4TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE CeNic

Beyond its most common meaning —linked to its literal sense— nihilism does not refer exclusively to the study of nothingness (nihil), and therefore it is not an issue limited to philosophical-metaphysical reflection, as common sense tends to consider it. Drawing on the reflections of the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883) in his novel Fathers and sons, as well as those of some of his compatriots —Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1883) and Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), for example— passing through philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), nihilism ceases to be a simple concept and becomes a phenomenon that directly engages human experience and, with it, all spheres of contemporary human existence. Works such as those by Franco Volpi (2005. El nihilismo. Buenos Aires: Biblos), Roberto Esposito, Vincenzo Vitiello and Carlo Galli (2008. Nihilismo y política. Buenos Aires: Manantial), Michelle Borrelli (2017. Nuovo umanesimo o nichilismo. Grandezza e miseria dell’Occidente. Trieste: Asterios Editore), and Costantino Esposito (2021. El nihilismo de nuestro tiempo. Una crónica. Madrid: Encuentro) bear witness to this. Within this context, the International Center of Studies on Contemporary Nihilism —dedicated to thinking about the phenomenon of nihilism from diverse perspectives (philosophical, political, cultural, educational, and social, among others)— opens the call for its 4th International Conference with the aim of fostering discussion on the multiple possible approaches to the two-faced phenomenon of “destruction” (the tendency toward nothingness, negation, and the minimization of diversity in the various spheres of human existence) and “creation” (diverse possibilities that run counter to any process of negation of the world’s multiplicity), offering a wide range of themes from which the experience of nihilism and its possible ways of overcoming can be addressed.