Abstract

Rolf Kühn:
Nihilism and the Future of Culture
Radical-phenomenological Determination
(FKTh 2021-2, p. 81–103)

Galileo’s method inaugurated a movement of objectification aiming at every aspect of being, a movement that continues today with the global digitalization of all segments of life. Nihilism, therefore, is not anymore synonymous with the negation of certain values, but with the suppression of the question of values as such. From the perspective of radical phenomenology, this question is tied to life as subjective and to its transcendentally grounded manifestations, since the beginning of humankind, in religion, ethics and esthetics. Michel Henry analyzes contemporary nihilism as life’s attempt to destroy itself, an analysis that cannot bracket the question of salvation, insofar as we continue to face the abyssal dimension Abgründigkeit) of an absolute origin of life. A renewed ars moriendi would thus have to take this into account, if it aims at giving access to an experience of truth that is not distorted by simulacra.