%0 Journal Article
%T Nihilism, Nature, and the Collapse of the Cosmos
%A David Storey
%J Cosmos and History : the Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy
%D 2011
%I Cosmos and History Publishing Co-op.
%X Though nihilism is a major theme in late modern philosophy from Hegel onward,it is only relatively recently that it has been treated as the subject of monographs and anthologies. Commentators have offered a number of accounts of the origins and nature of nihilism. Some see it as a purely historical and predominantly modern phenomenon, a consequence of the social, economic, ecological, political, and/or religious upheavals of modernity. Others think it stems from human nature itself, and should be seen as a perennial problem. Still others think that nihilism has ontological significance and issues from the nature of being itself. In this essay, I survey the most important of these narratives of nihilism to show how commonly the advent and spread of nihilism is linked with changing conceptions of (humanity¡¯s relation to) nature. At root, nihilism is a problem about humanity¡¯s relation to nature, about a crisis in human freedom and willing after the collapse of the cosmos, the erosion of a hierarchically ordered nature in which humans have a proper place. Two themes recur in the literature: first, the collapse of what is commonly called the ¡°great chain of being¡± or the cosmos generally; and second, the increased importance placed on human will and subjectivity and, correlatively, the significance of human history as opposed to nature.
%K Nihilism
%K Nature
%K Cosmos
%U http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/257/379