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Nihilismus ― die Ideologie des Antichristen: Der Glaube an das Nichts als Quell des Untergangs
In 1962, the young Eugene Rose (the future Fr. Seraphim) undertook to write a monumental chronicle of the abandonment of Truth in the modern age. Of the hundreds of pages of material he compiled for this work, only the present essay has come down to us in completed form. Here Fr. Seraphim reveals the core of all modern thought and life—the belief that all truth is relative—and shows how this belief has been translated into action in our century. Today, four decades after he wrote it, this essay is more timely than ever. It clearly explains why contemporary ideas, values, and attitudes—the “spirit of the age”—are shifting so rapidly in the direction of moral anarchy, as the philosophy of Nihilism enters more deeply into the fiber of society. Nietszche was right when he predicted that the 20th century would usher in “the triumph of Nihilism.”
“Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.”
This new second edition contains a superb essay entitled “The Philosophy of the Absurd,” written by Fr. Seraphim at the same time that he was working on “Nihilism.”
“Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.”
This new second edition contains a superb essay entitled “The Philosophy of the Absurd,” written by Fr. Seraphim at the same time that he was working on “Nihilism.”
170 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1994
About the author
Seraphim Rose
50 books338 followersSeraphim Rose, born Eugene Dennis Rose, was a hieromonk of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in the United States, whose writings have helped spread Orthodox Christianity throughout modern America and the West. They have also been widely read in Russia. Although not formally canonized as of 2008, he is venerated by some Orthodox Christians as a saint in iconography, liturgy, and prayer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 115 reviews
March 10, 2021
Fr. Seraphim addresses the modern philosophies of the present, previous, and 19th Centuries, and boils them down to their essence, nihilism. Many considered to be the great thinkers, philosophers, and political ideologues of those times developed various rationales and systems of thought that they believed would advance from beliefs in a supreme being, an afterlife, absolute truth, etc.
Fr. Seraphim, himself, unlike many Orthodox clergy, with respect to these was not one on the outside looking in --- the anti-theist, nihilist positions are one with which he was well familiar. He was very much, at one time, an active believer and consumer of these philosophies as part of a broader effort in his youth and academic years to find meaning apart from the Protestant Christianity in which he was raised.
With such a background as well as his current one as an Orthodox priest and monk, he has a unique perspective on his topic. He proceeds to examine 19th Century liberalism, exposing its failure to fully consider the logical consequences to which its tenets lead.
Which ultimately is nihilism. While no friend of this belief, Fr. Seraphim respects it for its proponents greater intellectual honesty on where ultimately their belief systems, yet proceeds to scrutinize them on the own standards they claim to set --- and shows them wanting. And these fiery ideologies, spawned in the streets, underground, heated debates, and college campuses of the 19th Century by young men disillusioned with the truths, traditions, and foundations of the times in which they lived would lead to the great nihilistic ideologies of the 2oth --- fascism, Nazism, and communism. Ideologies that, in their efforts to kick down the doors of what they saw as rotting vestiges of backward superstitions and hypocrisies would yield a bloody harvest in lives and destruction never before seen before in human history.
Much debate in this time over these in the last century often concludes that their core fault lays in an illiberal reliance upon statism and totalitarianism. Seraphim shows that these are symptoms of a darker source code --- nihilism. That belief --- no absolutes --- therefore, nothing can be "wrong". No absolutes --- therefore, no "God" --- and, in its place, every man and woman can then make self a god in its own right. A belief leading to chaos and oppression inevitably --- for everyone cannot be a "god" in an imperfect world with limited resources.
Ultimately, Fr. Seraphim then shows that such a universe is ultimately an absurdity -- one that leaves its adherents falling into an abyss of chaos, forever looking for meaning, yet never able to grasp onto anything definitive, timeless, enduring, and purposeful.
It would be something -- in some alternate reality -- to bring back from the great beyond, Fr. Seraphim and have him debate one of his intellectual anti-theist rivals, Nietzche or Christopher Hitchens --- to hear each square off their best arguments for their positions.
At any rate, this is a fascinating book to read. I highly recommend for anyone with an interest in philosophy or theology.
Fr. Seraphim, himself, unlike many Orthodox clergy, with respect to these was not one on the outside looking in --- the anti-theist, nihilist positions are one with which he was well familiar. He was very much, at one time, an active believer and consumer of these philosophies as part of a broader effort in his youth and academic years to find meaning apart from the Protestant Christianity in which he was raised.
With such a background as well as his current one as an Orthodox priest and monk, he has a unique perspective on his topic. He proceeds to examine 19th Century liberalism, exposing its failure to fully consider the logical consequences to which its tenets lead.
Which ultimately is nihilism. While no friend of this belief, Fr. Seraphim respects it for its proponents greater intellectual honesty on where ultimately their belief systems, yet proceeds to scrutinize them on the own standards they claim to set --- and shows them wanting. And these fiery ideologies, spawned in the streets, underground, heated debates, and college campuses of the 19th Century by young men disillusioned with the truths, traditions, and foundations of the times in which they lived would lead to the great nihilistic ideologies of the 2oth --- fascism, Nazism, and communism. Ideologies that, in their efforts to kick down the doors of what they saw as rotting vestiges of backward superstitions and hypocrisies would yield a bloody harvest in lives and destruction never before seen before in human history.
Much debate in this time over these in the last century often concludes that their core fault lays in an illiberal reliance upon statism and totalitarianism. Seraphim shows that these are symptoms of a darker source code --- nihilism. That belief --- no absolutes --- therefore, nothing can be "wrong". No absolutes --- therefore, no "God" --- and, in its place, every man and woman can then make self a god in its own right. A belief leading to chaos and oppression inevitably --- for everyone cannot be a "god" in an imperfect world with limited resources.
Ultimately, Fr. Seraphim then shows that such a universe is ultimately an absurdity -- one that leaves its adherents falling into an abyss of chaos, forever looking for meaning, yet never able to grasp onto anything definitive, timeless, enduring, and purposeful.
It would be something -- in some alternate reality -- to bring back from the great beyond, Fr. Seraphim and have him debate one of his intellectual anti-theist rivals, Nietzche or Christopher Hitchens --- to hear each square off their best arguments for their positions.
At any rate, this is a fascinating book to read. I highly recommend for anyone with an interest in philosophy or theology.
December 10, 2020
When I first read this it made me so angry that threw it against a wall.
November 3, 2019
For the most part a penetrating analysis of the dialectics of Nihilism and a beautiful call to European Man to return to Christianity. But the book suffers from two major flaws: An extremely superficial reading of Nietzsche and a misplaced love for Liberal Democracy.
Seraphim Rose says that Nietzsche is merely an out-and-out-nihilist, but the truth is that Nietzsche himself was against Nihilism, however he defined the symptoms and causes of Nihilism differently than Christians do, and in fact saw Christianity as a part of the problem of Nihilism. Nietzsche says in the last paragraph of the first essay of The Genealogy of Morals that the fact that there are no "Higher Men" today is the origin of Nihilism, whereas Seraphim Rose (and, in fact, most people) would say that the origin of Nihilism is that people are not as Christian as they once were.
As for the second point, Seraphim Rose did not see that it is precisely Americanism / Liberal Democracy that has spread Nihilism to the four corners of the globe, and it is this which has corrupted Christianity to turn it into a bourgeois religion that means whatever one wishes. This corruption of the religion of Jesus is a phenomenon that happens in all of its denominations. Communism and, yes, National Socialism, are actually much LESS Nihilistic than the Bourgeois Liberal Democracy "Human Rights" ideology.
But overlooking these two factual errors, what you are left with is a beautifully succinct book that situates modern man in relation to the horrors of Nihilism and the hope of his salvation in God. Recommended for those who are interested in this topic.
Seraphim Rose says that Nietzsche is merely an out-and-out-nihilist, but the truth is that Nietzsche himself was against Nihilism, however he defined the symptoms and causes of Nihilism differently than Christians do, and in fact saw Christianity as a part of the problem of Nihilism. Nietzsche says in the last paragraph of the first essay of The Genealogy of Morals that the fact that there are no "Higher Men" today is the origin of Nihilism, whereas Seraphim Rose (and, in fact, most people) would say that the origin of Nihilism is that people are not as Christian as they once were.
As for the second point, Seraphim Rose did not see that it is precisely Americanism / Liberal Democracy that has spread Nihilism to the four corners of the globe, and it is this which has corrupted Christianity to turn it into a bourgeois religion that means whatever one wishes. This corruption of the religion of Jesus is a phenomenon that happens in all of its denominations. Communism and, yes, National Socialism, are actually much LESS Nihilistic than the Bourgeois Liberal Democracy "Human Rights" ideology.
But overlooking these two factual errors, what you are left with is a beautifully succinct book that situates modern man in relation to the horrors of Nihilism and the hope of his salvation in God. Recommended for those who are interested in this topic.
