Nihilism

[The Nihilist]

I can find nothing on which to hang a world view. The best certainties are either too flimsy or too hard to pin down. The best reasoning is often simply wrong, so I can only rely on it in small ways. All the knowledge I have is on its very best days merely provisional, and my attitude is frequently too melancholy for me to take up any hedonism, no matter how refined. Nihilism looks like my only realistic option. Someone show me I'm wrong. Please.


Before anyone brings it up, I have no interest in simply embracing any beliefs simply because they're pleasant. I must also have a good reason for thinking they're true, and christianity just doesn't fit the bill.

 

[Axioma]

There's lots of flavors of nihilism out there. I certainly can't cite them all for you, but even if you stick to nihilism, there is lots to choose from. Nietzsche's nihilism is not the same as Sartre's. You can have terrible freedom or a tearing down before a rebuilding of something new, or you can decide that if nothing that we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, and so on and so forth.

Basically, nihilism is not the end of thought. Work out precisely what it means to you.

 

[The Nihilist]

No, I don't want to be a Nihilist. No one wants to be a nihilist. It's just the only realistic option remaining

 

[Axioma]

I like being a nihilist.

 

[Received]

I don't see why value should be even loosely related to your dedication to knowing the truth. Objective truth covers nihilism, like a tarp over a ride at a fair; one can know everything and still feel afloat. Subjective truth -- meaning -- is what you need. Stimulation of the frontal lobes. Psychologist recommended, and proven, which implies that we're evolved to be this way. Not enough?

 

[UnafraidOne]

I like being a nihilist.

I think a lot of people feel the same way you do. Even if such a state can be depressing at the same time it is enjoyable.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Does truth matter if it is about something you will can never affect anyway?


I can understand you want to know which road will get you home, and truth has value in that way and meaning to you.

Knowing if a unicorn horn has a clockwise or anticlockwise twist is not something you are likely to need to know, except you might want to draw one, so I'll tell you it is a left-handed thread.

But we have a particular type of life already; we are biological beings with a limited life span and limited in other ways, on this planet and not some other, so there are a lot of decisions we can't make and therefore don't need to make. Being born is a decision you don't have to make.

Life after death is one of those irrelevancies. A person's life up to the point of death is unaffected by anything that might happen afterword, the only thing affecting the person is their belief about the future. That is why in Christianity all the emphasis is on belief and not reality, because belief is the only reality there is.


Or maybe not. An atheist might recall dying and then wonder why he is waking up and about 3 metres tall and looks like some kind of grunt. Those grunts have vivid dreams and an implant that makes them all join each other in those dreams, very entertaining.

 

[Received]

Life after death is only irrelevant insofar as reason is concerned. You can reach a sound conclusion in seconds entailing the futility of considering death as a negativity. But what makes death so absurd isn't a failure to ascertain syllogistic truth. It's an instinctual repulsion, as old as life itself. We fear death because our instincts undermine our coolheaded, rational beliefs; the instincts work independent to them, and they still inhabit the same bag of bones we know as ourselves.

So props to religion for solving the problem. Because it does solve the problem, regardless of the fact that its claims are utterly unsubstantiated, heavily reliant on intuition, which may or may not be based on pure emotional wishes. So what. It's a reasonable emotional wish, and that's that.

Truth has value insofar as it is useful -- which is a tautology, given that value already implies usefulness. Somewhere we've lost this obvious realization. Life doesn't even work with truths, but with apparent truths; knowledge according to the epistemological definitions given by philosophers is problematic. Life works with apparent truths, and uses them as a person uses a car. It provides useful transportation, but sometimes the terrain is too rough, many times it breaks down and causes problems, and many many more times it's simply worth walking.

Value for objective truth for its own sake will inevitably lead to nihilism. It's that people fashion unobjective methods to get around this conclusion. They become stubborn, or willingly ignorant, or arrogant. I don't value truth as the highest good. I value life as the highest good.

 

[The Nihilist]

I don't see why value should be even loosely related to your dedication to knowing the truth. Objective truth covers nihilism, like a tarp over a ride at a fair; one can know everything and still feel afloat. Subjective truth -- meaning -- is what you need. Stimulation of the frontal lobes. Psychologist recommended, and proven, which implies that we're evolved to be this way. Not enough?

Well, I don't think that anything has any inherent meaning, value, or purpose, which I think answers what you're saying. On top of that, though, I feel like I'm forced into a position of philosophical Skepticism. The Skeptics have been the bad guys of philosophy, and they got their laughs by countering philosophical arguments with completely different, equally plausible arguments, thereby demonstrating the unreliability of using reason alone to get a handle on big questions.
But yeah, meaning would be fine.

 

[Chesterton]

Well, I don't think that anything has any inherent meaning, value, or purpose...

Maybe this is stupid, I don’t know, if so, someone can educate me where I’m wrong:

How could you have even considered meaning if it doesn’t exist?

I could look in a kitchen drawer for a spoon. I couldn’t look for a ___. I would look for a spoon because it exists. I wouldn’t look for a ___, because ___ doesn’t exist. (“___” represents something which doesn’t exist).

