Peter Gobets, founder of The Zero Project, passed away just a few days before publication of The Origin and Significance of Zero, a book project to which he devoted many years of his life. It is a sad irony that he did not get to hold the final product in his hands.
I never met Peter face-to-face, but we exchanged correspondence for years, beginning in 2013 when he sent me a copy of his novel, A Guide For the Apoplexed, written under the pseudonym Herman Gnuticks. After that, Peter encouraged me to participate in the Zero Project by attending events and contributing a chapter to The Origin and Significance of Zero. He was full of energy and enthusiam and had a good sense of humor. It was startling, and very sad, to learn of his passing.
The co-editor of The Origin and Significance of Zero, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, has written a touching obituary that appears on the Brill Publishing website.
In my last post, I wrote briefly about a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, where I attended the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Among the places I visited was Powell’s City of Books, which advertises itself as the world’s largest bookstore. I don’t know if that’s really true, but it certainly is the largest bookstore that I have ever been in. The first time that I went there in 2005, I was so overwhelmed by the size and expanse of the place that I wandered through the whole store, never stopping to browse, exiting the three-story building empty-handed with a feeling of deep anxiety. This time around I was calmer, taking multiple trips to visit multiple sections of the store on multiple days. Breaking up my book browsing in this bite-sized manner helped to make the experience less overwhelming and more relaxing. And this time I did not leave empty handed.
I found many interesting books that I would have liked to buy, but then I would have had to haul them back home on the plane, which seemed like more inconvenience than it was worth. In the end, I decided to purchase just one used pocket book that could easily be carried in my backpack. It was a 1973 paperback edition of Hubert Selby’s 1964 novel Last Exit To Brooklyn. This would be my first introduction to Selby’s writing, which I was interested in primarily because I am a fan of Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem For a Dream, based on another one of Selby’s novels. If Powell’s had a copy of that book, I would probably have started with it. Instead, I paid $4.95 and walked off with the book that a reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle called, “A profound vision of Hell.” When my wife saw my purchase, she said that she was familiar with Selby’s reputation but had no interest in reading his work. I was excited to discover what I had got myself into.
Last Exit To Brooklyn reminds me of other novels, like Trainspotting, that are assembled from short stories that could be read in isolation from one another, but which are held together because they constellate around a common location. In this book, that location is an all-night diner called The Greeks, in Brooklyn, New York. The characters in the various stories pass in and out of the diner, and some of their paths cross during the course of the book, but their narratives pursue differing trajectories, mostly ending in tragedy and abjection. There is a group of hoodlums who beat up and almost kill a serviceman; a trans woman who falls in love with one of the hoods from the diner, but ends up being degraded and abused by him; a guy who really wants a motorcycle; a woman who begins life as a predator, but ends up becoming a victim of gang rape; a union shop-steward who, while awakening to his own homosexual desires, ends up badly beaten by the hoods from The Greeks; and finally an imagistic snapshot of the meaningless and dismal lives of the residents of a government housing project.
In the course of reading one story after the other, I experienced a feeling like I was zooming in and out of various atrocious dramas transpiring in a neighborhood populated by residents with no real sense of community or compassion for one another. Their desperation, despair, and self-loathing are exhibited through alcohol and drug abuse, violence toward family and strangers, and the willingness to debase themselves and others sexually. No one is sympathetic in this novel, and I can see why some people really detest it. Published in 1964, it was praised by critics for its boldness and originality but in 1966 it was the subject of an obscenity trial in Britain, where it was, for a time, banned. Today, an uninitiated reader like myself will probably be confounded upon first starting to read the work, but as I stuck with it, the intensity and strength of Selby’s writing engulfed me, and I was drawn into a world that I would never care to experience in real-life.
One of the things that makes the book so challenging is the author’s unconventional style of writing. One sentence runs into another, mimicking the way that the characters speak in rambling, manic, alcohol and drug-induced streams. Interior monologues overlap with exterior conversations, and there are no quotation marks to indicate where one begins and the other ends. This stream of thought stretches on into paragraphs that run for pages, before an indentation or a text-break jolts the reader out of the flow. At times it is difficult to understand precisely what is going on in terms of the action (which may be a blessing in chapters like “The Queen is Dead,” and “Tralala”), but the manner of writing is always successful in arousing a frenzied mood of dread, disgust, and often horror. In “Landsend,” which appears as the last chapter – and is identified as a “Coda” – the agitation of a married couple who communicate solely by yelling at one another is evoked by the use of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS EVERY TIME THAT THEY OPEN THEIR MOUTHS. Once I stopped trying to think about who was who and who was saying what, I found myself slipping into the rhythm of Selby’s writing, which in turn placed me directly into the awful world of the characters. Throughout the book, I felt as if I was listening to the outbursts of particularly loathsome neighbors who might drive me to violence myself.
The chapter that I found most engrossing is titled “Strike.” More like a novella than a short story, it is longer than the other chapters and written in a more-or-less conventional style. Because of its length, the main character is more completely developed than those appearing as mere sketches in the other chapters; and because of its style, the narrative is easier to follow.
The central character in “Strike” is Harry, the steward for a union shop that manufactures machine parts. His resentment against management, and his devotion to the Union, is a mask for his own underlying lack of self-esteem and unhappiness in life. He is married and has a child, but his mind is filled with obscene fantasies about tearing his wife apart during sex and abandoning his family, who are just scapegoats for his discontent. He seems to be angry at everyone, and no one really likes him.
When his shop goes on strike, Harry feels and acts like a big-shot, running the strike office and telling everyone who will listen that he is the one in charge of the collective action. No one listens too closely to Harry, and no one really believes anything that he says, as it is clear that he is desperate for attention and using his position to boost his low self-esteem. After a violent confrontation between the striking workers, police, and strike-breaking truck-drivers (during which Harry is cowardly and indecisive), he starts to stock the office with kegs of beer, which he charges to the Union account. Each night he stays late, getting drunk and hosting late-night parties for some of the denizens of The Greeks, which sits just across the street from the office.
