philosophy, i’d argue, doesn’t spring from the wide-eyed wonder that ancient thinkers like plato or aristotle celebrated. it’s not born in some pristine moment of awe at the cosmos. rather, it emerges from a murkier place—a nagging, visceral sense that something we crave, something we’ve strained toward with all our might, has slipped through our fingers. it begins in disappointment, a modern mood that shadows our every step. this isn’t just a personal hunch; it’s a lens through which we can rethink what philosophy is for today, especially in a world that feels increasingly unmoored. as we face the wreckage of grand promises—whether they’re religious visions of salvation or political dreams of justice—it’s worth asking: what does it mean to think philosophically when the ground beneath us keeps shifting?
this sense of letdown isn’t abstract. it’s palpable in the air we breathe, in the news we scroll through, in the conversations that trail off into shrugs. we’re living through a time when the old stories—god’s plan, the march of progress, the triumph of democracy—don’t hold the weight they once did. for some, this collapse of meaning sparks a kind of restless despair; for others, it’s a call to retreat into private pleasures or lash out in defiance. but philosophy, at its best, doesn’t just catalog these reactions—it wrestles with them, seeking a way to live amid the ruins without surrendering to cynicism or violence. that’s the task i want to explore here: how do we forge an ethics, a politics, a way of being, when the certainties we leaned on have crumbled?
let’s start with the modern condition itself. since kant flipped the script in the late eighteenth century, we’ve been forced to reckon with our limits. his so-called copernican turn yanked us out of metaphysical daydreams—those fantasies of grasping the universe, our souls, or some divine order in one fell swoop. we’re finite, fragile creatures, he reminded us, tethered to bodies that falter and minds that stumble. a single virus, a gust of wind, can undo us. yet our culture clings to myths of transcendence—think artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, or even the glossy promise of a perfectly sculpted face. we’re obsessed with overcoming our frailty, and that obsession, i’d say, is a refusal to face the disappointment kant laid bare. it’s a refusal that breeds tragedy, not triumph.
this disappointment splits into two streams: religious and political. they’re not neatly separable—each bleeds into the other, coloring how we grapple with meaning and action. religiously, we’re haunted by the fading echo of faith. whether it’s a singular god, a pantheon, or some cosmic force, the transcendent anchors we once clung to feel flimsy now. god’s death, as nietzsche famously put it, isn’t just a headline—it’s a gut punch. it leaves us staring at a void where purpose used to be, asking: if the divine scaffolding is gone, what holds life together? that question can spiral into nihilism, a creeping indifference that snuffs out hope—or worse, despair that clings like damp rot. philosophy’s job, at least in this tradition, is to resist that slide, to think through the wreckage without pretending we can rebuild the old temples.
politically, the disappointment cuts deeper still. we live in a world soaked in violence and inequity—wars that grind on, wealth that pools in fewer hands, borders that bristle with fear. the ideals we pinned our hopes on—liberal democracy, equality, peace—seem hollowed out, eroded by corruption, apathy, or outright betrayal. today, on march 28, 2025, you can feel it: the politics of fear reigns, stoked by endless threats of “the other”—terrorists, migrants, anyone who doesn’t fit the script. it’s not new, this sense of a world gone wrong, but it’s acute. and it begs a question: how do we imagine justice when injustice is the air we breathe? that’s not a rhetorical flourish—it’s the spark for an ethics that doesn’t flinch, a politics that doesn’t buckle.
nihilism looms large here, and it’s worth pausing to unpack it. it’s not one thing—it forks into two paths. passive nihilism is the quieter beast: it gazes at the world, sees no point, and shrugs. it’s the stance of someone who’s given up on grand projects—progress, humanism, the lot—and retreats into birdwatching or yoga, chasing a private calm while everything burns. active nihilism, though, is louder, fiercer. it agrees the world’s meaningless but decides to smash it anyway, hoping something new might rise from the ashes. think of the anarchists of old, the utopians, or even al-qaeda’s twisted crusade—different flavors, same impulse. both are tempting traps, especially now, when the center feels like it’s barely holding. but i’d argue there’s a third way: not withdrawal, not destruction, but a stubborn insistence on facing the mess and building something from it.
what might that look like? it starts with ethics—not as a dry rulebook, but as a lived response to the world’s demands. we need an ethics that motivates, that pulls us out of our armchairs and into the fray. secular democracy, for all its merits, often fails to ignite that spark. it binds us with laws and norms we follow out of habit, not conviction. contrast that with the fire of a jihadist or a fundamentalist—they’re driven by something bigger, even if it’s metaphysical smoke. the trick is to find a secular ethics with that kind of pull, one that doesn’t lean on gods or utopias but still stirs us to act. that’s no small feat, and it’s where philosophy gets its hands dirty.
