Strong Black Nihilism and Existential Maturity: On Devon Johnson

Some books are so rich that it is difficult to articulate an entry point for discussion; any choice of a starting point seems to slight the other aspects of the text that deserve headline consideration. Devon Johnson’s Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism is this sort of text. This provocative and rewarding work explores the existential question of relating to value through the leitmotif of black nihilism. What Johnson demonstrates is that nihilism is a multidimensional phenomenon, coming in a variety of forms, and that the phenomenon of antiblack racism is one which cannot be disentangled from grappling with the problem of nihilism in its multifarious manifestations.

In short, Johnson argues that antiblack racism emerges hand in hand with modes of weak nihilism that undergird it; a consequence is that, in response to a world shaped by the weak nihilism of what Johnson terms “(European) Man,” black nihilism abounds as a rational response. However, it does not follow that black nihilism is monolithic. Rather, black nihilism emerges in a variety of forms, including both optimistic and pessimistic modes. What Johnson contends, though, is that both health within an antiblack racist world and liberation from an antiblack racist world ultimately depend on the pursuit of a specific mode of black nihilism—namely, strong black nihilism.

In what follows, I wish not to offer an overall review of Johnson’s text. As far as those things go, my review, in brief, is that this text is a must-read for anyone interested in Black existential philosophy or the philosophical question of nihilism. Rather than give a blow-by-blow of all of the text’s topics and arguments, I seek here to engage the text through the application of its argument to the question of existential maturity. This is a topic broached by Johnson and utilized deftly in the course of his argument. Nonetheless, I wish to show that, while Johnson demonstrates the relevance of existential maturity in understanding black nihilism, Johnson’s case for strong black nihilism—and, in particular, a liberationist orientation within it—in turn has implications for how we conceive of existential maturity.

Nihilisms Weak and Strong

Black existential philosophy may generally raise the question of value in terms of two directions. One direction is to start with the philosophical problem of a world that devalues Blackness and overvalues whiteness. The other direction is to start with the humanity of Black people, from which emerges an account of human life as one in which choices about what and how to value are not only commonplace but inescapable.

Johnson’s text, like much though by no means all of Black existential philosophy, offers an analysis that starts at the conjunction of these two directions: to exist as Black is to face the question of what and how to value in a world saturated with the assumption that Blackness ought not to be valued, or at least ought not to be valued as highly as whiteness. Johnson demonstrates that working through this conjunction calls, ultimately, for an analysis of nihilism.

Nihilism negates the assumption that the values by which human beings ought to live are determined external to human agency. Seriousness treats values as impositions from above—from God, parent, church, state, metaphysics, etc. The nihilist negates such seriousness, demonstrating that values are contingent on human choice. However, Johnson shows, a great range of errors come from conflating particular forms of nihilism with nihilism in general. All nihilisms negate (or, indeed, nihilate) the presumption that we must live according to ready-made values. Nonetheless, many nihilisms default to an alternative presumption for which, in effect, the alternatives that the nihilist provides appear nearly as ready-made as those that the nihilist has nihilated. This direction Johnson names weak nihilism, which “responds to the fall of traditional values by denying the value of human valuing altogether” (40).

For “(European) Man,” the turn to modernity occasions a nihilation of traditional values. Modernity rejects the strictures of reproducing the values of old. Yet what arises for (European) Man is not modernity as such but what may be termed Euromodernity, where the meaning of modernity as a philosophical concept is muted and subordinated to the imperative of white dominion over the globe.

Hence, what is produced is a weak nihilism. The values of the traditional metaphysics of Christendom fall, but the way in which they fall is structured by two desires. The first of these is a melancholic desire to replace its traditional metaphysics in a new guise, a wish to return to the fallen values. The second of these is a novel desire to subjugate the globe. The dialectical resolution of these two desires is, in effect, the relative deification of whiteness. Philosophically, the basic tenets of modernity call for valuing human valuing. But (European) Man reconfigures the discourse of modernity so that it is a weapon nihilating all other traditions while affirming Europe’s license to dominate the globe irrespective of its ability to produce values worth valuing.

