Honouring Nihilism —A Review of Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction

Authors

  • Roy Goddard University of Sheffield

Keywords:

Educational alternatives, progressive education, alternative education, difference, educational theory, educational philosophy, home education, education policy

Abstract

Ray Brassier’s Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (2007) embraces nihilism as “a speculative opportunity.†In the first part of this review my focus is threefold: on the book’s opening chapter in which Brassier considers the claims for eliminative materialism, a radical position within the analytic philosophy of mind; his second chapter which examines Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment as exemplary of the tendency in Continental philosophy to denounce “untrammelled scientific rationalismâ€; and its final few pages in which Brassier gives shape to his notion of nihilism by means of “a cosmological re-inscription†of Freud’s speculations concerning the death-instinct. However, I refer to other sections of the book throughout. In the second part of the paper I discuss questions provoked by Brassier’s argument and conclude with a brief suggestion of its implications for education.  

References

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Brassier, R. (2007). Nihil unbound: Enlightenment and extinction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brassier, R., & Rychter, M. (2011). Ray Brassier interviewed by Marcin Rychter: I am a nihilist because I still believe in truth. Retrievable from http://www.kronos.org.pl/index.php?23151,896

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Published

2016-12-19

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2016)

Section

SI Peer Reviewed Articles

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