nihilism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Nihilism
Nolen Gertz at the Aeon online site

On the other hand, in what context?

But point taken. Imagine a world where everyone thought about human interactions as I do!

It’s one thing to deal with all the human pain and suffering that comes about as a result of conflicts revolving around Gods or around No God ideological, objectivist, moral, political agendas. The conflicts that ensue between those deemed to be one of us or one of them. But at least there are still behaviors said to be right or said to be wrong.

What if you started out instead by concluding that, in the absence of God, all things really are permitted? That morality revolved solely around sustaining your own perceived wants and needs? That the whole point of it all was in not getting caught in the act of doing precisely that? Or, in a might makes right world, having the power to do what you please, others be damned.

Of course out in the real world everything is always considerably more complicated:

Nihilism is no exception.

There are simply far, far too many combinations of existential variables in far, far too many social, political and economic contexts [over time historically and across space culturally] in which any particular one of us might find ourselves. Endless combinations of childhood indoctrination, countless contexts in which our own lives would be almost unrecognizable to those brought up in very different sets of circumstances.

Consequently, even the author’s “general description intellectual contraption” above can only be truly grappled with out in a particular world, given a particular context understood in a particular way. All the points I argue in my signature threads.

So, in this respect, nihilists are much like everyone else: the embodiment of dasein. At least out in the is/ought world.

And now we are sinking down into a profoundly problematic abyss that is the coronavirus. What does it mean then to, for all practical purposes, “either keep thinking and risk alienating yourself from society; or stop thinking and risk alienating yourself from reality.”

In other words, there is still the gap between what you believe in your head is true and what you are able to demonstrate to others is in fact true. That doesn’t change just because you call yourself a nihilist.

2

And it is not coincidental that it is almost always that the social immunity fails at the darkest hour.

The Black Death was a sign of a time of total negation of the eclipse of light proceeding the fall of grace. It did prove a good sign, as MagsJ is prone to point out : there always is sunshine after a storm.

1918, the onslaught of the coming of dialectical furor that foreshadowed an an antichrist : the Fuhrer.

Marx was a diversion to Romantic idealism.

Art was burned by the the absurdists, as a reply to the proclamation: 'art for art’s ’ sake for trying to ground it pertinent, analytically .

Resulting in pure constructionist abstractions, viewing with socially authoritative elementary naive realism.

Pure foundemental , ‘progressive’ conceptual installations, , partially differentiated associations; cut ups, alienated typographies, hiding missing elemental escapism, to Herald in the possibilities for the transference from Freudian analytical salons, through the recurrent personality problems hawking emerging trends, to the finality of unabashed madness of the continuum of war from. 1848 through WW1-WW2-and today’s precipice.

There is the old sceptre hanging today, it really never went anywhere, the myth of illness does not define it, it only bursts out against the suppressed hostility of matter over form.

Ref: Georg Lukacs : Soul and Form

“The aim of the present chapter is to determine the character or nature of
(theoretical) nihilism. To do this, we will have to take up some complex
questions concerning being and knowledge. We will touch upon both of
them, and then seek to broaden and deepen our understanding in the fol‑
lowing chapters of this first part.
Can nihilism be considered the “normal” condition of humanity today?
Rather than trying to give a complete answer to this question, I intend to
focus on a fundamental dimension of nihilism: namely, the theoretical one.
Despite the myriad of analyses, can we really say that the essence of nihilism
is immediately clear for us? This is highly doubtful. On the other hand, E.
Jünger makes the particularly germane observation that “[d]efining nihilism
is not unlike identifying the cause of cancer. The identification of the cause
is not itself a cure but is preliminary to a cure. . . . To a large degree, to
understand nihilism means to understand it as a historical process.”1
Jünger
makes several notable assertions here: there is still no adequate definition
of nihilism; a definition needs to be sought; perhaps nihilism is a sickness
akin to cancer, but hopefully can be cured; and its process is historical and
universal.
Heidegger’s diagnosis is drastic inasmuch as he claims that metaphys‑
ics has always failed in its attempt to individuate the nature of nihilism:
“Nietzsche never recognized the essence of nihilism, like every other meta‑
physics before him.”2
Heidegger’s position only appears similar to Jünger’s,
insofar as he claims to have already reached what Jünger only hopes to”

© 2014 State University of New York Press, Albany

3

Uh, anyone else? :wink:

4

Uh, meaning the same , or Uh in the diminutive?