March 28, 2019
Esta obra é de uma sensibilidade admirável: uma verdadeira radiografia da pulsão niilista que habita o coração do homem moderno. O Pe. Seraphim Rose mostra como a vontade de negação (de Deus e de sua criação) se desenvolve em quatro fases sucessivas (tanto na ordem cronológica quanto em seu agravamento): liberalismo, racionalismo, vitalismo e niilismo de destruição. O autor, como todos os demais escritores que demonstram uma profunda espiritualidade, parte do princípio, e conduz seus leitores consigo, que os dramas da modernidade -- a negação dos valores, o totalitarismo, o terrorismo e a brutalização da arte -- são epifenômenos da revolta do homem contra Deus. Mas, uma vez que não há neutralidade no âmbito espiritual, o niilista, que em última instância é todo aquele que nega a verdade de Cristo, tem como ídolo o "nada" do qual o Criador fez todas as coisas -- atitude que o leva derradeiramente à negação da própria estrutura do real.
January 8, 2024
Seraphim Rose does a decent job of explaining the pitfalls of "Absolute Nihilism", a destructive system in which one is left with nothing but the void of beliefs. Aside from this, which is a fact that should be relatively obvious to any sane modern individual, there is not much of substance in this text.
First, I take issue to Rose's critique of positive (in the sense that they construct spiritual poles which go beyond the purely material) philosophies that have emerged after the dawn of Christianity, such as Fichte's German Idealism and Guenon's Perennialism. While these systems may not be infallibly true (how could any philosophy ever be?), they use the previously negative system that has been created and its principles to construct a positive approach that instills a higher value. While these systems contain traces of the DNA of negative nihilism in the sense that they acknowledge plurality and relativity, they are more productive for solving the crisis of meaninglessness than outmodedly trying to hold on to a belief system that does not even acknowledge the principles of the modern age.
This leads into my next critique of Rose: for all of his (sometimes convincing) rhetoric against all forms of "nihilistic" beliefs, he does not pose a clear solution to this issue. While Rose may expect the reader to be an expert in Orthodoxy before approaching this text, it is simply foolish for a spiritual person to write a book attacking all popular beliefs without providing any solid solution of his own. Although he convinces the reader of the dissatisfaction that comes from absolute nihilism, his only refutation against the previously mentioned positive nihilism is that all of its followers "must burn in the flames of Hell forever" (91), because it is not Orthodoxy: the only solution that Rose is willing to accept. While Rose may believe this to be good and true, he gives no defense to his beliefs aside from the fact that he "has faith". In an age that values critical thought, it is easy to view Rose's philosophy as more nihilistic than the positive systems that he criticizes, as it makes no effort to provide a logically satisfactory consolation. In this sense, the book feels incomplete, and could have greatly benefited from an expansive defense of Orthodoxy.
I also find Rose's critiques of modern art to be painfully misguided. Instead of recognizing that the first step towards change is acknowledgement, he bitterly rails against any art depicting so-called "nihilism" or the modern age, calling it "the work of Satan" without understanding that it is created for the purpose of striking fear into the viewer and inciting them towards social change. If we can't even express our current plight through the arts, how is it ever supposed to be solved?
Finally, Rose's genealogy of nihilism is simply laughable. By positing that the first step towards nihilism is simply having the knowledge of other faiths, philosophies, and cultures, it is implied that nearly everyone who has walked the earth for the last thousand years, including Rose himself, is a nihilist. This closed-mindedness also prevents him from understanding the commonalities between beliefs and religions, furthering the petty tribalism that prevents anyone from true spiritual transcendence in the modern era.
Overall, I was not convinced by Rose's polemics, and found him to be more of a void-creator and nihilist than the groups discussed in the text. His arguments, both constructive and destructive, are not philosophically sound, and lack any form of logical scaffolding to prove their validity. Maybe I'm just too far gone into the grip of my generation's nihilism to understand this seemingly universally regarded text, but I feel I can confidently say that there is not much of value to be found in this book.
First, I take issue to Rose's critique of positive (in the sense that they construct spiritual poles which go beyond the purely material) philosophies that have emerged after the dawn of Christianity, such as Fichte's German Idealism and Guenon's Perennialism. While these systems may not be infallibly true (how could any philosophy ever be?), they use the previously negative system that has been created and its principles to construct a positive approach that instills a higher value. While these systems contain traces of the DNA of negative nihilism in the sense that they acknowledge plurality and relativity, they are more productive for solving the crisis of meaninglessness than outmodedly trying to hold on to a belief system that does not even acknowledge the principles of the modern age.
This leads into my next critique of Rose: for all of his (sometimes convincing) rhetoric against all forms of "nihilistic" beliefs, he does not pose a clear solution to this issue. While Rose may expect the reader to be an expert in Orthodoxy before approaching this text, it is simply foolish for a spiritual person to write a book attacking all popular beliefs without providing any solid solution of his own. Although he convinces the reader of the dissatisfaction that comes from absolute nihilism, his only refutation against the previously mentioned positive nihilism is that all of its followers "must burn in the flames of Hell forever" (91), because it is not Orthodoxy: the only solution that Rose is willing to accept. While Rose may believe this to be good and true, he gives no defense to his beliefs aside from the fact that he "has faith". In an age that values critical thought, it is easy to view Rose's philosophy as more nihilistic than the positive systems that he criticizes, as it makes no effort to provide a logically satisfactory consolation. In this sense, the book feels incomplete, and could have greatly benefited from an expansive defense of Orthodoxy.
I also find Rose's critiques of modern art to be painfully misguided. Instead of recognizing that the first step towards change is acknowledgement, he bitterly rails against any art depicting so-called "nihilism" or the modern age, calling it "the work of Satan" without understanding that it is created for the purpose of striking fear into the viewer and inciting them towards social change. If we can't even express our current plight through the arts, how is it ever supposed to be solved?
Finally, Rose's genealogy of nihilism is simply laughable. By positing that the first step towards nihilism is simply having the knowledge of other faiths, philosophies, and cultures, it is implied that nearly everyone who has walked the earth for the last thousand years, including Rose himself, is a nihilist. This closed-mindedness also prevents him from understanding the commonalities between beliefs and religions, furthering the petty tribalism that prevents anyone from true spiritual transcendence in the modern era.
Overall, I was not convinced by Rose's polemics, and found him to be more of a void-creator and nihilist than the groups discussed in the text. His arguments, both constructive and destructive, are not philosophically sound, and lack any form of logical scaffolding to prove their validity. Maybe I'm just too far gone into the grip of my generation's nihilism to understand this seemingly universally regarded text, but I feel I can confidently say that there is not much of value to be found in this book.
December 15, 2018
This is a portion of a, sadly incomplete, manuscript Fr. Rose was working on which he had intended to deal with the entirety of the Revolutionary(modern) Age, and it's terrible failure from an Orthodox Christian perspective.
As he makes so very clear in this fragment of his intended work, the modern age has been a failure of violence, sadness, despair, ugliness and hatred precisely because of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment, the framework of modern Western society, has as it's logical conclusion the horrors of Nihilism. Nihilism, a belief in nothing, itself a Satanic reversal of the Divinely intended worship of said Divine, has led to the Revolution(by which Fr. Rose means not just Marxism, the most obvious, but the whole evolution of said - starting with the Jacobins of the French Revolution, carrying over to the Anarchists of the late 19th Century, the Marxists/Bolsheviks, as well as the Fascists and the National Socialists; all of whom are related to each other, and all of whom stem from the same root), and the Revolution has only succeeded in destroying the two most important things to the life of the human species: truth and faith.
When discussing the fracturing and hopelessness of society, it needs to be born in mind that Fr. Rose wrote this in the 60's, and one wonders what his thoughts would be on the Materialist and radical Individualist nightmare Western society has morphed into since his own concerned observations.
Although only a fragment of a larger work never completed, this is an excellent little work that makes some wonderful observations on just what truly underpins the darkness of the present age.
As he makes so very clear in this fragment of his intended work, the modern age has been a failure of violence, sadness, despair, ugliness and hatred precisely because of the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment, the framework of modern Western society, has as it's logical conclusion the horrors of Nihilism. Nihilism, a belief in nothing, itself a Satanic reversal of the Divinely intended worship of said Divine, has led to the Revolution(by which Fr. Rose means not just Marxism, the most obvious, but the whole evolution of said - starting with the Jacobins of the French Revolution, carrying over to the Anarchists of the late 19th Century, the Marxists/Bolsheviks, as well as the Fascists and the National Socialists; all of whom are related to each other, and all of whom stem from the same root), and the Revolution has only succeeded in destroying the two most important things to the life of the human species: truth and faith.
When discussing the fracturing and hopelessness of society, it needs to be born in mind that Fr. Rose wrote this in the 60's, and one wonders what his thoughts would be on the Materialist and radical Individualist nightmare Western society has morphed into since his own concerned observations.
Although only a fragment of a larger work never completed, this is an excellent little work that makes some wonderful observations on just what truly underpins the darkness of the present age.
January 7, 2018
Recently, these are a few things I have come to recognize as truth:
- order does not come from chaos without intelligent intervention.
and
- the postmodern argument, the idea of relative truth is deeply logically flawed and self-contradictory because assertion of relative truth is itself absolute
- therefore a belief in absolute truth is the only non-contradictory logical conclusion
- absolute truth is absolute and must therefore exist independent of my perception of truth and also exists without observation. Unfortunately, therefore, my personal wishes are irrelevant to any understanding of absolute truth.
