More Nihilism! Some brief notes on Critchley’s How to Stop Living and Start Worrying

17Oct10

Reading Simon Critchley’s How to Stop Living and Start Worrying I was (paradoxically?) hopeful that I had a supremely negative text on my hand. The book starts by engaging an issue I discussed here – that philosophy and life, or perhaps more accurately living, have become a mess leading philosophy towards self help and folk […]

Filed under: Badiou, cognitive science, Kant, politics, psychoanalysis   |  1 Comment
Tags: ethics, levinas, nihilism, simon critchley

Thought and Nature (some notes)

13Oct09

“It was the age of everlasting night. The sunset of man had long since gone by, and the last few millions who still dwelt on earth in those far future days took refuge in the mighty pyramid of imperishable metal that was the last of all men’s cities and would ere long become his tomb” […]

Filed under: Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant, nature, ontology, Schelling, Speculative Realism, transcendental materialism   |  2 Comments
Tags: being, epistemology, nihilism, post-apocalypse, William Hope Hodgson, Zapffe

Dysphorias

02Oct09

Alex and Nick have both posted their contributions to the Militant Dysphoria event on Wednesday in London.  One of the points in Dominic’s book which struck me was in relation to his discussion of Xasthur in that  suicide is not a solution but a capitulation (44) and that misanthropy must be cleaned of all self […]

Filed under: Speculative Realism   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: dysphoria, misanthropy, negative, negativity, nihil, nihilism

Nihilismus Autodidactus

23Jul09

One of the most unfortunate constants of science fiction is its humanistic optimism whether secular or mythic. The unification of planets, of empires and rebellions asserts a communitarian harmony as well as a ubiquity of civilized life. The post-apocalyptic and the dying earth subgenres offer some hope of desolation and pessimism but often relapse into […]

Filed under: Brassier, Freud, Speculative Realism   |  3 Comments
Tags: dying earth, lovecraft, nihilism, sci-fi, sf

Black Sun

14Jul09

The image of the black sun appears in various biblical, alchemist, hermetic and occult texts.  The black sun appears as the dark material underside of the pure and philosophical sun (the Platonic sun).  The productive material sun is placed as a rotting corpse into the earth’s core as its productive core going from Philolaus to […]

Filed under: Speculative Realism   |  11 Comments
Tags: black sun, nazism, nigredo, nihilism, reza negarestani

Speculative Realist Nature Philosophy and Dark Phenomenology

01Mar09

Complete Lies further elaborates the Grantian faction of Speculative Realism which leans towards vitalism and Deleuze (in Harman’s definition).  A cold vitalism and a spectral vitalism are both noted and, while I may fall in the former I might be more tempted to go with emanationist in the sense of Plotinus (if the religiosity and […]

Filed under: Brassier, Deleuze, Iain Hamilton Grant, Schelling, Speculative Realism   |  6 Comments
Tags: ligotti, lovecraft, nihilism