It is during one of these impromptu parties that Harry is introduced to a predatory transsexual who frequents the diner. Finding himself unexpectedly aroused, Harry starts to regularly visit a gay bar downtown, ultimately forming a relationship with one of the transwomen, who he wines and dines with money from the Union account. It seems as if Harry is finally happy, with friends and a lover who really enjoys spending time with him. However, when the Union strike eventually ends, so does the money, and Harry is dumped by his girlfriend, ostracized by the rest of the people at the gay bar, and left humiliated. In despair, he tries to seduce a young boy on the street and is beaten and battered nearly to death by some of the same hoods who he partied with at the Union office.
The other stories in Last Exit To Brooklyn are similarly bleak (except for “And Baby Makes Three,” which is a very short sketch of a guy who fantasizes about, and eventually gets, an old, junky motorcycle). The world that Selby conjures is populated by desperate people who share intimacy with other desperate people that can’t be trusted. I consistently felt dread as a seemingly minor event (such as Harry ordering a keg of beer) foreshadowed other events that I knew were bound to lead to no good at all. As I hoped for some sort of kindness, tenderness, or compassion on the part of the characters, I also shuddered at the more likely probability that any apparent benevolence was actually a precursor to continued victimization and cruelty.
But I guess that’s the genius of the author. Out of this series of stories, he successfully opens up an abyss of abjection that the reader falls into, partly willingly, and partly with reluctance. Selby repeatedly assaults us with such hyperbolic horror that we become conditioned to expect the worst while vainly hoping for some sort of upturn. The closest that the novel comes to any sort of redemption is in the final chapter, where one of the residents of an urban housing project, while cheating on his wife, ends up getting more sex from his one-night-stand than he anticipated.
That, and an old beaten up motorcycle, are apparently the best things that the characters in Last Exit to Brooklyn can hope for.
Portland Oregon is a small city with a big attitude. Upon our arrival, my wife and I were puzzled by the lack of car and foot traffic on the streets and startled by the number of loudly vocal homeless people wandering about. There are a lot of empty storefronts and an abundance of armed security guards. But there are also a number of really great restaraunts, parks, specialty stores, bars, music venues, and the single biggest bookstore I have ever seen. Portland prides itself on being weird. And it really is. I kind of like it.
We were in town for a meeting of the American Philosophical Association’s Pacific Division, which was held in the downtown Hilton. The conference itself was rather small, but well worth while. I chaired a sesssion of the International Association for the Philosophy of Humor on the first night, and along with others, presented a paper. A group of students from the College of Marin were also in attendance, and it was really nice to get a chance to hang out and socialize with them away from school. Over the course of the conference I attended a number of sessions on a wide variety of topics including: what it means to be a philosopher, Buddhism, Foucault, the nature of consciousness, and philosophy and higher education.
Away from the conference, we explored some of Portland’s attractions. There is a great public transportation system in the city, so it was very convenient to hop on a rail car and make our way east to Washington Park, where we spent an entire afternoon wandering along the walking trails. Unfortunately we were there on a day when the Japanese Garden was closed and at a time of year when the Rose Garden was not in bloom. Nevertheless, we had an enjoyable visit to the Portland Zoo, a very nicely arranged place where you can walk for hours and observe a quirky collection of animals that includes beavers, lamphreys, elephants, seals, tigers, bears, and many others.
Back downtown, we made repeated visits to Powell’s Books, an almost overwhelmingly huge store that is three stories high and occupies an entire city block. It was impossible to take it all in with just one visit, so we returned a few times over the course of our stay. I ended up purchasing an old paperback edition of Last Exit to Brooklyn while my wife bought a German edition of the first volume of Heidegger’s Nietzsche lectures. Sitting right across the street is an impressive Dr. Marten’s store, complete with a huge, lighted boot. On the other side of the street, we encountered a punk band playing a set on the sidewalk one night when we were out and about. This was just down the block from an enormous S&M shop called Spartacus, which we didn’t have the nerve to go into, but whose windows displayed a whole variety of zippered masks, whips, handcuffs, and other painful looking equipment. Portland is certainly weird, and it seems to have something for everyone.
There was also plenty of good food. We ate pizza at McMenamins Crystal Hotel, seafood at Jake’s Famous Crawfish, and doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnuts. It was on a walk down Burnside Street that we observed the long lines of homeless people queing up for dinner at a soup kitchen and prostitutes propositioning their clients near Dante’s Inferno, a music venue just across the street from Voodoo Doughnuts. Entering the doughnut shop, we were greeted by friendly, punk rock workers and a very serious, armed security guard who looked battle-hardened. The doughnuts must be defended!
I imagine that Portland is not everyone’s cup-of-tea, but I enjoyed our stay. The city looks like it has seen more prosperous days, and there certianly were streets and people that we made a point of avoiding while walking around at night. The vacant storefronts, the abundance of armed guards, and the security code protected bathrooms are all signs that the city is not in the best of shape. But Portland has a lot of heart along with all of the grit. Quirky stores, good food, bands playing impromptu sets on the street, and a great public transit system are some of the things that will probably bring me back in the future.
Sadly, Peter Gobets, the editor of the collection and founder of the Zero Project, passed away just days before publication. I first became acquainted with Peter years ago when he sent me a copy of his book,A Guide For the Apoplexed, a manifesto calling for the overthrow of philosophical dualism and monism in favor of a kind of ontology that the author calls “nonism.”
I was honored when Peter invited me to participate in the activities of the Zero Project. He was an enthusiatic, driven, and very funny man. His passion was infectious, and I will miss him.
The cover for The Origin and the Significance of Zero, edited by Peter Gobets and Robert Lawrence Kuhn, forthcoming from Brill Publishers. Included in the collection is my essay. “The Fear of Nothingness.”