crafting an ethics of commitment
so, how do we build this? let’s zero in on the self—not as a fortress of autonomy, but as something shaped by what it binds itself to. ethics, at its core, is about that binding: how does a person latch onto a good—say, justice, compassion, or even revolution—and let it carve out who they are? this isn’t armchair speculation; it’s the stuff of everyday life. we’re not blank slates; we’re forged in the push and pull of demands we choose to honor. think of the activist who risks arrest for a cause, or the parent who sacrifices sleep for a child’s future. there’s an experience here, a moment where a demand hits us—feed the hungry, fight the power—and we say yes, not just with words but with our whole being.
this yes isn’t passive. it’s not a nod to some external code we grudgingly obey. it’s active, a commitment that reshapes us. picture bob geldof in 1984, watching famine footage and feeling the tug of suffering half a world away. he didn’t just approve of helping—he threw himself into it, birthing live aid. that’s ethical experience: a demand meets approval, and a self takes form around it. but here’s the twist: the demand isn’t “out there,” objective and universal. it only becomes a demand because geldof said yes. another viewer might’ve flipped the channel. the circle—demand sparking approval, approval igniting demand—is what makes ethics breathe.
this gets tricky, though. what about the cynic who agrees famine relief is good but doesn’t lift a finger? or the ironist who sneers at “love thy neighbor”? they expose a gap: approval doesn’t always lead to action. and it shouldn’t have to—force a self to act, and you’ve killed its freedom. ethics isn’t a machine; it’s a wager, a leap that can falter. guilt creeps in here, that sting when we betray our own good. i’ve felt it myself—swearing off cigarettes, then lighting up at a party, the self-loathing sharp as the smoke. that split, between the self i want to be and the self i am, is where conscience lives. it’s not god’s whisper or freud’s cruel super-ego—it’s us working on ourselves, a discomfort we can’t shake.
this split self, this “dividual,” isn’t a flaw to fix. it’s the engine of an ethics worth having. take emmanuel levinas: he saw the self as cracked open by the other’s face, a demand we can’t fully meet yet can’t ignore. it’s infinite, unfulfillable, and that’s the point—it keeps us restless, responsible. or alain badiou: he ties ethics to fidelity, sticking with an event—like a revolution—that redefines us. add knud ejler løgstrup’s unyielding demand—radical, one-sided—and you’ve got a recipe for an ethics that doesn’t coddle. it’s not about happiness or mastery; it’s about commitment to something bigger, even when it overwhelms us.
but here’s the rub: this can tip into masochism, a self crushed under endless duty. that’s where sublimation comes in—not the grand heroics of tragedy, but something humbler, like humor. tragedy’s fine for heidegger or lacan, with their brooding heroes, but humor cuts closer to life. it’s samuel beckett’s wry grin at the absurd, a way to hold the split self together without pretending it’s whole. an ethics of discomfort, fueled by conscience, doesn’t promise peace—it offers propulsion, a shove toward action.
from conscience to politics
now, how does this jump from personal ethics to political resistance? conscience alone won’t topple a regime, but it’s the ember that lights the fire. politics today feels adrift—capitalism churns on, inequalities widen, and the old revolutionary scripts (marx’s proletariat, anyone?) don’t fit. yet marx still haunts us, not as gospel but as a diagnostic tool. his take on capitalism—its relentless drive, its dislocations—rings truer than ever in our globalized mess. but the idea that history hands us a ready-made political subject? that’s dead. the proletariat isn’t storming the barricades; new subjects—indigenous movements, anarchists—have to be forged.
this forging happens in the gaps, what i’d call interstitial spaces. politics isn’t just the state’s game—order, security, consensus—it’s the rupture, the dissensus that cracks it open. look at the zapatistas in chiapas or the seattle protests of ’99: they didn’t wait for permission. they named their struggle, built coalitions, and carved distance within the system. that’s anarchic, not in the bomb-throwing sense, but in its refusal of top-down rule. ethics feeds this—it’s the meta-political pulse, the why behind the how. without it, politics is just noise; with it, it’s a call to remake the world.
true democracy, marx’s phrase, isn’t a polished utopia. it’s messy, plural, a clamor of voices that won’t be hushed. it’s not the state’s machine—it’s the people’s push against it, a dissensus that keeps power in check. today, that might mean civil disobedience, indigenous rights, or a new language of protest. it’s not about seizing the state but subverting it, creating room for what jacques rancière calls the “part of no part”—those left out who demand to be heard. this is where philosophy, born in disappointment, finds its teeth: not in abstract truths, but in a commitment to resist, to imagine justice amid the unjust.
so, we’re back where we started—disappointment as a spur, not a dead end. nihilism tempts us to quit or destroy; an ethics of commitment dares us to stay, to act. it’s not a fix—it’s a stance, a way to face march 28, 2025, and whatever comes next. philosophy isn’t here to save us; it’s here to keep us thinking, fighting, living.
this text deeply influenced by critchley, simon. infinitely demanding: ethics of commitment, politics of resistance. london: verso, 2007. pdf.
