by Mugees Ul Kaisar
Meanings are not to be invented as Nietzsche and Camus thought, but rather, we are always already drenched in meaning. A carpenter is inherently in meaning whilst being immersed in the act of hammering. This meaning is pre-theoretical. It is practised as a skill rather than thought abstractly.
Feeling out of place with life and reality is a possibility of human experience. “Suicidal nihilism” (a feeling of meaninglessness that borders upon self-annihilation as the only possible way out) can fructify due to multiple factors. It could be because of social or psychological reasons, such as emotional dissonance. However, this article will particularly engage with one specific strain of such nihilism, dominated more by “intellectual” rather than psychological or emotional reasons.
Intellectually charged suicidal nihilism makes resolute knowledge claims about the nature of existence, which this article aims to problematise. To be sure, an emotionally or psychologically enabled suicidal nihilism may simply be because of inarticulable “anxiety” or dread or a pre-theoretical incongruence of an individual vis-à-vis life itself; in other words, one simply does not feel at home in life. But an intellectually dominated suicidal nihilism makes a (knowledge) judgment about the nature of life and existence, which supposedly becomes a premise for suicidal nihilism.
The main idea of such nihilism is that the universe is a random, meaningless accident, and that we are caught up in a whirlpool of cosmic mess, which leaves the only reasonable way out of “suicide.” This is a knowledge claim lacking the finality of evidence required for an authentic decision.
Firstly, the claim that the universe is a meaningless accident is baseless. There is no sufficient evidence for such a claim. We are not entirely sure as to how existence came to be (and what it is in its essence). Even the theoretical and observational contours of the Big Bang are not fully clear. The idea that existence results from a random, meaningless accident is a grand claim lacking scientific and philosophical evidence. How does a nihilist fully know, for sure, that the universe is pointless in principle? Wouldn’t agnosticism be a more truthful response, expressing one’s ignorance regarding the nature of existence and its genesis?
Contradictions
Before we proceed any further, let us first note the indispensable contradictions that the intellectual nihilism stumbles upon, which should stun its movement. The nihilist, for example, may claim that “everything is a result of chemical accidents” and yet would go on to cherish the “free choice” of ending life in a supposedly courageous act. One wonders what the notions of courage and decision could mean if everything is a meaningless accident. Would not this courage, this so-called “decision,” also result from a so-called chemical accident? A “chemical accident” makes one do what one does. Thus, intellectually grounded suicidal nihilism becomes self-defeating simply because one does not think through and decide anything, but rather, like a puppet, follows antecedent determinations of random accidents.
Therefore, we should ask, what is this “intelligence” that has judged everything to be accidental and meaningless in the first place? Why and how can we come to trust the judgments of an intelligence that is principally enabled by random, meaningless accidents? How do we know that our “intelligence” has reached the correct conclusion? Hence, the proper response to existence should be a stunned expression of astonishment or confusion rather than a chest-thumping attitude of knowing the ultimate nature of reality.
Moreover, absurdism and nihilism cannot have the final say on the nature of reality simply because the time is “open”: what is referred to as the “messianism of time,” in the sense that no one knows what is to come (as Derrida would say l’avenir). Since time remains open and existence cannot be closed upon itself, a final claim (such as the universe is so and so) that performs an immanent closure becomes impossible to make. We cannot make final claims regarding the nature and fate of the universe because it remains open.
Now, how to see this problem? How should we approach this conundrum? There is one perspective which avoids two problematic extremes: a) chest-thumping claim of “knowing” existence in its essence coming from both nihilists and (at least a section of) the religious people, and b) a total rejection of “meaning” in principle. This article proposes to tread the middle path between the two. That is to say, we cannot, and we should not claim final answers regarding the nature of existence, but at the same time we can register the (pre-predicative) immanent meaning within everyday life.
The Limits of Knowledge
Let us first elucidate the first part. To be sure, religion does not claim to know the final answer or purpose of existence; the Qur’an, for example, talks about the purpose of the creation of the “death” and “life” to test human beings (67:2) or at another place it says that the humans have been created to worship God (51:56), but nowhere does it mention anything about the purpose of existence or wajd itself. To shift the question one step back, Qur’an does not discuss the “purpose” of God or Zt itself; why is there God in the first place, or what is the “purpose” of God? Or why is there anything at all? The paradigm of “use” of “purpose” or meaning (in terms of means for some end) must finally be dropped simply because God is not a means to an end; God (by which we mean the ultimate reality) is, because it is.
This point is approached by contemporary physics in its own language; the fact is, no matter how far back we move in our reductionism, there is always the givenness of some “given” that cannot be circumvented. This is an important point that needs to be properly understood.
Let us dwell on it for some time. Recall, above, we talked about the notion of “chemical accidents”; this term is employed under a regime of reductionism, which attempts to explain away phenomena into nothingness. So, for example, if someone asks what love is. The response (under the paradigm of reductionism) would be that it is nothing but a hormone. But if we reflect on it a little, we will realise that such reductionism cannot explain anything in its essence. That is because reductionism does not explain the givenness of the “given.” The very isness of something. In fact, “givenness” fundamentally eludes such a paradigm of thought. The fact that there is anything at all; existence/wajd itself.
Hence, if we ask what that hormone itself is? We will get a response in terms of chemicals and compounds. We should not stop there. We should enquire further as to what a compound is; the response would be: molecules. If we ask what a molecule is, the response would be “atoms.” If we ask what an atom is, the response would be in terms of the rich sub-atomic world, constituting realities such as electrons. If we continue further and ask what an electron is, we may arrive at physical fields or energy. But the question remains: what is this field in its essence? What is energy in its essence? To this, we really do not have an answer. Reductionism thus culminates in mystery.
