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Figures of Nihilism in Vilém Flusser’s Philosophy

This essay focuses on the role of nihilism in the development of Vilém Flusser’s work, a notion that plays a major role at the beginning of his intellectual adventure and keeps resurfacing in various guises and different moments. Nihilism is linked to certain people and the work of certain philosophers: to his friend Alex Bloch and the work of Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Vicente Fereira da Silva. It appears in The History of the Devil, the autobiography Bodenlos and Vampyroteuthis Infernalis. Nihilism is connected to a series of topics: the forces of negativity and denial, the absurdity and groundlessness of human existence, the meaninglessness of life and the temptation of suicide, the concept of nothingness in Jewish thinking and the void in Oriental philosophy, the devil and the diabolical abyss, Mephistopheles and the infernal octopus at the bottom of the sea, and finally the zero-dimensionality of pixels and the principle of entropy. Flusser repeatedly spoke of himself in Mephistophelian terms and called his life in Brazil a diabolical existence. Samson Flexor painted a portrait of Vilém Flusser that strongly accentuated the diabolical side of his person. Louis Bec’s various species of Vampyroteuthis Infernalis represent different sides of Flusser’s thinking.

Figures of Nihilism (PDF 1.45 MB)

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