The STUDIA UNIVERSITATIS BABEŞ-BOLYAI issue article summary

The summary of the selected article appears at the bottom of the page. In order to get back to the contents of the issue this article belongs to you have to access the link from the title. In order to see all the articles of the archive which have as author/co-author one of the authors mentioned below, you have to access the link from the author's name.

  
       
         
    STUDIA EUROPAEA - Issue no. 1 / 2009  
         
  Article:   EUROPEAN NIHILISM BETWEEN PLATONISM AND CHRISTIANITY / LE NIHILISME EUROPEEN ENTRE PLATONISME ET CHRISTIANISME.

Authors:  VLAD MUREŞAN. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  It is with Nietzsche that what we call Western nihilism comes into the spotlight of history. With this, we gain consciousness of a process that has been secretly working in the substructure of European history. Following Nietzsche, Heidegger describes nihilism as a force unleashed as early as the splitting of the world into a phenomenal and an intelligibleone by Plato. What we call contemporary nihilism would thus be nothing else than the fulfillment and extinction of this long‐standing metaphysical tradition. We are critically assessing this view on the grounds that the pervasive influence of Christian theology (with its stress on the dead of God, completion of the Law, or the end of all things) is more appropriate to explain the catastrophic Western experience than the rather static, contemplative and serene platonic experience.

Keywords: Nihilism, Platonism, Christianity, Postmodernism, Deconstruction 		 
         
     
         
         
      Back to previous page