Nihilism, understood as the absence of a transcendental purpose, lies at the heart of the conflict that Israel initiated against Iran. But it is also what lies at the heart — the empty heart — of the West’s belligerent attitude. I believe it will also be the defining characteristic of the new nomos emerging from the decay of the US-led Western order. And that should worry us, because nihilism breeds violence.
This is not new. Many thinkers — Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Camus, and Heidegger, among others — have warned for over two centuries that this would be the outcome of a long process: the structuralization of meaning and purpose — once embodied in religion in the West — and its subjugation to the state. They spoke while in the midst of this process, foreseeing the consequences if the course was not altered. It wasn’t.
Heidegger argued that the material, utilitarian worldview — which values things solely for their external utility — had deprived humanity of any sense of meaning. The war between Israel and Iran seems to have no meaning: it is logical, but it does not make sense. Logical, because we can trace the geopolitical path that led to it, even identify individual motivations — and yet, it still does not make sense. Unless we interpret it as proof of its nihilistic nature: its sense lies in the fact that it has none.
That is what historian and sociologist Emmanuel Todd suggested in a 2024 interview for Elucid: “I have two working hypotheses on Israel,” he said. “The first is that of nihilism, due to a lack of meaning in Israeli society — the meaning of its history. The second, a consequence of the first, is the hypothesis that the situation will get even worse.” And it has. The violence unleashed in Gaza — and now in Iran — is violence stripped of moral restraint, driven only by material logic.
I will not attempt to predict the outcome of this conflict or who will be victorious, because there are many better analysts than myself — and they hold contradicting views. Is Iran following Russia’s Ukraine strategy to turn this into a war of attrition? Or has Israel really weakened its capacity to react? Personally, I find the first option more plausible — but Iran has also been hurt, so we cannot rule out the second completely.
Will direct US intervention — its indirect role being obvious — lead to regime change? I believe the Iranian regime is stronger than many assume — certainly stronger than Assad’s — because its strength (and its weakness) lies in a metaphysical claim. But regime change remains a possibility — and one that would be catastrophic for the region. Perhaps even more so for the US, which would have to deal with the fallout.
Some argue that this is precisely what the US wants. They point to a 2009 Brookings Institution report titled “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran” which appears to support such a conclusion. A collapse in Iran would also disrupt plans for the North–South trade corridor and the Chinese New Silk Road — both of which threaten US control of maritime trade. It could also cut off cheap oil flows to China, though I doubt this would have a major impact, given China’s diversified energy sources. Still, both China and Russia have condemned Israel’s actions in the strongest terms — lending credibility to these claims.
Israeli strategists appear to believe that their state will benefit from the ensuing chaos by asserting regional dominance — there is no other way to interpret their desire for regime change in Iran. The US under Trump wants to pivot away from West Asia and toward East Asia. Israel is either trying to carve out a position of power amid declining US presence, or it wants to drag the US into yet another Middle East war that will force it to stay — to the detriment of its own interest.
Iran has long been on Netanyahu’s radar. It was the end goal of a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break” written for him by a group of neoconservatives led by Richard Perle, just as he came to power. And power is something Netanyahu is now desperately clinging to. Just days before the attack on Iran, he narrowly survived a proposal at the Knesset that could have dissolved his coalition. He still faces multiple criminal charges in Israeli courts. Many suggest that the ongoing genocide in Gaza — and now the attack on Iran — are attempts to distract from a political collapse that could land him in prison.
Trump could be decisive in this war — but true to form, he behaves erratically. On the one hand, he amplifies Israel’s claims about a nuclear threat. On the other, he seems to foresee the consequences this intervention might have on his presidency. He manifests the divide that runs through the US establishment — and, more broadly, through US society — torn between its delusions of grandeur and the inescapable reality of internal incoherence and lack of purpose.
Leaders reflect the common denominator of the people they represent. Both Trump and Netanyahu seem to lack a clear sense of purpose, even though they clearly state their objectives. Trump because he seems to grasp that the US role in world affairs must change, but does not know how. Netanyahu because he has plunged into a profound nihilism. He no longer defines himself by what he is, but by what he is not — his enemies define him.
That is what Emmanuel Todd also suggests in the same interview quoted above: “Perhaps in the unconscious depths of the Israeli psyche, being Israeli today is no longer about being Jewish — it’s about fighting the Arabs.” This is the only way to explain the uncontrollable violence unleashed in Gaza — and now in Iran. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said that “Tehran would become Beirut,” referring to the application of the infamous Dahiya Doctrine.
Camus once said that nihilism is “not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to destroy.” The urge to destroy — to enact violence — is the result of a lack of purpose, where violence becomes the substitute for meaning itself. But as Hannah Arendt warned, violence, though it may fill the void momentarily, cannot create — it can only destroy. And that is why Israeli society is collapsing.
Iran stands as a mirror to this collapse — only differing in degree. I believe — though I stand to be corrected — that these are the only two states that explicitly legitimize their existence based on a metaphysical claim. Shi’a Iran, under the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih and the concept of the occultation of the last Imam, has made support for the state a tenet of faith. Zionist Israel was, according to Ilan Pappé, founded on the principle that “God does not exist, but He promised us this land.”
The Shi’a subordinated God to the state; the Zionists instrumentalized God, then discarded Him. In both cases — in all such cases — when religion is subordinated to the structural logic that gives rise to the state, nihilism inevitably follows. And nihilism breeds violence.
Whilst I agree with a lot of this, I don’t believe in the tenet that nihilism breeds violence. This particular conclusion needs way more nuance if it’s to hold water IMHO.
I personally have been profoundly nihilistic for quite some while now. I read too much about the “stupidest timeline” we are on. However, simultaneously I was in my professional life devoted to finishing the quality of life instruments I co-developed. The funny thing was that my internal justification for the use of these was what changed, once I learnt the full power of the survey and experimental techniques I had access to. We “sold” the instruments to funders as ways to broaden the idea of cost-effectiveness of interventions in society: to use resources where they have the greatest benefit. Yet I ended up rejecting this justification for a whole host of reasons, incluoding (but not limited to) the fact the paradigm was merely a disgsuised version of neoclassical economics, the implementation (just like existing measures) concentrated on totals and averages rather than distributional issues etc.
