You’ve raised an interesting point. I agree with you. Many moral objectivists aim to find universal truths and knowledge However, when some insist that their way is the only true path, it can limit open-minded thinking. What we often see in media sages.
It’s important to stay open to various perspectives and question our own beliefs to truly advance in understanding.
Christianity acknowledges the darkness and suffering of the world. If we remain at that, it’s easy to see why some people view it as a nihilistic perspective. The world is a pile of sht, and I’m part of it: I must be sht too, and everything precious to me is too. However, on the other hand, believers find in their faith a sense of hope that transcends nihilistic tendencies. I guess this is where philosophy gives way to blind faith.
What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Or, of far greater interest to me, the extent to which someone will take their definition of nihilism and provide us with examples of how they intertwine it in their interactions with others. Especially interactions that revolve around conflicting goods.
Then the part where over and again nihilism is anchored to means rather than to ends. In fact there are any number of people who will call those like Hitler nihilists because the means they employ are often nothing less than barbaric.
Or this from the NYT:
"From the beginning of Al Qaeda, there were reformers and there were nihilists. The dynamic between them was irreconcilable and self-destructive, but events were moving so quickly that it was almost impossible to tell the philosophers from the sociopaths. They were glued together by the charismatic personality of Osama bin Laden, which contained both strands, idealism and nihilism, in a potent mix.”
Again, how does this not pertain far more to means rather than to ends? As the author notes, “[t]hey did not see themselves as terrorists but as revolutionaries who, like all such men throughout history, had been pushed into action by the simple human need for justice.”
But for me it revolves by and large around a “for all practical purposes” fractured and fragmented moral and political philosophy. And the belief “here and now” that this pertains to ends first and foremost.
Language games let’s call them.
Then the part where words can be a precise fit in describing the either/or world around us. Either something is this or it is that. And virtually everyone concurs. But then the parts that get considerably more problematic…like calling someone a terrorist rather than a revolutionary.
Camus, The Plague and Us
Ray Boisvert on Albert Camus, Thomas Merton and a call to be a healer in a crisis.
Right, like there’s hardly any difference at all between them here.
With many religions, however, being responsible – keeping the faith – sustains objective morality all the way to the grave. And having made it that far, you are then rewarded further [for all of eternity] with immortality and salvation.
With nihilism, on the other hand…?
And while some nihilists do become amoral sociopaths or political autocrats, others embrace one or another rendition of moderation, negotiation and compromise.
In fact, I have never gone this far out on the philosophical limb myself. Instead, I come back to that crucial distinction between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world. It’s a fact – culturally – that every human community that has ever existed was burdened with the task of creating “rules of behavior”.
After that, well, the rest is history.
Let us not squander the precious gift of time, but instead, let us cherish it, honor it, and utilize it wisely in our journey towards spiritual enlightenment.
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All nihilists refuse to define the words they use - referring to abstractions, ideas, ideal, concepts - because they must maintain them as obscure as possible.
Obscurity is the key to mystical or magical effects.
Implying what you can never explain, nor prove, employing your targets esoteric anxieties, to fill in the void.
Defining a word, by using it as an anchor between your thoughts and the phenomenon which remain independent form your thoughts, would be a loss of manipulative power.
Then anyone can falsify and verify your claims…and you cannot have that.
The con-man, the magician, the priest, the charlatan, must be the mediating conduit, connecting the physical with the metaphysical.
Only he will invert the sequence…from physical to metaphysical, into metaphysical to physical.
In this way, the physical will be adjusted to accommodate the charlatan’s metaphysics, rather than the physical supporting metaphysical claims.
Nihilism inverts…using language, semiotics…and semiotics are the tools of grifters and shaman, producing psychosomatic effect only on the initiated…those that have been taught/trained how to react to specific words/symbols.
Pavlovian training.
This remains the limit of their “magical powers.”
Irony that conventional definitions of nihilism are part of the nihilistic paradigm.
I repeat myself for newcomers.
Existence minus god - as defined by the Jews (though they stole it from others) - morality/ethos - as defined by the Jews (though they stole it from others) - meaning - as defined by nihilists - purpose - as defined by nihilists - is not a negative state…but a positive.
A positive for those who live.
And if those definitions are anchored in existence, in the perceptible, then they cease to be absent.
For instance…does morality come through the mediation of moses, who communicated with god…no.