Hybrids do not nearly offer enough fodder for being suspect - consistent with irony . ! .&/or sarcasm.

Lukacs hints the difference is almost imperceptible, and so, hidden within an inclusive hidenness within the Being, as a form inordinately struggles with it’s significance.

Iambiguous, I’m getting into Lukacs, and have little doubt as to HIS significant relation to intentionality.

His use of the concept is ‘destiny’.

5

Pondering and thinking doesn’t equate to nihilism.
Nihilism is an empty space.
Thinking a long time using the standard of reality fails.
A new reality needs to be set in place.
This challenge of creativity escapes many.
Atheism is considered a form of enlightenment.
So says the moderns.

6

We’ll need a context of course.

7

Neutrality is the true and good nihilism.
Anti-thought, anti-meaning, is the bad nihilism.

Being neutral means we don’t interfere with the processes of nature.

The crap nihilism is for negative people that over criticise knowledge.

8

We’ll need a context of course. No, seriously.

9

the key is how, how we define Nihilism…

to say, I don’t believe in anything… the truth is,
you believe in something… even if it is ice cream,
you still have some belief…

to say, I don’t believe in the government… as being
nihilism, is a rather small, short sided vision of nihilism…

or I don’t believe in politics… but you have belief in something else
is really a rather selective vision of nihilism…

most nihilist I have come across, actually hold beliefs,
and a holding a belief is enough to disqualify one from
being a nihilist…

so, the fact of the matter is, there is very few and I mean very
few real nihilist in the world……

I have defined nihilism as devaluing or dehumanizing
human beings and their values… which is to say,
I am fighting nihilism just as that other fighter
against nihilism did, Nietzsche…

Nietzsche did try to fight what he saw as nihilism… his solution
was to fight nihilism as he saw nihilism…….

which is quite different, then how my solution is fighting nihilism…

Kropotkin

10

What is the opposite of nihilism?
Meaningism? Truthism? Har har.

1 Like
11

No, in my view, the key is not in how we define it, but in how we integrate that definition into the actual behaviors that we choose in our interactions with others.

Okay, in what context relating to what behaviors that come into conflict as a result of conflicting goods? And cite specific examples of Nietzsche doing this back in his day.

Basically, as I see it, all you keep insisting [over and over again] is that to the extent that others don’t share your own liberal/left political prejudices, they are themselves devaluing and dehumanizing human beings.

Unless of course I am not understanding your point of view.

So, in regard to a particular context relating to any well known sets of conflicting goods, how do you differentiate your moral narrative and political agenda from objectivism?

Either you are willing to moderate your convictions and through negotiation and compromise accept social, political and economic policies that include the views of conservatives and right wingers, or you insist that, no, only your own liberal assessment reflects a truly rational and ethical frame of mind.

Which is it?

And, however you construe it, cite actual issues that are of particular importance to you and describe in some detail what you would construe to be the best of all possible worlds.

12

Whatever the opposite might be the same conditions apply: meaningful and truthful in regard to what actual behaviors in what specific set of circumstances?

13

The opposite is literally the opposing .
Nothingness, that something, or some Being manifests.

But such nothingness is the product of a linear attitude, in the context of the strictly pre-symbolic. The elements of the pre-symbolic is strictly based on presence/absence.

Presence/absence does not involve the ego-self, an idea, but only a proverbial manifestation of a relational posture: the nothingness of the self.

That nothingness means the absence of a relational sign, nothing else.
Dasein consists of the 'other’s manifestation toward , or away in signifying it’s relation.
It is a self cirscribed center of various significations.

The signifiers define it.
Complex signifiers are the contexts within which the ego develops.

The ego is not transcendent apart its contexts within which significance develops.

