What Can Be Said

Fragment on Palestine

…flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.

James Joyce, Ulysses

According to Michael Allen Gillespie nihilism resulted from man’s attempt to grasp the unthinkability of a nominalist God, producing solipsism. For Jon Stewart it was an unavoidable product of science exposing Western culture’s “manifest image” to the cold, pitiless reality of the universe. Keiji Nishitani pointed to Hegel and the ways in which he identified the historical nature of our concepts: what was certain being shown to be contingent and fleeting. Whereas Nietzsche found nihilism’s origins further still, in the other-worldliness of Platonism and Christianity, and their disdain for what-is.

My nihilism, however, is a result of Gaza and the abattoir. Looking at these places, what am I to conclude but nothing matters?