Morality is a set of behaviours that evolved, out of necessity…making cooperative survival and reproductive strategies possible.
Mosaic Laws are amendments…ethics, lets call them…that were not invented by the Jews but existed and were part of every civilization.
God, lets say…if we adopt the Jewish definition then he is non-existent…and all kinds of linguistic acrobatics must be used to pretend that we are revealing something profound.
The concept was defined differently among the pagans…the Geeks…though, even then it had similar implications as those the Jews pretend to have invented…because even then gods referred nature and their power was determined by the quantity of men that believed in them.
Every polis, every city-state, has its own god, representing the city’s population.
The Jews defined their god as the protector of victims…because this was their essence.
And they restricted membership when the world’s victims wanted to participate.
This is clean in the current justifications Israel gives for slaughtering Palestinians…true Semites.
Irony of ironies…those professing to be Semites are not full-blooded Semites.
But it does not matter, because victimhood is the underlying identifier.
The victim cult has its own hierarchy.
Those chosen, by god, to suffer on his behalf, are on the top… code for the collective choosing itself as the prime sufferers, the world’s primary victims, as a tool for exploiting and manipulating mankind anxieties.
A “burden” they call it.
See the linguistic spin?
Their prophesies are all based on the inevitable consequences of their actions.
They know they will be despised, because it has happened so many times in the past…but they will not change their ways.
They choose not to, and this leads to the same consequences…and this is included in their lore.
I hate to contend with you but I must. I disagree. I would readily define each word as I use it. With myriad definitions of each word to represent a variety of definitions of a phrase, I would say that words are not so easily defined.
But as one, myself, who sees utmost destruction as an ideal, a nihilist who seeks only the end of all things, I consider my words fairly concrete. Obscurity of words means nothing to one who truly desires the utmost of conclusion.
I claim no magical powers, and if I had them, I would not be here. I don’t pretend to fully grasp all that you say, but I see objection to Jewish control and thus approve. I feel the same. But I am a nihilist. Not racist, as I hate all alike. If we have agreement, it is on the party most guilty for the depravity of humanity as we see today.
A word is properly defined when it is returned to its primary utility…connecting abstractions to perceptible phenomena.
Words acquire additional definitions as they acquire additional utilities.
So, if I want to define the organism, canine, I must use the English word to refer to it, dog, and define that word in accordance to the organism’s physical and cognitive performances…its behavioural patterns.
In other cultures they may use a different word, but must adopt the same definitions if they are referring to a phenomenon intendent from human desires.
Now ‘dog’ can have additional uses, and so additional definitions will be applicable, but the original remains.
This is true for all concepts that can be perceived, interpedently experienced.
But, if a man is a hypocrite or a coward that fears dogs, he may attempt to deny their existence by defining it in a way no living organism can match…theoretically defining it out of existence, and telling himself that the dogs he perceives are “illusions.”
This is what men do with many concepts…particularly the more abstract, like ‘freedom.’
They expose themselves when they fail to remain consistent and apply their “stringent philosophical standards” on all descriptive terms, like ‘power, strength, life, beauty.’
Such hypocrites, of which many are here on ILP, because they are a majority, not a minority at all, would do the same if they wished to deny life.
They would define life as only a god could hope to attain…and say that if life is not immortal then it is not life, but as good as anything dead…like a rock…and then claim that the living are illusions, and that all is equally dead.
Isn’t that what they’ve done with the term ‘free’, in reference to ‘will’?
Camus, The Plague and Us
Ray Boisvert on Albert Camus, Thomas Merton and a call to be a healer in a crisis.
Camus wrote The Plague in a way that it would challenge the last pronouncement. Readers are led to make value judgments, to praise Rieux and the volunteers who combat the plague.
Yes, and as the recent covid pandemic reminded us, even in regard to deadly diseases value judgments tend to be aligned with one or another One True Path. Meaning one or another set of political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. For some then covid was little more than those ghastly Big Brother liberals trying to take over, well, everything, right?
Click, of course.
In other words, in a world thought by some to be “beyond good and evil”, there are no essential moral truths. But then all those who insist quite the opposite, that they themselves reflect the very embodiment of objective morality.
That’s not the contrast I would make. After all, there are clearly foods that can be shown to be healthier than others. Instead, a better contrast would revolve around those who insist that eating meat is not only unhealthy but is as well immoral.
