Experience of Nothingness

158 Pages·1.248 MB·English

by  Michael Novak

MICHAEL
NOVAK
The
Experience
of
Nothingness
MICHAEL NOVAK
HARPER COLOPHON BOOKS
Harper & Row, Publishers
New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London
For Karen, Richard, and Tanya
— Experience o f Everything
The Experience of Nothingness. Copyright ©1970 by Michael Novak. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used
or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information
address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
First harper colophon Edition published 1971
Standard Book Number: 06-090239-6
Contents
I. The Experience of Nothingness
1. The Pursuit of Happiness? i
2. The Experience of America 4
3. In Europe: Nihilism 10
4. The Four Myths of the University 16
5. Story, Myth, and Horizon 23
II. The Source of The Experience
1. America’s Commitment to Objectivity 30
2. Three Doubts About Objectivity 36
3. The Drive to Raise Questions 44
4. Honesty and Freedom 51
5. Courage and Community 58
III. Inventing the Self
1. Action Is Dramatic 65
2. Decision Lies with Discernment 72
3. Three Myths of the Self 79
4. Truth Is Subjectivity 83
IV. Myths and Institutions
1. The Sense of Reality 89
2. The Tool 97
3. Politics and Consciousness 106
4. Nothingness and Reality 114
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the following sources for the use of
published materials:
American Academy of Arts and Letters for Daedalus: Symbolism
in Religion and Literature.
The Estate of Henry James for the letter from William James.
The Free Press for World Politics and Personal Insecurity by
Harold Lasswell.
Harvard University Press, The Loeb Classical Library, for
Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics (H. Rackham, trans.).
John Hopkins Press for Mind: An Essay on Human Feelings by
Suzanne Langer.
Little, Brown & Co. for The Thought and Character of William
James by Ralph Barton Perry.
McGraw-Hill Book Company for Soul on Ice by Eldridge
Cleaver.
David McKay Company, Inc. for The Varieties of Religious
Experience by William James.
Newman Press for The Ascent oj Mount Carmel by St. John
of the Cross (E. A. Peers, trans.).
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. for Identity: Youth and Crisis
and Insight and Responsibility by Erik Erikson.
Pantheon Books, Inc. for The Politics of Experience by R. D.
Laing and Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault.
Random House for The Stranger by Albert Camus; Culture
Against Man by Jules Henry; The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietz­
sche (Walter Kaufmann, trans.).
University of Illlinois Press for The Symbolic Uses of Politics
by Murray Edelman.
Preface to the Colophon Edition
The response to the hardcover edition of this book taught me
two things. First, older readers seem to have broken through the
American “system of meaning” more thoroughly than younger
readers. Many of the young still seem to be tempted by traditional
American illusions—that the annunciation of moral goals is itself a
moral act, that moral energy is the same as or better than political
energy, that “progress” will come more or less automatically from
good will (or other changes in consciousness), that morality consists
in the individual’s “doing his thing” (hoary laissez faire), that there
lurks up ahead somewhere, behind a hidden door, under a tree,
within some hidden cave, a greening light of hope and prosperity and
bliss: some magical dream drawing all Americans onward.
Many Americans, old and young, have seen too much, and
absorbed too much pain to go on believing in mirages. Life is much
more terrifying than easy hope pretends. Ugly, boring, painful,
vastly disillusioning experiences stalk our lives. There is much more
solitude in life than anything in the ideology of our education teaches
us. The gratifications and excitements of upward mobility sooner or
later abandon us to the dizzying inner spaces of our rootlessness.
To be sure, many Americans desire to cover over inner terror, to
shrug it off as momentary weariness, to brighten and to ‘Smile and
to look for something “constructive” to do. Many keep faith. But
others grow.
The generation that went to college in the fifties, my own genera­
tion, was preparing itself for the long haul. We were somewhat
“silent.” But also serious. The young who followed us, in the sixties,
burnt their candles at both ends, in spectacular light. Each genera­
tion has its own strength, and weakness. Ours knows well the
experience of nothingness, the contours of compromise and illu­
sion, the masks of security. If we no longer seem to hope—do not
believe it is from weakness; it is from strength. Facile and illusory
American hope has no power over us. Our hope is an acceptance of
despair.
The second insight critical reaction brought to me is that many
vii
The Experience of Nothingness
do not take seriously enough the nothingness of the experience of
nothingness. Many who enter into the experience never emerge
again. Insanity, pretense, mere conventionality, no-think, suicide,
cynicism, egocentrism, a wild drug-taking race toward an early death,
an intense desire to be consumed like flame—have we not seen in the
last decade countless forms of self-destruction in the name of inner
emptiness? It is not by chance that films like Bonnie and Clyde,
Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and even Joe
end in orgies of blood and death. It is not by chance that so many
cultural heroes end up dead with needle-pointed arms in chill hotel
rooms far from their homes. Listen to the wild beat of rock: hear
the intensity of death.
I am far from trying to show that our nothingness is unreal, further
still from pulling a rabbit of hope out of a hat. Let those who wish to
commit suicide commit suicide: I lay no imperative upon anyone.
What has caught my eye in the history of nihilism is that Nietzsche,
Sartre, and others wrote books: a most committed and disciplined
use of time. The same drive that led them to the experience of noth­
ingness seemed to teach them other values as well—and without
contradiction. Today, in any case, the experience of nothingness is
simply a fact: many of us have it. What did we have to do to get it?
It arises only under certain conditions. What are these conditions?
The form of the question as it arises today is: Granted that I have
the experience of nothingness, what shall I do with it?
Perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps kill myself, go mad, look for a
cause, turn on the radio, look for someone to hug, lie down and fall
into an endless sleep, become a sleepwalker, drift, pretend . . . The
possibilities are limitless.
To my knowledge, no one who has reflected upon the experience
of nothingness has called attention to the unique moral conditions
under which it appears. These conditions do not disappear when the
experience of nothingness seeps like fog into one’s consciousness.
There is no obligation to notice what these conditions are. There is
no obligation, once noticing them, to reinforce them and to build
one’s life upon them. That is only one choice among many. That is
merely something we can do, if we wish, without falsifying the
experience of nothingness in the least.
Preface
This book, then, is at most an invitation. Notice, it says, every­
thing you can about what is happening to you. Do not avert your
eyes from the commitments which are in fact, if you experience
nothingness, already operating in you. You need not do either of
these things. But you may. If you do, you “structure” the experience
of nothingness—by calling operations within yourself into conscious­
ness, which you might otherwise not have noticed. So doing, you
do not falsify the experience, do not cancel it, do not escape from it.
It becomes a source of further actions, actions which are by so much
without illusion. (“By so much.” Are men every wholly without
illusion? No.)
From year to year, the experience of nothingness grows deeper
in one’s life, takes a more inclusive and profounder hold. By no
means is this book intended to remove, cover over, or alleviate that
experience. I want to unmask one piece of ideology only—that the
experience of nothingness necessarily incapacitates one from further
action.
Every form placed upon the experience of nothingness is ideologi­
cal, including the form suggested here. The one advantage I claim
for the course I have followed is that it keeps open the cellar doors;
the cool draughts of the experience of nothingness remain one’s
constant companion, one’s constant critic, one’s constant stimulus.
If you desire to possess everything, desire to have nothing.
Finally, the reflections on political action in Chapter IV are not
meant to heap contempt on democratic forms of political life. They
are intended to point out the void whence these forms spring, which
they do not cover. Democracy is an illusory form of government.
Although among illusions it is the least murderous, its hands too
know blood, dry and caked, freshly red. We work as in a darkness-
work, and yet do not wish to be deceived. If everything is meaning­
less, we come to such perception only through a most scrupulous
fidelity, an honorable fraternity. If these too are meaningless, they
remain one disposition open to us. They invite, they do not compel.
Granted that we have the experience of nothingness, what shall we
do with it?
January, 1971 M ich ael N ovak
ix
«
Note
This brief philosophical essay was first prepared for delivery as the
four Bross Lectures at Lake Forest College in January 1969. I am
grateful to President William Graham Cole, Dean William Dunn,
Professor Forest W. Hansen, and members of the community at
Lake Forest for having invited me and for having responded to my
work with generosity and warmth. To Dean Dunn, who arranged
everything, I owe special thanks.
Kathy Mulherin offered invaluable research assistance,
household confusion, and entertainment to our children. Sharon
Winklhofer and Terry Linnemeyer typed, and typed, and typed.
Prologue
This philosophical voyage may be construed as a meditation on
following poem:
On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings—
oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed', My house being
now at rest.
In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised
—oh, happy chance!
In darkness and in concealment, My house being
now at rest:
In the happy night, In secret, w/re/i none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that
which burned in my heart.
This light guided me More surely than the light of
noonday,
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting
me—
A place where none appeared.
St. John of the Cross
“Prologue,” Ascent of Mount
Carmel