Nihilism says that there’s no transcendent beyond – nothing to guarantee the meaning and order of the world. No objective justification of morality, and all that. The highest values degrade themselves, right?
And Gnostics think that there is a beyond?
Sure, but it’s one we can’t access. There is meaning and goodness and so on, but not for us. Transcendence is just nothingness – a hole in the world. God is just the nothing of the world. Nothing remains of God but the void.
So Gnostics believe in God?
God is absence, that’s all.
Yeah, but the absence of God is not nothing. There’s still a relation to God – but as absent. As absent meaning, truth and goodness.
So what?
It’s a relation that inverts the values of the world, and calls for us to invert them. Living against the world – that’s what it’s about. Live in the world, but as though you didn’t belong to it. Do what you do, live as you live, but in full awareness of the nullity of every worldly relation, every action.
Work in Progress 