The alternative to weak nihilism is strong nihilism, which “not only rejects decadent values, but seeks creation of ways of valuing beyond weak nihilism” (40). What might be termed a genuine modernity, as opposed to the “modernity” enmeshed in Euromodern presuppositions, would treat the human capacity for value-creation as requiring the effort to produce values through which future generations could continue to produce values.

The obvious point to make here is that white supremacism is premised on denying the human ability to produce values through a provincial affirmation of the white ability to do so. For Euromodernity, strong nihilism as such is verboten, though its appeal may be strategically appropriated as ideological justification for white hegemony. In other words, Euromodernity claims that it is only white people who have the capacity to create values worth valuing; the value of “values of color” is negated a priori.

The logic of Euromodernity culminates in its peculiar expressions through antiblack racism. Antiblack racism takes the form of asserting that all of the general defects supposedly present where whiteness is lacking take absolute form in the context of black people and black peoples. Hence, strong nihilism by definition should affirm black valuing and black value-creation; antiblack racism by definition negates these. Ergo, (European) Man’s embrace of modernity negates modernity’s philosophical link to strong nihilism through a weak nihilistic attachment to valuing whiteness and disvaluing blackness.

It is out of this context that black nihilism emerges. Black people inhabit a world where antiblack racism functions as a “traditional” value. To negate antiblack racism, then, requires some form of nihilism. One interpretation of “black nihilism” is that it is simply any form of nihilism expressed and/or acted upon by black people. A second interpretation would be that it is a form of nihilism that emerges as an effort to negate antiblack racism’s function as a traditional value. For the moment, I will assume this second interpretation to be true, though later we will return to some complications that arise in reintroducing the first interpretation.

Hence, black nihilism seeks the fall of antiblack racism as a source of traditional values. Johnson demonstrates, however, that most analyses of black nihilism have suffered from a narrow and reductive conception of nihilism. Most analyses occlude that nihilism comes in both weak and strong modalities, and within those modes there are multiple varieties.

For instance, two forms of weak nihilism are pessimism and optimism, respectively. While many people use these terms in many ways, let us focus on their meaning to an analysis of nihilism as Johnson makes amply evident. It is often said that optimists see the glass half full and pessimists see the glass as half empty. The problem with such a characterization is that any reasonable observer should be able to note that, by definition, any glass which is half empty is also half full, and vice versa. The force of pessimism and optimism is not epistemic, as the metaphor suggests, but axiological.

For the optimist, the faith that things shall be better warrants, in effect, embracing hope for deliverance. Such hope is called for because it is evident that the values supposed to render the world intelligible are not up to the task. But instead of seeking alternatives, the optimist simply embraces the notion that benevolent turns of events are destined to intervene. The optimist avers that the shortcomings of our values to date are overridden by destiny, and such destiny is an inevitably positive one. Optimism prompts weak nihilism since it can be clear-eyed about the insufficiency of traditional values but calls for a belief in the inevitability of improvement as a substitute for genuine projects of value-creation.

For the pessimist, by contrast, traditional values clearly fail, but such failure is taken as conclusive evidence of the failure of any present or future acts of value-creation as well. The failure of valuative attitudes 1, 2, and 3 is taken as conclusive evidence of the failure of valuative attitudes 4, 5, 6, and onward up to n. The failure of our values to date, for the pessimist, ensures the failure of any values whatsoever.

In the context of black nihilism, optimism and pessimism emerge as meaningful ways of negating the force of antiblack racism as a value to be taken seriously, but without calling for the production of alternative values as such. In Johnson’s analysis, Cornel West is taken to task for attacking essentially a strawman caricature of black nihilism. West sees nihilism, as in effect, merely a form of pessimistic detachment. Hence, West’s argument is against a specific form of weak nihilism, rather than nihilism in general. As such, West’s defense of an optimistic Christianity amounts to posing one form of weak nihilism against another.

