0

Existentialism

and

Nihilism:

Reflections

from

the

Perennialist Perspective
Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah
Rajbag Colony, Nagbal, Ganderbal, Kashmir,191201
marooof123@yahoo.com
9419546538

Abstract
Nihilism as appropriated in existentialist-absurdist thought appears as a stubborn problem and
consequent absurdism of such writers as Camus and Beckett follows which is a very unsatisfactory
position from a philosophical or metaphysical viewpoint. Perennialist perspective offers an
alternative approach to tackle the problem of nihilism and critique existentialist thought and its
appropriation for absurdist response. The present paper applies perennialist critique to absurdist
thesis and points out limitations of finitistic immanentist existentialist thought that informs
absurdist philosophy.

Existentialism

and

Nihilism:

Reflections

from

the

Perennialist Perspective
Absurdism that follows the alleged absence or death of God the dominant myth of
modern age is a philosophical position defended with great energy by Camus and presented with
all its horror by Beckett though there are important differences between Camus and Beckett.
Beckett doesnt find any meaning in the world of phenomena except a negative one which states
that everything decays and every phenomenon dissolves and gets noughted because its reality is
voidnesss. But absurdity of all actions goads one to go within and see the still centre of existence.
However this self, this unattainable essence itself is not something finding which man would
eternally rest and forgive nature all its pain. Camus, on the other hand, retains enough faith in man
and meaning of his existence and finds so much to affirm and celebrate despite mortality of
everything on earth to seek for transcendence and meaning outside it or to turn ascetically inwards.
Absurdism has been approached from existentialist viewpoint. Existentialism
distinguishes itself from all previous essentialist idealist philosophies that recognize
metaphysical/ mystical principles. Being devoid of metaphysical and mystical principles
existentialism ended in nihilistic subjectivism and irrational tendencies which find full expression
in the fragmented and chaotic works of Samuel Beckett.
The foremost perennialist thinker Schuon has singled out Kierkegaard for his criticism.
His criticism of Kierkegaard applies with equal force on major figures of existentialism and on
Camus subjectivism, absurdism, sentimentalism and anthropocentrism and these are the major
points of criticism against the existentialists.
In what does constitute the error of modern mentality that brings it to its nihilistic
impasse? This is a complex problem needing detailed treatment. However we will focus on the
thought currents that inform our selected writers. Schuon in his Letter on Existentialism
identifies and criticize foundational errors of this thought current that culminates in Camus and
Beckett. Referring to Kierkegaard he says (and this applies to other existentialists and absurdists)
that he rejects organized Christianity and hence traditional theology which upholds it, and

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he does so in favour of a subjectivism which is not intellectual (for in that case he would
have acknowledged objective metaphysics whose mode of expression perforce is rational
and abstract) but voluntaristic and sentimental; whence comes his subjectivistic or
individualistic moralism, his insistence on thinking existentially, his nullity from the
point of view of the real and efficacious spirituality which saves. Heideggers concept of
anguish he finds completely antimetaphysical and hysterical. (Schuon, 2005: 493).

Having in mind Kierkegaard and others who passionately oppose life to thought he asks
What can be said of a philosopher who thinks blithely about the insincerity, or the mediocrity, of
thought, as such. By blithely he means without being aware of contradiction, without taking the
trouble to reflect a little, without manifesting a modicum of objectivity (Schuon, 2005: 493).
Because existentialists lack objective truth which is metaphysically integral their theories and their
moral attitudes count for nothing. Existentialism is a pernicious substitute for intellective
contemplation and sanctity. If the existentialists so imbued with sincerism were really sincere,
they would be saints or heroes and leave rationality in peace (Schuon, 2005: 495). According to
Schuon existentialism has no right to criticize the abuse of rationality whose nature it doesnt even
perceive (Schuon, 2000: 493). Schuon finds Kierkegaard quite ignorant of the notion of Intellect.
Existentialists league with subrational forces after denying reason its connection with the
transcendental Intellect.
Existentialism in all its forms (existential, scientific, religious or atheistic) affirms the
individuality of an individual as the end and beginning of everything. Absurdism, as a movement,
rejected traditional and secularist progressivist accounts of the fate of man. It expressed the
condition of individual as it is, not as it should be. Man, according to absurdists, is in eternal exile,
damned to suffer forever without ever knowing why and true heroism is to suffer without asking
for why one should suffer. He can not know because there is nothing to know. What can be known
is the limited knowledge that one gets through the senses and reflects in the time and space bound
mind. Man in flesh and blood (which alone describes man as he really is) suffers and that alone is
certain.