- any coherent concept of morality presupposes a knowledge of absolute truth
These are fragments (and by no means conclusive in their current state) that may lead to a logical syllogism of something like: therefore a God exists and as an ordered and logical being I have a moral obligation to Him as my creator. This is not what I want to think. I want to be free from moral obligation, I want to believe in the ubermensch, in myself as an ubermensch, I want to be free to do as I want without repercussion. Unfortunately, I am starting to see this is not true.
Eugene Rose competently deconstructs nihilism in all its current forms but doesn't quite build the bridge to faith. Rose defends his theology from a perspective well-informed by philosophy and literature which I something I totally dig. Made me realize I need to read more of the Russians.
- order does not come from chaos without intelligent intervention.
and
- the postmodern argument, the idea of relative truth is deeply logically flawed and self-contradictory because assertion of relative truth is itself absolute
- therefore a belief in absolute truth is the only non-contradictory logical conclusion
- absolute truth is absolute and must therefore exist independent of my perception of truth and also exists without observation. Unfortunately, therefore, my personal wishes are irrelevant to any understanding of absolute truth.
- any coherent concept of morality presupposes a knowledge of absolute truth
These are fragments (and by no means conclusive in their current state) that may lead to a logical syllogism of something like: therefore a God exists and as an ordered and logical being I have a moral obligation to Him as my creator. This is not what I want to think. I want to be free from moral obligation, I want to believe in the ubermensch, in myself as an ubermensch, I want to be free to do as I want without repercussion. Unfortunately, I am starting to see this is not true.
Eugene Rose competently deconstructs nihilism in all its current forms but doesn't quite build the bridge to faith. Rose defends his theology from a perspective well-informed by philosophy and literature which I something I totally dig. Made me realize I need to read more of the Russians.
September 2, 2025
Father Seraphim's booming prophetic voice makes our own discourse seem weak and fallen. These writings date back to the 1960's and indeed sound like from another age; but at the same time resound aptly for our current moment. Terminal regression roughly brings on the collapse he foretells. Our old rhetoric is fluff and no longer helps. In the end, we get what we wished for.
May 23, 2016
More profoundly, Nihilist "simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life.
May 27, 2021
...језиво и пророчанско штиво.
Оно што су Зли дуси (Бијесови) у умјетничком смослу, то је ова књига у филозовском.
Оно што су Зли дуси (Бијесови) у умјетничком смослу, то је ова књига у филозовском.
September 19, 2022
Quite dishearteningly, this "book" is only one chapter of what would compose the magnum opus of Fr. Seraphim Rose's writing career; nevertheless, very few books written by contemporary Christian theologians come as close to the erudition and prophetic nature of Fr. Seraphim Rose. Within this work, Fr. Seraphim Rose takes on the entire tradition of "Nihilism" generated from the inevitable excesses of Western Humanism and the Enlightenment. To this end, he begins by discussing the Liberal, Realist, Vitalist, and truly "Nihilist" position—the former represented by the 17th century to remove the focus of religious unity from society, the latter by 19th century Russian anarchists. Each particular position seems, in our modern conception, to exonerate itself on the basis of how distant the specifically political evolution of man has been. In fact, it seems almost absurd to suggest that the advent of Bolshevism or National Socialism could have been facilitated by the "prudential" considerations of 17th century Liberals. Nevertheless, Fr. Seraphim Rose outlines within 100 pages the genealogical consequences of gradually removing the sovereignty of God from man's daily consideration. One very quickly sees how the "snowball effect" of minimizing religious conflict leads invariably to the romanticism of Nature as a religious domain, then to the worship of speed and Man's "inexorable spirit." Very quickly, we are faced with either total affirmation or self-immolation by ontological nothingness.
Of course, the Christian stands outside of this perspective. Which is precisely why Fr. Seraphim Rose addresses these points for an audience who was otherwise shielded from the disastrous implications of Western philosophy. Because the spirit behind the evolution of Nihilism is not simply one of artistic libertinism; on the contrary, it is through the inspiration of the Prince of Darkness that we seem to march quicker towards the realization of the Antichrist. That is why, for how incomplete this work is—representing one chapter of a nearly 1000 page work—this fragment is all the more crucial. May any Christian who reads this work derive many great insights into the spiritual malaise of modernity. God Bless and Christ is King!
Of course, the Christian stands outside of this perspective. Which is precisely why Fr. Seraphim Rose addresses these points for an audience who was otherwise shielded from the disastrous implications of Western philosophy. Because the spirit behind the evolution of Nihilism is not simply one of artistic libertinism; on the contrary, it is through the inspiration of the Prince of Darkness that we seem to march quicker towards the realization of the Antichrist. That is why, for how incomplete this work is—representing one chapter of a nearly 1000 page work—this fragment is all the more crucial. May any Christian who reads this work derive many great insights into the spiritual malaise of modernity. God Bless and Christ is King!
November 26, 2024
The best diagnosis of nihilism in the modern age I have read. He is like an orthodox Lewis. He is quick to move past the rationality of it as it is self-defeating in that there is no truth except the truth of nihilism. He moves on to the sociology and sees nihilism as fundamentally a psychological problem. This is worth noting as it rare that when one’s life is going well to have a nihilistic outlook on life.
One eye-opening association is his first stage of nihilism being Liberalism. As it frees us of any obligations beyond ourselves including Truth and Morality.
Furthermore the stages of Realism and Vitalism could equally be framed in the opposite way, unlike the final stage of destruction that is most closely associated with nihilism. However it makes more sense when framing nihilism as misplaced value. Referencing Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky as two of the most impactful writers on the subject, we see that once God is dead we look for something else to worship as highest, be it intellect, life and pleasure or tearing down of any and all institutions.
One particularly relatable quote on the disjunction between worldly values or Godly values. “the Christian is in a certain sense, in an ultimate sense, a nihilist. For to him, in the end, the world is nothing, and God is all… opposite of the nihilism examined here where God is nothing, and the world is all. That is a nihilism that precedes from the abyss and the Christian nihilism precedes from abundance.”
Nihilism is a question of ultimate value, both what you believe and how you live. It is no surprise that his solution is to believe in Christ and moreover live a Christian life.
One eye-opening association is his first stage of nihilism being Liberalism. As it frees us of any obligations beyond ourselves including Truth and Morality.
Furthermore the stages of Realism and Vitalism could equally be framed in the opposite way, unlike the final stage of destruction that is most closely associated with nihilism. However it makes more sense when framing nihilism as misplaced value. Referencing Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky as two of the most impactful writers on the subject, we see that once God is dead we look for something else to worship as highest, be it intellect, life and pleasure or tearing down of any and all institutions.
One particularly relatable quote on the disjunction between worldly values or Godly values. “the Christian is in a certain sense, in an ultimate sense, a nihilist. For to him, in the end, the world is nothing, and God is all… opposite of the nihilism examined here where God is nothing, and the world is all. That is a nihilism that precedes from the abyss and the Christian nihilism precedes from abundance.”
Nihilism is a question of ultimate value, both what you believe and how you live. It is no surprise that his solution is to believe in Christ and moreover live a Christian life.
March 8, 2017
There is a threefold purpose of the nihilist revolution, according to Rose,
1. the destruction of the old order
2. the making of the "new earth"
3. the fashioning of the "new man"
1. the destruction of the old order
2. the making of the "new earth"
3. the fashioning of the "new man"
May 27, 2017
This is a must read. It'll help you understand quite a bit and helps you see how modern man is headed for disaster thanks to taking the lies of nihilistic thought.
January 2, 2025
Very, very troubling read. If you have no hope for secular society and want to lose that last additional bit of hope you didn't even know you still had, this is the book for you.
May 26, 2024
My Orthodox friend gave this to me to read for “leisure.”
It was not leisure. It was painstaking labor, but honest and good work. It was worth combing through insane levels of philosophical ideas. Big words, smooth brain, mind destroyed.
Anyways, Father Seraphim Rose basically talks about the true nature of Frederich Nietzsche’s nihilism, which is the violent opposition to and practice against Christianity—or in his words, an “antitheistic, anarchistic, rebellious attitude” against God’s good creation. Fr. Rose expounds upon this notion by addressing the many proverbial foils between Christianity and nihilism, where the latter proves to be a desperate supplanting of Christian theology, which only ends in a hollow parody of the “Absolute Revealed Truth” (Jesus Christ).
Overall, I’d give it 4.7/5. Very hard to read but very rewarding to digest after many attempts at closing this book.
It was not leisure. It was painstaking labor, but honest and good work. It was worth combing through insane levels of philosophical ideas. Big words, smooth brain, mind destroyed.
Anyways, Father Seraphim Rose basically talks about the true nature of Frederich Nietzsche’s nihilism, which is the violent opposition to and practice against Christianity—or in his words, an “antitheistic, anarchistic, rebellious attitude” against God’s good creation. Fr. Rose expounds upon this notion by addressing the many proverbial foils between Christianity and nihilism, where the latter proves to be a desperate supplanting of Christian theology, which only ends in a hollow parody of the “Absolute Revealed Truth” (Jesus Christ).