What Johnson defends as an alternative is strong black nihilism. Strong black nihilism, as black nihilism, seeks to negate the function of antiblack racism as a traditional value. As a strong nihilism, moreover, strong black nihilism affirms the prospect for value-creation against antiblack racism. Strong nihilism takes responsibility for replacing traditional values with new ones. Hence, strong black nihilism seeks to replace antiblack racism as a traditional source of values with new modes of black value-creation.

This analysis implies a choice between strong black nihilism and weak black nihilism. Johnson’s analysis of forms of weak black nihilism, such as West’s prophetic Christian black optimism, Derrick Bell’s black pessimistic “racial realism,” and Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism, all affirm the choice of strong black nihilism over these weak nihilistic alternatives. However, what Johnson’s analysis implies is something else of relevance in understanding the relationship between weak and strong nihilisms. Many of the forms of weak black nihilism have their forerunners in strong black nihilism. Afropessimism, for instance, appeals to Frantz Fanon as a theoretical forbear. Yet, as Johnson persuasively shows, Fanon’s work reveals him to clearly be a strong black nihilist.

What this seeming paradox reveals is an existential problematic within strong nihilism in general. The weak nihilist needs only maintain a nihiliation of traditional values; the weak nihilist’s static alternative can be retained indefinitely. One can be a weak nihilist in a way that one arguably cannot be a strong nihilist, since strong nihilism implies an existential orientation toward value. Hence, to choose strong nihilism over the competing alternatives is not a one-off affair; it is, rather, an ongoing project. What are the implications of this for understanding strong black nihilism? To answer, let us first turn to the existential question of maturity.

Existential Maturity

Johnson’s text engages my own work on the question of maturity. I, in turn, have already elsewhere employed Johnson’s account in making sense of the relationship between punk rock, nihilism, and maturity. Let me here offer a brief philosophical sketch of existential maturity before returning to the question of its relation to black nihilism.

If we conceive of an existent as one who confronts the question of what to become, and thus is enmeshed in responsibility, then the maturity of the existent raises the question of ongoing and irreducible responsibilities. Existence poses, ultimately, not only the matter of responsibility but responsibility for responsibility. This recursive structure implies that to exist is to face infinite responsibility (or responsibilities).

Maturity, in such a context, cannot mean to have simply arrived at the apex of a linear growth; adulthood considered existentially is not a threshold condition of license but rather an ongoing and anguished demand. That is to say, social relations may establish lines between those who count as valid wielders of power and authority and those who do not, and such lines are often characterized in terms of child vs. adult. Nonetheless, those lines also exclude many genuine adults along other lines (racial, sexual, carceral, etc.). Hence, what is it issue in those schemas is the difference between being one who experiences adult license and existing as one who confronts adult responsibilities. Existential maturity is concerned with the latter rather than the former—though this in turn suggests that inequalities and absurdities in the realm of the former are issues that the latter must face.

Existential immaturity, then, emerges where the effort to value one responsibility—often, though not always, in the form of simply a responsibility to get what one wants—to the point of its negating other responsibilities. Existential immaturity seeks to ignore or efface the tragic structure of adult responsibilities, wherein it is typical that even in doing what is right, one still produces harm. To the immature, such harm is treated as if it fell by the wayside, swallowed up by the purported rectitude of one’s conduct: “Why should I apologize for hurting you? I did what it was right to do.” To the mature, though, there remains the matter of responsibility for the harm one has wrought even where one has done the right thing.

From this, a basic relationship between existential maturity and strong nihilism in general follows. To merely accept and affirm traditional values on the basis of their being inherited is immature: it amounts to accepting such values merely because they have been valued, but not because they are valuable. What is valuable, in existential terms, is contingent on options that have not yet been brought into being. That is to say, the existentially valuable is valuable relative not only to what is but to what can be made to be in the future. Maturity demands a responsibility for such future options and future values. Hence, maturity implies responsibility for value-creation. Maturity thus demands nihilism, as it requires nihilating the notion that traditional values must hold sway. Yet maturity also demands a rejection of weak nihilism, since weak nihilism negates responsibility for producing alternative values.