In the late 1990s when I was working on my dissertation (which was published in 2003 as Laughing at Nothing), my advisors warned me not to come out as an advocate of nihilism. Back then, “nihilism” was a dirty word, and proclaiming one’s self a nihilist was pretty bad; bad enough to alienate colleagues and threaten job prospects. That has changed in the last couple of decades. Lately nihilism has become respectable, even hip. I’m all for it, of course, but I have to admit that I still harbor some nostalgia for the old days when I was greeted with suspicion, hostility, and even fear because of my nihilist sympathies. I guess that’s the punk in me.
One of the contemporary areas of philosophy in which nihilism has been taken up and unabashedly advocated is in critical race theory. Authors such as Celestin Monga, Calvin L. Warren, and more recently Devon R. Johnson, have used nihilistic perspectives to address the black experience and to offer critiques of a world structured according to antiblack racism. In these works, nihilism is viewed not as a problem to be overcome, but rather as a tool for understanding and pushing back against worldviews that denigrate black people and their outlooks.
Devon R. Johnson’s Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism is a book that champions nihilism as a potentially positive, “responsive attitude” (p. 19) to a rotten world. The author takes Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy as a departure point, building on the distinction between active and passive nihilism, and using it to understand and critique antiblackness while also offering a way toward overcoming racism. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche famously observed the ambiguous nature of nihilism, highlighting how, on the one hand, passive nihilism leads to capitulation and surrender in our confrontation with traditional values, while on the other hand, active nihilism leads to our rebellion against those same sorts of values. In passivity, a nihilist remains uncreative, unwilling to forge new values that may replace the old, decaying ones. But in activity, a nihilist experiences a sense of liberation, enthusiastically smashing old values and potentially erecting new ones in their place.
Johnson champions “black nihilism” in general as a way to fight against what he calls “white nihilism.” All humans, the author claims, find themselves thrown into a world of chaos and confusion. In order to endure this world, we must interpret it, and the traditional European interpretation of reality, which has become the de facto human perspective, places whiteness and blackness into a binary opposition. Whiteness is associated with all that is pure and good, while blackness is associated with impurity and evil: all that is not white. This antiblack viewpoint elevates white people and degrades black people. It is so embedded in human culture that it generally goes unrecognized and unchallenged. Nevertheless, its consequences ripple through our world, resulting in harm and suffering. This passive, weak, unquestioned form of “white nihilism” is something that needs to be challenged and overcome by exerting a strong, active nihilistic force in order to undermine the old, racist, antiblack values, replacing them with new, non-racist values establishing the dignity of all humans, no matter what their color may be. So, according to Johnson, black nihilism, especially strong (active) black nihilism, can serve as a positive force that improves our world by rebelling against and demolishing racist thought patterns. Even weak, passive forms of black nihilism have a positive role to play, he claims, since they at least represent a step toward questioning stale, antiquated, European values.
Johnson is an existentialist, and so he believes that in acting, we all freely choose what it is that we value. It would be bad-faith to think that values exist ready-made in the world, just waiting to be discovered by us. This is why he disagrees with those, like Cornell West, who advocate Christian virtues as a remedy for antiblack racism. West’s philosophy is an example of what Johnson calls weak (passive) optimistic black nihilism since West sees nihilism as a problem that will eventually be overcome with the establishment of God’s kingdom. For West, black struggles in the world are beautifully tragic, and there’s nothing that can be done to alter God’s plan, yet he has faith that in the end, the virtuous will ascend to heaven. On the other hand, Johnson also disagrees with the strong (active) pessimism of authors such as Derrick Bell and Frank Wilderson who focus on the “inevitability of black suffering” (p. 88). These pessimists are nihilists who abandon all hope for the end of racism, yet they continue actively to resist its injustices. According to them, the human world is necessarily structured according to a racist pattern – the opposition between black and white – and ultimately there is nothing that can be done to alleviate black suffering other than bring this world to an end.
Johnson’s own existentialist perspective argues for a new form of “strong black nihilism” (p. 145), which is consonant with the late period of Nietzsche’s philosophy; that period in which he sought a transvaluation of all values. For Johnson, this is what black nihilism should aim toward. It should be instrumental in bringing forth a future in which black people are empowered creatively and joyously to affirm and transform their own perspectives freely, without oppressive, antiblack backlash. The path to this future is paved both by pessimistic and optimistic forms of black nihilism, which, when paired with strength, represent resistance to antiblackness. Ultimately the goal is a kind of black maturity that might transcend both optimism and pessimism. In the end, Johnson looks to the aesthetic potential of hip hop music for an indication of how black nihilism might begin to forge new values, but he concludes that what a future, non-racist world will finally look like “cannot, and should not, be known ahead of time” (p. 190).
I enjoyed this book, and I agree with the overall trajectory of Johnson’s argument. Like him, I do not think that nihilism is a wholly negative phenomenon, and I agree that active nihilism in particular possesses the powerful potential to help us undermine and throw off old, rotten cultural values that threaten to bring us to ruin. Among those values are racist ways of thought, some of which have their roots in the tradition of European philosophy. Along with Johnson, I fully advocate questioning the assumptions underlying this tradition, and I agree that we can and should rebel against assumptions that are false and unfounded. I especially like his observations about how “vulgar” gestures (p. 4) (such as those found in hip hop – and I would add punk) can help us to assertively express our resistance against corrupt social conventions. Giving the middle finger to these aspects of the world can be a positive, active form of nihilistic revolt that opens up the path for something fresh and new to make an appearance. Actually, even if they lead to nothing new at all, I still find such gestures to possess value simply as modes of human expression.
