Terror, Violence and the Impulse to Destroy: Perspectives from Analytical Psychology

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Given this circumstance, existence itself--all action, suffering, and feeling--is ultimately senseless and empty. In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life , Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning.

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The Skeptic Empedocles' observation that "the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life," for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesias of Cyrene. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide. Centuries later during the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarized the existential nihilist's perspective when, in this famous passage near the end of Macbeth , he has Macbeth pour out his disgust for life:.

Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. In the twentieth century, it's the atheistic existentialist movement, popularized in France in the s and 50s, that is responsible for the currency of existential nihilism in the popular consciousness.

Terror, Violence and the Impulse to Destroy

Jean-Paul Sartre's defining preposition for the movement, "existence precedes essence," rules out any ground or foundation for establishing an essential self or a human nature. When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom but also existential horror and emotional anguish. Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being "thrown" into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning.

It's a situation that's nothing short of absurd. Writing from the enlightened perspective of the absurd, Albert Camus observed that Sisyphus' plight, condemned to eternal, useless struggle, was a superb metaphor for human existence The Myth of Sisyphus , The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness, and they expended great energy responding to the question of whether surviving it was possible.

Their answer was a qualified "Yes," advocating a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism. In retrospect, it was an anecdote tinged with desperation because in an absurd world there are absolutely no guidelines, and any course of action is problematic. Passionate commitment, be it to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Camus, like the other existentialists, was convinced that nihilism was the most vexing problem of the twentieth century. Although he argues passionately that individuals could endure its corrosive effects, his most famous works betray the extraordinary difficulty he faced building a convincing case.

In The Stranger , for example, Meursault has rejected the existential suppositions on which the uninitiated and weak rely.

In Caligula , the mad emperor tries to escape the human predicament by dehumanizing himself with acts of senseless violence, fails, and surreptitiously arranges his own assassination. The Plague shows the futility of doing one's best in an absurd world. And in his last novel, the short and sardonic, The Fall , Camus posits that everyone has bloody hands because we are all responsible for making a sorry state worse by our inane action and inaction alike.

In these works and other works by the existentialists, one is often left with the impression that living authentically with the meaninglessness of life is impossible. Camus was fully aware of the pitfalls of defining existence without meaning, and in his philosophical essay The Rebel he faces the problem of nihilism head-on. In it, he describes at length how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilism, characterized by profound hatred, pathological destruction, and incalculable violence and death.

By the late 20th century, "nihilism" had assumed two different castes. In one form, "nihilist" is used to characterize the postmodern person, a dehumanized conformist, alienated, indifferent, and baffled, directing psychological energy into hedonistic narcissism or into a deep ressentiment that often explodes in violence. This perspective is derived from the existentialists' reflections on nihilism stripped of any hopeful expectations, leaving only the experience of sickness, decay, and disintegration. In his study of meaninglessness, Donald Crosby writes that the source of modern nihilism paradoxically stems from a commitment to honest intellectual openness.

When sincere inquiry is extended to moral convictions and social consensus, it can prove deadly, Crosby continues, promoting forces that ultimately destroy civilizations.

Michael Novak's recently revised The Experience of Nothingness , tells a similar story. Both studies are responses to the existentialists' gloomy findings from earlier in the century. And both optimistically discuss ways out of the abyss by focusing of the positive implications nothingness reveals, such as liberty, freedom, and creative possibilities.

Novak, for example, describes how since WWII we have been working to "climb out of nihilism" on the way to building a new civilization. In contrast to the efforts to overcome nihilism noted above is the uniquely postmodern response associated with the current antifoundationalists.

The philosophical, ethical, and intellectual crisis of nihilism that has tormented modern philosophers for over a century has given way to mild annoyance or, more interestingly, an upbeat acceptance of meaninglessness. French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes postmodernism as an "incredulity toward metanarratives," those all-embracing foundations that we have relied on to make sense of the world.

This extreme skepticism has undermined intellectual and moral hierarchies and made "truth" claims, transcendental or transcultural, problematic. Postmodern antifoundationalists, paradoxically grounded in relativism, dismiss knowledge as relational and "truth" as transitory, genuine only until something more palatable replaces it reminiscent of William James' notion of "cash value". The critic Jacques Derrida, for example, asserts that one can never be sure that what one knows corresponds with what is. Since human beings participate in only an infinitesimal part of the whole, they are unable to grasp anything with certainty, and absolutes are merely "fictional forms.

American antifoundationalist Richard Rorty makes a similar point: This epistemological cul-de-sac, Rorty concludes, leads inevitably to nihilism. In contrast to Nietzsche's fears and the angst of the existentialists, nihilism becomes for the antifoundationalists just another aspect of our contemporary milieu, one best endured with sang-froid.

In The Banalization of Nihilism Karen Carr discusses the antifoundationalist response to nihilism. Although it still inflames a paralyzing relativism and subverts critical tools, "cheerful nihilism" carries the day, she notes, distinguished by an easy-going acceptance of meaninglessness.

Such a development, Carr concludes, is alarming.

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If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. Worse still, the banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies. It's a conclusion that dovetails nicely with Nietzsche's, who pointed out that all interpretations of the world are simply manifestations of will-to-power.

If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind:. I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength. Nihilism Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.

Origins "Nihilism" comes from the Latin nihil , or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism.

Terror, Violence and the Impulse to Destroy

This collapse of meaning, relevance, and purpose will be the most destructive force in history, constituting a total assault on reality and nothing less than the greatest crisis of humanity: Will to Power Since Nietzsche's compelling critique, nihilistic themes--epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness--have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers.

Check copyright status Cite this Title Terror, violence, and the impulse to destroy: Subjects Violence -- Psychological aspects -- Congresses. Terrorism -- Psychological aspects -- Congresses. Jungian psychology -- Congresses.

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