How would it ever have occurred to you, to seek something in the universe which doesn’t exist?

You could answer that meaning exists only in the human imagination. And if you can convince yourself of that, then your problem is solved. You don’t have to think anymore, you can go to work, watch TV, try to be a decent citizen, or be an anarchist, serial killer, doesn't matter, etc. until you die.

I wanted to be a nihilist for a good while, but I couldn't convince myself that meaning, value and purpose were all in my head.

 

[The Nihilist]

Chesterton, I think you've answered your own question. Nothing has inherent meaning. Meaning is assigned to things by humanity.
You do get that the point of this exercise is to provide a good reason not to be a nihilist, right? It's not to come in here with half-baked answers so you can feel good about having tried to save me from going to hell or whatever. If you have a legitimate reason for thinking that meaning, value, and purpose aren't all in my head, or yours for that matter, spit it out so we can all go get drunk.

 

[Chesterton]

Chesterton, I think you've answered your own question. Nothing has inherent meaning. Meaning is assigned to things by humanity. You do get that the point of this exercise is to provide a good reason not to be a nihilist, right? It's not to come in here with half-baked answers so you can feel good about having tried to save me from going to hell or whatever.

No, I don’t get any point to your exercise. You’re being absurd. You state flat out you know nothing has inherent meaning, while simultaneously looking for “a good reason not to be a nihilist”. If you know what you claim you know, you should be a nihilist. What’s your issue here?

If you have a legitimate reason for thinking that meaning, value, and purpose aren't all in my head, or yours for that matter, spit it out so we can all go get drunk.

Spit out an answer to the question I posted.

 

[Received]

Meaning in the ontological sense isn't meaning in the transcendent, existential sense, which is what we're talking about when we refer to meaning, value, or purpose.

 

[nadroj1985]

I can find nothing on which to hang a world view. The best certainties are either too flimsy or too hard to pin down. The best reasoning is often simply wrong, so I can only rely on it in small ways. All the knowledge I have is on its very best days merely provisional, and my attitude is frequently too melancholy for me to take up any hedonism, no matter how refined. Nihilism looks like my only realistic option. Someone show me I'm wrong. Please.

Well, I think Received's advice is more likely right than not -- you should perhaps see a psychologist. But nihilism isn't a "realistic option," IMO. It's an admission of failure, an admission that there are no realistic options.

Paradoxically, nihilism is both a strong, dogmatic claim and an overall nausea in the face of strong, dogmatic claims in general. Nihilism, fittingly enough, is completely vacuous. You probably shouldn't try to reify it. Think about it this way -- the nihilism you're advocating is actually a pretty damn strong claim, or rather a group of strong claims; that nothing has inherent purpose or meaning, that all "certainties" are not such, and so forth. But these all turn back on themselves; if nihilism is correct, none of them have any bite. The only way they could is if you really did ascribe to some sort of absolutism. Nihilism is funny, ultimately, which is why Nietzsche encourages us so often to laugh.

But seriously, a perniciously melancholy attitude is more likely than not a psychological or physical problem, not a philosophical one.

 

[The Nihilist]

It is my opinion that most philosophical issues are simply psychological or physical problems, so let's not let that get in our way.
Thank you for pointing out the problems of nihilism, and explaining why on its best day it is unpalatable.
Absolutism is an old habit, and I sometimes still tend to think in the vocabulary of absolutists, so the prospect of nihilism does present some sting.

 

[Received]

Should we differentiate nihilism objectively and subjectively -- existing "in" the object (the chair means something), and "in" the subject (transcendent, goal-oriented purpose)? Nihilism is self-negating when referring to the former, but not when referring to the latter. But when I'm with the latter, I'm hiding my laziness, if not rebellion -- why sit around and b*tch when any action is preferable to nothingness, to despair, to idleness?

 

[ExistencePrecedesEssence]

Should we differentiate nihilism objectively and subjectively -- existing "in" the object (the chair means something), and "in" the subject (transcendent, goal-oriented purpose)? Nihilism is self-negating when referring to the former, but not when referring to the latter. But when I'm with the latter, I'm hiding my laziness, if not rebellion -- why sit around and b*tch when any action is preferable to nothingness, to despair, to idleness?

I was reading The Outsider by Colin Wilson a few days ago, and he points this out; but he also goes on to say that most humans very rarely are dependable to act on their rebellion until it is threatened 1) with death, or 2) with a likely alternative. But, he also says, likely alternatives are hard to come by, and those near death very rarely retain their epiphanies. He then concludes that man, in his natural state--living towards death with almost ignorant denial of it happening--is as likely to carry out his potential than a stray dog is to find a home. I thought it was interesting that Camus, also, proclaims that we live, in society, in an equivocal nihilism, denying much the same as we deny death.

 

[The Nihilist]

I find that explanation pretty satisfying

 

[billwald]

Doesn't the Bible teach that "meaning" comes from one's work and good chow? And a little booze, but not to much.

 

[The Nihilist]

Doesn't the Bible teach that "meaning" comes from one's work and good chow? And a little booze, but not to much.

No, I don't think it does. Moreover, I don't think work is an end in itself. To be happy with that is to be a slave.