Johnson premises his own argument on an assumption that I would, however, also call into question: I do not believe that the categories “white” and “black” are as absolute or as categorically opposed to one another as he (and other critical race theorists) claim them to be. “White” and “black” are abstractions, and in the world of concrete existence, no human, no culture, and no intellectual tradition is absolutely white or black. For instance, Johnson characterizes the western philosophical tradition as a form of “white nihilism.” And yet, that very tradition includes the perspectives and contributions of many important and influential philosophers of color, including Hypatia of Alexandria, Augustine, Du Bois, Fanon, West, Bell, Wilderson, and Johnson himself. I think it false, then, to characterize western philosophy solely as “white.” I would contend that, in fact, it is not best characterized in racial terms at all, but in terms of its underlying aspirations and goals. The participants in this tradition (whatever color they may be) are best understood in terms of their willingness to enter into a rational, ongoing, generations-long conversation with one another concerning some of the most important and profound questions – including questions about race – that confront all humanity, not just white humanity. Philosophy, while addressing race and being affected by race, is not race specific. It is a tradition that is racially, sexually, and culturally diverse, although it has not always been recognized as such. While I agree with Johnson that it is a nihilistic discipline, I certainly do not think that philosophy is, or ever has been, a solely “white” discipline.
And while I agree that ours is in many ways a racist world, I do not agree that the world is absolutely racist. The Western tradition of philosophy may include many particular thinkers who have expressed racist ideas and sentiments (as Johnson clearly points out is the case with Hegel and Kant), but I don’t agree that this implies that all Western philosophies are therefore also inherently racist. That line of reasoning is guilty of committing a composition fallacy. Individual human beings can be flawed, bigoted, and imperfect; however such people can produce ways of thought that lead beyond their own flaws, bigotry, and imperfections. An example of this is Johnson’s own use of Nietzsche’s philosophy. Although Johnson considers Nietzsche to be “a terrible racist” and a “rat” (p. 78), the analytical structure of Johnson’s own book owes its existence to this very “rat’s” intellectual labors.[*]
We nihilists know that no one is pure or perfect. And yet we can learn from, critique, and stand on the shoulders of our impure predecessors, leaving their racism behind while also embracing, and being thankful for, their worthwhile contributions. Nihilism, as a philosophy, rejects utopias and the claim that we can end all suffering and struggle. The world will never be perfect, since perfection is itself an abstraction against which we judge concrete reality. Yet there is nothing in nihilism that prohibits incremental progress toward a world that better fits our subjectively generated ideals. Even though I personally don’t think that racism will ever be completely eradicated, I can say that in my own world, the world that I actively strive and struggle to cobble together from my own particular, concrete circumstances, racism has no role to play.
Fuck racism.
[*] Johnson doesn’t offer any evidence of Nietzsche’s own racism. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Nietzsche was in some ways racist, but I do know that in some ways he was not. For instance, he had a falling out with his sister over the issue of her anti-Semitism, and in various places Nietzsche writes about his own disgust for anti-Semites. In fact, one of the final notes he wrote as he descended into insanity stated that he wanted to have all anti-Semites shot.
My application for sabbatical during the fall 2024 semester has been approved. During my leave, I will work on revisions to The Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distress, which went out of print in 2023. I tentatively plan to title the revised edition Wondrous Distress: The Path of Philosophy. Once complete, I will reissue it through a new publisher.
What follows is the main substance of my sabbatical proposal. I have not included schedules, the bibliography, or other supplementary materials. Notice the heavy emphasis on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), which is now a central element required in all projects supported by the College of Marin.
Application for Sabbatical Leave: Fall 2024
John Marmysz
Instructor of Philosophy
I am requesting one semester of sabbatical leave in fall 2024. At that time, I will have been a full-time philosophy instructor at the College of Marin for a total of nineteen years. This will be my second, single-semester sabbatical. My previous sabbatical was granted for the spring 2014 semester.
The kind of leave I am requesting is for the purpose of pursuing an independent project. This project involves the revision of my textbook The Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distress (Cengage, 2011).
Description of my proposed independent project, its goals and objectives
The Path of Philosophy: Truth, Wonder, and Distress was written as a guidebook for my philosophy students at the College of Marin. It traces the history of western thought from its beginnings in ancient Greece to contemporary developments in the postmodern world. In this work I demonstrate how philosophy is unique and distinct from religion and science while at the same time showing how all three disciplines are interrelated. The unique essence of philosophy, I argue, lies in its commitment to Truth, its enthusiasm for raising questions, and its willingness to defer final answers to those questions. This essence I call “wondrous distress.” By examining the arguments and contributions of influential thinkers from the ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern periods, I show how philosophical thinking has historically served as a motivation for the pursuit of new developments in science, religion, and philosophy itself.
I published The Path of Philosophy with Cengage Learning in 2011. In 2023, the book went out of print. For my sabbatical project, I shall undertake a revision of the manuscript in preparation for the book’s reissue. This project includes the following goals and objectives:
Revision and update of content: I shall revise the existing chapters and add new chapters to the book highlighting equity and diversity in philosophy. This will be reflected in the treatment of a greater variety of women philosophers and philosophers of color. I also plan to include a new chapter that addresses contemporary developments in philosophy that are relevant to current issues in our culture. (A more detailed breakdown of the anticipated revisions, and a timeline for their completion, appears at the end of this proposal.)
New illustrations: The book in its current form contains original illustrations by Juneko Robinson. I shall once again commission her to create illustrations to accompany the new content.
Correction of errors: The text currently contains a number of typographical mistakes and minor factual errors. I shall correct these for the sake of accuracy and rigor, reflecting my concern for academic excellence, which is also one of the College’s core values.
I plan to share the outcomes of this project with members of the campus community in the following ways:
Students: Upon completion, the revised work will continue to be used as the primary textbook in PHIL 110: Introduction to Philosophy and PHIL 117: History of Philosophy: Modern to Contemporary. I shall post the chapters on the classes’ Canvas sites, which will eliminate textbook cost to those students. There are too many problems with the State’s Open Educational Resource program for me to be comfortable making the text available there. (Issues include: questions about uncompensated academic labor, lack of academic review, quality control, profiteering by companies and venture capitalists, and copyright complications.)[1] Eventually, I plan to seek a peer-reviewed republication of the book with a reputable press in physical form, as I have found that there is a large minority of students at the College of Marin who prefer physical books to electronic texts.
Colleagues: I shall give a presentation on the book’s central concept of “wondrous distress” and its relevance to equity and diversity at an open campus forum. Additionally, I shall write and submit a post-sabbatical report. Eventually, once published in physical form, the book will be available in the campus library.
Benefit to students, program, colleagues
I am the sole philosophy instructor at the College of Marin, teaching all of the philosophy courses we offer. Since I began teaching here, I have grown the philosophy program by introducing new classes, expanding offerings online, working to articulate all philosophy classes with the UC and CSU systems, introducing an AA-T degree program, mentoring and supporting the activities of the vibrant student Philosophy Club, and growing overall student enrollment. Our philosophy students regularly transfer and continue their educations in philosophy (at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels) at universities such as USF, UCB, UCLA, UCD, UCSC, SFSU, SSU, SUNY Stonybrook, and Stanford University (among others). In addition to transfer students, our philosophy classes regularly attract community members seeking cultural enrichment rather than a degree.
Philosophy classes at the College of Marin are consistently popular. We offer 18 units each semester, with all classes either filled and with long waiting lists, or near full enrollment. Summer enrollment in philosophy classes has exploded in the last few years, and as a result, three sections of PHIL 110: Introduction to Philosophy are now offered each summer, representing enrollment of around 90 students.
With this background in mind, my proposed sabbatical project offers the following benefits to students, the program, and my colleagues:
Student success: The primary textbook in PHIL 110: Introduction to Philosophy and PHIL 117: History of Philosophy: Modern to Contemporary is The Path of Philosophy. Each academic year (including the summer session) the collective enrollment in these classes alone is approximately 300 students. Revising and updating the textbook articulates with the mission of the College of Marin by serving the needs of these students, improving their philosophy education and promoting their success in these classes. This in turn benefits those who seek the AA-T degree in philosophy while preparing them for transfer and continued success in four-year philosophy programs at other colleges and universities. It also serves those in our community who seek a high-quality introduction to the discipline of philosophy but who are not interested in a degree.
As philosophy students take other classes at the College of Marin – or as they earn their degrees, graduate, transfer to four-year institutions, and enter the workforce – the lessons that they have learned about philosophical thought will, I hope, be taught by them to others on and off of our campus. It is a shame that philosophy is increasingly being marginalized in higher education in general, and at the College of Marin specifically. The California State Legislature has reduced the number of philosophy classes that count toward fulfillment of GE requirements, as well as (astonishingly) eliminating Logic as a class that meets the Critical Thinking requirement for graduation.[2] At the College of Marin, I have for years vainly advocated for the hiring of another philosophy instructor to help support our AA-T degree program, but have repeatedly been rebuffed. It feels as if the discipline I love is increasingly being devalued by those in power. There seems to be a stereotype that philosophy is too abstract to have any real-world application. Many people in positions of power (on both the right and the left) seem to think that philosophers are wishy-washy or that they weaken our political confidence and resolve. The results of my sabbatical project will, I hope, help to refine a picture of philosophy that pushes against these falsehoods and that reaffirms philosophy as one of the most important fields that a college can offer. In promoting “wondrous distress,” philosophy teaches us to remain logical, inclusive, and open to what we don’t know so that we may strive without end to learn more about ourselves and the world of which we are a part. This is a message beneficial not just to philosophy students, but also to my colleagues and the staff at the College of Marin. It is also a message that I think today’s world needs to hear, perhaps more than ever.
Academic excellence and innovation: Revising and updating The Path of Philosophy articulates with the College of Marin’s commitment to academic excellence and innovation. The textbook is already a work of original scholarship insofar as it is the culmination of years of study, research, and reflection. I have used this textbook in the classroom at the College of Marin for more than thirteen years. Over that period of time I have discovered errors that need correction, topics that need further articulation, and I have been exposed to new, relevant research that has led me to rethink some of the interpretations offered in the book. During this time, I have also been introduced to new issues and thinkers that deserve inclusion in the text. Revising and updating the book so that its contents are up to date, accurate, and rigorous would reflect the college’s commitment to supporting academic excellence and innovation.
Collaboration, open communication, and critical thinking: Philosophy is a discipline that teaches the importance of logic and critical thinking, the importance of questioning ideological assumptions, and the need unceasingly to engage with others in open conversation and the exchange of ideas. In these ways, it is a discipline that embodies the values of collaboration and open communication, which are among the core values of the College of Marin. Many of the revisions and improvements that I plan to make have been prompted by conversations with students, colleagues, and staff. They are a concretization of the open, rational, and ongoing process that is involved in teaching about, and rethinking the details of, my discipline over the last decade or so. The product of this sabbatical, thus, will in large part be inspired and made possible by the atmosphere of collegiality here at the College of Marin. As I carry on with its use in the classroom, this text will continue to transmit those same values to future philosophy students.
Equity and diversity: Equity and diversity are at the forefront of everyone’s minds these days. One of the goals I will pursue while revising The Path of Philosophy is to integrate a more diverse array of underrepresented thinkers into the book’s narrative. Presently, there are two women philosophers who appear: Hannah Arendt and Simone De Beauvior. In the revision I plan to address the contributions of many other women philosophers as well as philosophers of color including: Hypatia of Alexandria, Mary Wollstonecraft, Hildegard of Bingen, Luce Irigary, Julia Kristeva, Angela Davis, W.E.B Dubois, Yukio Mishima, Nishitani Keji, Kitaro Nishida, Frantz Fanon, Cornell West, Frank Wilderson, Jorge Gracia, George Yancy and others. The inclusion of these thinkers will not only increase the ethnic and sexual diversity of the philosophers represented, but it will hopefully also be inspiring to the widely diverse population of students at the College of Marin who will see themselves reflected in the pages of the book.
