That guy was precisely not a nihilist.
It’s funny a casual read might take this as critical, but since he seems entirely unlike someone who sits on balconies as neo-beatnik french existentialist guy, it comes off more as a rerouted compliment.
Well i like to believe that self termination for anything, any cause, that has no real lasting consequence, is a purposeful act of nihilistic destruction of the self. And that’s a no-no in prom’s guide to life extended edition.
Among consequences of no lasting value I include political protesting, which makes that self immolating dude either a nihilist or a dummy.
Now if self destruction is to save a bunch of other people, we have an arguable case against nihilistic purpose and acts of genuine nihilism. But that monk just didn’t give a damn, knowing darn well what he just did would make little to no difference in the scheme of things. All that monk got out of that thing he did was a spot on an album cover.
How do I refute nihilism?
from the Quora site.
Matthew L Reigada
The defining characteristic of nihilism is the proposition that nothing has meaning or purpose. You can further specify to a category of nihilism and refine the subject matter on which the proposition predicates as well as whether one is specifying innate/objective meaning or subjective meaning, but the general proposition is the same across the category at the logical level of why it is inaddressable.
On the other hand, how exactly would one employ logic in order to determine why something exists instead of nothing at all? Or why this something exists and not something else entirely?
How, logically, does the human condition fit into all of this? Is it logical or illogical that sim worlds or dream worlds exist? Same with God or the multiverse.
Logic would seem to revolve largely – solely? – around those who have managed to create a language sophisticated enough to…to need it? In other words, you can’t just say anything that pops into your head. Let alone insist that everyone else is obligated to say the same thing.
But: about what?
How about this: actual social, political and economic contexts? For example, is it more or less logical to elect Kamala Harris president of the United States?
Thus, the need to make a distinction between the either/or and the is/ought world. Subjectively, you might believe that Leprechauns exist, but that God does not. Thus, in my view, the far more crucial component here revolves not around what you believe exists “in your head” [logically or not], but what you can demonstrate exists empirically “in reality”…for everyone?
Yet, as subjective beings, we here on Earth have already created hundreds and hundreds of One True Paths which, while others might reject them subjectively, it doesn’t make them any less objectively wrong.
Well, whatever objective means in a universe this staggeringly vast and mysterious.
Martin Alonso Aceves Custodio:
Nihilism is an inevitable pitfall of excessive philosophizing. After pondering countless partially answered questions and inadequately supported theories, one may succumb to the feeling that life serves no discernible purpose.
Just for the record, in regard to meaning and morality, some nihilists [like me] make an important distinction between “discernable purposes” in our individual lives [the part I root existentially in dasein], and the essential purpose rooted in religion or philosophy or biological imperatives.
Martin Alonso Aceves Custodio:
On the other hand, are or are not the vast majority of moral objectivsts intent on pursing anything but truth and knowledge? Instead, many insist only their own One True Path truly does encompass both.