These elements suggest why, for black people, strong black nihilism and existential maturity coalesce. Existential maturity demands strong nihilism. Indeed, the reverse appears also to be the case: implicit in the very notion of strong nihilism is an affirmation rather than denial of what existential maturity calls for. So, prima facie, strong nihilism and existential maturity are axiological bedfellows.

However, I would like to suggest that this surface level analysis of existential maturity and strong nihilism does not exhaust the dimensions of the relationship between existential maturity and strong black nihilism. Let us now turn to this question in specific.

Strong “black” Nihilism and Strong “Black” Nihilism

As stated above, we can conceive of strong black nihilism either in terms of a strong nihilism adopted by black people or as a strong nihilism adopted in opposition to antiblack racism’s function as traditional value. In the context explored in Johnson’s text, we might argue that the difference between these two conceptions is irrelevant, since the question is of how black people respond to antiblack racism; hence, strong black nihilism emerges at the conjunction of these two conceptions. But here I wish to show that taking the disjunct seriously helps clarify both a more subtle argument within Johnson’s text as well as matters of the broader applicability of Johnson’s text beyond what is immediately obvious.

If we conceive of forms of strong black nihilism that do not fit both of these conceptions, then we may start with those forms of strong black nihilism manifest in the lives of black people that nonetheless does not seek to abolish antiblack racism’s function as source of traditional values. Existentially, many black people may seek not to have their own values determined by the force of antiblack racism; they may seek to buck tradition themselves, without seeking to supplant those traditions as sources of value for others. Hence, strong black nihilism as such may not entail a commitment to uprooting antiblack racism. Hence, in other words, there is the issue of a black existentialism which is not black liberationist.

From such a standpoint, black people would need to produce alternative values of their own, but the function of such alternative values would not be to topple antiblack racism. Such a view requires black people affirming their humanity (or, at minimum, their status as value-creators), but not necessarily thereby affirming the value of blackness. The call to strong nihilism here, then, stems from an acknowledgment of the agent as an existent, rather than a commitment to eradicate antiblack racism. Strong nihilism here appears as a way that individual black people, or even particular communities of black people stopping short of an ecumenical Pan-Africanism, can take ownership of their situations by articulating new values to live by. While this is in practice an embrace of black agency in the concrete, it is delinked from an affirmation of black agency in the abstract, which in turn means that it may delink from concrete struggles for black liberation as such. This does not mean that such nihilism is necessarily opposed to liberation. Rather, what it may seek is “my liberation” but not black liberation as black liberation.

In light of this direction, it must be noted that Johnson’s argument about strong black nihilism works at two levels. The first is to establish the general superiority of strong black nihilism over weak black nihilism as a response to antiblack racism. The second, though, is to establish the superiority, or at least maturity, of what I will term strong Black nihilism over the form of strong black nihilism described in the preceding two paragraphs. Strong Black nihilism, in brief, is a species of strong black nihilism that takes seriously a commitment to black liberation as such—one upshot of which is its re-conceiving of the latter as “Black” liberation, capitalized.

The typicality of strong black nihilism (and its philosophical cousin, black existentialism) being paired with commitments to Black liberation may cloud the relevance of this point. But it should not be forgotten that many black people elect to adopt values of their own, to produce and create new values, and even to be involved in communal efforts to produce alternative values without necessarily being committed to Black liberation. Value-creation by black people need not take the form of seeking to eradicate antiblack racism and bring about the liberation of all black people. Examples in daily life are myriad, but even in the realm of academic scholarship such orientations can be plainly discerned. For instance, postmodern efforts to deconstruct blackness raise the issue of value-creation—of the play of signs—while rejecting, on a variety of grounds, the value of Black liberation as such. Hence, taking deconstruction rather than liberation as the avowed path to value-creation, this form of strong black nihilism may reject strong Black nihilism in favor of, in effect, strong “black” nihilism.

