Nihilism and Philosophy: Nothingness, Truth and World

Description

The question of nihilism is always a question of truth. It is a crisis of truth that causes the experience of the nothingness of existence. What elevated truth to this existential position? The answer is: philosophy. The philosophical will to truth opens the door to nihilism, since it both makes identifying truth the utmost aim and yet continually calls it into question. Baker develops the central insight that the crises of truth and of existence, or 'loss of world', that occur within nihilistic thought are inseparable, in a wide-ranging study from antiquity to the present, from ancient Cynics, St Paul, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Agamben, and Badiou. Baker contends that since nihilism is always a question of the relation to the world occasioned by the philosophical will to truth, an answer to nihilism must be able to propose a new understanding of truth. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Truth and world Truth and wisdom Socratic truth Truth and time 1. The True World The two worlds Whence worldlessness? The Christian world Spinoza’s world 2. Cynic Nihilism Phusis Foucault’s Cynics Apolis Negation 3. Paul’s World A genealogy of cosmos Paul against empire Anti-cosmos Badiou’s anti-cosmos 4. Paul: Nihilist or Overman? The reactive Paul The active Paul Paul the Overman The messianic vocation 5. Nietzsche’s World Nietzsche’s anti-cosmos The true world is a lie ‘The world is perfect’ Heidegger’s Nietzsche 6. Heidegger’s World Being-in-the-world Freedom and finitude The Nothing Nihilism 7. Parrhesia Parrhesia in the polis Philia Socrates’s last words Philaletheia Conclusion References Index