I came to see that these instruments could be used in maximin strategies by governments: help the worst off and using methods that actually passed muster. I passionately believe in that. And since my circumstances changed, I saw “stuff on the ground” – the people at the bus-stop – who cared passionately about society, our suburb and recognised in the core, even if they might not be able to enunciate it well, that our political system is rotten and isn’t there to help them in any way. I do not for one moment think I know how to reconcile this nihilism about how we as society are running off a cliff, with the remaining desire to produce stuff for both the population, and for the individuals at the bus-stop. But I find violence is alien to me. Maybe I’m just naive.
If you “saw … people … who cared passionately about society, our suburb” and retain a “desire to produce stuff for both the population, and for the individuals at the bus-stop”, then I submit you’re not a nihilist.
“But I find violence is alien to me. Maybe I’m just naive.”
For myself, I find the potential for violence within me closely linked to the degree of fear I experience–much of which, on first reflection, I habitually see as solely generated by external events (like the present Iran/Israel War).
However, on further reflection, what I would call my powerful primitive sense of fear seems to have significant internal origins– often quite separate from such external political events. In other words when I experience fear, I am habitually much more comfortable seeing the causes in external events rather than in any internal rage I may have experienced as a consequence of, say, emotional abandonment by Mommy and Daddy.
I link nihilistic behavior closely to anger, rage and the apparent necessity, in my case, of appearing invulnerable, because vulnerability is just too painful–a “wonderful,” negative feedback loop that can lead to personal as well as collective self-destruction.
I tend to agree with Terry. While this might be assuming something about the writer that is unwarranted, there appears to be a reaction against nihilism due to the concept that there is no predefined purpose to existence, imposed upon us by a higher power, as this may threaten one’s faith. I see that elsewhere more starkly, but it might infiltrate here too. Perhaps we need, any more, a different term now that the term “nihilism” has been defined in popular vernacular as acting to destroy all structures both physical and conceptual, simply perhaps to gain a feeling of personal power.
I, on another hand, see the lack of an imposed purpose as the opportunity to define one’s own purpose. This can be difficult, it requires discipline to avoid turning inward and making self-aggrandizement one’s purpose. But it’s also the ultimate opportunity.
Odd, or perhaps interesting, how all this leads one to realize that the way forward is indeed a narrow way.
I don’t disagree with the fact that one might consider himself a nihilist and still find a source of meaning from which to derive principles, but in that case do you think that would be nihilism? I’m not sure.
This post displays a commitment to idealism that is rather remarkable. The author doesn’t mention the raft of theories that have worried about the corrosive effects of capitalism on values. I could tick off a few and I’d usually say “starting with Marx” but today’s post reviewing Cassidy’s book on capitalism’s critics provides a more comprehensive list including some predating Marx. In any case, some reference to this crowd of people objecting to capitalism’s tendency to make “all that is solid melt into the air” is requisite.
As far as Netanyahu’s nihilism goes, doesn’t Zionism provide just the sort of motivating orientation that lifts him out of the nihilistic doldrums? Isn’t the Greater Israel project still in the works? I recently read an article — author forgotten, sorry — who pointed out how one wing of Zionism, in the wake of failed messianic hopes centuries ago, did actually take on a deliberately nihilistic stance but only in the service of Zionism. We currently experience that as “they do nothing but lie,” along with killing the dispossessed. For those not part of the project it sure feels like nihilism, a violation of the sort of ideal speech situation frame Habermas used to write about, but for those in the know it’s just part of attaining the final goal.
1) The Iranian regime for decades has prioritized “Death to Israel” – the extermination of the Jewish people. 2) The Jewish people are rightly determined that they will never allow another Holocaust. 3) The Iranian regime can never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, period. 4) Everything else, all the bloviating chatter and whining and faux moralistic tears and wails driven subliminally by hatred of Jews disguised as humanitarian concerns, is nothing more than irrelevant hot air. 5) Should Israel and the rest of the world wait until the Iranian mullahs detonate a nuclear weapon in Israel or anywhere else before saying, “Oops, our bad, looks like the Iranian regime does have nukes after all” instead of proactively taking action now to defang the serpent?
They won’t allow another holocaust, but they’ll perpetrate one. The Zionist entity is permanently psychologically damaged.
If the Jewish people, at least those in Israel, are determined to never allow another Holocaust, then why are they perpetrating one of their own on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank?
The Israelis, really Zionists, as distinct from Jews in general, have become the very Evil they once suffered under.
An “accident” at Dimona can also generate a lot of “hot air.”
You wouldn’t be the dreaded John Sweeny Todd, the ‘Demon Barber’ of Tel Aviv, would you?
This manifestation of equivalent racist persecutions to those that were done to them in the past, now heartlessly directed at Palestinians or other Arabs is so incongruous. Words are hard to find. Ironic seems very inadequate.
Perhaps it is a bit like children growing up in an abusive family and then sometimes growing to later becoming adult abusers.
As Rodney King once said, “why can’t we all just get along?”
Actually, people who were abused as children are better than the Israelis. As a report from NICHD summarizes years of data:
” Contrary to conventional wisdom, adults who were physically abused as children were no more likely to abuse their own children than were other adults their age.”
(NICHD is National Institutes of Child Health).
I think this is an important finding – it shows that people are not just captives of their past. It is too bad the same thing cannot be said of Israelis apparently.
If it’s so important that Iran is denied nukes, why does Israel never acknowledge their stockpile?
Well, there’s the rub. Israel and the U.S. live outside of international rules. Witness our refusal to acknowledge the International Court of Justice, which has found Netanyahou is a war criminal. And now Trump has demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender, while at the same time talking about negotiations. The outcome of the negotiations is already determined, and the U.S. expects this to be taken seriously?
The Iranian regime for decades has prioritized “Death to Israel” – the extermination of the Jewish people.
Who gives you the right to equate Israel the country with “the Jewish people”? There are plenty of Jews who don’t support Israel and their ranks are growing. The constant talk of Israel’s “right to exist” seems to deny any right for people who live on land that Israel wants to exist. This is not humanism or even good religion.
Jews are not worse than other groups, or better. In fact they are the same and certainly capable of being villains. Just ask all the dead babies in Gaza.
No Holocaust means no Holocaust for anyone, or it used to mean that.