Nihilism is an absolute reduction to this attitude -posture, and modernly it may consist of a neutrality born out of ambivalence. ( between the reduction and the production of significance)

It is no mere coincidence that das signifies neutrality, a neutral contextual symbolism, that intentionally defines it’s self in opposition to the nothingness of the reduced existential phenomenon-of the. eye: . (Sartre’s concept) in its early manifestation.

Nihilism is the nominal opposite of the phenomenal.

A comment may be had here that it would be necessary to bring this toward a less abstract definition, but the best way is to point to the phenomenological reduction as the antithesis of the essential toward which it is reduced.

Existence does precede the essential, but the incorporation of it is inavoidable ex-post facto.

Unless, the reduction becomes aligned with a belief in god, as that, which came before any manifestation.

The rationalist position of neutrality is signified by the dialectical synthesis, and contraverts the material with the immaterial. (Kant Hegel) contrary to opinion, they are postural manifestations and they are not contrary. They actually complement each other, probably, but not sufficiently cyclically.

This is why I am a firm believer in that the holding of a nihilistic posture can adhere to higher contextual spheres, which include both.

The paradoxical nature of the relationship come out literally :

‘Heidegger uses the expression Dasein to refer to the experience of being that is peculiar to human beings. Thus it is a form of being that is aware of and must confront such issues as personhood, mortality and the dilemma or paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with oneself.
Wikipedia › wiki › Dasein
Dasein’ - Wikipedia

In other words , it may be an intentional use of das ein & .da sein which combine in differing structural hierarchies to be defined in such a way, as to signal the circularity inherent.

Finally: the only support I could find for the above patadoxicality was the oriental connection :

'Some have argued for an origin of Dasein in Chinese philosophy and Japanese philosophy: according to Tomonobu Imamichi, Heidegger’s concept of Dasein was inspired—although Heidegger remained silent on this—by Okakura Kakuzo’s concept of das-in-der-Welt-sein (being-in-the-worldness, worldliness) expressed in The Book of Tea to describe Zhuangzi’s Taoist philosophy, which Imamichi’s teacher had offered to Heidegger in 1919, after having followed lessons with him the year before.[15] Parallel concepts are also found in Indian philosophy[16][17] ’

{ I think it was left unsaid for a reason, but that evades the central mystery of how transcendence is overcome by Jaspers, re.: the existential jump):

Yo proceed from Jaspers to Lacan, for it appears it is of a necessity here, because of Your particular block iambig, that the ‘existential junp’ can have no practical sense. that the objectives borne out of a transcendence don’t show a possible venue:

'Jacques Lacan turned in the 1950s to Heidegger’s Dasein for his characterisation of the psychoanalyst as being-for-death: (être-pour-la-mort).[20] Similarly, he saw the analysand as searching for authentic speech, as opposed to “the subject who loses his meaning in the objectifications of discourse…[which] will give him the wherewithal to forget his own existence and his own death”.

{this implies the very limitations of speech within the contextual narrative within which the Russel-Wittgenstein-Sassure analysis show boldly the lack of similitude, the unfilled spaces, between conceptual chains , rather then its opposing use of intentionally programmed criteria.}

In terms of criteria, the objective limit of conscious manifestation devolves back unto the presubjective Dasein, the original state if unintended consciousness In-It-Self. That self carries the world of possibility, but only at times when the spaces between are put on hold.(epoche)

The Buddhic connection becomes manifest here, as a matter of periodic criteria.

Anyway, the idea seems to manifest similarly as in the test of/ for the uncertainty principle: vis. the search for the connection of uncertain with the general principles. (Acin to Einstein’s need to connect the general with the special theory)

That it has not yet been achieved-automatically transforms the need unto the primordial solutions offered by the Vedas.

14

Nihilism
Nolen Gertz at the Aeon online site

Then [for me] that truly enigmatic relationship and interaction between the psychological self and the part where any particular “I” chooses to pursue this philosophically.

Or, for others, theologically, morally, politically.

The part I encompass on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

But how “for all practical purposes”, in terms of our daily interactions with others, does someone go about making the distinction between passive and active nihilism?