Again, however, the contrast here between the either/or world and the is/ought world. For example, it is a fact that Donald Trump was sworn into office today as president of the United States. On the other hand, is it a fact that this is a good thing or a bad thing?
Camus, The Plague and Us
Ray Boisvert on Albert Camus, Thomas Merton and a call to be a healer in a crisis.
Why not, then, go with religion? For Camus, as for Nietzsche before him, religion just offers a disguised version of nihilism. The world is ‘fallen’, meaningless in itself. All values derive from divine commands.
Here we go again: God and religion as manifestations of nihilism?
Which, from my own frame of mind, only makes sense if the focus is on means rather than ends. 9/11 perhaps being the classic example of this. Fly jet planes into buildings deliberately killing yourself and hundreds and hundreds of others.
Nihilists!
When, of course, as some note, religion was invented in order to sustain One True Paths all the way to grave. And then some, right? As in immortaluty and salvation for all of eternity in Paradise.
Then the part where those who are indoctrinated to believe such things can be indoctrinated in turn to blow themselves and others to pieces in the name of God.
Go ahead, ask these fanatics if they are nihilists.
On the other hand, Camus was also bothered in turn by those existentialists able to reconcile “existence is prior to essesnse” with Marxism. While at the same time given particularly brutal policies, Marxists themselves are said by some to be nihilists.
And all the faithful need do is to believe it. And if you’re wondering how this can possibly include the lives of innocent children, you can then marvel all the more at just how mysterious God’s ways truly must be.
On the other hand, if the doctor is being honest with himself, he’'ll admit that No God carries with it the assumption there is no objective morality and no immortality and salvation. Or, for some of us, a fractured and fragmented morality and then oblivion.
Camus, The Plague and Us
Ray Boisvert on Albert Camus, Thomas Merton and a call to be a healer in a crisis.
On the other hand, if you genuinely do believe that a God, the God, your God does exist, why is it out of the question to implore the flock not to go to doctors or to hospitals when they are ill? Instead, either through a leap of faith, “because the Bible says so” or because William Lane Craig convinced you the evidence is there, you fall back on the assumption that because God works in mysterious ways, sickness and diseases are just part and parcel of His Divine plan. If your son or daughter is gravely ill you accept that as God’s will. You grieve his or her loss on this side of the grave, but you also truly do believe that you will be reunited once again in Heaven. And then for all of eternity.
It really comes down to what you are willing to believe [and do] on this side of the grave in order to please God and assure yourself that immortality and salvation are all the rewards you’ll ever need.
Yes, that is, no doubt, one way to encompass it. On the other hand, religious faiths around the globe require of the flocks any number of behaviors that others will find especially revolting. But so what? The only thing that matters within any number of congregations is what God may or may not find revolting.
In other words, the True Christian Syndrome. Still embedded in the fact any number of men and women worshipping and adoring a completely different God will insist it is the Christian flocks who worship the false God.
Or what’s wrong revolves around not understanding the Divitinty as Merton did?
On the other hand, “what should I do?” in order to pass muster on Judgment Day? Then the part regarding any number of moral conflagrations whereby one set of political policies brings suffering to some and relief to others.
Right, like the assessment of healers among conservatives and the assessment of healers among liberals doesn’t expose the limitations of that approach.
Nihilism can make you happier, even in the Covid era. No really, let me explain…
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian.
Writing a book about nihilism in 2020 was a strange experience. Whenever anyone asked about the project they’d offer the same feedback: “It’s a great time to be nihilist!” I get the sentiment. In the face of rolling health, financial and climate crises, the population is rich with existential dread. But, as I have rebutted many times, nihilism isn’t relevant because it mirrors our fears and apathies; it’s relevant for its ability to soothe our exhausted 21st century brains.
I’m trying to imagine all of the conflicting reactions to this from the objectivists among us.
Also, it may be a great time for some to be nihilists but I suspect that applies only to those who by and large live satisfying, fulfilling lives in which they have access to any number of options. That’s just how it basically works for most of us, in my view. There’s our philosophy of life and there’s the set of circumstances we find ourselves in. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t.
Then the part where any number of men and women are able to fall back on one or another One True Path to keep them afloat during troubling times. God or No God. And, of course, this is all just another manifestation of dasein from my own frame of mind.