Strong Black nihilism, by contrast, is strong black nihilism that also values Black liberation as such, and, indeed, values Black liberation as a source of subsequent Black value-creation. The use of the capital “B” here is thus reflective of the particular form this orientation takes in manifesting the “strength” of its strong nihilism. From the standpoint of black nihilism in general, whether weak or strong, it is not a given that blackness itself be valued, let alone transvalued. That is to say, black pessimistic nihilism, for instance, may take the form of negating many traditional values without negating antiblack racism as such. There is no necessity that black nihilism value blackness. However, where an analysis of antiblack racism leads to the conclusion that it has falsely constructed blackness, a distinction between “blackness” as a racist, colonial imposition and “Blackness” as a self-affirming appellation emerges. We see this movement, for instance, in W.E.B. Du Bois’s long advocacy of capitalizing “Negro”; Du Bois was well aware that “negro” was an arbitrary term imposed on black people, but he understood that Black people could choose to see themselves as a people and hence embrace being “Negro.”

What I am terming strong Black nihilism denotes those forms of strong black nihilism that affirm Blackness. Such affirmation denotes a nihilation of antiblack racism, but where the commitment to produce alternative values calls, ultimately, to go beyond nihilation toward eradication. As such, strong Black nihilism affirms the value of Black people pursuing liberation through which subsequent generations of Black value-creation may become possible.

Johnson’s argument at the second level, then, can be characterized as follows: existential maturity, as an imperative faced by black people, calls for favoring strong Black nihilism over merely strong black nihilism. In other words, existential maturity supports Johnson’s case for liberation, which is tied to an account of Fanon on value-creation as well as the broader tradition of existentialists such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre for whom liberation was axiologically indispensable to a genuine existentialism. In that respect, it should be noted that despite Johnson’s criticism of West, he firmly agrees with West on the question of Black liberationism; the point of departure is that West’s view implies that weak black nihilism is compatible with Black liberation, while for Johnson these are ultimately incompatible.

Part of the reason for this is that, as noted above, the existential dimension of nihilism suggests that, for the strong nihilist, the project of being a value creator is a vexed one. For the non-liberationist strong black nihilist, the problem becomes one of, in effect, having to produce values of one’s own independent of a world of other black value-creators. At a certain point, a strict self-reliance poses the problem of a desire to be one’s sole source of values. While Euromodern interpretations of existentialism often take this turn, Johnson’s formulation of strong nihilism stipulates neither a solipsistic nor individualistic constraint on value-creation. Responsibility for values cannot be understood to be so shared that the individual’s responsibility disappears, but this does not mean in turn that the individual faces such responsibility in isolation. For the strong black nihilist, then, the nihilation of Black liberation as a meaningful source of one’s own values is, ultimately, a turn away from the prospect of general Black collaboration in value-creation.

Hence, there is a form of strong black nihilism which is simply strong nihilism adopted by black people facing an antiblack racist world, and then there is another form, strong Black nihilism, which many black people adopt (as Black people) as a commitment to liberate Black people at large. Yet if many Black people adopt strong Black nihilism, does it follow that only Black people may do so?

From Strong “Black” Nihilism Back to Existential Maturity

In the non-liberationist mode of strong black nihilism, it is easy to see why this suggestion poses a philosophical dilemma. For non-black people to affirm the roles of black people as value-creators while refusing to seek to eradicate antiblack racism implies, ultimately, a collapse back into forms of weak nihilism. Non-liberationist strong black nihilism articulated by a black speaker in the first person is intelligible: “I, a black person, will be a strong nihilist; this shall be my response to how antiblack racism affects me.” However, from the standpoint of a non-black speaker, the claim begins to diminish into absurdity; ultimately we are left with, “strong nihilism for some black people, but not for all.”

