Nihilism, it's not reasonable.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

It is not reasonabe for men to think of their experiances as meaningless and without purpose, it is against human nature and thousand of years of human culture to submit to an ideology of meaninglessnes and hoplessness.

I don’t care if science can’t objectively proof meaning and purposes it doesn’t mean it isn’t. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to turn on the stories of our forefathers for what is exactly in accordance to science today.

We have composed various mythologies and the importance of man has been clear in all of them, with this said though we value ourselves we humble ourselves before the Gods, Nature and all forces above us, the unexplainable.

But we knew (or thought we did) that man is the measure of all things.

To measure by anything else is to folly and diminish our worth as a species.

This is where I think Faith can be reasonable because with negative theories bombarding man based on “current knowledge” it is only reasonable for man to hope for better future revelations.

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You seem to be arguing more that nihilism isn’t healthy.

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What kind of nihilism are we talking about ?

Nihilism doesn’t need to be associated with hopelessness.
In fact, nihilism or at least existential nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value . It does not follow that there’s no hope.

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Life is full of the extraordinary. We are too busy trying to experience it instead of being it and allowing it to express itself. To be yourself, you don’t have to know or understand it. You don’t have to do anything.

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The standard exhibited kind.

No it doesn’t but it usually is.

Right, but usually thats the attitude they carry. Some call them cynics, but it just goes to show how varied the definitions of words can be.

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Hey Stoic,

Nihilism has intrigued me since high school and it has shown me both its negative and positive dimensions. You might be interested in this thread I made on it a little while back: http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=178385&p=2291916#p2291916

I agree. More so, I believe there is no such thing as meaninglessness for a human being; there is only the denial of meaning. What makes nihilism a somewhat difficult term is that some people who are confused deny all meaning – in spite of the fact that meaning is fundamentally stitched to all thought and feeling – and call it nihilism, whereas, on the other hand, another group of people deny that meaning (or value judgement) has certain qualities, e.g. any possible objective ground, any “ultimate” or certain reality.

Fixed Cross also had some really interesting things to say in the other thread:

[size=85] Courage is required for meaning. If meaning is subject-dependent (and it is) and we can not live without meaning (we can’t) then we have to stand in the face of nothingness upholding what we happen to find meaningful as real. The upside is that subjects have always done this. By their own meaning-establishing they have managed to be subjects. With the advent of collectivized meaning, the power of the subject to assert himself has decreased. Language has weakened us, it has in part “objectified” us, meaning that it has petrified our creative capacity to stand alone, be actual subjects.
The one thing that still retains absolute meaning is the concept meaning itself. Since meaning is always necessary for a being to proceed in its being (“meaning” meaning ‘reason to act/be’) it is inherent in being. Not meaning is dissolved in nihilism, but objectivity, certainty, equality. ~Fixed Cross[/size]

The only revelations that will come are the continuously developing revelations of meaning. If you can’t trust your own ability to see value in life and in yourself, if your inner narrative isn’t nourishing or strong enough, then you might come to rely on the interpretations of others, whether “scientific” or theological, in place of your own thoughts and feelings.

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I’m a nihilist, simply, because meaning and purpose do not exist. However, I live quite a content life, rather happy. It is the weak-minded who feel hopelessness or despair in some form due to this acceptance of truth.

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Can you substantiate that claim?

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What are you trying to say here, and why?

:-"

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LOL. Good one, O_H

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I’m saying they don’t exist, and arguing otherwise is futile. The case for meaning cannot be presented, because meaning is solely subjective. What only exists in the subjective realm cannot be supported in the objective realm (the realm people try to place it in when arguing that meaning exists). If one argues that meaning exists because one experiences it, then a schizophrenic has a very good case for why voices actually do reside in his head.

But the point of my post was to convey how nihilism does not necessarily entail despair, I didn’t expect that first statement would stir debate.

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If there is no purpose, there is no futility either.

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I like that, thats a good one.