Featuring a more diverse selection of philosophers in this text goes beyond a concern for the mere inclusion of minority voices. The intent is to offer a fuller and more accurate treatment of the rich and varied perspectives that have been, and that continue to be, brought to bear on the eternal and indestructible philosophical questions. The addition of underrepresented thinkers, thus, is not an exercise in mere tokenism, but represents an attempt to offer a more sophisticated, fine-tuned, and truer account of the viewpoints that have come to define the history of philosophy.
Minority thinkers – like all philosophers – are part of a tradition that involves the ongoing logical discussion, critique, and development of ideas. For instance, to understand the ideas of Cornell West, it is necessary to understand a history of thought influenced by Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and Nietzsche. West is inspired by the insights of past thinkers to diagnose and critique current manifestations of racism in western culture, and his conclusions on these matters differ from other black scholars like Calvin Warren, who, building on the thought of Martin Heidegger, derives different, and much more pessimistic conclusions. Including thinkers such as these in the narrative helps to demonstrate how relevant philosophy is to contemporary cultural debates, and (perhaps even more importantly) shows that we need not agree with one another in order to engage in reasoned, logical, discussion about important issues. This is, I think, an empowering message, helping students to understand that disagreement need not be hostile. It can be a useful tool helping us to unite and to engage in conversation with those from whom we differ. This is the very essence of real diversity and inclusion: respecting the ideas and thoughts of those different from us.
Philosophy is not about coming to final, unquestionable conclusions. It is about the ongoing openness of thought. This is a tradition that teaches us to respect one another as intelligent, rational beings. As such, it energizes us all to engage with our culture and our communities while avoiding overconfidence and zealotry. Philosophy should make us more uncertain, getting us to interrogate our own assumptions and the assumptions of others. The rich body of thought produced by philosophers from various minority communities enhances this tradition by challenging many of the unrecognized assumptions we take for granted and by exposing us to a greater variety of perspectives.
Enhancement and improvement of my teaching and professional competence
Currency in the field: As the only full-time philosophy instructor on campus, it is absolutely imperative that I remain current in my field. A revision of The Path of Philosophy gives me the opportunity to do research that updates and improves the text, bringing it up to date with contemporary developments in philosophy, thus enhancing and improving my own expertise in the subject and in turn contributing to the educational excellence of the philosophy classes offered at the College of Marin.
While it is impossible to predict the exact ways in which my own understanding of these philosophers will be improved in the course of researching and revising the textbook, I can say that by becoming acquainted with a more diverse array of thinkers and how their work is connected to the thousand-years-long history of philosophical thought in the west, the richness and fullness of my understanding of philosophy (a field to which I have devoted my life) cannot help but expand and improve. In turn, this richer and fuller understanding will be conveyed to the students in my classes, improving the quality of their educations and, I hope, their lives as well.
Cultural currency: Additionally, it is important that I continue to develop my ability to relate the sometimes very abstract ideas in philosophy to concrete social and cultural phenomena. A revision of the text gives me the chance to explore and to demonstrate the relevance of philosophy to contemporary cultural controversies and debates related to racism, sexism, homophobia, right- and left-wing extremism, and the growth of ideology. An update of the book will enhance my own cultural currency, thus improving my ability to teach today’s students and appeal to their diverse backgrounds and interests.
Conclusion
I am very excited about this proposed sabbatical project and the benefits it will bring to myself, the students at the College of Marin, and to the District. In summation, the goals and outcomes I anticipate from this sabbatical project are:
revision and updating of textbook content, including increased emphasis on equity and diversity
commission of new, original illustrations
correction of typographical and minor factual errors
increased competence in my own field concerning contemporary developments in philosophy
increased currency and familiarity with the concrete applications of philosophy to cultural issues
enhancement and improvement of the quality of the philosophy classes at the College of Marin and of my teaching
Thank you for considering this proposal. I eagerly look forward to your decision.
I turned 59 in December 2023. In 2024 I enter my 60th year. It was my sister who gleefully reminded me of this, with the aside that she did not feel old until she hit 60. Up until then she tells me she didn’t think much about her age. I, on the other hand, already feel mine. I can’t pinpoint a particular moment when this happened, but over the course of the last decade my physical stamina and motivation have started to wane just as I struggle to come to terms with the realities that lurk ever more imminently on the horizon. I’ve begun to plan for retirement and to worry what it will be like as I enter the twilight years of life. I have intrusive thoughts about the death of my loved ones, and I increasingly find myself imagining the possible scenarios of my own decrepitude and demise. I picture sitting in the doctor’s office and getting the news that tells me how it will all end. I picture being alone in an old folk’s home. I picture the worst.
My body is a logbook of the passing years. I started losing my hair when I was young, so I don’t really associate baldness with growing old. If anything, it feels like a remaining symbol of past vitality and defiance. I began shaving my head in my 20s, and it has been a stable part of my style for decades. Now, however, there is less hair to shave. Along with this, there is my aging skin, the wrinkles, and the changing shape of my body. On that skin and on that body there is an accumulation of scars reminding me of the accidents, misadventures, fist fights, and other events that that have left their lasting, yet fading marks; reminders of youthfulness now also faded. Tattoos from my 20s and 30s fade along with the scars. In time, my whole body will fade away.
Those are the gloomy thoughts. But there are also positive ones only made possible by reaching this age. I have a wonderful, more than 40-year-long relationship with my wife, who I have been with since we were teenagers, so I feel loved. Together we live the sort of life that suits us, pursuing projects we enjoy, traveling, and doing silly things that many of our friends with more responsibilities can’t do. And I feel loved by those friends; people I have known since childhood and with whom I share memories of the events that left the scars mentioned above. I have time to ride my motorcycle and to sing in a band. I have time to read, think, and write.