Hence, taking seriously an anti-liberationist strong black nihilism from a non-black perspective may function ultimately as a collapse back into weak nihilism. It takes a position on the responsibility of others to create values while refusing to work to make possible the role of all others in value-creation. Consider, for instance, those non-black people whose response to antiblack racism is that they must devote their lives to deconstructing racial categories. Such deconstruction could, of course, be linked to efforts against white supremacy and for Black liberation. But where it isn’t—where it amounts to simply a commitment to deconstruction—it may happen to create room or resources for some black deconstructors but does not seek to produce a world in which all Black people can function as agents of value-creation.

What remains, though, is the possibility of non-black people adopting strong Black nihilism. In other words, can people who identify or are identified as white, Latinx, Asian, etc. be proponents of strong Black nihilism? As I see it, they can. Such people can adopt the view that the traditional values of an antiblack racist world must be nihilated and existents share responsibility for producing alternative values, where the project of producing those alternative values both necessitates and depends upon the project of Black liberation.

However, what is involved is not simply an affirmation along the lines of “Black Lives Matter.” For strong Black nihilism, traditional values must fall and conditions must be produced wherein Black value-creation can help set afoot a new world and a new humanity. Non-black people denouncing antiblack racism is not, on its own, strong Black nihilism. Strong Black nihilism cannot be had on the cheap. It is, unfortunately, quite typical for many non-black people to adopt a view that takes seriously the importance of denying that antiblack racism should function as a traditional value but that stops short of a genuine affirmation of Black liberation and Black value-creation. Indeed, we have the familiar phenomenon of the person who can proudly fly a “Black Lives Matter” banner but whose views on questions of value and value-creation amount to an implicit retreat into “All Lives Matter.” Nonetheless, to note the atypicality of non-black people adopting strong Black nihilistic views is not to demonstrate that this is impossible.

Given that, we may come full circle on the question of existential maturity. Johnson has shown why this matters within the debates on black nihilism, pushing black nihilism toward what I am terming strong Black nihilism. Yet it strikes me that the same case can be made about existential maturity in general. To the degree that the existent inhabits an antiblack world, the question of how to respond to that world’s values is an existential question. One response is to simply reproduce them uncritically. Another response, that of weak nihilism, is to nihilate them without the effort to replace them. But we have seen why it is that, if one values existential maturity, then one ought to turn to strong nihilism. And if one inhabits an antiblack world—and, in particular, if one inhabits such a world in such a way that one may benefit from its antiblackness—then “strong nihilism for me, but not for them” amounts to an implicitly weak nihilism, similar to Beauvoir’s characterization of the passionate man.

Hence, it seems reasonable to conclude that, for anyone seeking existential maturity, it may be requisite to pursue the project of strong Black nihilism. I do not say, “to be a strong Black nihilist,” since this formulation raises a number of questions, particularly in light of the existentialist dictum that existence precedes essence. Averring that one is a strong Black nihilist does not amount to taking seriously the value of strong Black nihilism; indeed, such a proclamation may as easily amount to bad faith about the reality of what one actually values. Yet if the aim of existential maturity itself demonstrates the folly of the project of “being” a strong Black nihilist, it seems to equally call forth the reasons that any existent ought to value strong Black nihilism. To choose to live in a world of antiblack racism without fighting for a world of Black freedom in value-creation is to choose to reproduce the antiblackness of the world, whether in part or in whole.

A Concluding Note

I stated above that Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism is a must-read for students of Black existential philosophy and those with interest in the philosophical topic of nihilism. What I have tried to show, though, is why Johnson’s argument is relevant to those concerned with existential questions in general; to merely study “generic” existentialism on the grounds that such matters can be understood independent of questions of race amounts, in short, to a commitment to existential immaturity. Moreover, while the nature of Johnson’s argumentative engagements may fall outside the realm of what is considered familiar or even intelligible from the standpoint of many moral philosophers, Johnson’s arguments—though critical of moralism—are nonetheless of profound moral relevance. Similar points can be made about Johnson’s axiology, philosophical anthropology, and even relevance to areas such as epistemology and metaphysics. In conclusion, then, I would append to my recommendation the following: that Johnson’s text is one that demands attention from anyone seeking to use philosophy to produce better ideas and/or a better world.