Overall, I’d give it 4.7/5. Very hard to read but very rewarding to digest after many attempts at closing this book.
March 11, 2017
A great insight into Nihilism, with a lot of ideas that I already felt and perceived, but did not have the skill to express about it.
As a orthodox myself, Seraphim's point of view is very logical and near to me, despite a radicalism that someone with a more western upbringing may perceive it.
By only problem with Rose is the initial chapter on Liberalism, witch I did not felt to be also including libertarianism, my political identity. I actualy totaly agree with his observation on the lack of a strong connection with God in the liberal mind, but this is a generalization and liberalism should not be considered phase one of nihilism. A person with a liberal mindset, or political/philosophical identity may also be in search of that superior Truth, and in such a state are actualy many people, including orthodox.
Overall the book is a very necesary one for all orthodox and people concerned with nihilism.
As a orthodox myself, Seraphim's point of view is very logical and near to me, despite a radicalism that someone with a more western upbringing may perceive it.
By only problem with Rose is the initial chapter on Liberalism, witch I did not felt to be also including libertarianism, my political identity. I actualy totaly agree with his observation on the lack of a strong connection with God in the liberal mind, but this is a generalization and liberalism should not be considered phase one of nihilism. A person with a liberal mindset, or political/philosophical identity may also be in search of that superior Truth, and in such a state are actualy many people, including orthodox.
Overall the book is a very necesary one for all orthodox and people concerned with nihilism.
March 16, 2024
Profound and prophetic. Fr Seraphim’s lays out how the nihilistic worldview that permeates every inch of society will inevitably lead to the anti-Christ. Philosophically, he destroys nihilism, showing that it’s an absurd, inverted version of Christianity. This book serves as a wake up call for Christians to prepare for the spiritual war that’s coming and to be on guard against thinking this world can be saved outside of Christ.
June 15, 2020
An excellent book by the late Fr. Seraphim Rose. This was written before Rose became a monk and was more philosophically oriented.
August 10, 2017
Passionate, sure, but too fervent and generic and often times lazy. 'Also,' 'too' 'many' 'damn' 'scare' 'quotes'.
April 3, 2019
My only regret is having not read this sooner.
January 3, 2021
The sooner you read it, the better
August 13, 2024
"There is no need, even today when men seem to have become too weak to face the truth, to soften the realities of the next life; to those--be they Nihilists or more moderate humanists--who presume to fathom the Will of the Living God, and to judge Him for His "cruelty," one may answer with an unequivocal assertion of something in which most of them profess to believe: the dignity of man. God has called us, not to the modern "heaven" of repose and sleep, but to the full and deifying glory of the sons of God; and if we, whom our God thinks worthy to receive it, reject this call,--then better for us the flames of Hell, the torment of that last and awful proof of man's high calling and of God's unquenchable Love for men, than the nothingness to which men of small faith, and the Nihilism of our age, aspire.
Nothing less than Hell is worthy of man, if he be not worthy of Heaven."
Nothing less than Hell is worthy of man, if he be not worthy of Heaven."
May 14, 2022
Seraphim Rose crafts a moving narrative description of nihilism as it manifests in contemporary life and in modern people's personalities. I found his knowledge of history, philosophy, and psychology impressive, and his goal as an author was ambitious but admirable. Some points did not land as much with me, but on the whole this book truly resonated with me and made me rethink some of my fundamental beliefs. I'll want to revisit this slim yet incisive book to continue to meditate on what it wants to say about the value of religious belief in the modern world.
July 23, 2024
ničehuljenje
December 22, 2024
Fr Seraphim Rose is an incredibly smart man. Unfortunately, I am not nearly as smart as him so half of this book went over my head. I will read this again once I am wiser in years and age.
February 12, 2026
I picked up this book at a Touchstone: Journal of Mere Christianity conference I attended in Chicago last year. The book soon gripped me by its unflagging, sober good sense and the breadth and depth of Rose's handling of his topic. Similar to what I find in the writings of C.S. Lewis and Josef Pieper, he wrote with an uncommon lucidity and unimpeachable logic.
Eugene Rose takes up for his aim in this illuminating treatise an examination of the unique Nihilist mentality that underlies so much of modernity's ills, and an examination of its effects and role in contemporary history. As Rose sees it Naziism and Communism were but expressions of a broader Nihilism, which has so pervaded our world that there is no longer any "front" on which it may be fought. As a definition of Nihilism, Rose presents Nietzsche's definition from "the fount of philosophical Nihilism" as being the most succinct: That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs - no 'thing-in-itself.' This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind." The expression "all truth is relative" Is a popular translation of Nietzsche's phrase, "..there is no (absolute) truth." "Relative truth" is primarily represented to our age by the knowledge of science. The unreflective scientific specialist, if pressed on the question of truth, will resort to saying all truth is empirical and relative. But claiming the truth is empirical is a metaphysical statement and claiming all truth is relative is a an absolute statement, two helpless self-contradictions. Correlatively, the absolute cannot be attained by means which are relative. The first principles of any system of knowledge are the object of faith, not of scientific demonstration. The materialist philosophy, to be consistent, would do away with the category of truth, but its adherents, "innocent of thought that is either consistent or profound, seem unaware of this fatal contradiction." Vladimir Solovyov pointed out the discrepancy regarding the Russian Nihilists of the 19th century in their altruistic and idealistic practices to their purely materialistic and egoistical theory, when he ascribed to them the absurd syllogism, "Man is descended from a monkey; consequently we shall love one another."
Today, I find the intellectual work of the atheist Jonathan Haidt to be clearly a force for good in our society. But when pressed on this point, would he not have inadequate answers too about the nature of truth. No amount of just-so stories can provide the grounds for truth. The only position that involves no logical contradictions is the affirmation of an absolute truth which underlies all lesser truths. The absolute truth cannot be attained by relative means.
Overall, what stands out to me as making Rose's book exceptional is the degree to which he provides a sound, overarching framework of clarity, a kind of proper foundational perspective from which to approach the subsidiary problems of modernity.
Rose similarly describes "naturalism" as "Naive realism" because its adherents internal contradictions signal an incomplete reflection. He notes that "Relative truth" is primarily presented to our age as scientific truth.
Rose lucidly divides the stages of nihilistic dialectic into four stages: 1) Liberalism, 2) Realism, 3) Vitalism and 4) the Nihilism of Destruction. Liberalism is the neutral breeding-ground of the more advanced stages of Nihilism. Rose writes, "The incompetent defense by Liberalism of a heritage in which it has never fully believed, has been one of the most potent causes of overt Nihilism." He describes Liberalism as an attitude in which truth no longer occupies the center of attention. "The Liberal may be interested in culture, in learning, in business, or merely in comfort; but in every one of his pursuits the dimension of the absolute is simply absent. He is unable, or unwilling, to think in terms of ends, of ultimate things. The thirst of absolute truth has vanished; it has been swallowed up in worldliness."
Nietzsche further defined Nihilism beyond the assertion that there is no truth by saying "there is no answer to the question: 'why?'" Nihilism thus means that that the ultimate questions have no answers.
It seems at the heart of the crisis of our Western universities is this nihilistic betrayal of truth. "The profound responsibility the scholar once possessed, the communication of truth, has been reneged; and all the pretended 'humility' that seeks to conceal this fact behind sophisticated chatter on 'the limits of human knowledge,' is but another mask of Nihilism the Liberal academician shares with the extremists of our day."
Like a supremely sober medical or forensic diagnosis, Rose concludes that Liberalism is the first stage of the Nihilist dialectic, as its own faith is empty and it calls into being a yet more Nihilist reaction. This reaction is the second stage of Nihilist dialectic: Realism.
Rose defines Realism as a generic term inclusive of the various forms of "naturalism" and "positivism" in its simplest form. He further notes it is the doctrine popularized under the name of "Nihilism" by Turgenev in Fathers and Sons. In comparison to Liberal vagueness, the Realist world-view seems perfectly clear and straightforward. In place of agnosticism, there is open atheism; in place of "higher values", there is materialism and self-interest. "All is clarity in the Realist universe - except what is most important and most requires clarity: its beginning and end. Where the Liberal is vague about ultimate things, the Realist is childishly naïve: they simply do not exist for him; nothing exists but what is most obvious."
C.S. Lewis quite reasonably addresses the shortcomings of a naturalistic, atheist point of view in his essay "On Living in an Atomic Age," among other works. He says to suppose that Nature is all that exists and it is just a meaningless play of atoms in space and time, producing conscious beings whose consciousness is an accidental result of the whole meaningless process and therefore meaningless itself. He posits three things we might do in response: 1) Commit suicide. 2) Resolve to simply have as good a time as possible, given the dark heart of meaninglessness underlying it all. 3) Defy the universe, asserting your rationality and human values in spite of its meaninglessness. But if our standards are derived from a meaningless universe they must also be as meaningless as it. Lewis remarks that only by thinking through to the end the naturalistic position will many open up to questioning the naturalism. "If Nature when fully known seems to teach us…that our own minds are chance arrangements of atoms, then there must have been some mistake; for if that were so, then the sciences themselves would be chance arrangements of atoms and we should have no reason for believing in them. There is only one way to avoid this deadlock. We must go back to a much earlier view. We must simply accept it that we are spirits, free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe, and must draw the conclusion that we are not derived from it. We are strangers here. We come from somewhere else. Nature is not the only thing that exists. There is 'another world' and that is where we come from."
