Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark

“There has been an ancient war across the fields of philosophical inquiry, and in this violent conflict two diametrically-opposed sides: on the one front, those movements aligned with perceiving philosophy as enlightenment, and thus inescapably tied to discourses of truth, absolutism, and idealism that would render ours a radiantly serious, legitimate discipline. Tradition, structure, reason, and systemic orders of the mind follow in their wake; and on the other front, those movements aligned with perceiving philosophy as dark trek, and thus inescapably tied to discourses of chaos, exception, obscurity, and fragmentation that would render ours a deviant, criminal enterprise. Originality, distortion, tremor, and rogue speculation follow in their wake. For one alliance, the light promises a certain stability of Being (desire for groundedness); for the other alliance, the night provides gateways and trajectories of becoming (desire for flight or freefall). In this way, it is a war between the throne and the open sea, a war between significance and the ingenious manipulation of meaning within the folds of pure meaninglessness. The conceptual schism between day and night therefore marks the existential border between those with a pathological need to rule and those with a diabolical impulse to abandon, subvert, and reinvent the game of mortal experience.”

—Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh, Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark