Beyond Nothingness
Costantino Esposito - An Interview with Costantino Esposito, Author of “The New Nihilism”
When did you first get the idea to write this book?
It all stemmed from the proposal that the director of “L’Osservatore Romano,” the Holy See’s historic newspaper, had made to me to hold a column in the newspaper, choosing myself a theme that seemed particularly urgent and interesting for the historical moment in which we were living. At that time I had the intuition that it was worthwhile to refocus on a problem that is now so widespread in contemporary culture as to be hidden, or rather camouflaged within the different perspectives with which the existence of human beings understands itself on a daily basis. This was precisely the phenomenon of “nihilism,” resurfacing within the crisis of meaning that runs from top to bottom through the individual histories of individuals, as well as the cultural, political, social, and economic events of the “great” history of the world. A crisis of meaning (and not just any meaning or one relating to the situations experienced from time to time, but of the ultimate meaning for which each of us is in the world) that has become like the air we breathe, the pre-understanding of all our discourse. Somehow a kind of “spirit of the time” that marks like a secret, subtle wound everyone, even those who would not be said to be “nihilists,” but who have to reckon with and go through this crisis of the sense of self and the world, precisely in order to regain this sense.
From those articles (reworked and supplemented later with several other reflective texts) came the idea that it was worth expanding and articulating the discourse into a proper book.
Certainly these are unprecedented times in the United States, Europe, and around the world. What can readers find in your book that will resonate with them during this era?
The crisis I mentioned is perhaps the most appropriate key to understanding and interpreting the whole range of different crises that – in an increasingly geo-politically interconnected way – mark our time. It might seem that the question of “why” we are in the world and the search for meaning for existence is something too small, individual and insignificant compared to the macro-phenomena unfolding on the world stage. But on the contrary, it is precisely in the presence or lack of self-awareness, in the consideration or neglect of the irreducible value of each individual person that we can find the ultimate explanation for the many difficulties of our time. Certainly, there are many factors “outside” the self that continually condition the search for fulfillment of our person, who is never like a monad in a desert, but is always marked by the challenges of the reality around him or her. While I was writing the book, the terrible pandemic emergency of Covid-19 broke out, which amplified and radicalized the question of meaning I was talking about. And yet of the two, either a motive and taste worth living for flourishes again in the self, in the person, or it will not be possible to respond to the often dramatic provocations of reality and give them perspective. Nihilism has so far meant precisely this divorce between the meaning of personal life and the destinies of the world. But today the need for the two to meet again becomes evident.
How did you research this book?
I have not tried to carry out a purely conceptual-theoretical discourse or a doctrinal analysis, but I wanted to assume the method of a phenomenological “field” investigation. Somewhat with the ambition of doing the dispassionate and honest work of a “reporter” who hunts for his subject and tries to highlight it in those “case studies” where it can best be brought out. And so I ventured into the territories of literature and neuroscience, painting and TV series, poetry and, of course, philosophy, which is my field of specialization and also my perspective in reading the examples covered. And this is not to break the phenomenon of nihilism into individual fragments, but to draw from each of them news about the “new” configuration that it takes on in our time: no longer just a loss of values (as had been theorized from Nietzsche onward for almost a century and a half) but a new chance to ask again the question about the meaning of self and the world.
What did you learn while writing it?
Above all, I have learned one thing: that if you look closely at a crisis phenomenon, you can discern not only a difficulty but also a question – sometimes tacit or inapparent – that is settled at the bottom of it. Every crisis is a chance to listen again to the voice of restlessness that inhabits our reason and our heart. That is, to listen again to that deep desire for the good, the beautiful and the true – that desire for “being” – that constitutes the irreducible face of our self. The nihilism of our time is no longer that of destruction and Promethean revolt, nor only that of bourgeois conformism, but that of extreme expectation and possible hope.
Which philosopher is the biggest influence on you and your work?
I would say that there are at least three thinkers to whom I feel indebted: going backwards, Martin Heidegger (for the conception of existence as a question about being), Immanuel Kant (for the nexus between metaphysics and critique) and Augustine of Hippo (for the discovery that our self is called by an Other to be itself, and experiences as restlessness its relationship with a You). These authors, however, for me should never simply be repeated as a canon, but verified, crossed, and in some cases even gone beyond in order to understand with our personal voice the present time.
What advice would you give to writers who wants to start a book that deals with a similar topic?
I would advise them to always and in every case start from experience, not from presupposed and prejudiced beliefs. Clearly, we all have starting beliefs, but it is a matter of testing them in the impact with reality. It is precisely through this impact that our questions can be reawakened and the sense of the world we seek can be “unleashed.”
Who would you like to read The New Nihilism: The Existential Crisis of Our Time and why?
I think it may appeal first and foremost to those who seek a deeper understanding of the existential condition of contemporary humanity, which is deeply marked by many crises, but which can be re-understood as the possibility of asking whether there is something irreducible in our experience that can withstand “nothingness.” The nothingness from which many think they derive and into which they believe they must end up. Classical nihilism arose from the separation of life from its ideal meaning; now it is a matter of seeking that meaning no longer outside or beyond life but within it.
What book(s) are you currently reading?
I have recently read Cormac McCarthy’s two latest, resounding novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, in which the metaphysical fabric of human nature is poignantly understood. Our being “burns,” as it were, for the expectation of meaning that will overcome nothingness and make us discover the unpredictable and gratuitous power of the fact that “we are there.” This prompted me to go back and read some of McCarthy’s own earlier novels, in which he documents that each person carries “the fire” within him or herself and can rekindle it in the world he or she traverses, like the two unforgettable protagonists – the father and the son – in The Road or like the young men who cross the desert on horseback to go beyond the frontier. Always beyond, to infinity and into infinity.
What book or project are you working on next?
I am currently working on two books on philosophy: one is about the “discovery” of the “I” in two authors who have profoundly marked our self-consciousness, namely Augustine and Descartes. But it will not only be a historical reconstruction, but also a proposal to rethink our “self” as an original and irreducible phenomenon, at a time when it is often claimed that it would be only a neuro-biological phenomenon or a mere cultural construction. Instead, the second book will be titled “Intelligent Beings” and will be an inquiry into what it means to possess (or presume to possess) intelligence: from angelic intelligences to plant and animal intelligences, from collective intelligence to artificial and post-human intelligence… Today, the intelligence of humans is called upon to recapture itself and to re-propose the problem of its “specificity” precisely by questioning all other forms of intelligent being.
Costantino Esposito is professor of history of philosophy and history of metaphysics at University of Bari Aldo Moro and at the Institute of Philosophical Studies of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI) in Lugano. He is the author of many books and articles, including Introduzione a Heidegger. The Notre Dame Press is delighted to publish his latest work, The New Nihilism: The Existential Crisis of Our Time.