Technically the term carefully chosen by Iranians is “the Zionist regime” which of course does not mean Israel as such not to speak of elimination of Jewish people.
Iran would have nothing against an Israel that was a human rights respecting, multicultural, egalitarian state that was not constantly terrorizing it’s neighbors and trying to be the local hegemon.
Excellent point Polar. This is a vital distinction that is carefully ignored by the propagandists of western powers when they blare out their calls for suppression of Iran. A careful mistranslation of the Farsi.
Category error here. Israel is not the Jewish people.
Here is the issue: for right and left wing Zionists alike an ethno-supremacist Israel JUST IS the Jewish People.
For them–and I think most really do believe this–to be opposed to Israel analytically means to be antisemitic.
If you point out to them that nobody is opposed to an Israel where all ethnicities and religions had equal rights, then they will say (as Bernie Sanders has said) that this is impossible, because Israel will then cease to be a *Jewish* State.
To say Israel has the “right” to exist means that Israel has the *right* to be a “Jewish” State, with all the apartheid repercussions that follow.
A multicultural, pluralist Israel is, ideologically, a contradiction in terms. A place where the Jews live alongside Arabs (Christian or Muslim) who possess equal rights an equal representation, can NEVER be “Israel”; it would be some other entity. Israeli society is so beholden to this image that there is really no combating it at this point.
It’s not a category ‘error’, it’s out and out propaganda.
When you’re defending a losing position, just make sh*t up.
There’s much to take issue with in your post, “John Sweeney,” but the reference to “[subliminal] hatred of Jews” is to my mind the most pernicious. I don’t believe that the vast majority of Americans hate Jewish people. Most American gentiles don’t really care whether someone is Jewish or not. They often don’t know whether another American is Jewish, and when they find out, it doesn’t matter to them. That’s because white Americans see Jewish people as other white Americans, on the “subliminal” level. What we’re seeing now is increasing numbers of all types of Americans and people around the world recognizing that Israel is committing horrible, horrible crimes and offering the most pathetic, threadbare excuses for it. The political and the media classes in the US constantly lie about it, which is compounding the problem for Zionists. (Obviously, this is something different from Judaism and Jewish culture generally.)
In my own American community, I often hear Zionist Americans bloviating about this or that melodramatic outrage that they’re forced to endure. I’ve wondered how they can be so short-sighted, to say the most outrageous things–like, for example, claiming that the entire world of thousands of ethnicities is motivated by antisemitism–and expect people to come around to their way of thinking. The sad truth is that Zionists are talking to other Zionists, and these echo chambers reify their toxic beliefs; but when they talk to someone who isn’t a Zionist, they sound like maniacs. (From what I understand, there are no more than two or three anti-Zionist synagogues in the entire US.) Five years from now, are you still going to be a full-throated Zionist? I doubt it.
Well said, Anon. Doubtless there will be no reply from “John Sweeney”. Was it a paid or unpaid internship “they” got?
The chant “Death to Israel” is well deserved. For 80 years Israel has been perpetrating violence against non-Jewish peoples. For 80 years massacres, indiscriminate bombings, assassinations, and now genocide. Israel well deserves to die. Its end can’t come soon enough. Your apologies for Israeli behavior comes up way, way short.
1) The Iranian regime for decades has prioritized “Death to Israel” – the extermination of the Jewish people.
What does that even mean? Are they allocating 5% of their national budget to exterminating Jewish people in Iran? How many Jews has Iran pogromed since 1979? “Death to Israel” is a slogan (and see the comment below on the mistranslation) just like “Death to America.” Iranians have been chanting “Death to America” since 1979–how many Americans have they killed, and how many Iranians have the American’s killed.
2) The Jewish people are rightly determined that they will never allow another Holocaust.
That is great, but where is the evidence that post-revolutionary Iran has ever perpetuated a Holocaust or even a genocide? There is a genocide case pending in the International Court of Justice, but it does not name Iran as the perpetrator.
3) The Iranian regime can never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, period.
No regime has ever been “allowed” to have nuclear weapons, If Iran develops nuclear weapons, it won’t be because they were “allowed” nuclear weapons, it will probably be because the regime feels that nothing short of a nuclear deterrent is going to dissuade hostile powers from attacking it. If you want to insure Iran gets nuclear weapons, make sure you back them into a corner.
4) Everything else, all the bloviating chatter and whining and faux moralistic tears and wails driven subliminally by hatred of Jews disguised as humanitarian concerns, is nothing more than irrelevant hot air.
On one hand, you are partially correct. Morality has nothing to do with the situation, only hard power will decide the contest. On the other hand, it has nothing to do with ethnic hatred either. It has everything to do with fear for survival.
5) Should Israel and the rest of the world wait until the Iranian mullahs detonate a nuclear weapon in Israel or anywhere else before saying, “Oops, our bad, looks like the Iranian regime does have nukes after all” instead of proactively taking action now to defang the serpent?
Are they “defanging” the serpent? They can’t hit deep enough to interfere with enrichment. Even if the American’s hit with tactical nukes, will this “defang” the serpent? Even if successful, you are only creating a delay, while at the same time ensuring the resolve to nuclearize. You are also creating an international precedent to nuclearize.
There are a number of nuclear powers in the world. The USA is the only nation which has conducted an offensive nuclear strike, and that was against a nation without an ability to muster a nuclear response. Nuclear weapons are primarily defensive weapons, intended to deter attack. Further, it is conceivable that Iran might strike a nation like Saudi which can’t respond with a nuke, but it is hard to imagine even if ICBM’s were air dropped down to Teheran for use, that they would strike Israel given Israel’s nuclear deterrent.
The most troubling aspect of Bibi’s cynical ploy to stay out of prison is that Israel has maybe 5-7 desalinization plants supplying 80% of the water, and the equivalent thermal power generation plants supplying 75% of electric. If Iran manages to blast about 12 sites in Israel, Israel’s infrastructure and state capacity will completely break down. I suppose the US can keep on fighting even if Israel is effectively destroyed, and Israel can go nuke all its neighbors, enemies and allies as either punishment for their subliminal hatred of Jews or out of sociopathy, but what a total waste given the original aspirations for the Israeli state, its pure unadulterated nihilism.
Bibi has every personal reason for choosing elective suicide for his nation, you would not expect less from a sociopath, but the fact that Israeli’s en masse are willing to drink the Kool-aid because he says so, total nihilism.