He

knows

nothing

about

his

origin

and

end

and

the

accounts

of

salvation/emancipation/progress are all incredible. He has always found himself imprisoned in the
mud of which he is made to witness the never ending drama of life, decay and ultimately death. He
is damned to taste the tragedy of unfulfilled ambitions alone without any savior. All the grandnarratives of human history fail to illumine the dark mystery of existence and account for useless

3
suffering. All that an individual can do is to suffer with nausea, live in anxiety, play games to pass
time, commit suicide as an act of mans true freedom or laugh at the absurdity of everything, curse
heavens, indulge in various methods of escaping time and self. Accordingly absurdism, as the cry
of individuality, rejected all spiritual authority in the true sense of the word, authority originating
in the supra-human order, as well as any traditional organization based essentially upon such
authority.
Individualism, rationalism, humanism and empiricism are all in the background of
absurdist outlook. Because individual doesnt count in nature and because reason fails to deliver
and comprehend the irrational and dark existence and because as a humanist one needs to deny any
suprahuman source of meaning and because empiricism excludes supraphenomenal or
transcendence by definition absurdist thesis emerges quite clearly.
Existentialism presumes to be humanistic. It is individualistic, rationalistic (though only
to begin with as it finds rationalism inadequate but that doesnt make it turn to suprrational and
supraindividual faculties and has typical rationalistic prejudices against), secular and man
(terrestrial man) centred. Shahzad Qaiser rightly observes in this connection:
humanistic culture, in so far as it functions as an ideological and therefore as a religion, consists
in being unaware of three things: Firstly, of what God is, because it does not grant primacy to
Him; secondly, of what Man is, because it puts him in the place of God; thirdly, of what the
meaning of life is, because this culture limits itself to playing with evanescent things and to
plunging into them with criminal unconsciousness. In a word there is nothing more inhuman
than humanism [because] one can not improve man by being content with the surface while
destroying the foundations (Qaisar, 1998: 96)

Qaisars further observations about existentialism deserve to be quoted:

The essential limitation of all the existentialist thinkers, in the ultimate analysis, was
their succumbing to human finitude the theistic, atheistic and agnostic existentialists
inflated the role of finitude by the use of such expressions as intensified finiteness;
radical finiteness; enhanced finiteness; essentially finite; finitism; logos of finite
objectivity; immanent transcendence so on and so forth (Qaiser, 1998: 96).

Rejecting the possibility of knowing truth, of knowing and accessing the Real is the hallmark of
absurdism. Mystical and religious position is the exact negation of this standpoint. Absurdism is
simply a logical development of certain long standing Western assumptions and convictions. In
this connection an observation by William Haas seems quite relevant. William S Haas traces the
roots of the problem of the western mind to the following conviction:

Wisdom at any level is based on and is contained in conceptual thought, and its
existence depends on the clarity of its formulations...
Ignoring to the utmost possible degree the concept as the vehicle of
philosophic thought, the East attempts to establish immediate contact with the Real.
This communion and what derives from it is, to the man of East Wisdom (Haas, 1953:
159).

In other words, as Haas elaborates further, the necessary thesis of the West is that
consciousness without content is inconceivable. This is confirmed by the idea of metaphysics and
the analogous idea of science that consciousness must eventually become its own object. The
Eastern thesis, on the contrary, is that the very essence of consciousness is to be free from any
object.
Camus states that absurdism must assume there to be no supernatural. So when such
possibilities as transcendence, intellectual intuition and wisdom are denied in the existing man,
the center of mans being (God) is also denied and then what man is left with is his own selfimprisoned consciousness of himself in the world of immanence. Albert Camus suggests that the
only option man is left with is to revolt. He writes that the rebel is a man who is determined on
creating a human situation where all the answers are human. But the reasonable question that
almost all the absurdists and existentialists ask is how can and why should one live when one
already knows the futility and meaninglessness of all living, when there is no heroism left, when
no heaven is left to be won because there is no heaven; when all human endeavor is Sisyphean. A
hero who fights for nothing, who gets only ashes at the end of the day doesnt deserve to be called
a hero. The absurd hero is indeed absurd a caricature of traditional hero, martyr of nothingness.
He revolts against the empty sky and tosses his head against the mountains he perceives as alien.