Even if we remove all the particles and energy from the universe, we are still left with the givenness of the “laws of physics” (which in and of themselves are a total mystery). No matter the shape or form of the laws, their presupposition is nevertheless a “given” (without which we cannot possibly conceive of any universe at all). That is why the idea of absolute “nothingness” (at least in its physical terms) or “void” which nihilism relishes is problematic, as contemporary physics shows, simply because it is utterly impossible to arrive at; something always already precedes “analysis” perpetually. There is always a “given” which precedes all reductionism.
The givenness of a “given” cannot be circumvented, as Jean-Luc Marion shows in his phenomenological investigations. Therefore, reductionism inevitably hits the dead end of “mystery” at the face of the givenness of some given which is uncharacterizable. In other words, the essence of anything and everything is an enigma.
The Paradigm of Mystery
It is in these terms that we should redefine the above response of agnosticism (which in the above discussion had come out as the only genuine and sincere reaction to the problem of existence). The “mystery” paradigm is much richer as it registers the aesthetic grandeur or wonder of existence. Interestingly, the Qur’an defines God in terms of gaib or mystery. The highest station of knowledge, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, is bewilderment or hairat. Many Sufi masters have interpreted taqwa as awe or astonishment rather than merely in terms of childish fear.
The Qur’an upholds the idea that there cannot be anything like unto God in the sense that it is finally indescribable in its essence. By God, according to the traditional metaphysics (irf, what we mean is the ultimate essence of reality (whatever is truly true), Al-Haq, and thus it does not remain an abstract proposition or the “God of the gaps.” (For further explanation, see Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s essay “God is Reality” in his book The Need for a Sacred Science.) That is why the Qur’an talks about God through traits/sift, the expression of which we witness around us rather than in terms of zt or essence.
The Qur’an does not delve into the question of the nature or the zt of God. To invoke Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics, the world is nothing but a dialectic of jalli and jamli names of God. In other words, creation is enabled by the dialectic of muhiy and mumt or qbiz and bsit: the names of “immanence” and “transcendence.” Since God as Absolute (or the Ultimate Reality) is infinite or the abode of all possibilities (in other words, the source and origin of everything), creation of all kinds comes to be. For a brief introduction to Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics, see William Chittick’s books Ibn ‘Arabi: Heir to the Prophets and Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide. See Chittick’s book The Sufi Path of Knowledge for a detailed treatment of this issue.
The Second Extreme
Now, let us move on to the second extreme position referred to above. The idea that meaning is completely impossible or absent in principle: this is again baseless. In fact, we are permeated with meanings all around. Note that this has nothing to do with claiming the final meaning of all existence per se, which has already been dismissed above. What we are referring to here is the immanent meaning within everyday life. For example, the processes of digestion within and the photosynthesis without are nothing but manifestations of meaning. The fact that we move around here and there and that the world or life can hold us at all is enabled by various meaning tissues.
Here, we need to invoke Heidegger’s work on Being and Time. If we reflect on our lives, we shall see that most of our lives are in flow with daily activities, which are meaningful in and of themselves. Meanings are not to be invented as Nietzsche and Camus thought, but rather, we are always already drenched in meaning. A carpenter is inherently in meaning whilst being immersed in the act of hammering. This meaning is pre-theoretical. It is practised as a skill rather than thought abstractly.
Our lives consist of situations or contexts within which things are meaningfully tied; in an absorbed and embodied mode of being, things do not surface up as alien or absurd “objects” stuck in space-time order, but instead in one’s practical mode of being, one is immanently inter-connected with everything such that one performs a meaningful action, appropriate for a particular situation. For a detailed treatment of this subject, see Hubert Dreyfus’ book Being-in-the-World.
Practical Involvement
Heidegger basically overturns traditional Western ontology; it is not the mentalist, abstract, representational mode of thinking which is primary (where things are abstracted out as cut-off “objects,” crying for meaning) but rather one is always already situated within a life-world wherein a practical involvement with things meaningfully enables everyday activities.
It is only when the practical mode of being breaks down that the things begin to appear as abstract objects; say, for example, if a hammer comes across too heavy or too light (for the immersed activity of hammering), only then its separateness as an abstract object surfaces otherwise the carpenter, hammer, wood, workshop and the wilderness from where the wood comes are all immanently tied up in one practical life-world. In fact, it is the background activity of “hammering” that provides meaning for the (so-called abstract) properties such as heaviness and lightness.
This aligns with Wittgenstein’s “use theory of meaning,” according to which everyday life is seen as a set of language games within which we participate. Language games are inherently meaningful, like any physical game that players play amongst each other; once abstracted out, a rule of play would of course mean nothing. Heidegger and Wittgenstein’s point is that most of our lives that are part of immersed, involved, participatory modes of being, engaged with activities and invoking daily skills, are always already immanently meaningful.
To be sure, both thinkers do not posit any ultimate ground to the everyday (mundane) meaning, but that is besides the point; what is of interest to note here is that everyday life is always already meaning-laden (not available to a detached, abstract analysis but always operative within the absorbed, active mode of being).
Hence, in sum, we are to balance the above two extremes: in addition to desisting from making grand knowledge claims about the nature of existence, which are contradictory and bereft of proper evidence, we should attend to the everyday ordinary life already permeated with immanent meaning.
(The writer holds an MA in Philosophy from Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, where he is currently undertaking his doctoral research. Ideas are personal.)
