• Gus Lamarch
    924
    "The war! Do you remember it? What has the war created? Here it is: The woman sold her body and called the prostitution “free love”. The man, who “dodged” to manufacture bullets and to preach the sublime beauty of the war, called his cowardice: “delicate artfulness and heroic cunning”.

    This one who always lived in unconscious infamy, in cowardice, in humility, in indifference and in weak renunciations, cursed against small audacities — which he had always detested — because by themselves they did not have the strength to prevent his belly from being torn apart by those weapons that he himself had constructed for a vile morsel of bread. Because even the beggars of the spirit — those who always remain outside to warm up while the more noble part of humanity enters into the hell of life — these humble and devoted servants of their tyrant, these unconscious slanderers of superior minds, even these, we say, did not want to depart.

    They did not want to die. They writhed, they wept, they implored, they prayed! But all this from a low instinct of impotent and bestial self-preservation, deprived of every heroic roar of revolt, and not instead from questions of a superior humanity, of refined depth of feeling, of spiritual beauty.

    No, no, no! Nothing of all that! The belly! Only the bestial belly. Bourgeois ideal — proletarian ideal — the belly!"
    — Renzo Novatore

    In this passage, Renzo - Italian philosopher of the 20th century - talks about the duality between the concepts of nihilistic "Nothing" and the Christian "God", where both end up emanating destruction to the human conscience. However, Novatore also makes explicit the fact that their purpose of devastation differs at the point where religion, while creating ruin, turns its creation into its worst villain, while nihilism does not seek to "virtuously" justify its devastation.

    With this context being put:

    "The proposition that the use of "Nothing" as a driving force for humanity, due to the fact that its essence would be closer to the individual subjective human nature, than the religious, which seeks to be justified by the consumption of illusions, tends to the conclusion that the creative use of "nothing" would be more beneficial to the human individual, for not seeking culpable justifications for their means of achieving their ends."
  • Jack Cummins
    5.1k

    I wonder if we had a situation of war now whether people would be in many countries would be prepared to sacrifice for the supposed greater good as occurred in the two world wars. Obviously, it would be completely wrong because of nuclear weapons. However, I think that it may also be different because Christianity is not as dominant as it was in the early Twentieth century.

    I don't actually know anyone who has fought in a war but do wonder if the idea of life after death makes it easier. I am inclined to think that the majority of people would not be willing to be martyrs now. The reason that I say that is because, if anything, there appears to be such a dread of death in our culture. I think that this fear has been so apparent in the threat of the pandemic.

    I have seen this among people who claim . to be religious too. When I have spoken with them there fear does not really seem to be about the fear of death of an afterlife, but the whole notion of death, as not existing. I would say that we are now entering a time when many people combine aspects of Christianity, and other philosophies, including nihilism. However, I would say that many people do not name the philosophies and many do not really think through the nature of their ideas fully, but hold contradictory beliefs at a subconscious level.

    This may not have the implications for the thread of wars which were at the heart of fighting for Christendom and the mythological fight for Armageddon. Of course there was the conflict between Christianity and Islam, as well as the war against terrorism. Of courset, the underlying subtext may have been the fight over oil.

    However, I would say that there are specific dangers of the lack of clear conscious beliefs on a collective level. The very lack of clarity of thought could lead to an unconscious mass destruction.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    The very lack of clarity of thought could lead to an unconscious mass destruction.Jack Cummins

    I believe this phrase summarizes well what Novatore believed to be the reason why we should adopt "nothing" as purpose.

    Obviously, the "clarity" of what the "purpose" would be for individuals if this "Creative Nothing" were adopted, would be as vague as the Christian metaphysics - which is the point that Renzo criticizes -. The difference between the two lies in the fact that with nothing as purpose, you at least have the creative freedom to build your own "Christianity" - for the sake of understanding -.

    Religions, create a whole cosmogony, theology, and even history - concepts like "Translatio Imperii" and "Translatio Studii" - that must be followed by their followers. This kills the individual sense and therefore, all human capacity.

    The problem I find in Renzo's philosophy, is that we live in times where the establishment of nihilism has already been completely accomplished - in the West - and his philosophy - of Novatore - is one that has its maximum value "during" the process. Therefore, implementing it now would simply make this intellectual chaos that afflicts the contemporary world, worse.

    I believe that the best option would be to register these same thoughts so that future generations - after the collapse - can, eventually, be illuminated again by the grace of knowledge that, comically, was the same that had destroyed their own world...
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    As Hemingway put it: "Our Nada who art in Nada, Nada be thy name."
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    "Our Nada who art in Nada, Nada be thy name."Ciceronianus the White

    The idea of Novatore is to use nothing to create something, not to turn nothing into something. Therefore, this quote, in the context of this discussion is wrong.
  • Ciceronianus
    3k
    he idea of Novatore is to use nothing to create something, not to turn nothing into something. Therefore, this quote, in the context of this discussion is wrong.Gus Lamarch

    I haven't read him, so I'm sure you know better than I. But as God is described as "nada" according to this version of the Lord's Prayer in Hemingway's story, "nada" is God", and so "nada" is the creator of all. So, from nothing comes something--creatio ex nihilo. That of course isn't necessarily what Hemingway intended to express, but it's an interesting inference from the substitution of nothing for God in the prayer.
  • Gus Lamarch
    924
    I haven't read him, so I'm sure you know better than I. But as God is described as "nada" according to this version of the Lord's Prayer in Hemingway's story, "nada" is God", and so "nada" is the creator of all. So, from nothing comes something--creatio ex nihilo. That of course isn't necessarily what Hemingway intended to express, but it's an interesting inference from the substitution of nothing for God in the prayerCiceronianus the White

    The point is that Novatore is against this. It is not enough to have the freedom to substitute one word, one sense, for another, but the total and absolute freedom of any concept, and/or interpretation of all doctrinal and totalitarian traditions.

    You can, for example, take this as a search for the psyche that existed in the minds of people who lived in Classical Antiquity - pre-Christianity -.
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