Biological constructs, historical constructs, cultural constructs, social, political and economic constructs. Then those who are able to convince themselves that their own constructs are derived from God or one or another political ideology or from one or another school of philosophy or from nature itself. In other words, God, politics, philosophy and nature as they [and only they] understand it.
And what has human history to date taught us about notions of morality, decency and goodness other than one or another rendition of “you are either ‘one of us’ in sharing a particular dogma or ‘one of them’ who don’t.”
Then, in regard to value judgments, that crucial distinction between existential meaning and essential meaning. And the part where we are able to demonstrate that what something means to us it should also mean to all rational men and women.
Are there any philosophers who seriously defend nihilism?
antonivs at reddit
What kind of nihilism are you asking about? Because for example, much of Western philosophy has been shaped by a response to an acceptance of existential nihilism. Quoting from that link:
In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life, Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning.
Pratt traces it back to the ancient Greeks.
No, really, when exactly does the beginning here…start? Going all the way back to the pre-Socratics? Or should we just fast forward to Nietzsche, the death of God and an at times truly grim 20th Century that ushered in an existentialism as we know it today.
Go ahead, reject existential nihilism. After all, I certainly wish I was able to think up a way to reject it myself.
So, given particular contexts, let’s explore this.
Me being one of them, of course. On the other hand, I recognize that all of the existential variables that were crucial in my becoming one might crumble and be replaced by another frame of mind altogether. As, again, this has happened over and again in the past.
Epistemic nihilism? In fact, sans sim worlds and dream worlds and solipsism and Matrix contraptions, I don’t see how meaning in the either/or world cannot both be known and readily communicated objectively to others.
A Defense for Moral Absence
Broderick Sterrett at the University of Utah
Christians vs. Mormons vs. Hindus vs. Democrats vs. Republicans vs. Alt-Rights vs. Utilitarians vs. Existentialists vs. [insert belief here]. Isn’t it exhausting?
On the other hand, who is going to get tired of hearing that they have access to objective morality here and now and immortality/salvation there and then? Especially when all they have to do is simply believe that their own One True Path really is the one and only path able to bring it all about.
I suspect I wouldn’t if I could be…born again?
And even though I note over and again just how slim it would be that it’s your own frame of mind, with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, few are likely to put that in jeopardy by questioning it. This part by and large: the psychology of objectivism - one possible narrative - Psychology and Mind - I Love Philosophy
Same thing though. You can point this out over and again to the moral objectivists, but with so much at stake, why would they put it all in jeopardy? Years ago I subsumed all doubt in a string of dogmatic assumptions bouncing from one True Path to the next. Now I’m “stuck” with the consequences of thinking what I do until a new experience [or argument] is able to persuade me to give God and religion and objective morality another shot.
Here, I’ll assume that he is a moral nihilist as opposed to an epistemic nihilist. As for whether “moral truths and laws of right and wrong” exist, we are back, in my view, to the part where some say yes [emphatically], and others say no [empathically]. But they are all basically in the same boat…the gap between what they believe “in their head” and the part where they are able to demonstrate that what they do believe is in fact what all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated themselves to believe.
Nihilism can make you happier, even in the Covid era. No really, let me explain…
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian.
After spending two years engrossed in nihilism, I’ve become particularly sensitive to our relationship to “meaning” as an opaque but all-consuming idea.
Then those for whom the meaning of life is anything but opaque. But no less all-consuming in that they divide up the world between one of us [the heroes] and one of them [the villains]. And we know full well where that can take us. For some, it’s human history in a nutshell.
Again, one of those things that can easily come to mean very different things to very different people. But there are so many things able to be commodified in the world today, we might as individuals have an entirely unique collection of assumptions regarding how to sustain “communities, ethics, logic and equality” from the cradle to the grave.
Or even to define what they mean such that others are obligated to share that definition in turn. Or else.
And they will be. More or less. For some. Then back to the part where we are able to explain particular sets of circumstance to others and almost everyone will concur on the meaning of them. For example, Donald Trump is president of the United States again. What does that mean? As opposed to someone insisting that he is doing a superb job back in office. What does that mean?
A Defense for Moral Absence
Broderick Sterrett at the University of Utah
Nihilism is the assertion that moral truths like good and evil, right and wrong, are as fictitious as the deities atheists denounce. It’s no longer a question of deciding what is good and bad without the guidance of a preacher, it is just deciding there is no good or bad to choose from.