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Consequently there can be no salvation but revolt. So cut from his vertical dimension (heaven) the
post-modern absurd man plunges himself into meaninglessness and despair.
However this is not to say that the absurdists out rightly reject any possible
transcendence. Their sincerism holds true to the apparent contingent and relative world. What
we know with certainty is our own uncertainty that we can not/ do not know certainly. The journey
of becoming is quite clearly from nowhere to nowhere. We are born and die without knowing
Why. This is the conclusion that is drawn and experienced by those who limit all knowledge to
human reason and to subjective individualism alone. This subjective limiting of the Truth (with all
sincerity) is the real tragedy of all absurdists. Men of true wisdom and spirituality of all ages and
traditions share the absurdist premises that the immanent world is meaningless and tragic in all its
forms and can be truly made meaningful with reference to transcendence (by denying
transcendence the absurdist denies the possibility of meaning as well). Buddha identified the whole
samsaric life with dukkha. Buddhas fire sermon shows it so clearly. All the three Semitic
religions emphasize the fallen state of mans consciousness. Man was created in trouble as the
Quran notes. In short all suffer in all forms for no apparent fault of theirs. Death levels all and the
suffering was useless.
Absurdists dont find any reason for anything. And those things which show something
is wrong with man such as sin, guilt and suffering lead them to believe that the universe is
unreasonable. The difficulties in traditional theodicy make a very strong case against God and his
creation and onus doesnt fall on man. Believing terrestrial man to be the measure of everything
and his earthly happiness as the summum bonum of life absurdists are driven to revolt against the
impersonal suprarational order of the world that takes almost no heed of individual and his dreams
and desires. Approaching the problem of existence by means of his individual reason alone
absurdists failing in this attempt as they must from the perspective of mystical traditions the
absurdist suffers from inalienable alienation.
All religions, traditional philosophies and mystical traditions are based on the
possibility of knowing truth and thus assert that real corresponds not to something absurd and
meaningless though from human, all-too-human perspective one may find the Ultimate Reality of
which religions talk as suprarational and loosely absurd. However the absurd is irrational rather
than suprarational. Religion/mysticism talks about mystery of existence. Absurdists too talk about
it but consolations are different in the two cases. Both religion and absurdism are skeptical of

6
reasons power to comprehend the mystery of existence. However religion cracks the mystery by
positing the eye of the heart which sees the essences. What Nietzsche says is that it is not that we
dont know the truth but we know it and it is depressing. Religions assert that truth makes one free
and dont care if it is not consoling. It is man who needs consolation and truth has nothing to do
with consolation. However religions assert that we are in good and safe hands and need to be
grateful for that, and that the life of Spirit is the life of peace. Sophists in opposing our access to
truth opposed our final beatitude and peace which once realized give a lie to absurdist thesis.
Absurdist thesis is something absolutely heterodox if we accept universal orthodoxy of faiths and
traditional philosophies and mysticism(s). It amounts to negation of everything that makes the
world endurable and justifies it on this or that account. Gorgias of Leontinis famous remark that
Nothing exists! is absurdist nihilist claim par excellence. Intelligence is left unaccounted and so
are the experiences of beauty and goodness in absurdism. Nothing matters, nothing justifies
anything. Order, purpose, design and evidence of intelligence are to be explained away. But even
explanations have no power. Nothing can be explained. We are here on a darkling plane. Nothing
lights our darkness. The universe is gratuitous.
Absurdism is a consequence of nihilism. While nihilism is often discussed in terms of
extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the twentieth century it has been associated with the
belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without
meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself all action, suffering, and feeling-is ultimately senseless and empty.
There is a great deal of confusion and disagreement on what qualifies as nihilism. There
is a lot of loose talk regarding the use of the term. Buddhism has been dubbed as nihilistic by many
respected authorities. Hinduism is also sometimes labeled as nihilistic. Schopenhauer is also
designated so. It is easy to refute the charge of nihilism on any religious/mystical tradition.
However it is difficult to refute this charge when labeled on almost all modern philosophical
thought currents as denial of transcendence or impoverished view of the same is characteristic of
them. Modernity and postmodernity in fact the whole of post-Enlightenment thought implicitly
and explicitly nihilist. Nietzsche recognized this in his declaration that modernity has murdered
God and in the absence of him a great crisis of devaluation of values or nihilism is to be reckoned
with. Modern thought encounters nihilism at almost every plane and it is a major problem for it.
Major movements in modern thought are directed at finding a solution or attempt at coping with