The third stage in the Nihilist dialectic is Vitalism. Rose observes that the chief intellectual impetus of the Vitalist movement has been a reaction against the eclipse of higher realities in the Realist "simplification" of the world. Against utopias of rationalist planning, a protest is raised in the name of "life," which, whatever it means, would clearly be stifled in the Realist paradise. Though a reaction, it radically fails to correct this deficiency in Realism because it accepts as an essential presupposition the critique of absolute truth made by the Realism it was attempting to combat. "There is no form of Vitalism that is not naturalistic, none whose entire program does not begin and end in this world, none whose approach to any other world is anything but a parody."
Intellectually, Vitalism is defined in part by its presupposed rejection of Christian Truth, coupled with pseudo-spiritual pretension. The occultism and pseudo-spirituality of W.B. Yeats are an example of this.
In Vitalism "activity" is clearly an escape from boredom and meaninglessness and "most profoundly from the emptiness that takes possession of the heart that has abandoned God."
In politics, "the most successful forms of Vitalism have been Mussolini's cult of activism and violence, and Hitler's darker cult of 'blood and soil'…"
Quoting Nietzsche again, Rose writes, "'The falseness of an opinion,' said Nietzsche, 'is not for us any objection to it… The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving…' When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the 'life-giving,' the 'vital'; it is the final divorce of life from truth."
Rose in a key passage poignantly notes, "Men have rejected the Son of God Who, even now, desires to dwell in men and bring them salvation; and finding intolerable the vacuum this rejection has left in their hearts, they run to madmen and magicians, to false prophets and religious sophists, for a word of life. But this word, so readily given, itself turns to dust in their mouths when they try to repeat it. Realism, in its rage for truth, destroys the truth; in the same way Vitalism, in its very quest for life, smells of death."
The final stage of the Nihilistic dialectic is the Nihilism of Destruction. Here is found a "pure" Nihilism which is a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute nothingness.
Rose "gives the lie" to the progressivist self-understanding by his depth of grappling with first and last things, which they singularly fail to do. What appears to the progressive as "progress" is but an advance in the dialectic of Nihilism to this nadir. In the pure Nihilists, what to others was prologue becomes an end in itself. They are also called Revolutionists, who believe in revolution for its own sake, not for some good it may bring about. Rose writes that Nietzsche "proclaimed the basic principle of all Nihilism, and the special apology of the Nihilism of Destruction, in the phrase, 'There is no truth, all is permitted.'" He observes Dostoyevsky's prescient characterization of the extreme Nihilist mentality in his novel The Possessed, or what is perhaps more accurately sometimes translate The Demon.
Rose sums up the stages as follows: "The first stage of Nihilism, which is Liberalism, is born of the errors of taking our diseased eye for a sound one, of mistaking its impaired vision for a view of the true world, and thus of discharging the physician of the soul, the Church, whose ministrations are not needed by a 'healthy' man. In the second stage, Realism, the disease, no longer attended by the necessary physician, begins to grow; vision is narrowed; distant objects, already obscure enough in the 'natural' state of impaired vision, become invisible; only the nearest objects are seen distinctly, and the patient becomes convinced no others exist. In the third stage, Vitalism, infection leads to inflammation; even the nearest objects become dim and distorted and there are hallucinations. In the fourth stage, the Nihilism of Destruction, blindness ensues and the disease spreads to the rest of the body, effecting agony, convulsions, and death."
Rose then takes a look at the theology and spirit of Nihilism. He cites Nietzsche, the Anarchist Proudhon, and Albert Camus, and others, who identify their struggle as being against the idea of God. Rose points out that Nihilism fails if true Christian faith remains in a single person, for that person will be a living example of Truth. I must say, on approach of Rose's work, expecting a possibly shallower level, I was struck by the gravitas of his radical sobriety.
Rose pulls back the veil and diagnoses: "Nihilist rebellion is a war against God and against Truth; but few Nihilists are fully aware of this. Explicit theological and philosophical Nihilism is the preserve of a few rare souls."
Dostoyevsky observed the closeness of blind will to nothing: "the most assertive are closest to the most nihilistic." Only blind will separates them from the Abyss, having abandoned truth and every authority.
Nihilism owes its whole existence to a negation of Christian Truth. It is the blind rejection of God's creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. There is an endeavor at the heart of Nihilism to annul God's act of creation by returning the world to the nothingness from which it came. The god of Nihilism is nothingness itself, understood as the nothingness of apostasy and denial.
It is the end of the age of Revolution: "The Revolution reveals its truest face in Nihilism; without repentance- and there has been none- what comes after can only be a mask hiding that same face. Whether overtly in the explicit antitheism of Bolshevism, Fascism, Naziism, or passively in the cult of indifference and despair, 'absurdism' and 'existentialism,' modern man has clearly revealed his resolve to live henceforth without God- that is to say, in a void, in nothingness."
In this Nihilist world, there is no longer any point of orientation. Order, authority, certainty, faith, and beauty are replaced with anarchy, confusion, arbitrary and unprincipled action, doubt and despair. It is a world of fragmentation, discontinuity and disjointedness.
For Nihilism to advance, it depends on an illusion that the negation it demands is but a means to a higher end. "Nihilism furthers its Satanic ends by means of a positive program." Naziism, and its war, have done for Central Europe what Bolshevism did in its Revolution for Russia: destroyed the Old Order. The new order from the Nihilist point of view will be one of perfect "realism" and total "liberation"; "in actual fact it will be the vastest and most efficient prison men have ever known.
Marx and Engels, like their contemporary Nietzsche, and like Lenin and Hitler after them, subscribed to the mystique of violence, seeing a magical change to be wrought in human nature through indulgence of the passions of anger, hatred, resentment, and the will to dominate. Rose observes many thinkers have been able to see the clear connection between the naive Nihilist philosophy that reduces reality and human nature to the simplest possible terms and a Nihilist practice that similarly reduces the concrete man. The "new man" is rootless and disoriented and discontinuous man with no past since Nihilism has destroyed it. He is "the raw material of every demagogue's dream," reduced to a pliant sub-humanism.
Rose even breaks down the "new man" into categories: "the free-thinker" and skeptic who is closed only to the truth but open to each new intellectual fashion; the "seeker" after "new revelation", ready to believe anything new because the true faith has been eradicated in him; the "autonomous man," who pretends to the humility of only asking his "rights," yet is full of the pride that expects everything to be given him in a world where nothing is authoritatively forbidden; "the man of the moment," without conscience or "values", and hence at the mercy of the strongest "stimulus"; the "rebel", hating all restraint and authority because he himself is his only god; the "mass man," the new barbarian, thoroughly reduced and simplified and capable of only the most elementary ideas. Rose summarizes, "These men are all one man, the man whose fashioning has been the very purpose of Nihilism."
Rose acknowledges a genius and fervor and even a certain nobility in Marx, Proudhon, Nietzsche and the like, but, he continues, it is the nobility of Lucifer. Their vision is the vision of the Reign of the Antichrist, the Satanic imitation and inversion of the Kingdom of God.
Rose says Nihilism is most profoundly a spiritual disorder and it can only be overcome by spiritual means. And there has been no attempt whatever in the contemporary world to apply such means. "He who cannot believe in Christ must, and will, believe in Antichrist."
**
Rose's life story is interesting to me. He studied Chinese philosophy in Pomona college, where he graduated magna cum laude. He came out as gay at the college and through a gay partner he was exposed to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. While his partner lost interest in Orthodoxy, Rose's interest grew. He eventually terminated the relationship with his partner, and later described it: "I was in hell; I know what hell is." He turned his back on the gay lifestyle and joined the church, and never returned. He engaged in an ascetic life of contemplation, eventually founded a community of Eastern Orthodox booksellers and publishers.
I am not a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but consider myself a mere Christian, catholic with a small c, who yearns for the unity of the Church. However poor my ecclesiology, this yearning for unity of the church is central to it.
On approaching Rose's book I thought I might encounter some hagiographic fluff, but I was immediately struck by the voice of the book's sober, thoughtful seriousness and gravitas. Secular readers might look in his work for signs of repression to back up their ersatz sexual anthropology but they too, if they ever wandered out of their parochial bounds, would no doubt also encounter the same thing.
In contrast to Rose's book is a book by A.G. Roeber as reviewed by Stephanos Bibas in the First Things, November 2025 issue. Roeber's book, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America, as Bibas points out in his review, provides a distorting framework. His idea of "dialogue", according to Bibas, is less witness than infiltration. He remarks that the Forham Center which publishes Roeber's book is "a progressive project seeking to assimilate the Church to the world, rather than the other way around." Roeber's starting point is neither the Holy Scriptures nor the Church Fathers, but a "farrago of predominantly secular and heterodox sources smushed together." Bibas diagnoses that Roeber "takes the Enlightenment as a given and so uses the language of rights, social contract, and democracy, importing a Western, libertarian, individualist epistemology." He suggests traditional Christians should take Roerber's book as a cautionary tale. "Our faith requires us to draw clear lines and not confuse secular vocabulary and concepts with the sacred ones that orient us."