I remmeber one person telling someone else to make the most of their live because they didn’t beleve in an afterlife or anything like that.

And thats kind of what I thought, one could argue that without purpose everything is futility, but I agee with the above.

I mean why would making the most of your life be any better than wasteing it away if there’s no purpose, the end result would be the same.

The point can be muddled though.

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Perhaps reasonable can be seen as in what is acceptable or not. Values are accepted not in an either/or manner, but partially. I would accept Your such and such only if. There are no absolute truths, values, or the reasoning behind them. What is reasonable for me may not be for You, but in the public domain, reasonable is analogous to general acceptance. How would a reasonable man think, in such and such a scenario?

 It is an inference which has to be made, in order to be able to get out of absolute subjectivity.  Absolutely subjective values do not exist, even in the minds of the most subjective values. Propositionally,  valuless statements such as," I love what I see" , is not absolutely void of meaning, because although, it can be supposed that I see what I love, the fact that I may not see it, doesen't mean I could not love it, would I see it.  So there is a possibility involved in nihilism, a possibility of sharing general concepts.

Even a conceptual nihilism, an unshared negation of general concepts, implies a possibility. So nihilism may be a deliberate negation of that possibility, but that negation does not desribe the conceptual negation, only of its usage. We choose not to use that possibility, by disuse. “I love what I see” becomes, "I do not see it, and even if I did, how could you know of my seeing it? You could only rely on the the fact that I am honest in my saying “I see it”

So, even though, there is no certainty that I am lying , there is a possibility that I am telling the truth, and whatever I am seeing ,I love. The possibility of that truthful proposition, leads to upon request, to elaborate as to what exactly I am seeing that I love.

Nihilism is a break in the chain of possibility of reasonabless. Not that that possibility does not exist. What causes the break? The appearant uselesness of a concept lays not in the fact that it is necessarily useless, but that it isn’t useful, now, or it isn’t being used. Usage makes values. Whatever I can use, I keep, whatever I can’t, I throw away. It is not a simple simple nihilism of belief in value and it’s negation.

When Nietzche said “god is Dead” he is not saying god is dead. And before that he was alive, he is saying --God is of no use.(Not that we can’t use the term, but we don’t know, we can’t know what God is.
The objective use of God is dead, but the possibility of its usage isn’t.

Therefore, nihilism is not a general denial, but of a specific abandonment of it’s reasonable possibility.

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Isn’t it fair to say that your experience of life will be much better if you make the most of it as opposed to wasting it ? Won’t you feel happier?

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Hmm. Wasn’t he also referring to a growing secular/atheist/anti-theist movement ?

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Absolutely. However referientiality is the problem in faith. Faith is not a foundation of objective belief, but a singular description. The nihilistic movements were a description of mass-belief entropy. But it is a movement away from, a reaction against, a belief, it’s not structurally authentic.

Singular views, on the other hand , in the case of Nietzsche, for instance, are at most accommodations,to such reactions. The ring, in niebelungen, protecting brunhilda (gotterdamamerung)). —is a symbol of this singular thought, that gods’ twilight irrespective, within the singularity of the ring, remains the mystery of divinity.

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My experience of nihilism (which I admittedly am still caught in) is when materialistic reductionism usurps subjectivity (and inter-subjectivity) as the king of kings and lord of lords.

To force all subjective experience to conform to the laws of reductionist logic will cause one to go fucking insane. One becomes the Underground Man. One can no longer function as a harmonious entity. In this sense nihilism is indeed unreasonable, unbearable, impossible to live by.

What we know via “reason” must not tyranize over what we know via feeling, or vice versa. “All is merely subjective” is the cry of an intellect that has reached the limits of the rational, i.e., has felt the impossible contradiction. Reason is something that must be over-come, not man.

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Exactly. The hope is derived from existential meaning rooted in dasein.

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A lot of nihilists even argue that a given person needs to MAKE meaning out of the world instead of relying on some objective meaning that everyone shares in.