Empty Transcendence – How Capital Creates and Nihilates Meaning

Abstract

This paper attempts to understand the interconnections between capitalism and nihilism: How does capitalism both afford and deny certain possibilities of meaning in life? By building upon Marx and Nietzsche, it argues that capitalism provides possibilities for meaning in life on a horizontal plane, consisting of projects of personal growth. Simultaneously, however, capitalism is nihilistic in the sense that, by keeping us occupied on the horizontal, it denies the vertical dimension of meaningfulness, defined by the unexpected breaking asunder of one’s self-centred frame. In place of such qualitatively transformative possibilities, capitalism offers only quantitative growth, a transcendent goal that is empty of existential substance but which can nonetheless offer meaningful identity projects.