“2) The Jewish people are rightly determined that they will never allow another Holocaust.
Except in Gaza.
If my understanding is correct, in the field of Holocaust studies, the Holocaust is considered a unique genocide suffered by the Jewish people, in contrast to genocide, which has befallen many ethnic groups, the Armenians, the Tutsis, etc. This also connects with Zionism and “never again,” in the sense that Israel was intended to be a Jewish homeland and a refuge for Jews so they could flee future persecution. It also connects with Jewish theological identity in a manner. So while it is possible for there to be a genocide in Gaza, it doesn’t qualify as a Holocaust.
My comments should not be viewed as an endorsement of this view, but it is important to understand, for example, when you hear Netanyahu speak about the Holocaust, I am pretty sure this is the kind of notion he is assuming (and his audience). But there is an entire school in the West of Holocaust Studies programs, full of academics, who teach this stuff, its not just the Israeli right-wing. This could dovetail into a discussion of the “Woke Right” but that is a digression from the current spectacle of Bibi electing to stake the future of Israel on the outcome of a game of Russian roulette played with ballistic and cruise missiles.
This is pure unadulterated hasbara.
The closest thing to your #1 claim is a remark by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which Israel flagrantly mistranslated and then flogged. Ahmadinejad said, using the conditional tense, “It would have been better if Israel had never existed.” This was mistranslated as the infamous and false claim that he wanted to wipe Israel from the map.
And please explain to me why Israel can have nukes and Iran can’t? Aside from the fact that they were stupid enough to sign the NPT when they were a US puppet, as in the Shah was nominally in charge?
Iran has decided to be independent. “Death to Israel” is an imaginary and purposefully attribute with which Zionists depict the Monster they have constructed for the international audience.
Don’t call governments you don’t like “regimes” because all governments are regimes!
@John Sweeney—First, let’s take the mystery and magic out of nuclear weapons. We are at the point where any advanced industrial nation can put together a nuke. If Iran can build a nuke, which it can and probably should, then so can Japan, S. Korea, Canada, Germany, Italy and likely a half dozen other countries in short order. The question is: Do we really want that?
On the so-called Iranian threat, Noam Chomsky asked years ago, What do you do about a country [Israel] that already developed nuclear weapons outside the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and are daily violating resolutions of the Security Council and the IAEA? That’s a much more serious problem.
He has also said forever, “There are two nations not only calling for some nation not to exist but are destroying it—namely the US and Israel. That’s their position regarding the Palestinians [and a Palestinian State] and they’re not just saying it, they’re doing it. They’re doing it day by day and that’s the meaning of the policies going on right before our eyes in Gaza and the West Bank which we are supporting and paying for.” Meanwhile, “Iran has supported the international consensus on the two state settlement.”
Lastly, Chomsky said, according to Israeli literature, an Iranian nuke was not a threat to Israel but to Zionism. That is, if the region becomes too dangerous, the government fears most Israelis with the means to do so will leave Israel permanently.
Yes, and I have serious problems with people trying project (lack of) religion onto our situation. This has a long history, and as far as I am concerned, it’s BS. The people who profess religious values the most are also the most selfish, cruel, and indeed nihilistic. I am generalizing of course, but Christianity has simply become a cult to justify and reinforce capitalism via Calvanism in the US in particular. So blaming this on a lack of religious belief or values doesn’t hold air, let alone water.
In my life I have watched as US society has been deliberately propagandized through the media and education systems to destroy empathy, from the individual, family, community, all the way up to the societal and global levels. This has been done to justify the positions of a tiny minority. That minority, through actions that are generally uncoordinated, but which are rooted in common interests associated with their social and material positions in society, protect their own interests at the expense of everyone else, all the while using their power and influence to fool huge swaths of humanity into believing that their privation is not a result of the the collective selfishness of the tiny minority, but rather some other group or groups that are either near or far, who have often suffered even more under the regimes controlled by the tiny minority. There are also even much smaller groups within that tiny minority that have the power to wield entire nations and alliances as weapons or tools to pursue their goals of dominion and hoarding of resources. What we need to understand is that we live in a system that was created or modified by the tiny minority, who have few scruples, in their own interest, which rewards sociopathy and psychopathy, which has entrenched and greatly expanded sociopathy and psychopathy in both the visible ruling class (politicians) and the tiny minority that is the true power behind the throne. I think that many of us would agree that good people, ethical and moral people, DO NOT seek power over others. So what does that say about people that seek power and wealth (which are for all intents an purposes, due to the structure of society, the same thing)?
Whether or not violence is a good or bad thing depends entirely on the position of the observer, and the conditions the observer finds themselves in. If that violence protects or expands your position, it is a good thing! If it does the reverse, it is bad. Simple as that. And this is another point where I disagree with the author. Utilitarianism is not necessarily a bad thing. Liberation is a violent process that is deeply rooted in community, and it protects and expands the positions of vast swathes of humanity. Liberation is an extremely positive process when viewed through a utilitarian lens. When liberation occurs, the tiny minority tend to lose vast quantities of personal wealth and power, and potentially their lives, but we, through the education system, media, the arts, and distorted philosophies, have been taught to empathize with this tiny minority, who are the most visible to us (as opposed to those that are less visible- the vast numbers of the poor), so many quibble and wring their hands when people start talking about any action consistent with liberation, such as the struggles of many of the people in the Middle East to throw off the yoke of imperialism, and colonialism. People very much need to think this through, and have the courage to back their convictions in both word, and deed. It will take sacrifice, privation, and loss of life, but the other alternative is further expansion and entrenchment of the very serious problems the author is concerned with, which will ultimately create much more suffering and death. Some people understand this, and in some areas of the world, the numbers of people with this understand has reached a critical mass (Russia, Iran, Palestine, and especially large portions of Latin and South America- where people have carried the torch without dropping it, I would add) where they can affect change. I assume we in the western world will eventually reach a critical mass as well, but I do not know how long this will take, or whether it will happen piecemeal or all at once, but I sincerely wish it would hurry the (family blog) up.