"Passive nihilism is more the traditional ‘belief that all is meaningless’, while active nihilism goes beyond judgment to deed, and destroys values where they seem apparent. Passive nihilism signifies the end of an era, while active nihilism ushers in something new.

Again, especially in a world where there is clearly a distinction to be made between essential and existential meaning.

Suppose you conclude that life is essentially meaningless and yet you choose to continue interacting with others out in a particular community from day to day. Even as you set for yourself the task of deconstructing truth and justice into “existential contraptions” that doesn’t make the need to conclude something meaningful about them go away.

For me, of course, this then revolves around the extent to which someone either feels more or less “fractured and fragmented” than “I” am given that I construe moral and political values to be largely existential prejudices derived from dasein.

So, my aim is less in regard to “ushering in something new” and more in grappling with how to communicate “I” as I know it – broken, splintered, cracked, – in a world that is still largely nestled in one or another rendition of objectivism.

In other words, anything new would still be subsumed for all practical purposes in the components of my own [now] chronic ambiguity and ambivalence.

15

I get You, and it is not really a choice on a schematically conscious level, the choice may not necessarily present it’s self in a nominal level of either this or that, for if You concur with the cyclically that Nietzche presents in an eternal reconfirmation, then the contextual derivation of either concentrating on the points raised, or rather the raised points OR, the unfulfilled spaces between them- become mute by perhaps the following analogy, or rather demonstration.

Suppose that existence is like a film and the film runs at variable velocities.
The stills that constitute the action become more realistic, when a specified frames per unit of time is achieved.

It doesent mean that the stills have disappeared, only that the simulation becomes closer to the actual appearance.

A slowdown will shift awareness toward an unintended shift of focus toward the spaces between the objects. A speedup will tend to reconstruct awareness to focus on the Gestapo apprehension of the whole field. and minimize the tendency toward deconstruction of the objective , without breaking down the more general framework of conscious apprehension, but with almost a imperceptible introduction of the use of deliberate intention, to slow down the myriad particles within that frame: so as to re-create an original or at least a more general and authentic awareness.

Time appears to shorten the spatial-objective frequency, creating blur at first, then clarity at certain velocities.

De construction works the same way, except there is an unfounded will to slow it down, because certain limits are being reached.

Technology shortens appearent time, by creating constructed simulation, and deconstruction may be a more naturally processed unwillful participation.

The whole development of the will as a constructed metaphor, shows this struggle , and the antithesis of romantic idealism is grounded in-it’s self.

Deconstruction shows an emphasis in a return to the thesis, and that idea goes way back.

Can’t argue temporarily, that two thousand years overrides 200 years of modern science either, because for the same reason that Einstein’s disconnect in relativity: or the relational summation of value between them.

16

Iambiguous wrote:

“Then [for me] that truly enigmatic relationship and interaction between the psychological self and the part where any particular “I” chooses to pursue this philosophically.”

{Don’t worry there was controversy surrounding Case in between Nietzche and Heidegger as well, and I will try to reference that later on today. It doesent lower the argument toward the charge of defensive ‘intellectualization’ , however, it merely is an attempt by ‘experts’ to lover the bar of a philosophical ground, as opposed to a newly formed psychological truism in-it’s-self

Again, an intentional transcendence is not needed in a schematically constructed object(ive((sm)), but a deconstruction entailing more and more derivitive uncertainty, requires a transference to a transcendental object.

This may be a diminishingly reductive, as at a critical point, a leap may be required to overcome it’s self.

Its like a receeding horizon, struggling to establish focus with the spatial-temporal recess, ( the past appears to retain the form until it becomes inperceptibly vague then disappears, whereas the objective, or what appears to be the other side of apprehension, keeps breaking up the objective - frame of reference into smaller and smaller detail, creating a spatial- temporal horizon that appears to slow the action.

Along the lines of the idea Parmenedies tried to illustrate.

17

Okay, you get Me. Let’s start there. Now, given that, what do you think I am articulating about nihilism [and Nietzsche’s passive/active distinction above] insofar as it is not “on a schematically conscious level” in regard to, say, the points I raise about dasein in regard to, say, conflicting value judgments in regard to, say, any actual existential context of your choice.

