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Individuation, Meaning, and the Underworld of the Soul
A Reading of Principles of Struggle in an Age of Nihilism
by Dr Mohammad-Mehdi Ardabili

Aydin Areta

My own view here may be somewhat more radical even than a philosophy based on “struggle,” because in my view nihilism is not a social and historical condition but another name for the archetype of the “underworld of the soul.” And you know that my approach to the dark night and the underworld of the soul has never been to struggle against it, but to accept it, understand it, and then enter into an alchemical relation with it—to understand as deeply as possible the meaning of this dark night for the soul.

In my archetypal account of individuation, the voice of the soul is profoundly polyphonic. No voice within it is silenced. Every stage in the soul’s alchemy—including the primordial “formless and purposeless matter,” Massa Confusa, and the stage of the soul’s blackening that follows it—is itself part of the alchemy of individuation, with its own meaning and place on the path of individuation. Nihilism, then, is not an enemy of the soul or of human individuation but a foundational stage in its realization. What prevents us from moving along the path of individuation is not the existence and pervasiveness of this heavy enchantment in our time, but the soul becoming monophonic: being possessed by this archetype and becoming fixed within it.

In my philosophy, the archetype of the “warrior” is only one of the archetypes of individuation, and its foundational ideal is not the realization of the myth of the “I/ego,” but the realization of the “soul.” In my view nihilism is only a mode or condition of the soul. If we encounter it merely as an obstacle, our struggle itself can become an obstacle to liberation and freedom. More fundamentally, any approach centred on pathology and the pathologization of the soul can ultimately create its own obsessions, bonds, and impediments, because it replaces the archetypal polyphony and many-voicedness of the human soul with a new god.

Beyond this difference in our understanding of “struggle,” I find Dr Ardabili’s Principles of Struggle in an Age of Nihilism highly readable and valuable, and I recommend it to all friends who have not yet read it.