Basically, there is no ultimate good or evil, everything is realtive to the position of the observer. I think that was the thesis Dostoevsky was trying to eleborate on Crime and Punishment. Of course, is a debate that we are not going to solve here, for it has not been since we have record of humanity, but I think there’e needs to be more nuance. Would you sacrifice your family and loved ones for the good of a State that claims to want the best for all? Of course, the devil is on the details and we would have to examine what do we mean by state, by good for all and even our personal psyches in relation to how we see family and loved ones.
I agree with this argument, but not with the argument that this is nihilism. Rather the opposite. This is very real eschatological purpose. Whatever about the US and Europe, which I will agree are in an existential abyss and rapidly shifting to rule by fiat, Israel is a completely different case. We’re dealing with religious crusade or SS trooper mentalities openly on display throughout Israeli society. Were the crusaders or nazis nihilistic? I disagree here. The Israelis clearly believe in something, even if it is only in themselves. And the US political class certainly believes in them also.
Re “no longer about being Jewish” the author I’d forgotten in my above comment, Gabriel Piterberg, in his book The Returns of Zionism describes the surprising level of antipathy Zionists felt towards more traditional Jews who, more or less, conceived of their religion in terms of Torah interpretation that Zionists felt led a far too legalistic orientation. Writers like Gerhard-Gershom Scholem argued that Zionism must instead draw on the more impulsive, inspiration-based teachings of the Kabbala. They ridiculed Torah Jews. Piterberg’s book is fascinating, e.g. hard to imagine that these people would be drawing on Wilhelm Dilthey’s hermeneutics to argue for inspirational identifications with past warrior heroes of Judaism in order to get around the Torah scholars.
I agree. The zionists do have values and are ready to kill children for it.
Here is a real nihilist. ”He doesn’t care about anything, he’s a nihilist.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JLLCyrf8Ro4&pp=ygUWTGVib3dza2kgbmloaWxpc3QgcG9vbA%3D%3D
In any case, I really, really appreciate your more philosophical posts about current events, Curro. It tickles a nerve that goes beyond the concrete, mundane, immanence of events. It gives you a feeling of that maybe there is a teleology or at least dialectics if things, rather than a stochastic, value-free chain of events. There may be more to it than my decreasing real income.
“the US political class”, most of them anyway, are paid to believe in them. A couple billion dollars and about a year’s worth of propaganda and they would change sides. Not the evangelical maniacs, though.
For the nazis, there’s actually a strong argument they were; I think Camus has a whole discussion on it in The Rebel. For the Crusaders, I think it was closer to pure “herd morality”, though there’s an argument (and not just existentialist, also Marxist) that this represents a regression in the same direction as nihilism. Especially at least since the Enlightenment (and if you believe in the “moderate / radical enlightenment” dichotomy, I could see the argument that this is what divides them).
In a way, as I mentioned in my other long comment, I think the purest expression of nihilism today is TINA, “resistance is futile”, etc. It all comes down to murdering the will, to think or act with any concrete, positive value. The uncontrolled lashing out by those in our dying system with weapons and the submission by those without them are two sides of the same coin.
Camus also wrote a play, Les Justes, dissecting the commitment of terrorists to their cause and their acts. It’s a good little play.
https://annas-archive.org/md5/51a4969b61255450b63f45eff2bc33e9
It all depends on which definition of nihilism you’re using. The first definition I found was “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” I think this definition fits the author’s premise pretty well. I think the Gaza genocide shows both an abandonment of both religious and moral principles, and an acceptance in the belief that life (of anyone who gets in their way) is meaningless. And now we’re seeing it again in the preemptive attack of Iran. The best thing that could happen would be for the US to withdraw its support of Israel so that this warmongering madness can come to an end before WW3 erupts.
This is exactly what I was wondering, but couldn’t quite articulate. As Dostoevsky said, I think, it takes a flare of genuine idealism for someone to embrace extreme violence. Real nihilists don’t believe in something enough to do real violence.
I do think that widespread nihilism, of a lesser, less proactive sort, does help spread violence by inducing people to not oppose bad things: accept violence, injustice, and other wrongs as normal and just shrug them off. It is something that I often notice in myself and bugs me immensely, for “I have sinned….in what I have done, and in what I have
failed to do.”
I am aware that I elaborated on a very particular definition of nihilism. One could argue that the Zionists believed in something, but the object of their belief is not transcendent (God does not exist but he gave us the State), which means it is immediate and perishable (the State).
The question is: can something that is immediate and perishable give meaning? Probably it can, to a person who believes that all there is to life is the immediate and perishable—but then, that rules out any transcendental meaning, at least in the way the Scholastics used the term
Thanks for your thoughtful posts but some of us would prefer to take this out of the realm of philosophy and more into the realm of behavior. This certainly won’t answer the meaning of life question but it does seem to explain the way people act. Nature and nurture have created us. All else is speculation.
But if one wants to make this about nihilism then Israel at this moment could be taken as an example of the “i’ll be gone, you’ll be gone” business culture that seems to rule much of the USA. A “lifeboat” where so many have dual passports may be prone to foolish and self destructive risks. The Netanyahus have a condo in Miami. Perhaps it’s less about nihilism and more about self deception. The reality of 9 1/2 million trying to control the entire ME may be at hand.
This is a nice change-up from the discussion of the military situation, and I agree with your main thesis 100%. I think you’re absolutely right that Iran is one of the few states in the world today with a genuine ideology too. Therefore it can imagine possibilities and act outside the world that TINA would build (which is also why it’s subtly capable of some things that not even Russia or China are).
I would interpret a few details differently though:
1. To the extent Iran recognizes a certain unity between the state and religion, I don’t know if I would consider that new or uniquely Iranian. I’d say that’s always been characteristic of Islam in general, and it arguably proceeds directly from the central doctrine of Tawhid (God’s transcendental oneness), which implies you ultimately can’t separate practical & political values from religious ones. If that seems extreme, it’s always been a thread in classical political philosophy (a lot of Islam, especially the more Turco-Persian flavors, look like Neoplatonist ontology with Aristotelian ethics once you scratch the surface).
2. Whenever Shi’ism is the primary cause for some aspect of Iranian culture, I would also actually downplay the Revolution as the starting point. Instead, you probably have to go back to the Safavids who officially converted the country (there’s always been a latent sympathy for Shia ideas in the eastern half of the Islamic world though). Because they still had a dynastic monarch at the top, it’s easy to miss how revolutionary, and in some ways republican, the Safavids were.