And I am settling into feeling like a senior faculty member at school. I have tenure and can pick and choose what I teach and how I spend my time on campus. I can avoid the people that annoy me, the politics that bore me, and the committees that are a waste of time. I long ago abandoned the idea that I have a teacher’s image to uphold, and even though I may sometimes provoke raised eyebrows from my peers, college administrators, and the campus police, I do feel as if I can be my authentic self at work. Those are pretty good things.
Going through this litany of the good and the bad reminds me a bit of Marcus Aurelias, who began his book Meditations with a similar list of things that he disliked and things he was thankful for. Similar to him, I realize that there are some things (such as aging and death) that I can’t really do anything about, while there are other things (such as love, work, friendship, and fun) that I can do something about. This calls to mind the ancient wisdom of the Stoics as well as the modern wisdom of the Existentialists: focus attention on what is under your control so that life might become worth living. This is also the lesson that I draw from my own nihilistic philosophy. In the end, nothing really matters and yet in this life we have to do something. Even deciding that you are going to do nothing requires that you decide what “doing nothing” consists of. If my life here is just a brief blip on the screen of Being, then I want to do whatever it is that I find – for whatever reason – fulfilling. Life doesn’t last, but then neither do beautiful flowers, and the reason we cultivate flowers that are destined to die is precisely so that we can enjoy them while they are in bloom. Their ephemerality is what makes them more treasured than plastic ones. Likewise, the preciousness of human life is connected to the fact that it doesn’t last indefinitely. We are beings-toward-death. If we weren’t, we would be something other than human, and whatever that would be, it would be no less meaningless, but perhaps less magnificent, in the cosmic scheme of things.
I understand why some people view the nihilist void as depressing, but in my most cheerful moments I actually find it liberating. It liberates me from feeling ensnared in the artificial expectations and the illusory ideals of others. It frees me to pursue my own illusions.
So, in this, my 60th year, I plan not to waste time on things that don’t bring some sense of fulfillment. I have laid the groundwork for projects that will occupy my time and energy in 2024, and so long as I don’t die before the end of the year, my attention and efforts will be focused on a handful of activities, including my sabbatical project, reading, reflection, motorcycle riding, and being with loved ones. And if I do die this year, then at least I won’t be here to worry about it anymore.
Here are a couple of short, bite-sized, four minute video selections from my interview with Fidias Panayiotou. The first focuses on being-toward-death while the second focuses on living a nihilist’s life.
The final chapter of Afropessimism brought me to tears, and in doing so it may also have undermined the thesis developed throughout the rest of the book. Perhaps this was the intent. I’m still thinking it all through. I’m not sure whether the author’s purpose was to develop an objective ontology of racial relations or whether his purpose was to develop a subjective phenomenology of his own inner struggles with racial identity. If his goal was the former, then the book is a fascinating failure. If the latter, it is a heart-rending success. In either case, it is an uncomfortably captivating read.
Afropessimism is part autobiography, part psychoanalytical reflection, and part philosophical ontology. The author, Frank Wilderson, a professor of African American studies at UC Irvine, tells his own story of growing up in a Black, upper middle-class Minneapolis family while struggling with his identity, drugs, mental health, and larger political and philosophical issues related to race. His mother and father were successful academics – professors at the University of Minneapolis – involved in social activism and liberal causes. Wilderson recounts, in a series of fragmented yet temporally sequential events, how he rebelled against their liberal world-view, drifting into radicalism first as a Marxist and then as an Afropessimist: a philosophical position holding that there is no hope for any sort of positive change in the world of race relations. The broad trajectory of this story charts his awakening to the fact that nothing will ever change between Blacks and non-Blacks precisely because in this world, blackness is a necessary antithesis to whiteness, serving to define what it means to be human. White is human while Black is non-human. The only possibility for changing this situation, he claims, lies in ending this world.
Wilderson’s Afropessimist philosophy is articulated in bits and pieces, developing into something like a coherent whole toward the end of the book. While citing influences such as Marx, Gramsci, and Fanon, what really struck me was the deeply Hegelian nature of Wilderson’s thought process. The world we inhabit, he claims, is premised on a fundamental dialectical opposition between two points of reference: White and Black (terms that he himself capitalizes). White is the ideal and Black is the antithesis of this ideal. Whites and Blacks, he claims, are like “cats and dogs”; a strange analogy, since cats and dogs are not really the antithesis of one another. There is no necessary conceptual connection between them, as you can understand what a cat is without knowing what a dog is, and vice versa. But perhaps what the author is suggesting is that like cats and dogs, Whites and Blacks have an ingrained suspicion or hostility toward one another. In any case, Wilderson asserts that while “White” defines everything that is human, “Black” defines everything that is the opposite of human. His startling conclusion is that Blacks are not human at all, and yet they are a necessary presence in this world against which non-Blacks must define and orient themselves. All of the violence and hatred directed against Blacks buttresses the current human, social order. Echoing Hegel’s ontological dialectic from The Phenomenology of Geist, Wilderson accounts for the very structure and unfolding of our human world through the opposition of Master (White) and Slave (Black). It is this very opposition that opens up the space within which humanity operates. “There is no world without Blacks” (p. 40).
According to Wilderson, what this state of affairs implies is that Blacks stand alone and unique, apart from everyone else in the world. “The Black psyche emerges within a context of structural or paradigmatic violence that cannot be analogized with the emergence of White or non-Black psyches” (p. 247). So it is that Asian, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Feminist, and mixed-race struggles are fundamentally different from the struggles of Blacks, and in fact are dependent upon the “social death” (p. 248) of Black people. All non-Black people are still human to the degree that they emulate whiteness and reject blackness. They still have a place and a stake in the world while Black people have no place and no stake in the world whatsoever. Blackness is pure absence, a nothingness filling Whites and non-Blacks with revulsion and horror. But it is an absence structurally necessary for the present order of things to operate.