Rose's book has reminded and impressed on me the importance of a thorough-going framework for clarity, one arrived at not by suppressing the primal questions as Nihilism strives to do, substituting vagaries and delusions of a never materializing grandeur, but by single-minded devotion to the absolute truth. Books like Roeber's in contrast are confused and full of conflicting claims. They do not speak with authority and sobriety like the Lord Jesus Christ.
Eugene Rose takes up for his aim in this illuminating treatise an examination of the unique Nihilist mentality that underlies so much of modernity's ills, and an examination of its effects and role in contemporary history. As Rose sees it Naziism and Communism were but expressions of a broader Nihilism, which has so pervaded our world that there is no longer any "front" on which it may be fought. As a definition of Nihilism, Rose presents Nietzsche's definition from "the fount of philosophical Nihilism" as being the most succinct: That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs - no 'thing-in-itself.' This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind." The expression "all truth is relative" Is a popular translation of Nietzsche's phrase, "..there is no (absolute) truth." "Relative truth" is primarily represented to our age by the knowledge of science. The unreflective scientific specialist, if pressed on the question of truth, will resort to saying all truth is empirical and relative. But claiming the truth is empirical is a metaphysical statement and claiming all truth is relative is a an absolute statement, two helpless self-contradictions. Correlatively, the absolute cannot be attained by means which are relative. The first principles of any system of knowledge are the object of faith, not of scientific demonstration. The materialist philosophy, to be consistent, would do away with the category of truth, but its adherents, "innocent of thought that is either consistent or profound, seem unaware of this fatal contradiction." Vladimir Solovyov pointed out the discrepancy regarding the Russian Nihilists of the 19th century in their altruistic and idealistic practices to their purely materialistic and egoistical theory, when he ascribed to them the absurd syllogism, "Man is descended from a monkey; consequently we shall love one another."
Today, I find the intellectual work of the atheist Jonathan Haidt to be clearly a force for good in our society. But when pressed on this point, would he not have inadequate answers too about the nature of truth. No amount of just-so stories can provide the grounds for truth. The only position that involves no logical contradictions is the affirmation of an absolute truth which underlies all lesser truths. The absolute truth cannot be attained by relative means.
Overall, what stands out to me as making Rose's book exceptional is the degree to which he provides a sound, overarching framework of clarity, a kind of proper foundational perspective from which to approach the subsidiary problems of modernity.
Rose similarly describes "naturalism" as "Naive realism" because its adherents internal contradictions signal an incomplete reflection. He notes that "Relative truth" is primarily presented to our age as scientific truth.
Rose lucidly divides the stages of nihilistic dialectic into four stages: 1) Liberalism, 2) Realism, 3) Vitalism and 4) the Nihilism of Destruction. Liberalism is the neutral breeding-ground of the more advanced stages of Nihilism. Rose writes, "The incompetent defense by Liberalism of a heritage in which it has never fully believed, has been one of the most potent causes of overt Nihilism." He describes Liberalism as an attitude in which truth no longer occupies the center of attention. "The Liberal may be interested in culture, in learning, in business, or merely in comfort; but in every one of his pursuits the dimension of the absolute is simply absent. He is unable, or unwilling, to think in terms of ends, of ultimate things. The thirst of absolute truth has vanished; it has been swallowed up in worldliness."
Nietzsche further defined Nihilism beyond the assertion that there is no truth by saying "there is no answer to the question: 'why?'" Nihilism thus means that that the ultimate questions have no answers.
It seems at the heart of the crisis of our Western universities is this nihilistic betrayal of truth. "The profound responsibility the scholar once possessed, the communication of truth, has been reneged; and all the pretended 'humility' that seeks to conceal this fact behind sophisticated chatter on 'the limits of human knowledge,' is but another mask of Nihilism the Liberal academician shares with the extremists of our day."
Like a supremely sober medical or forensic diagnosis, Rose concludes that Liberalism is the first stage of the Nihilist dialectic, as its own faith is empty and it calls into being a yet more Nihilist reaction. This reaction is the second stage of Nihilist dialectic: Realism.
Rose defines Realism as a generic term inclusive of the various forms of "naturalism" and "positivism" in its simplest form. He further notes it is the doctrine popularized under the name of "Nihilism" by Turgenev in Fathers and Sons. In comparison to Liberal vagueness, the Realist world-view seems perfectly clear and straightforward. In place of agnosticism, there is open atheism; in place of "higher values", there is materialism and self-interest. "All is clarity in the Realist universe - except what is most important and most requires clarity: its beginning and end. Where the Liberal is vague about ultimate things, the Realist is childishly naïve: they simply do not exist for him; nothing exists but what is most obvious."
C.S. Lewis quite reasonably addresses the shortcomings of a naturalistic, atheist point of view in his essay "On Living in an Atomic Age," among other works. He says to suppose that Nature is all that exists and it is just a meaningless play of atoms in space and time, producing conscious beings whose consciousness is an accidental result of the whole meaningless process and therefore meaningless itself. He posits three things we might do in response: 1) Commit suicide. 2) Resolve to simply have as good a time as possible, given the dark heart of meaninglessness underlying it all. 3) Defy the universe, asserting your rationality and human values in spite of its meaninglessness. But if our standards are derived from a meaningless universe they must also be as meaningless as it. Lewis remarks that only by thinking through to the end the naturalistic position will many open up to questioning the naturalism. "If Nature when fully known seems to teach us…that our own minds are chance arrangements of atoms, then there must have been some mistake; for if that were so, then the sciences themselves would be chance arrangements of atoms and we should have no reason for believing in them. There is only one way to avoid this deadlock. We must go back to a much earlier view. We must simply accept it that we are spirits, free and rational beings, at present inhabiting an irrational universe, and must draw the conclusion that we are not derived from it. We are strangers here. We come from somewhere else. Nature is not the only thing that exists. There is 'another world' and that is where we come from."
The third stage in the Nihilist dialectic is Vitalism. Rose observes that the chief intellectual impetus of the Vitalist movement has been a reaction against the eclipse of higher realities in the Realist "simplification" of the world. Against utopias of rationalist planning, a protest is raised in the name of "life," which, whatever it means, would clearly be stifled in the Realist paradise. Though a reaction, it radically fails to correct this deficiency in Realism because it accepts as an essential presupposition the critique of absolute truth made by the Realism it was attempting to combat. "There is no form of Vitalism that is not naturalistic, none whose entire program does not begin and end in this world, none whose approach to any other world is anything but a parody."
Intellectually, Vitalism is defined in part by its presupposed rejection of Christian Truth, coupled with pseudo-spiritual pretension. The occultism and pseudo-spirituality of W.B. Yeats are an example of this.
In Vitalism "activity" is clearly an escape from boredom and meaninglessness and "most profoundly from the emptiness that takes possession of the heart that has abandoned God."
In politics, "the most successful forms of Vitalism have been Mussolini's cult of activism and violence, and Hitler's darker cult of 'blood and soil'…"
Quoting Nietzsche again, Rose writes, "'The falseness of an opinion,' said Nietzsche, 'is not for us any objection to it… The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life-preserving…' When such pragmatism begins, Nihilism passes into the Vitalist stage, which may be defined as the elimination of truth as the criterion of human action, and the substitution of a new standard: the 'life-giving,' the 'vital'; it is the final divorce of life from truth."
Rose in a key passage poignantly notes, "Men have rejected the Son of God Who, even now, desires to dwell in men and bring them salvation; and finding intolerable the vacuum this rejection has left in their hearts, they run to madmen and magicians, to false prophets and religious sophists, for a word of life. But this word, so readily given, itself turns to dust in their mouths when they try to repeat it. Realism, in its rage for truth, destroys the truth; in the same way Vitalism, in its very quest for life, smells of death."
The final stage of the Nihilistic dialectic is the Nihilism of Destruction. Here is found a "pure" Nihilism which is a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute nothingness.
Rose "gives the lie" to the progressivist self-understanding by his depth of grappling with first and last things, which they singularly fail to do. What appears to the progressive as "progress" is but an advance in the dialectic of Nihilism to this nadir. In the pure Nihilists, what to others was prologue becomes an end in itself. They are also called Revolutionists, who believe in revolution for its own sake, not for some good it may bring about. Rose writes that Nietzsche "proclaimed the basic principle of all Nihilism, and the special apology of the Nihilism of Destruction, in the phrase, 'There is no truth, all is permitted.'" He observes Dostoyevsky's prescient characterization of the extreme Nihilist mentality in his novel The Possessed, or what is perhaps more accurately sometimes translate The Demon.