3. Veleyat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist) OTOH is a pretty revolutionary doctrine, especially for Iran where it represents a decisive break with monarchy. The supreme irony is that it’s arguably a nod to early American democracy (by way of de Tocqueville) as much as Shi’ism being what binds their civilization together. De Tocqueville argued that the judicial branch was the least predisposed to monopolizing and abusing power so the Iranians gave the veto, some military command, and a few other typical executive powers to essentially their supreme court justice. That’s also what makes the idea that killing Khamanei will “overthrow” the government really stupid, beyond the fact that he’s both old and sincere enough that he expects to die soon anyways.
4. Back to your main point of nihilism, this is arguably what makes the Islamic Republic really interesting: it’s arguably still the only government in world history to unofficially adopt existentialism as a doctrine. The most explicit thread I’m aware of is through Ali Shariati, but there’s an argument that (most?) Qom clerics themselves hold to a more religious form of it tracing back to Mulla Sadra (which has other interesting implications that would probably be off topic here and maybe on this site).
Thanks for the great background info. I think your second point is essential to understanding the difference in regime change susceptibility between Iran and Syria. Syria is a mainly geographic signifier and a modern colonial creation, whereas Iran represents a more-or-less continuous civilization stretching back thousands of years. Assad himself was nominally from the Ba’ath party, whose platform is that the Arab world should be united as one and that Syria as presently constructed should not exist. With such a weak state ideology, is it any wonder that he was toppled so easily?
Even outside of Islam, the people of Iran genuinely feel that they are a civilization unto themselves and worth protecting as they are. It takes an incredible difference in power to regime change that kind of country, a difference which no longer exists.
You’re wrong about Syria. Syria, like Egypt or China or Mesopotamia or Persia, is one of the oldest political units in the world, whether as a free-standing state, or as a province of some passing empire or another.
Languages and religions and technologies have changed, boundaries have fluctuated, the usual wars and plagues have struck, but in era after era, you will find this thing called Syria, more or less where it is now. It’s much older, as a governed entity, than any of the states that can be found in Europe.
Denying the reality of a country is a common tactic used by imperialists to justify their projects. The Americans made such arguments in Iraq. The Russians do it in Ukraine. “It was never really a country anyway, so that means it’s okay for us to do whatever!”
I guess I’m touchy about this, because I’m Canadian, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to call Canada an artificial country.
Why not respect all countries as you find them? For example, does it matter that the modern state of Ghana is a recent foundation? Perhaps you should fly to Accra, and preach to people there about “post-colonial creations.”
You’re also wrong about Bashar al-Assad. “Toppled easily” ? How can you disregard one of the largest wars of our time, a war with many pitched battles, that raged for over a decade? To call that “easy” is an insult to rebels and loyalists alike. Why don’t you go fix all those hectares of rubble, if it was all so easy?
Finally, I think you’re wrong about “regime change” in the first place. Has that been the goal in Iraq or Libya? As I see it, the real goal of the attackers has been to destroy the sovereign capability of the states themselves. For today’s Westerners abhor independence, whether of ancient states or new.
«Is Iran following Russia’s Ukraine strategy to turn this into a war of attrition?»
I think Russia sees this more as a war against the Nazis (cf. “denazification”) than a war of attrition. I hope Iran understands it similarly.
All wars are wars of attrition: the only question is if one attritts more and when. But short of global thermonuclear war, HOW each side attritts can be determinative. IMHO, in Ukraine Russia has forborne from inflicting pain upon civilians for fun and profit, not adopted a strategy of attrition.
I think Iran has to calibrate its response over time so that Israel is weakened without (ideally) bringing the US into the conflict, inflicting just enough pain to Israel as payback for its unprovoked attack and a little bit more as payback for Gaza, until regime change is achieved in Israel. As has been mentioned somewhere, Israel had hoped to lure Iran into retaliating immediately with hundreds, even thousands of missiles, thinking this would assure US entry into the war. So far that hasn’t happened. The ideal end of this war would be when Israel and the US are out of missile defense resources, and Israel’s economy has come to.a full stop, at which point Israel would sue for peace. But Israel, being ruled by fanatics, won’t do this unless or until cooler heads prevail there, producing regime change. So the question to ask is: do such cooler heads even exist in Israel now? Not likely. The future looks bleak indeed. For the Middle East and the US, where nihilistic sociopaths seem to be everywhere in Western politics now.
Break out the fainting-couch and smelling-salts.
Nah, let’em wake up on their own, on the floor.
Guns don’t kill, people do. But people don’t kill, they thougths and desires that trigger them to act do. Even if you get it wrong, the excersice is worth it.
John
Iran houses a Jewish community that has resided there for centuries.
They are outraged by Zionist aggression.
It must be a Zionist claim that the Persians want to kill Jews.
After all, Israeli children are taught that the Arabs are Nazis.
Are there still significant Jews in Iran? I thought their numbers thinned out pretty dramatically after the start of GWOT. I know they existed, my freshmen year dormmates included a Persian Jew and a nominally Muslim Turk. Everyone got along just fine.
Not many, I should think, although Wikipedia’s figure, about 9,100, seems too small to me, although I have no firsthand knowledge and little of even secondhand variety….
I also,think 9,000 is too low. An Al Jazeera article suggests 20,000.
A wiki article on Iranian Parliament religious minority reserved seats states that the Jewish religious minority has one dedicated seat.
One could make an argument that it is psychopathy,not nihilism, that is at the core of our conflcts
I don’t understand these smoke curtains. Israel always was a thug state, the West colonial SS gendarme in West Asia and North Africa. I don’t believe for a second that Israel is blackmailing the US or manipulating it, it’s the same thing that to say an Al Capone’s thug is manipulating his boss for decades. It’s a fairy tale. Trump distracted Iranians when he never had any intention of making any peace, his records show absolutely the contrary. Israel is entering the same trap Ukraine did, and like Ukraine, it has exactly the same amount of autonomy. Herr Merz said it crystal clear.
What it is totally nihilist is capitalism. Civilizations die when they forget what really matters, to leave a world for the humans who come after us, and decide otherwise their gods and ghosts are more important. Don’t call it nihilism, because they actually believe in their gods stronger than ever, nor call it decadence: it’s purely suicide by hubris.
