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Abstract: Language and Nihilism. A Critique of the Homogenization of Language --- If language is understood not only as a simple way of communicating, but also and fundamentally as an experience, in which man opens himself to the world, to other men and their works, and to things (Heidegger), then the loss of linguistic diversity can mean nothing less than the death of the multiplicity of worlds, in which the spiritual diversity of cultures is expressed. It is therefore not unreasonable to think that this decline could consequently lead to an identity devoid of difference, and thus to the predominance of identity over diversity. This pre-eminence of identity would, in this sense, be the culmination (die Vollendung) of the emptiness inherent in the nihilistic phenomenon that characterizes the contemporary world—its tendency towards uniformity and identity without difference (die Gleichheit). This is the meeting point of language and nihilism, and the thesis of this paper. Sociological studies on glotophagy, hegemony, and linguistic imperialism help to concretize this Heideggerian reflection.
Keywords: language, nihilism, linguistic imperialism, Heidegger
Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 15; Downloads: 3
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Abstract: In the paper, the author subjects the narrative of “interculturality” to a critique from an intercultural perspective, invoking the critical potential of Intercultural Philosophy in contrast to a culturalist “interculturality” light. The background of this analysis is the epistemic violence exercised by the West in the fields of knowledge, science, and education. This violence is particularly noticeable in the case of philosophy, leading to a sort of “philosophical homicide” (philosophicide) with respect to indigenous philosophies, such as the Andean one in the case of Abya Yala. The paper concludes with some guidelines for the challenges that a critical Intercultural Philosophy must face in the 21st century.
Keywords: intercultural philosophy, Andean philosophy, epistemicide, Abya Yala, philosophicide
Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 13; Downloads: 3
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Abstract: One of the ways, in which a form of nihilism might be thought to be present in contemporary life and culture, in an especially pervasive and powerful fashion, is in the phenomenon of homelessness. Since homelessness is essentially a privative phenomenon, any serious engagement with it forces us also to engage with the ideas of home, and of place and belonging, from which homelessness derives—ideas that themselves take on a problematic character in the contemporary world. The paper addresses some of the arguments and claims that arise in relation to these ideas, and especially the critical arguments that are frequently directed at them and are taken to imply the need for their abandonment. The main claim of the paper is that such a conclusion is misconceived and misguided, and that home, place, and belonging require rethinking and retrieval rather than abandonment. The paper has three main elements: first, a brief survey of the lines of argument that are typically directed at the notions at issue here; second, an exploration of the reasons why those notions remain necessary; third, a discussion of the task of retrieval and the way the task of retrieval is itself central to the possibility of critique.
Keywords: homelessness, home, belonging, place, nihilism
Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 8; Downloads: 3
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Abstract: Banalization and Leveling --- The need for a new mythology, expressed in the oldest program of the system of German idealism, already indicates the social topicality of the phenomenon that arose and came to be called nihilism. Hölderlin’s poetry expressly takes on the role of the new mythmaker. The invocation of Dionysus, the god of community, the god of all, the “common god,” aims to offer an alternative to the then-existing but still current lack of a sense of commonality and community. The nihilistic echo of man’s contemporary liberation from the shackles he has imposed on himself shows us that behind the strategies of emancipation lies a unified schematism. Thanks to it, the connection between liberation and individualization that is taken for granted in modern thinking is abolished. The irresponsibility of the contemporary world works by leveling every innovative step forward, and at the same time it does not see its own decision as the beginning of a new norm. In modern conditions, the will for new, different, original, authentic is not driven by an insatiable need to search for true breakthroughs, but, on the contrary, by the desire for their leveling. In this day and age, if something seems unusual, it becomes old and uninteresting at express speed. At the same time, successful examples of “modernization” were related to the “refreshing” of antiquity, most often associated with inventiveness, and even with a virtuoso interpretive gesture.
Keywords: banalization, leveling, Husserl, Heidegger, diastasis
Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 9; Downloads: 3
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Abstract: Evoking Leo Strauss’s 1941 text “German Nihilism” and his forceful claim that nihilism is above all “the rejection of the principles of civilization as such,” my intention is to thematize the possible forms of coexistence that survive and develop despite the negation and even exclusion of certain forms of civic forms of cooperation and collaboration, as well as insistence on a closed society in the Bergsonian or Popperian sense. If nihilism is often connected to a crisis of legitimacy and reasoned discourse, with a crisis of justification of certain actions or manipulative and perverted uses of language and mind, with various protocols of destruction across many levels and taking many shapes, what interests me is the role of negation and a potential classification of various negative, socially negative, destructive, or nullifying actions and acts in the construction of (non)homogenous and (in)human social groups.
Keywords: nihilism, war, negation, destruction, affirmative negation
Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 9; Downloads: 3
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