Rose sums up the stages as follows: "The first stage of Nihilism, which is Liberalism, is born of the errors of taking our diseased eye for a sound one, of mistaking its impaired vision for a view of the true world, and thus of discharging the physician of the soul, the Church, whose ministrations are not needed by a 'healthy' man. In the second stage, Realism, the disease, no longer attended by the necessary physician, begins to grow; vision is narrowed; distant objects, already obscure enough in the 'natural' state of impaired vision, become invisible; only the nearest objects are seen distinctly, and the patient becomes convinced no others exist. In the third stage, Vitalism, infection leads to inflammation; even the nearest objects become dim and distorted and there are hallucinations. In the fourth stage, the Nihilism of Destruction, blindness ensues and the disease spreads to the rest of the body, effecting agony, convulsions, and death."
Rose then takes a look at the theology and spirit of Nihilism. He cites Nietzsche, the Anarchist Proudhon, and Albert Camus, and others, who identify their struggle as being against the idea of God. Rose points out that Nihilism fails if true Christian faith remains in a single person, for that person will be a living example of Truth. I must say, on approach of Rose's work, expecting a possibly shallower level, I was struck by the gravitas of his radical sobriety.
Rose pulls back the veil and diagnoses: "Nihilist rebellion is a war against God and against Truth; but few Nihilists are fully aware of this. Explicit theological and philosophical Nihilism is the preserve of a few rare souls."
Dostoyevsky observed the closeness of blind will to nothing: "the most assertive are closest to the most nihilistic." Only blind will separates them from the Abyss, having abandoned truth and every authority.
Nihilism owes its whole existence to a negation of Christian Truth. It is the blind rejection of God's creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. There is an endeavor at the heart of Nihilism to annul God's act of creation by returning the world to the nothingness from which it came. The god of Nihilism is nothingness itself, understood as the nothingness of apostasy and denial.
It is the end of the age of Revolution: "The Revolution reveals its truest face in Nihilism; without repentance- and there has been none- what comes after can only be a mask hiding that same face. Whether overtly in the explicit antitheism of Bolshevism, Fascism, Naziism, or passively in the cult of indifference and despair, 'absurdism' and 'existentialism,' modern man has clearly revealed his resolve to live henceforth without God- that is to say, in a void, in nothingness."
In this Nihilist world, there is no longer any point of orientation. Order, authority, certainty, faith, and beauty are replaced with anarchy, confusion, arbitrary and unprincipled action, doubt and despair. It is a world of fragmentation, discontinuity and disjointedness.
For Nihilism to advance, it depends on an illusion that the negation it demands is but a means to a higher end. "Nihilism furthers its Satanic ends by means of a positive program." Naziism, and its war, have done for Central Europe what Bolshevism did in its Revolution for Russia: destroyed the Old Order. The new order from the Nihilist point of view will be one of perfect "realism" and total "liberation"; "in actual fact it will be the vastest and most efficient prison men have ever known.
Marx and Engels, like their contemporary Nietzsche, and like Lenin and Hitler after them, subscribed to the mystique of violence, seeing a magical change to be wrought in human nature through indulgence of the passions of anger, hatred, resentment, and the will to dominate. Rose observes many thinkers have been able to see the clear connection between the naive Nihilist philosophy that reduces reality and human nature to the simplest possible terms and a Nihilist practice that similarly reduces the concrete man. The "new man" is rootless and disoriented and discontinuous man with no past since Nihilism has destroyed it. He is "the raw material of every demagogue's dream," reduced to a pliant sub-humanism.
Rose even breaks down the "new man" into categories: "the free-thinker" and skeptic who is closed only to the truth but open to each new intellectual fashion; the "seeker" after "new revelation", ready to believe anything new because the true faith has been eradicated in him; the "autonomous man," who pretends to the humility of only asking his "rights," yet is full of the pride that expects everything to be given him in a world where nothing is authoritatively forbidden; "the man of the moment," without conscience or "values", and hence at the mercy of the strongest "stimulus"; the "rebel", hating all restraint and authority because he himself is his only god; the "mass man," the new barbarian, thoroughly reduced and simplified and capable of only the most elementary ideas. Rose summarizes, "These men are all one man, the man whose fashioning has been the very purpose of Nihilism."
Rose acknowledges a genius and fervor and even a certain nobility in Marx, Proudhon, Nietzsche and the like, but, he continues, it is the nobility of Lucifer. Their vision is the vision of the Reign of the Antichrist, the Satanic imitation and inversion of the Kingdom of God.
Rose says Nihilism is most profoundly a spiritual disorder and it can only be overcome by spiritual means. And there has been no attempt whatever in the contemporary world to apply such means. "He who cannot believe in Christ must, and will, believe in Antichrist."
**
Rose's life story is interesting to me. He studied Chinese philosophy in Pomona college, where he graduated magna cum laude. He came out as gay at the college and through a gay partner he was exposed to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. While his partner lost interest in Orthodoxy, Rose's interest grew. He eventually terminated the relationship with his partner, and later described it: "I was in hell; I know what hell is." He turned his back on the gay lifestyle and joined the church, and never returned. He engaged in an ascetic life of contemplation, eventually founded a community of Eastern Orthodox booksellers and publishers.
I am not a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but consider myself a mere Christian, catholic with a small c, who yearns for the unity of the Church. However poor my ecclesiology, this yearning for unity of the church is central to it.
On approaching Rose's book I thought I might encounter some hagiographic fluff, but I was immediately struck by the voice of the book's sober, thoughtful seriousness and gravitas. Secular readers might look in his work for signs of repression to back up their ersatz sexual anthropology but they too, if they ever wandered out of their parochial bounds, would no doubt also encounter the same thing.
In contrast to Rose's book is a book by A.G. Roeber as reviewed by Stephanos Bibas in the First Things, November 2025 issue. Roeber's book, Orthodox Christians and the Rights Revolution in America, as Bibas points out in his review, provides a distorting framework. His idea of "dialogue", according to Bibas, is less witness than infiltration. He remarks that the Forham Center which publishes Roeber's book is "a progressive project seeking to assimilate the Church to the world, rather than the other way around." Roeber's starting point is neither the Holy Scriptures nor the Church Fathers, but a "farrago of predominantly secular and heterodox sources smushed together." Bibas diagnoses that Roeber "takes the Enlightenment as a given and so uses the language of rights, social contract, and democracy, importing a Western, libertarian, individualist epistemology." He suggests traditional Christians should take Roerber's book as a cautionary tale. "Our faith requires us to draw clear lines and not confuse secular vocabulary and concepts with the sacred ones that orient us."
Rose's book has reminded and impressed on me the importance of a thorough-going framework for clarity, one arrived at not by suppressing the primal questions as Nihilism strives to do, substituting vagaries and delusions of a never materializing grandeur, but by single-minded devotion to the absolute truth. Books like Roeber's in contrast are confused and full of conflicting claims. They do not speak with authority and sobriety like the Lord Jesus Christ.
May 2, 2019
You don't need to be, though I'm sure it helps, an Orthodox Christian to see that this is an incredibly lucid and perspicacious exploration and refutation of Nihilism, the pervasive spirit of our age and the cause of worldly incoherence.
Fr. Seraphim comes from a position of faith and clarity of argument that manages to be like a dagger which slices through counter-arguments, but, which also harbors a fundamental fairness and openess to acknowledge the appeal and positives that have driven Nihilism and its different breeding grounds (such as Liberalism, Realism and Vitalism).
I found the section on vitalism most engaging in terms of considering his words, and hypothesizing about what his reaction would've been, in this current context where the things he describes have been so amplified. His arguments that critique have now become apologies, justifying rather than improving bad art, especially hit home.
He diagnoses a fundamental, driving, restlessness in current man and skewers the relativistic, hubristic, Superhuman/God-man status that has unmoored society from any norms or truth and urges the inevitable nihilism of destruction, its own logical end. He does this showing his own expertise in the thoughts of men like Hitler, Nietzsche, Bakunin, and Dostoevsky, presenting their beliefs, ideals, or warnings/insights for the organisation of humanity and society.
… its Nihilist counterpart is full of doubt, suspicion, disgust, envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy - one or more of these qualities predominating in any given personality. It is an attitude of dissatisfaction with self, with the world, with society, with God; it knows but one thing: that it will not accept things as they are , but most devote its energies either to changing them or fleeing from them.
The book is slight and rounds out with an essay about the philosophy of the absurd which picks at the same strand the essay on nihilism deals with, pointing out how a rejection of absolute truth, or a belief in ultimate meaninglessness, are in themselves claims of absolute truths. They negate themselves from their start, "to assert that 'there is no truth', one must believe in the truth of this statement, and so again affirm what one denies"
Though the connection between the works of nihilism, tracking the ideas of the belief in the Superhuman, the Man-God or man's free will as ruling force without any anchor in truth, to the "Ye shall be as gods" promise of Satan in Genesis, may be a bit of an eye-roll moment for some, I would suggest that - from a believers point of view - this is actually a very coherent and cogent conclusion.
All in all, I think there are a lot of things to mull over in this slender book, it packs quite the punch. Regardless of your status as a believer or not, I would recommend people to read it. One does not have to agree with everything an author says to derive knowledge and valuable nuance from a text, after all. It is a very interesting analysis of the current Century and where, especially, Nietzsche's philosophy has led us, total wars and all, and where it might be heading now. Basically, it'll be worth the while even if it only pisses you off.