I don’t disagree, but why does it matter to live for a world that benefits the humans who come after us? If we die and that’s it, then what happens after I’m dead will not affect me in the least—I won’t even be able to know, because I simply won’t be.
So I will simply live to have the best life I can until I’m dead (and that might include caring about others while I’m alive), but after that, it’s frankly not my problem—I won’t be sentient.
Like the other isms, nihilism isn’t very useful because it is vague and attempts to describe the absence of everything, like trying to photograph a vacuum. i have a simpler view of the Israel phenomenon. The population has become addicted to the excitement of victorious wars. If no conflict presents itself, they will engineer one. This is why “greater Israel” has no boundaries. Israel is a militarized society that idolizes its warrior elite. It was the martial feat and death of Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan in Entebbe that paved the way for Bibi’s career. Every victory since the founding of the state has re-energized Israel’s quest for redemptive violence. In short, Israel is hooked on war, and it will keep fighting and killing until something stops it.
I feel like now is a good time to dust off this story from the Archdruid about how the US over reaching just one more time is what could lead to its destruction.
Nice one – hadn’t read this (5 part story) before. Thanks!
I’m presently reading Greer’s recent (2020) book, Decline And Fall, an updated look at the above link, and a lot more.
He takes a different, and interesting, and valid look at modern societies and the history of empires from his perspective. It’s worth the time, in my opinion, to take a look at it.
That sentence says a lot in a few words.
To simplify:
To the nihilist the ends justify any means.
To the idealist the means dictate the ends.
Dave, your background lends credibility but this looks like you just expressed a gut feeling more than a result of study, so I ask if you are certain about that? Or is it just cynicism?
This is the sum total of whatever wisdom I have accumulated in my seven decades.
Perhaps my profound disappointment in my fellow human beings sounds like cynicism, but I choose to perceive myself as an idealist. What goes around comes around. Just do what’s right…
I thought the biblical/anthropology on this was uncontroversial. Some leftovers from the fall of the Sumerian kingdom went West, small villages of a bakers dozen, past mythology evolves, and then boom a population expansion – first city states. With the advent of city states a class system was born of religious leaders from two families, the king, business/trader people and all the agrarians.
All that time the religion was in flux due to the older agrarian views and the new city state politically run views. This then gets the historical treatment via endless military adventurism in the name of the creator and then getting run over by more powerful nations. Followed by Christendom, advent of modernity, and lastly the need for oil. On the latter “the Brits” as Jeffery Sach’s points at – its all their fault for drawing lines on a map to control the region, regardless of the ethnicity and its dramas.
All awhile this whole thing is about oil and a side of water – barf …
Nihilism, understood as the absence of a transcendental purpose
This isn’t the correct and accepted definition of nihilism either in philosophy or politics, so the entire argument is spurious; an academic exercise for 101
Bazinga! Excellent observation.
There is no single, correct, and universally accepted definition of nihilism—unless you accept Wikipedia’s, that is. The definition I’ve used broadly sums up many others that have been proposed before. But you don’t necessarily have to agree with the exact wording.
To claim that there is a single definition we must abide by literally is a kind of literalism very close to a type of nihilism—in this case, one in which only what is apparent and measurable exists, and there is no meaning beyond itself, as the meaning of something transcends the thing itself (the meaning of the word goes beyond the spoken or written symbol).
This is an interesting piece. and thanks to the author.
Both the Americans and the Israelis claim great purpose in current events, and so this analysis appears to imply that what they claim is purpose, in fact isn’t.
If you go to Martin Heidegger’s letters to D.T. Suzuki, exiting the transcendental worldview was central to his project. Both Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) and History of the Concept of Time are lengthy expositions of what Heidegger thought was was wrong with transcendental philosophy. And a fundamental precept of Zen is that transcendentalism is a wrong turn.
The problem can be understood through the detachment from the world that transcendentalism claims. The most tedious is subject – object dualism. The process by which one transcends it has never been plausibly worked out.
Without a way to get from the imagined ‘inside’ to the imagined ‘outside’ of one’s self, transcendence isn’t possible.
Please keep writing.
I think that what both Heidegger and Suzuki pointed out is that there can be no transcendental philosophy that disregards the material, for it becomes a form of idealism. But at the same time, any materialist philosophy that disregards something transcendent becomes senseless.
Language is an example of this: the meaning of a word transcends the symbol, but you cannot have the meaning without the symbol. I think one of the teachings of Zen is to find the transcendental within the material.
What is this process of transcendence that you claim? How does it work?
Derrida distinguished between metaphysical and non-metaphysical categories. My cat recognizes gender categories to the extent that she can mate effectively.
If I understand you, all categories are metaphysical in the sense of having space between, as you put it, sign and signified.
So again, how is this space transcended?
In forty years of reading philosophy. I’ve yet to see a coherent answer.
What is a transcendental purpose? You make the claim that nihilism is precisely the lack of a transcendental purpose but then fail to explain what you mean by this latter term. Your invocation of religion and its subordination to the state would seem to suggest that it is a purpose that is beyond the immanent earth, but one that gives meaning to the earth only on the basis that it has a meaning that is not inherent to it. (In using the terms ‘world’ and ‘earth’ here I’m drawing a distinction between the world as a totalising process of domination and earth as the site of embodied, multitudinous, and nomadic human life; nor should it be forgotten that to be human is to be of the earth.) Any transcendental purpose that points to a world beyond the earth as the site of its meaning is ultimately hostile to the earth precisely because it voids the earth of meaning.
In this the transcendental purpose becomes its own nihilism, able to inflict the very violence which you claim comes from its absence. But is this anything new? Have we not seen “violence stripped of moral restraint” unleashed throughout history by the very forces that proclaim themselves as bearers of a transcendental purpose? What do we see when we look at the history of the Christian West? Often the regular resort to an annihilatory violence against those we deemed to be lesser than us, a violence that was often justified by the servants of the God who was the origin of that purpose. Perhaps what we are seeing now, and what makes it seem unprecedented, is a violence that was once kept outside the boundaries of the West being perpetrated in the centre of the self-proclaimed rules-based international order, which would be better understood as a rules-based world order, and by a representative of that order. Western violence, with Israel as its current paradigm, has become a 24-hour news feed, part of a continuum of violence we have never repudiated.
