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In his short and seminal Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose delineated four stages of Nihilism, defined by their ever-increasing indifference or hostility to truth. The first and mildest stage of Nihilism is Liberalism. The Liberal does not believe in truth, higher truth, absolute truth, or Christian truth. Yet he retains “the name of truth, and the names of those truths men once regarded as absolute.” The next stage of Nihilism is Realism (though I think a better name would be Materialism). The Realist aggressively denies all higher truth, he says that only the material, the physical, the lower, the purely deterministic, is true. The Vitalist in turn reacts against the unbearably meaningless and sterile world that has been created by the Liberal and the Realist. He seeks a revived meaning and vitality in life, but without challenging the Liberal’s and Realist’s assumptions about truth or seeking a restoration of the truths they have destroyed. On the contrary, since the truth offered by Liberalism is so weak and vague, and the truth offered by Realism is so deadening and depressing, the Vitalist rejects the very idea of truth: short and seminal book , Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose delineated four stages of Nihilism, defined by their ever-increasing indifference or hostility to truth. The first and mildest stage of Nihilism is Liberalism. The Liberal does not believe in truth, higher truth, absolute truth, or Christian truth. Yet he retains “the name of truth, and the names of those truths men once regarded as absolute.” The next stage of Nihilism is Realism (though I think a better name would be Materialism). The Realist aggressively denies all higher truth, he says that only the material, the physical, the lower, the purely deterministic, is true. The Vitalist in turn reacts against the unbearably meaningless and sterile world that has been created by the Liberal and the Realist. He seeks a revived meaning and vitality in life, but without challenging the Liberal’s and Realist’s assumptions about truth or seeking a restoration of the truths they have destroyed. On the contrary, since the truth offered by Liberalism is so weak and vague, and the truth offered by Realism is so deadening and depressing, the Vitalist “The falseness of an opinion,” said Nietzsche, “is not for us any objection to it…. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving … ” When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the “life-giving,” the “vital”; it is the final divorce of life from truth. [Nihilism, p. 50]. In the Vitalist stage of society, people deliver themselves over to an unending search for sensation and excitement, for the exotic and the experimental, for ever-greater freedom and satisfaction of desires, for the “riches of diversity,” for the transforming “energy” that is produced by a society in constant change and motion—and with all these things being seen as, even explicitly promoted as, a substitute for any inherent truth and goodness in existence. In the Vitalist stage of society, people deliver themselves over to an unending search for sensation and excitement, for the exotic and the experimental, for ever-greater freedom and satisfaction of desires, for the “riches of diversity,” for the transforming “energy” that is produced by a society in constant change and motion—and with all these things being seen as, even explicitly promoted as, a substitute for any inherent truth and goodness in existence. As Vitalism reaches its peak, the final stage of Nihilism starts to appear. This is the Nihilism of Destruction, “a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute nothingness.” It strikes me that with the Massachusetts decision legalizing homosexual marriage, our society may be passing from the Vitalist stage of Nihilism to the full-blown Nihilism of Destruction.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 20, 2003 09:46 AM | Send