Theoretically? Because for all all practical purposes there’s simply no getting around the need for “rules of behavior” in any particular community. And moral nihilists are no more able to demonstrate No God than the religionists are able to demonstrate that a God, the God is their God.
That’s why nothing ever really gets resolved. You merely have to believe that something or someone does in fact exist and that’s what makes it true.
So, sure, add your own misconceptions to the list. Unless, of course, you actually are able to demonstrate that what you believe about all this really and truly is what all other rational men and women are obligated to believe.
Or else?
Fortunately, that’s all it takes, isn’t it? If you get my drift.
Same thing though. If you are convinced nihilists are in fact all of those things then “in your head” that is what they are. And that’s all they need to be in order for you to choose one set of behaviors rather than another. And it’s the behaviors we choose that result in actual consequences.
A Defense for Moral Absence
Broderick Sterrett at the University of Utah
Trust me: some moral nihilists make no such distinction at all here. Me, for example. Instead, I start with the assumption [and that’s all it is] that, in the absence of a God, the God, human meaning and human morality revolve existentially around dasein.
As for how others react to both atheism and nihilism, that too is embodied existentially in dasein.
Of course, there are any number of members here who will point out that being good or bad isn’t the point. It’s accepting that their own God or spiritual belief is the one and the only path in which to access objective morality, immortality and salvation. As for those other avenues, are they able make the same claims about morality, immortality and salvation?
“Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.” wiki
Over and again, I can only point out the enormous gap between Humanism and religion. At best humanists can convince themselves – re ideology, deontology, biological imperatives, etc. – that their own assessments do reflect the most rational manner [philosophically or otherwise] in which to understand human interactions. Then the part where some are so convinced it’s their own self-righteous dogma, they attach one or another rendition of “or else” to their political agenda.
Then the part where those like the amoral global capitalists and the sociopaths insist good and bad do in fact exist. Things are good when they benefit them and bad when they don’t.
Call it the Trump, Musk, Putin, Xi Syndrome.
Nihilism is any dogma or ideology that nullifies experienced existence, using semiotics…because existence cannot be nullified other than in the human brain where it is simply inverted.
So, the brain abstracts reality, reducing it to a form that it can store and use, and then it synthesized its own abstractions, creating ideas like unicorns and satyrs and centaurs etc…and it can also invert its own constructs.
So, a nihilist isn’t really nullifying existence but his own abstractions and understanding of existence.
This ius a very seductive method because it can be used to comfort those who have been traumatized or who find existence too much to handle or too little to justify their suffering…
This would explain the popularity and longevity of the Abrahamic triad. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three examples of spiritual nihilism.
A Defense for Moral Absence
Broderick Sterrett at the University of Utah
A nihilist believes there is no true value in words like good and bad. Morality is a conventional tool which humanity created for itself, by itself.
Of course, those like IC here are likely to capitalize it: Nihilism.
Why? Because that makes it a proper noun. In other words, while folks may have conflicting assessments of what nihilism means – in particular “for all practical purposes” – once you capitalize it you are basically encompassing a frame of mind that revolves around “my way or the highway.”
“Here and now” I can’t think up an argument that effectively challenges [let alone rebuts] this assumption. Thus, if there is no God and ethicists and deontologists can be found all up and down the moral and political spectrum “down here”…?
So, sure, given this assumption, there are going to be those who may well become sociopaths…those who are extremely dangerous to others. They have thought themselves into believing that morality [in a No God world] revolves solely around “what’s in it for me?” And God [if there is one] help those who get in their way. Unless, of course, for whatever “mysterious” reason, He never really helps the victims at all.
Out of the blue, I just thought of characters from a movie that I would myself describe as moral nihilists: https://youtu.be/hJyQ8TvwvEI?si=71NjOfA48k7DwsUR
And is there a philosopher among us who could effectively challenge them…effectively challenge moral nihilism?
Over and again, however: we’ll need particular contexts.
Then the part where, existentially, moral nihilism revolves far more around dasein than any technical, analytic, academic philosophy.
And the part where nihilism is used describe the means employed by the objectivists more so than the ends.
Again, however, if “I” do say so myself.
Really, how hard can that be: “In the absence of God, all things are permitted.” They merely have to be rationalized given certain assumptions about the human condition. And these assumptions suffuse any number of One True Paths.
It’s just that those on particular paths [God or No God] do append “or else” to their moral and political dogmas.