It is true that religion accommodated itself to the state. In the West’s case it was a Christian religion that, in the failure of the arrival of the Kingdom of God, made its peace with the world and the state, and entered into history. In doing so it helped institute a dual teleology of world-historical progress and Christian missioneering and it is the residue of this duality which determines the West’s transcendental purpose, its self-appointed unifying mission, the movement towards an unrealisable ideal. It is not the absence of a transcendental purpose, therefore, that leads to violence but its superfluity, its excess, which infects such constructs as the rules-based international order, which is nothing more than a debased version of the Christian proselytising mission, which seeks to subjugate the entire earth into a world totality.
This is a spot on observation that may point to some of the author’s unquestioned assumptions and identifications.
You are right, and I agree with much of what you say, including religious claims to transcendence. My mistake — though perhaps not a very unfortunate one, since it sparked an interesting debate here — was not clearly defining what I meant by transcendental.
I don’t take it to mean an ultimate goal or an existing afterlife (though I don’t reject that those might also be sources of meaning). What I mean by transcendental is something that is not limited to the material. As I’ve done in previous comments, I point to language:
We need to agree on the interpretation of certain symbols, but their meaning is not restricted to them. There’s a lot more to be said — and agreed or disagreed with — but constructive criticism that points out your own mistakes is always welcome.
I have to point out that this piece, nominally about a current set of conflicts in the world, has sparked a philosophical discussion that I can’t recall having seen in NC since I began reading it shortly after Tata passed in about 2008 or 9. Congratulations to both the author and to the commentator community here. Very well done.
I’m not sure what to make of this piece. I know sometimes things get posted here not because they’re being endorsed but because they spur thought and discussion.
This isn’t the first recent post here that strikes me as an exercise in pure idealism. As a filthy historical materialist, I think idealism fundamentally doesn’t actually exist, at least at the scale of entire societies or civilizations. Material conditions shape and motivate ideas, and not the other way around. Ideas at best tinge some underlying material drive.
Even if that weren’t the case, ‘these people don’t believe in anything!’ is an accusation that has been leveled against everyone from 19th century bomb throwing anarchists to any number of flavors of fascists, and everyone in between. But it’s simply never been true. Talk to any kind of committed extremist or true believer in anything and they absolutely have principles. They may be stupid, incoherent, etc, but they are there. These people have firm worldviews and objectives.
Zionists in particular genuinely believe in all the hasbara talking points. Israel is the one refuge for Jews, is surrounded by eternal enemies through no fault of its own, and must be defended and even expanded at all costs. They genuinely think all these things. Whatever else modern Israel is, it’s not an exercise in nihilism, by any definition.
‘We are a starwars civilization, with godlike technology, medieval institutions and stone age emotions.” – E.O Wilson
______
It’s all moving very fast.
Is nihilism a feature of mortality, always there in the shadows? Or do you court it with the ever- increasing yet semi-conscious sense (especially among the ownership and political classes) that one is doomed to fail against one’s own idealized image. This can deal a crushing blow to an individual — or to an entire society that believes it is ‘exceptional.’
Nihilism: could it not result from our lack of control for what we ourselves have brought into being — for which we feel more responsibility? Previously unimaginable technology that, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out, runs us — we don’t run it. “The medium is the message,” the pace and scale of our actions changed by the new technology.Tech that has surpassed our ability to respond. Surveillance tech is everywhere. The weapons, the supercomputers are, we are cautioned, “replacing us” — all with military applications that make their development into an arms race impossible to avoid. (Iran also designs these with skill.)
Drones are fighting half the wars now; and AI will require the energy-use levels of entire cities to run. Tarkovsky admired the film, Terminator (the original), because he thought it captured where we were headed in the 80s — to an existential battle with our machines.
This places a great weight on any thinking person and can breed nihilism.
But who can stop it? (William Binney/ NSA genius: “I would unplug everything.”)
And not facing reality breeds nihilism, imo. The wideing gyre? Israel’s reality is that it is surrounded by a billion muslims it seeks to dominate. Its origins as a state are in the Nakba — the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians. They must rationalize this, and they do! Another unreality.
Their only possible safety probably lies in Israel being content with their gains and not trying to expand.
But expansion consumes Israel’s political identity, and the only possible way to the leadership position it seeks — to be fully dominant in the entire region — is by having the US, with a very specific interest of its own in the oil-rich middle of the World Island — joined at its hip.
(Biden: “If Israel did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.”)
Doesn’t the nihilism breed senseless action: it is all unrealistic, but you rush ahead blindly and do it all anyway — unable to stop the power drive, or its twin: self-hate.
Today our war plans so eaily fail — serially — and turn into runaway trains.
For most of the world having to watch this, threatened with WW3, not quite so blinded as the rotten leadership everywhere, this is all terrifying.
Neurotic pride among our leaders and ruling class could well be the primary cause of their nihilism. They have lost their connection to others and they spread their infection through the media, by decree and by other means.
Empathy is an antidote. I was at ground zero on 9/11 and lived through the whole terrfying event. Aren’t the Iranian people terrified? Don’t the mothers weep when their children are slaughtered?
This idea makes sense to me– Neurotic Pride, the idealized image; the loss of the real, no longer grounded in reality of what will likely happen next. Nor in the reality of what human beings need to live and find some happiness. Personality disorders encouraged by cultural malaise. Nihilism can result and take on a societal shift into madness.
Starving 2 million people to death in real time on TV today — this breeds nihilism…but also resistance! (181 of 193 nations voted for a Gaza ceasefire at the UN. Bless the student activists.)
These wars are complete moral failures that too many people in America and Israel try to justify.
The timing of today’s events: Add geography as a factor (Braudel) with the North South Trade corridor which the US is loathe to allow: another train crossed fromn Xi’an China to Tehran just 2 weeks ago; and then add to this the political careers of Bibi and DJT under intense pressure, and all of it explodes.
But the nihilism,I believe, takes root in neurotic pride, from fantasizing about ourselves and missing what we really need in this life. It is more endemic in the leadership class.
________
P.S.
From a very recent Yves article:
“Just 37 members of Congress, according to one tally, have backed anti-war resolutions currently before the House and Senate, even as new polling shows that a majority of the American public opposes U.S. military action in Iran.”