The Survival of Nihilism

Abstract

In a recent encyclical letter Fides et Ratio [Faith and Reason] (October 1998) Pope John Paul II issued a call for philosophy to renounce the nihilism of post-modernity and to resume metaphysical research into the truth. In this extended (165 page) ‘untimely meditation’ on philosophy, the first on the subject to issue from the Vatican since L’Aeterni Patris of Pope Leo XIII in 1879, the Pope proposed to revive the alliance between philosophy and Christianity underdone by a secular modernity whose philosophy terminated in nihilism. The issue of the encyclical letter coincided with the controversial canonisation of Edith Stein, a victim of Auschwitz and, with Heidegger, one of the most gifted and innovative students of Husserlian phenomenology. The conditions for the papal appeal to philosophy had been established in two earlier encyclical letters Veritatis Splendor [The Splendour of Truth] 1993 and the extremely provocative and radical Evangelium vitae [The Evangel of Life] 1995. All three encyclical letters amount to a defence of the concept of ‘life’ against what are perceived as nihilistic direats to its sanctity, threats typified by the event of the Holocaust.

Nihilist und Christ — das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloss…

(Der Antichrist §58)