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this problem. It is almost universally recognized that nihilism is a problem and not solution to any
problem. There can be no joyous nihilism though some critics such as Cottingham so portrayed
Nietzschean nihilism. Nietzsche did not want to be a nihilist and in fact viewed this movement as a
sign of resignation, passivity, decadence and degeneration, and tried to overcome it by not going
back but by breaking through and going beyond it.
Nihilism is writ large in the outlook of modern man who thinks that it has come of age
after removing or distancing the only hurdle in the way of freedom God. Champions of atheistic
existentialism know this God and not the God of traditions who grounds freedom and is Freedom.
Exile, alienation, angst, discontent, and many other negative epithets characterize modern nihilistic
atmosphere. As Camus describes modern nihilism:
A nihilist is not someone who believes in nothing, but someone who does not believe in
what he seesNihilism, whether manifested in religion or in socialist preachings, is the
logical conclusion of our so-called superior values. The free mind will reject these
values and denounce the illusions on which they are built, the bargaining that they
imply, and the crime that they commit in preventing the lucid intelligence from
accomplishing its mission: of transforming passive nihilism into active nihilism.
In this world rid of God and of moral idols, man is now alone and without a
masterThis unbridled freedom put him among the ranks of those of whom he himself
said that they suffered a new form of anguish and a new form of happiness. But, at the
beginning, it is only anguish which makes him cry out: Alas, grant me madnessBy
being above the law, I am the most outcast of all outcasts. He, who cannot stand his
ground above the law, must find another law or take refuge in madness. Form the
moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes responsible
for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer in
life. It is to himself and himself alone, that he returns in order to find law and order.
Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the nostalgia without
any aim, the most painful, the most heart-breaking question, that of the heat which
asks itself: where can I feel at home? (Camus, 1953:61-62).

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We can see modern absurdism as a species of nihilism and accordingly treat it. Modern
absurdism appears to be a particular variant of nihilism and skepticism. Skepticism is of
ancient origin and absurdist conclusion cant be escaped by skeptics, ancient and modern. Both
nihilism and absurdism however dont believe in human reasons power to unveil the dark
mystery of existence. However both are great rationalists. The irrational is there but needs to be
taken as irrational, absurd, inhuman and something which ideally should not have been thus.
Man knows nothing about the ultimate issues and cant know as long as human reason is
trusted, intellect denied, grand metaphysical structures laughed away. Absurdism is the
consequence of excessive faith in reason which betrays its pretensions. In the East there is not
this credulity towards claims and pretensions of reason and thus absurdism didnt develop as a
consequence. Faith in reason, human self and its autonomy and separation are prerequisites for
belief in the absurd. Both are absent in the traditional view. In fact nothing is more absurd than
the belief in reason and declaring that absurd which escapes its tracking. Christianity dissolves
the absurd by emphasizing nonrational modes of encountering and trusting reality. One can
declare anything as absurd only in the light of any prior apprehension of meaning or standard
of meaning. Wherefrom does one get the certainty of laws of reason and logic? In a broader
sense all nonidealistic philosophies and all those systems of thought that reject theological
picture as well as mystical picture are more or less absurdist. As Nietzsche said the death of
God or disbelief in God implies nihilism and therefore absurdism. Now man cant afford to be
a complete and consistent nihilist or absurdist. We have only two kinds of people believers
and those who believe that they dont believe but nonetheless continue to believe in some other
gods. Man kills God but then he himself becomes one or wishes to usurp his place. There is no
way to escape God; one can only feign to have escaped. One continues to worship him in
different reflections or images. Man is condemned to overcome nihilism/absurdism either
through some alternative metaphysics or faith or through positing some artistic attitude or
different mode of apprehension of reality. Camus isnt an absurdist as Nietzsche isnt a nihilist.
Man cant afford to be nihilist in the sense Bazarov is without becoming a stone. He cant be a
Caligula. Neither can Mersault be properly characterized as human. Sisyphus is not a possible
human response. No man has ever consented, given a choice, to Sisyphean reality. Man is
made for the Absolute and if deprived of this hunger he has to turn a beast. All denials of
Absolute by men still are based on some image of Absolute that man carries in his heart or

