Notions of order and chaos - The Crisis of Nihilism

The Crisis of Nihilism

 

The final and most distressing duality Turgenev presents us is the ultimate divergence between Arkadii and Barazov at the end of the novel; this deviation presents us with a crisis—namely the crisis of nihilism. Consider that Barazov becomes a sort of martyr in his death, although a proper nihilist would never use the term, as martyrdom to them is complete foolishness; nonetheless, it makes us wonder whether this is the future of a nihilist world: a living death in apathy. Arkadii, who instead chooses to accept his humanly emotions and inert morality, lives happily with a life he formerly condemned; perhaps there is also hypocrisy in nihilism?

Remember that nihilism is simply not an inversion of values, as that would solely create more of the same. Instead, nihilism is an attempt to transcend those values into something completely different, something more in tune to our materialistic universe. There is no sense in deferring ourselves to irrational absurdities; instead, let us abjure them and develop our own, not so much as values—for they simply cannot exist in our primitive reality—but as a surpassed sense of being. The paradoxical problem remaining is whether we, as a society, will ever be able to achieve this; can we throw to the earth all our nonphysical emotions and dogmas, and instead survive in a universe compelled into chaos? In a materialistic cosmos, all entities eventually end up in this chaos, from the inner quantum mechanics of the atom to the pandemonium of the stars in the boundless heavens of night—why, then, are we so unable to achieve such a seemingly simplistic goal? Barazov, were he to stumble upon that question, would surely shrug his shoulders nonchalantly and assert that we can—all we must understand is that, Socratic-style, we truly know nothing except chaos in a universe of materiality.