"What is the Nihilism in which we have seen the root
of the Revolution of the modern age? The answer, at first thought,
does not seem difficult; several obvious examples of it spring
immediately to mind. There is Hitler's fantastic program of
destruction, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Dadaist attack on art;
there is the background from which these movements sprang, most
notably represented by several 'possessed' individuals of the late
nineteenth century--poets like Rimbaud and Baudelaire, revolutionaries
like Bakunin and Nechayev, 'prophets' like Nietzsche; there is, on a
humbler level among our contemporaries, the vague unrest that leads
some to flock to magicians like Hitler, and others to find escape in
drugs or false religions, or to perpetrate those 'senseless' crimes
that become ever more characteristic of these times. But these
represent no more than the spectacular surface of the problem of
Nihilism. To account even for these, once one probes beneath the
surface, is by no means an easy task; but the task we have set for
ourselves in this chapter is broader: to understand the nature of the
whole movement of which these phenomena are but extreme examples.
To do this it will be necessary to avoid two great
pitfalls lying on either side of the path we have chosen, into one or
the other of which most commentators on the Nihilist spirit of our age
have fallen: apology, and diatribe.
Anyone aware of the too-obvious imperfections and
evils of modern civilization that have been the more immediate
occasion and cause of the Nihilist reaction--though we shall see that
these too have been the fruit of an incipient Nihilism--cannot but
feel a measure of sympathy with some, at least, of the men who have
participated in that reaction. Such sympathy may take the form of pity
for men who may, from one point of view, be seen as innocent 'victims'
of the conditions against which their effort has been directed; or
again, it may be expressed in the common opinion that certain types of
Nihilist phenomena have actually a 'positive' significance and have a
role to play in some 'new development' of history or of man. The
latter attitude, again, is itself one of the more obvious fruits of
the very Nihilism in question here; but the former attitude, at least,
is not entirely devoid of truth or justice. For that very reason,
however, we must be all the more careful not to give it undue
importance. It is all too easy, in the atmosphere of intellectual fog
that pervades Liberal and Humanist circles today, to allow sympathy
for an unfortunate person to pass over into receptivity to his
ideas. The Nihilist, to be sure, is in some sense 'sick,' and his
sickness is a testimony to the sickness of an age whose best--as well
as worst--elements turn to Nihilism; but sickness is not cured, nor
even properly diagnosed by 'sympathy.' In any case there is no such
thing as an entirely 'innocent victim.' The Nihilist is all too
obviously involved in the very sins and guilt of mankind that have
produced the evils of our age; and in taking arms--as do all Nihilists
not only against real or imagined 'abuses' and 'injustices' in the
social and religious order, but also against order itself and the
Truth that underlies that order, the Nihilist takes an active part in
the work of Satan (for such it is) that can by no means be explained
away by the mythology of the 'innocent victim.' No one, in the last
analysis, serves Satan against his will."
Excerpt from NIHILISM: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age by Fr. Seraphim Rose
No comments:
Post a Comment