I liked it quite a lot and will definitely re-read it and consider some of the finer points. I wish the layout of the book was better though, the text comes across as needlessly dense in this edition. But it is inexpensive, so that's a big plus.
"The philosophy of the absurd is, indeed, nothing oiginal in itself; it is entirely negation, and its character is determined, absolutely and entirely, by that which it attempts to negate."
Fr. Seraphim comes from a position of faith and clarity of argument that manages to be like a dagger which slices through counter-arguments, but, which also harbors a fundamental fairness and openess to acknowledge the appeal and positives that have driven Nihilism and its different breeding grounds (such as Liberalism, Realism and Vitalism).
I found the section on vitalism most engaging in terms of considering his words, and hypothesizing about what his reaction would've been, in this current context where the things he describes have been so amplified. His arguments that critique have now become apologies, justifying rather than improving bad art, especially hit home.
He diagnoses a fundamental, driving, restlessness in current man and skewers the relativistic, hubristic, Superhuman/God-man status that has unmoored society from any norms or truth and urges the inevitable nihilism of destruction, its own logical end. He does this showing his own expertise in the thoughts of men like Hitler, Nietzsche, Bakunin, and Dostoevsky, presenting their beliefs, ideals, or warnings/insights for the organisation of humanity and society.
… its Nihilist counterpart is full of doubt, suspicion, disgust, envy, jealousy, pride, impatience, rebelliousness, blasphemy - one or more of these qualities predominating in any given personality. It is an attitude of dissatisfaction with self, with the world, with society, with God; it knows but one thing: that it will not accept things as they are , but most devote its energies either to changing them or fleeing from them.
The book is slight and rounds out with an essay about the philosophy of the absurd which picks at the same strand the essay on nihilism deals with, pointing out how a rejection of absolute truth, or a belief in ultimate meaninglessness, are in themselves claims of absolute truths. They negate themselves from their start, "to assert that 'there is no truth', one must believe in the truth of this statement, and so again affirm what one denies"
Though the connection between the works of nihilism, tracking the ideas of the belief in the Superhuman, the Man-God or man's free will as ruling force without any anchor in truth, to the "Ye shall be as gods" promise of Satan in Genesis, may be a bit of an eye-roll moment for some, I would suggest that - from a believers point of view - this is actually a very coherent and cogent conclusion.
All in all, I think there are a lot of things to mull over in this slender book, it packs quite the punch. Regardless of your status as a believer or not, I would recommend people to read it. One does not have to agree with everything an author says to derive knowledge and valuable nuance from a text, after all. It is a very interesting analysis of the current Century and where, especially, Nietzsche's philosophy has led us, total wars and all, and where it might be heading now. Basically, it'll be worth the while even if it only pisses you off.
I liked it quite a lot and will definitely re-read it and consider some of the finer points. I wish the layout of the book was better though, the text comes across as needlessly dense in this edition. But it is inexpensive, so that's a big plus.
"The philosophy of the absurd is, indeed, nothing oiginal in itself; it is entirely negation, and its character is determined, absolutely and entirely, by that which it attempts to negate."
November 30, 2018
Another essential read for Christians to understand the modern world and where it's headed.
Some brilliant passages:
"In this room Eugene undertook to write a monumental chronicle of modern man's war against God: man's attempt to destroy the Old Order and raise up a new one without Christ, to deny the existence of the Kingdom of God and raise up his own earthly utopia in its stead. This projected work was entitled The Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom, of God.
Only a few years before this, Eugene himself had been ensnared in the Kingdom of Man and had suffered in it; he too had been at war against God. Having rejected the Protestant Christianity of his formative years as being weak and ineffectual, he had taken part in the Bohemian counterculture of the 1950's, and had delved into Eastern religions and philosophies which taught that God is ultimately impersonal. Like the absurdist artists and writers of his day, he had experimented with insanity, breaking down logical thought processes as a way of "breaking on over to the other side." He read the words of the mad "prophet" of Nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche, until those words resonated in his soul with an electric, infernal power. Through all these means, he was seeking to attain to Truth or Reality with his mind; but they all resulted in failure. He was reduced to such a state of despair that, when later asked to describe it, he could only say, "I was in Hell." He would get drunk, and would grapple with the God Whom he had claimed was dead, pounding on the floor and screaming at Him to leave him alone. Once while intoxicated, he wrote, "I am sick, as all men are sick who are absent from the love of God."
"Atheism," Eugene wrote in later years, "true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God Whose ways are so inexplicable even to the most believing of men, and it has more than once been known to end in a blinding vision of Him Whom the real atheist truly seeks. It is Christ Who works in these souls. The Antichrist is not to be found primarily in the great deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips. Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ....""
"The Liberal, the worldly man, is the man who has lost his faith; and the loss of perfect faith is the beginning of the end of the order erected upon that faith. Those who seek to preserve the prestige of truth without believing in it offer the most potent weapon to all their enemies; a merely metaphorical faith is suicidal. The radical attacks the Liberal doctrine at every point, and the veil of rhetoric is no protection against the strong thrust of his sharp blade. The Liberal, under this persistent attack, gives way on point after point, forced to admit the truth of the charges against him without being able to counter this negative, critical truth with any positive truth of his own; until, after a long and usually gradual transition, of a sudden he awakens to discover that the Old Order, undefended and seemingly indefensible, has been overthrown, and that a new, more "realistic"--and more brutal-truth has taken the field."
Some brilliant passages:
"In this room Eugene undertook to write a monumental chronicle of modern man's war against God: man's attempt to destroy the Old Order and raise up a new one without Christ, to deny the existence of the Kingdom of God and raise up his own earthly utopia in its stead. This projected work was entitled The Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom, of God.
Only a few years before this, Eugene himself had been ensnared in the Kingdom of Man and had suffered in it; he too had been at war against God. Having rejected the Protestant Christianity of his formative years as being weak and ineffectual, he had taken part in the Bohemian counterculture of the 1950's, and had delved into Eastern religions and philosophies which taught that God is ultimately impersonal. Like the absurdist artists and writers of his day, he had experimented with insanity, breaking down logical thought processes as a way of "breaking on over to the other side." He read the words of the mad "prophet" of Nihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche, until those words resonated in his soul with an electric, infernal power. Through all these means, he was seeking to attain to Truth or Reality with his mind; but they all resulted in failure. He was reduced to such a state of despair that, when later asked to describe it, he could only say, "I was in Hell." He would get drunk, and would grapple with the God Whom he had claimed was dead, pounding on the floor and screaming at Him to leave him alone. Once while intoxicated, he wrote, "I am sick, as all men are sick who are absent from the love of God."
"Atheism," Eugene wrote in later years, "true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God Whose ways are so inexplicable even to the most believing of men, and it has more than once been known to end in a blinding vision of Him Whom the real atheist truly seeks. It is Christ Who works in these souls. The Antichrist is not to be found primarily in the great deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips. Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ....""
"The Liberal, the worldly man, is the man who has lost his faith; and the loss of perfect faith is the beginning of the end of the order erected upon that faith. Those who seek to preserve the prestige of truth without believing in it offer the most potent weapon to all their enemies; a merely metaphorical faith is suicidal. The radical attacks the Liberal doctrine at every point, and the veil of rhetoric is no protection against the strong thrust of his sharp blade. The Liberal, under this persistent attack, gives way on point after point, forced to admit the truth of the charges against him without being able to counter this negative, critical truth with any positive truth of his own; until, after a long and usually gradual transition, of a sudden he awakens to discover that the Old Order, undefended and seemingly indefensible, has been overthrown, and that a new, more "realistic"--and more brutal-truth has taken the field."
November 7, 2023
I love Fr. Seraphim Rose but this essay was a DNF.
The entire thing is predicated on “Nihilism means nothing matters so everything goes”, which is clearly not the case. Attempts to lump Hitler and Stalin together as “both nihilists” don’t work, nor does saying Nihilism somehow ruled over the entire 20th century.
I started this expecting an Orthodox Christian critique of Nietzsche, it ended up being a passionate and heartfelt but ultimately misguided attempt at critiquing modernity in general. For instance, calling Christianity the “old order” Nihilism wants to destroy when Nietzsche himself wanted society to revert to that of the Homeric Greeks, many centuries older.
Nothing about Nietzche’s critique of Christianity as “slave morality”, Aristocratic morality, nothing interesting about Vitalism.
The entire thing is predicated on “Nihilism means nothing matters so everything goes”, which is clearly not the case. Attempts to lump Hitler and Stalin together as “both nihilists” don’t work, nor does saying Nihilism somehow ruled over the entire 20th century.
I started this expecting an Orthodox Christian critique of Nietzsche, it ended up being a passionate and heartfelt but ultimately misguided attempt at critiquing modernity in general. For instance, calling Christianity the “old order” Nihilism wants to destroy when Nietzsche himself wanted society to revert to that of the Homeric Greeks, many centuries older.
Nothing about Nietzche’s critique of Christianity as “slave morality”, Aristocratic morality, nothing interesting about Vitalism.
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