Federico Campagna: A Man of Faith and Folly

Federico Campagna identifies himself as a Sicilian philosopher based in London. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this is entirely true. He is Italian and he does work and live in London, but is he a philosopher or is he not merely a moral and political idealist who uses philosophy whenever it's convenient to do so simply to underpin his metaphysical and, indeed, quasi-mystical search for what he describes as a fundamental architecture of emancipation?

At any rate, his current work revolves around the question of contemporary nihilism, viewing the latter as something that we need to move beyond in order that we might reconstruct reality - and not merely reality as understood by science, but an enchanted or magical reality that is more originary and which supports the ontological primacy of Dasein or mankind's manifest self-understanding. 

Thus, Campagna's dreary, dated, and clichéd characterization of nihilism as a deep crisis of truth that paralyses all human action and imagination is one which I would decisively reject. If we must talk about a topic that has been so overly-discussed, then it seems to me the starting point has to be with Ray Brassier and not Ernesto de Martino, the anthropologist and historian of religions whom Campagna refers us to.     

For unlike Campagna, I don't think nihilism is something to be overcome and I certainly don't think we should attempt to do so in the name of values which, he says, reside in some kind of ethical core and stretch from the gates of Being into our everyday lives, constituting one of the mysteries of existence of which he is so fond. Rather, like Brassier, I think nihilism is a speculative opportunity, not an existential dilemma or disease; a chance to think (even if it turns out thinking has interests that do not coincide with human welfare or happiness). 

Ultimately, Campagna, by his own admission, is a man of faith. In an article published earlier this year, he explicitly tells us that faith is what we need today to accompany an ontological awakening. Faith in what? Faith in life and the intrinsic value of life, which cannot be objectively determined by science, only subjectively affirmed by the faithful individual. Only faith in life transforms Dionysian chaos into Apollonian harmony; noise into music. He writes:

"It is only the interplay of the forces of Being and faith that empower and ... will realize our new architecture of values ... And [result in] the establishment of ... an oasis of limit and freedom, where the chorus faithfully sings for its own glory and Apollo benignly looks on from beyond."  

To which we can only shout hallelujah and not know whether to laugh or cry ...


Notes: 

Federico Campagna was speaking at the 6/20 Club on Sunday the 20th of September, 2015. His paper was entitled On Magic and the Reconstruction of Reality After Nihilism. A version of this paper was given to the Art/Work Association earlier in the year and details of this presentation can be found by clicking here. 

The other paper by Campagna  to which I refer and from which I quote, is entitled After Nihilism, After Technic: Sketches for a New Philosophical Architecture. It was published in the online journal e-flux and can be read by clicking here. 

For Ray Brassier's brilliant discussion of nihilism in terms of enlightenment and extinction, see Nihil Unbound (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).