18

I can only presume that a choice appears as non-available to you, because the very nearing to what being and time interferes with Your decision to restructure Your schematic ordering.

Analogies help clear up terminology here, passivity entails a minimum engagement of the will of a overbearing reliance upon determinating factors , or contextual refrains. In other words, you may be thinking or not, most probably not, from how I read You, that You may as well stay put, without restructuring or destructuring yourself, because a passivity leads to the unintended epoche-condition within situation, from which any attempt to move to either side, appears by now senseless, or doutfully beneficial.

This senselessness is not tantamount to having no sense, to try to understand and figure out ( quantify) the pros and cons of movement either way, but it does tend to move You along determinate ways, since nihilism is also relative movement, albeit umpreceivable.

To be clear: everyone’s situation merits a relative analysis, and in Your case, only an existentially founded examination is appriproate, with a good faith application of self disclosure.

For instance, in terms of ethical/moral conflict related to specific issues dealing with abortion: would your ethical views differ if, the family of resemblances required You to be more , or less objective ; as it pertained to Your daughter, if You had a daughter and if she became pregnant?

A very apt example to be had here is risk management. Most everyone, agrees with viewing life in general to be contingent my loaded with variable amounts of inordinate risk. Most people , literally conduct their life according to their own estimation of this variability, within the context of their everyday life as it stands in contrast to an obsessionally willful reaxemination of levels of risk.

Most of this day to day living creates the choices by which we are obliged to navigate with, hence mist will turn into automatic reflexes, like an auto pilot , where common sense will overtake the need to willfully engage.

Most actions will disengage to become aware of why we choose to do this or that.

Such a process will determine a course of action, short and long term. Its not like yeah, I really base my decision on the latest census, or my need to go along with the crowd, so I don’t think about it. No, we constantly assess the quantitative risk of any decision.

However most people will garner a demotive aspect behind the need to take unnesecarry risk.

Case at hand the gambler. For most people who tend to think of themselves as 'unlucky in life’s, are the sort the feel bad, not only if they loose at gambling, but if the look back and develop negativity up in discovering that they had won, only if they had seen the opportunity to take advantage of a past situation.

For this kind of person, who can not realize that one cannot read tomorrows paper yesterday, as will as they can: risk taking will become a tremendous wrought by the famous Marxian notion of ‘diminishing returns’

I was going to tangent another philoso-psychological truism- as it pertains to social flow, but thank God , was able to stop myself.

19

Your Me, my “I” here, neither passively nor actively, sees any reasonable manner in which to move beyond dasein, in order to pin down a “new world” – for the ubermen? – that would be necessarily/inherently either better or worse than the “old world”.

Until “I” am able to come upon an argument and/or experience that persuades me [schematically or otherwise] to see myself as less fractured and fragmented, I am likely to sustain my current frame of mind [about abortion] given what I presume to be an essentially meaningless world that ends for all eternity in oblivion.

How about you? Schematically or otherwise how do you react to Nietzsche’s distinction in regard to your own existential leap to abortion: rational or irrational, moral or immoral?

20

For me, Nietzche is preempted by more current thinkers, whose thought is implicit in their own use of language:

‘For Karl Jaspers, the term “Dasein” meant existence in its most minimal sense, the realm of objectivity and science, in opposition to what Jaspers called “Existenz”, the realm of authentic being. Due to the drastically different use of the term “Dasein” between the two philosophers, there is often some confusion in students who begin with either Heidegger or Jaspers and subsequently study the other.’

{Again , fitting to Your suggestive narrative as to the distinction between psychology and philosophy, although there was overlap between the two thinkers.}

If it was me who had a decision like this to make, I never had to face such a possibility, for although I have And have had daughters, the moral and ethical disjuncture would be or would have been merely based on a field of possibility, not even rising to the level of the probable.

I would venture on a very different issue, that I am reluctant to raise here, and if I were to tell You, You would probably agree.

Therefore I’d rather pm that , in the event that You may be interested to the point where You may be of help.