9
mind. The greatest executioner of truth and metaphysics speaks and criticizes in the name of
truth and is a metaphysician. Even de Sade, perhaps the only consistent atheist of the 19 th
century, doesnt qualify as an absurdist. Caligula shows how man cant exist without the sense
of infinite or Absolute. All perversions are because of perverted sense of the absolute rather
than denial of it. Man can live only in the light or shadow of Absolute. As Baudelaire said:
Alas, human vices, however horrible one might conceive them to be, contain the proof (were
it only in their infinite expansion) of mans longing for the infinite, but it is a longing that often
takes the wrong route []. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in
the depravation of the sense of infinite (Euvres Completes).
The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional
anguish arising from our exile. According to existentialists it is possible by virtue of passionate
commitment and impassive stoicism to confront nothingness but as a critic remarks: In
retrospect, it was an anecdote tinged with desperation because in an absurd world there are
absolutely no guidelines, and any course of action is problematic. Passionate commitment, be it
to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Enter nihilism. It is only a religious
man who has enough resources to confront nothingness and overcome nihilism. Is not God
defined as nothing? Godhead is often described as desert, void. The soul is mortal. What is
immortal is not something individual. Only the transindividual Spirit is immortal. A religious
man consents to be nothing, to be annihilated in self noughting. The absurd man has not
mastered this virtue of self-naughting.
All religious and wisdom share the absurdist nihilistic premises that the immanent
world is an illusion (Maya), meaningless and tragic in all its forms. Individuality and self are
illusions. In mysticism it is the individual self, the ego which is to be transcended. Such a state
is termed by mystics as selflessness. Buddha identified the whole worldly life with dukkha
(suffering in and through everything), as is revealed clearly and lucidly by his Fire Sermon.
Buddha says that everything burns with the fire of desire. All the three Semitic religions
emphasize the fallen state of mans consciousness. The Quran repeatedly emphasizes that man
is in a state of disequilibrium and trouble in this world. The prophet of Islam indicates the
meaninglessness of this world by saying that the world is a prison cell for a true believer. In
short, all suffer in all forms for no apparent fault of theirs in the finite world. Death levels all
and the suffering becomes useless.

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Meaning is something transcendent that no reason could contain. In fact if we were to
discover reason for everything nothing will be meaningful because meaning is transcendence.
As someone has said that the God that reason could comprehend would not be worth
worshipping. Similarly the universe that reason understands in its own terms doesnt fascinate
nor inspires awe and ceases to be sacred or mysterious. God traditionally is the ground of
meaning and God is mysterium temendum et facienum. God is the mystery of existence. So if
we speak of mystery and somehow celebrate this fact of mystery we give meaning to the
world. Meaning is given from above or by virtue of or with reference to the category higher up
in the rung of existence. What transcends the world and man can alone give meaning to them.
The universe is mysterious and not irrational in traditional worldview while as in the absurdist
view the universe is irrational. Human can be given meaning by what transcends human but
nothing transcends man in humanistic rationalistic worldview as he is the measure of all things.
One can also state that there is no meaning in things phenomenal and what is needed is
to transcend them by being firmly seated in witnessing consciousness. With this change of
perception one no longer identifies with the things and one escapes their tyranny. Nothing
appears as hostile or dense. One stands aloof from everything or absorbs everything in himself.
One sees oneself as pure consciousness. Things are no more. They are maya. One is liberated
from bondage to things, to finitude by transcending the ego.
There is no way to salvation and seeing this one is saved. Salvation lies in abandoning
the ideal of salvation. Good can be realized by abandoning all good.
The East has long before seriously encountered nihilism and attempted to overcome it.
Christianity too has brilliantly tackled it though most of its critics and many defenders have not
cared to understand it properly. Jesus at the cross and crying to silent heavens why he has been
abandoned is supreme instance of encountering nihilism. The way Simone Weil understands
crucifixion and allied stories appropriates modern arguments for nihilism. The way Altizer
reads it is fraught with some meaning for those who find nihilism a problem. The postChristian West approaching the metaphysical questions from quite problematic assumptions is
really defenceless against nihilism. Our selected writers, Beckett and Camus, too have quite
unconvincingly because of their problematic attitude towards modern thought that is
condemned to be nihilistic dealt with the issue of nihilism as we will see in this work.

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Against nihilism religion asserts nothing is ultimately senseless and empty. All
suffering is somehow transformed. Everything glorifies God and that redeems it. Buddha
nature is in everything. God is in everything. Nothing is mere waste or futile. God is the Origin
and End of everything. All things move toward God or glorify him.
References
Camus, Albert, 1953, The Rebel, trans., Anthony Bower, Middlesex: Penguin Books

Haas, William S., 1953.The Destiny of the Mind: East and West, Faber & Faber, London.
Qaisar, 1998, Metaphysics and Tradition, Gora BoClub Road, Lahore.
Schoun, F., 2005, The Essential Writings of Frithjof Schoun, ed., Syed Hossain Nasr, London: Perennial
Books,