, The Rebel, <\/em>105). The first premise[1]<\/a> (\u00acG \u2192 K) is based on the pre-Nietzschean pattern: \u201cGod is dead, I am God\u201d. Kirillov and Zarathustra feel exuberant enough to replace divinity. In the second premise (\u00acG \u2192 S) God\u2019s absence entails suicide. If God is dead, I either become God or I kill myself. We have the scheme of Jacobi\u2019s reasoning once again: we must choose between nothing and God. Because if God doesn\u2019t exist, we ourselves become the ghostly God of nothing. Kirilov\u2019s conclusion (S \u2227 (S \u2192 K) \u2192 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 \u201cGod does not exist\u201d (\u00acG), all conclusions become permissible: Kirilov\u2019s conflation of divinity with self-murder becomes the allegory of an age marked by the destruction of meaning and the specter of extinction.<\/p>\n # Note<\/p>\n\n
\n