11. Images, Artificial Intelligence, and Informational NihilismVeronica Neri, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Artificially generated images open up new ethical issues. Since it is no longer easy to understand and discern the true from the false, we can adopt a consciously critical view or a nihilistic view. In the field of information, the criterion of visual truth has become abolished. Artificial images are “nontransparent,” subject to a potentially endless process of transformation; they are, moreover, replete with biases that make it difficult to understand the meaning of the image. The crisis of truth, the personalization of visual data, the enclosure into knowledge bubbles, machine learning systems, their conveyance and reception, question the very existence of visual information. The risk is the process of “defacticization” of reality, a loss of trust in the facts being told. This can lead to a kind of informational nihilism and the extinction of trust in “the other.” Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on an ethics that overcomes the devaluation of the meaning of today’s visual signs and allows them to be rehabilitated as bearers of informational, but also social, cultural, and anthropological meaning. Keywords: artificial images, defacticization, nihilism, regulation, visual information Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 29; Downloads: 6 Full text (480,55 KB) |
12. Heidegger : Technik, Gestell und NihilismusJesús Adrián Escudero, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Heidegger. Technology, Enframing, and Nihilism --- Martin Heidegger’s reflections on technology and nihilism analyze the challenges of the modern world. In his later writings, he describes technology as more than just tools; it is a mode of revealing that reduces the world to a mere stock of resources. This leads to the alienation of human beings who lose their intrinsic value and are perceived only as objects of calculation. Heidegger considers this perspective to be nihilistic, as it neglects meaning in Western metaphysics in favor of use and control. To escape this nihilistic tendency, he advocates for a shift towards an open relationship with being. The contribution is divided into three parts: the conception of technology, the meaning and genealogy of positionality, and the nihilistic implications and possible alternatives through a relational ontology. Keywords: enframing, fourfold, machination, relationality, technology Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 31; Downloads: 6 Full text (579,80 KB) |
13. Sprache und Nihilismus : Eine Kritik an der Homogenisierung der SpracheAlfredo Rocha de la Torre, 2024, original scientific article 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: 35; Downloads: 8 Full text (462,13 KB) |
14. A Phenomenological Explication of Cultural Difference : With Reference to the Cultural Situation in TaiwanChung-Chi Yu, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: In an age when it has become commonplace to encounter cultural differences, the problem of the latter deserves our close attention. With the help of phenomenology, the paper manages to illuminate the meaning of cultural difference. Beyond that, the paper wishes to show that phenomenology may also provide us with a solid ground, such that we can handle cultural difference in the face of the challenge of nihilism. The first part of the contribution is dedicated to a brief review concerning the question how the problem of cultural difference has been hinted at in the thoughts both of Husserl and Schutz, and how it was overlooked by both of them. As next, the paper deals with the concept of appresentation, in order to see how it was originally developed in Husserl and then transformed by Schutz. The last part lays out the twisted experience of cultural difference displayed in the novel Orphan of Asia; within it, Nietzsche’s ideas of nihilism are introduced, in order to evaluate how to face cultural differences appropriately. Keywords: cultural difference, nihilism, Husserl, Schutz, appresentation Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 34; Downloads: 8 Full text (497,74 KB) |
15. Progress as Barbarism : Epistemic Violence and Philosophicide of the West Against Indigenous Cosmo-SpiritualitiesJosef Estermann, 2024, original scientific article 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: 35; Downloads: 7 Full text (502,58 KB) |
16. Selbstverteidigung und Selbstbestimmung gegen moralischen Nihilismus im Kontext des StrafrechtsAzelarabe Lahkim Bennani, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: Self-Defense and Self-Determination Against Moral Nihilism in the Context of Criminal Law --- The article concerns the question in what sense does comparative criminal law research confirm the idea that inflation of repressive laws promotes overcriminalization and does not promote trust in the possibility of mutual moral improvement between actors. We will also see to what extent the right to self-defense is recognized in its various forms. Trust in the laws is ensured by the fact that the will to power guarantees the right to self-defense. This is guaranteed by the right to avoid self-accusation. Guilt is not simply a consequence of accusation, coming from society, or of self-incrimination. Guilt does not look in the direction of the past, in the direction of retributive purposes. Rather, it has a prospect of the future, of mutual correction of character and behavior. This calls moral nihilism into question. Keywords: moral nihilism, self-accusation, Nietzsche, penal law, guilt, Islam Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 34; Downloads: 6 Full text (511,86 KB) |
17. Nihilism, Homelessness, and PlaceJeff Malpas, 2024, original scientific article 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: 37; Downloads: 7 Full text (471,31 KB) |
18. Wounded Thinking of the Wounded World : Nihilism and Global WarmingSusanna Lindberg, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: The article claims that one of the most important tasks of thinking today is global warming. Can it be analyzed as another form of nihilism: not as nihilism of the meaning of life, but as a new kind of nihilism of human and nonhuman life itself? Could global warming be analyzed as a kind of “objective nihilism” tied to the active nihilism of humankind that causes it and to the passive nihilism of humankind that endures it, rather than acting against it? This article attempts to explain “the objective nihilism” of global warming with the help of Maurice Blanchot’s term “disaster,” by showing how it leads to the nihilistic attitudes of despair and indifference. It also asks how the lucidity of nihilism can be turned into a force. Keywords: objective nihilism, global warming, world, catastrophe, Maurice Blanchot Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 32; Downloads: 8 Full text (431,80 KB) |
19. Banalisierung und NivellierungDragan D. Prole, 2024, original scientific article 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: 35; Downloads: 6 Full text (438,07 KB) |
20. Thinking God—Today?Holger Zaborowski, 2024, original scientific article Abstract: The essay tackles the question of the possibility of thinking God in the present day. It emphasizes the necessity of contemporary translations of traditional talk about God, in the contemporary age, which is characterized by God’s “absence,” “death,” or “fading.” The contribution first points towards the phenomenon of “pious” atheism that is friendly towards religion; it presents the attempt to justify religion and faith in God functionally, before critiquing this attempt because of its human, all too human access to God and because of its circularity; it instead approaches a different thinking of God, and in doing so, indicates a place for the experience of benevolence as a path to God. Keywords: God, thinking God, nihilism, “pious” atheism, benevolence Published in DiRROS: 09.01.2025; Views: 21; Downloads: 6 Full text (477,33 KB) |