Nihilism (Carthage Reprint) [Paperback]

Stanley Rosen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The growing importance of reason in philosophy concerns Stanley Rosen in this essay. Rosen's primary objective is to defend Plato and classical philosophy against Martin Heidegger's radical existentialist criticism. . . . Many critics of Heidegger consider his dubious politics during the early days of Nazi rule irrelevant to the understanding of his work. Rosen argues, on the contrary, that Heidegger's philosophy helps explain his initial enthusiasm for, and later submission to, the Nazi regime. The argument yields genuine insight into the connection between philosophical and political nihilism. Furthermore, exposing the evil consequences of nihilistic thought adds to his stout defense of the classical tradition." -- Elliot Feingold, Book Week

"There is no question of the importance and relevance of the problem of nihilism, and Rosen treats it with a combination of insight and thoroughness which makes Nihilism an impressive and important book. . . . Deserves to become a classic study." -- Kenneth Dorter, Dialogue

"This is an impressive book. . . . Part of the interest of this book resides in its structure, which analyses moments in the history of ideas to sketch a systematic critique of theoretical and practical reason." -- Times Literary Supplement

"Those who ignore his book do so at their peril. It vigorously poses issues which have been too long neglected by both political scientists and political theorists." -- R. L. Nichols, American Political Science Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Augustines Press; 2nd edition (November 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890318450
• ISBN-13: 978-1890318451
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,835,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Applied Kojeve, June 3, 2004

By 

Sarwat Hanna (Portand Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nihilism (Carthage Reprint) (Paperback)

If nihilism is silence, that fits Kojeve's definition of silence as the only alternative to complete wisdom. Kojeve plots every philosophy in a little chart, and along one axis is time and the other axis is truth, and every philosopher can be understood as occupying one spot in the grid. So what Rosen does is present a history of nihilism that fits the precursors of contemporary nihilism in one spot or another on the grid. The origin of modern nihilism, as Rosen presents it, in very Nietzschean fashion, is Christianity. By locating the good in some distant beyond, Christianity broke from paganism by separating the good from the useful, and thereby separated reason from application to this world. Thus Kant's distinction between reason and understanding is an unwitting repetition of Christianity, which is exactly Kojeve's version of Kant as the typical Christian philosopher. Of course, Rosen is not a Hegelian but a Straussian, and the historical exercise is conducted in the name of a return to the classical political rationalism of Plato and Aristotle. An excellent book, Rosen at his most candid and clear.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good !, December 6, 2000

By 

calcidius (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nihilism (Carthage Reprint) (Paperback)

Stanley Rosen says nihilism is the position that obtains when all speech becomes like silence- once all values become justifiable they also become meaningless. Wittgenstein and Heidegger represent the two movements in modern philosophy that Rosen accuses of rejecting the authority of words.

The first part of the book brings out the similarities between fundamental ontology and ordinary language philosophy. Rosen shows that common to both is the misguided attempted to create themselves ex-nihilo while the major difference lies in their use of tools - one group uses sledgehammers while the other makes due with a nail file. Rosen then goes on to defend classical philosophy against Heidegger's charge that Plato dehumanized and devalued human existence- thus bring nihilism to the west.

Stanley Rosen does a exceedingly good job of showing how existentialism reduces to the very thing it tries to escape -- in the end the master becomes defined by his slave--

12 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rosen out of his mind, June 22, 2000

By 

steven schwartzbard - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nihilism (Carthage Reprint) (Paperback)

Rosen says at one point that he set out to fill the gaping hole in Strauss's platonism, the entire absence of an ontology, or as Rosen calls, a technical philosophical doctrine. If for Strauss the ideas are "fantastic, not to say incredible," Rosen rejoins: and nothing you say changes that. Rosen is thus determined recover a true Plato, the philosophical plato, and with the help of Heidegger's Wiederholung of the gigantomachia, but explicitly against Heidegger. The project is thus to save Strauss from Heidegger by using Heidegger against himself to fill in the esoteric but hollow core of Straussian platonism. Capisce? That is the project of Nihilism, and Rosen never shys away from confronting Heidegger head-on. Yet Rosen, to his detriment, never learned one important lesson from Strauss: the depths are contained in the surface, and only in the surface, of things. For Strauss that meant, to my mind, that philosophy is always political because it can never be technical. Rosen's 'ordinary language metaphysics' is sensible enough, but Rosen himself (despite what he says) is deeply impatient with politics (and philosophy) precisely because he fails to see that politics is the surface that contains the depths.