These are, obviously, very provocative and controversial claims, and the evidence Wilderson provides to buttress his position comes from personal autobiography. He remembers, as a child, his own desire to see a Black youth stab a White community worker; he recounts how his father was racially insulted by a group of Native Americans that he was trying to help; he remembers a Palestinian acquaintance who described the humiliation of being searched by a Black Jew as opposed to a non-Black Jew; he recounts later experiences at an academic conference where White liberal feminists expressed horror and hostility toward his Afropessimist philosophy; near the end of the book he recalls the racism he encountered working as a waiter and while serving with the ANC in South Africa. Even those experiences that, to the reader, seem like positive instances of interracial exchange, friendliness, and love are offered as examples of the unbridgeable gap between White and Black: his friendly conversation with an Arab cab driver and the White couple he shares a ride with in Berkeley (in which he feels latent fear and hostility); his marriage to a White woman (a relationship in which he says he remains a slave while his wife remains the master). Some of the experiences that the author reports are flat-out bizarre, like when he was a 20-something living with his girlfriend in an apartment that he was convinced was being contaminated with nuclear radiation by a White neighbor.
Clearly, the autobiographical evidence Wilderson offers in support of his thesis is not adequate to establish his conclusion. There is a huge gap between his personal experiences with anti-Black racism and his claim that, structurally, our world is premised on an ontological division between White and Black that relegates all Blacks to “social death.” And yet, upon finishing the book, I felt there was a truth that Wilderson had articulated in this work. I do think it is reasonable to observe that the suffering of Black people is of a unique sort, and that it differs in nature from the suffering and struggles of other people. The legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism that exists in the US hangs like a cloud over our own culture, casting its cold shadow on interracial relations. In the US, the “one drop” rule (also known as hypodescent) held that if people had even “one drop” of Black blood in their veins, they were to be considered Black. No matter how irrational this may be (after all, how does one measure “one drop of Black blood”?) it has had an impact on how we think about and how we perceive race. A person with one Black parent and one non-Black parent is commonly perceived as Black, categorized as a minority among the majority of the population. This perception does often have the effect, as Wilderson suggests, of casting our world as a place where everyone is either Black or White. We have been wounded by this history of racism and racialized violence, and that wound has not healed, as is all too clear from contemporary events. And I agree with the author that giving expression to feelings of hopelessness and rage concerning this cultural situation is worthwhile, healthy, and important, regardless of how “negative” it might all sound.
What I disagree with is that the divide between White and Black is as unbridgeable as he believes it to be. It is the unremittingly pessimistic stance of Afropessimism that I find unrealistic. My own evidence for this is also personal. I have spent most of my life in love, and in a relationship, with an Afro-Asian woman. Additionally, many of the most important people in my life – among them family members, friends, and students – are of color. These personal experiences alone make me question Wilderson’s unequivocal opposition between Black and White. But his overly pessimistic standpoint is also disrupted, I think, by my own emotional reaction to the book’s final chapter. In this, which strikes me as the most honest part of the work, Wilderson describes his mother’s descent into dementia and her eventual death. His grief over her passing resonated seamlessly with my own experience with my mother’s passing many years ago. I shed tears as I read this closing section, feeling united in heartache with the author, but not at all separated by race. The fact that his mother was a Black American woman and that my mother was a White Scottish woman was completely irrelevant to my response. Our suffering was the of the same sort: the purely human sadness of a son losing his mother.
This is what makes me think that the correct way to approach Afropessimism may not be as an objective and universal ontology of the relationship between Blacks and Whites, but as a subjective account of the effect that the author’s personal struggles have had on his own psychological and phenomenological processing of his world. This reading is encouraged by the fact that Wilderson begins and ends the book with an account of his nervous breakdown while attending UC Berkeley. From the very start, the scene is set for readers to consider what contributed to this breakdown.
In diagonising his mental struggles, Wilderson highlights the ugliness of racism, but there is also an equally important thread addressing the ongoing friction between the author and his parents. Wilderson writes of a life-long resentment against his mother and father. Their liberal politics and confidence in the American way of life aggravate and anger him. And yet, as the story moves forward, he ends up uncomfortably occupying the same sort of valued position within the world as did his parents. He becomes a respected academic at a public university, the winner of various literary awards and an NEA Fellow. Could the pessimism he expresses about the racial fate of the world possibly be connected to his own participation in the very kind of mainstream life he grew up resenting? There is also the detail, never really deeply explored, that the two romantic relationships he writes about the most are with women (one Black and one White) much older than him in age. When this detail is coupled with his explicit resentment toward his mother and with the final conclusion in which he grieves her death, a psychological drama deeper that race seems to be playing out. Lest you think it unfair that I make these observations, I would point out that Wilderson himself is influenced by, and in his book freely applies, psychoanalytic principles to his analysis of culture and race. Rather than detracting from its value, I feel that bringing this perspective to bear actually deepens the humanity of his work. Looking at it this way, Afropressimism is not a book about a non-human (as Wilderson refers to himself and all Blacks), it is a book about a deeply sensitive and wounded human being with whom readers of any color can sympathize.
If, on the other hand, it is read as an objective description of the ontological structures underling the relationships between all Blacks and Whites, Afropessimism ends up essentializing race, erecting absolute “Whiteness” and absolute “Blackness” as the pillars holding up the entire human world. But who is absolutely White? And who is absolutely Black? Aren’t these antithetical absolutes simply Hegelian abstractions with no real, concrete exemplars? If, as Wilderson writes, all mixed-race people are non-Black, and if no one is absolutely White or absolutely Black, then isn’t the real, concrete world that we actually inhabit populated entirely by non-Black people?
That would mean that in reality there is no such thing as a purely White or a Black person at all, which, by the way, is just fine with me.
The Nihilist Void 