nihilism

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

This is the point I often come back to…the point that many [the objectivists in particular] just seem to shrug off as of seeming little importance at all. When of course in grappling with anything in the vicinity of teleology, it is by far the most important consideration of all. Until someone has a grasp on why something rather than nothing exist, and why this something and not another something, it’s like them reading one verse from one chapter of the Bible and attempting explain the meaning and the purpose of Christianity.

Instead, at best, one can start with attempting to understand the meaning and the purpose of one’s own life. While, at the same time, noting that in some respects, it seems to overlap with the lives of others. Then sharing experiences with them…attempting to come up with those things that seem to be true for all people. In other words, an existential meaning and an existential purpose.

In other words, seeming to lack in any essential meaning and purpose such that when we compare and contrast the particular things that we think, feel, say and do, there does not appear to be a “transcending font” we can turn to in order to sort out differences and conflicts.

Still…

Here, however, I am quick to point out that evoking a “groundless” existence is just another manifestation of dasein. I have no way in which to demonstrate that there is neither a God nor a Humanist font from which to derive an essential meaning and purpose. And that, in fact, in the world as I know it, there are far, far, far more people able to think themselves into believing that there is one than there are folks like me who “here and now” cannot.

And that’s before we get to those who are able to just shrug all of that aside, and immerse themselves in any number of experiences/interactions that provide them with fulfilment and satisfaction. All of the meaning and purpose that they need as it were.

The difficulty here tends to revolve around the part when, in the pursuit of your own pleasures, it becomes an obstacle or an obstruction for those who wish to pursue things that precipitate conflicts. Or when these pursuits revolve around moral and political value judgments that come to clash.

Then this: which existential “meaning and purpose” will prevail?

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

Here’s the thing though…

If you treat your life itself as you do a game of chess, you merely have to think yourself into believing something about your life that is the equivalent of how you think about a checkmate in chess. Ontologically and teleologically the rules of chess and the aim in following them is to arrive at checkmate. So, if you believe that there does exist a God, the God or, instead, a No God Humanistic equivalent, then revolving your life around accomplishing that which you deem to be an obligation on your part in living your life becomes all that is really necessary.

That’s the beauty of things like this: the belief in and of itself is all that is necessary to make it true. You either do or you do not checkmate your opponent. You either do or do not live your life in sync with God or in sync with one or another political ideology or deontological/philosophical scaffolding.

Moves have meaning in chess only because they bring you closer to the ultimate meaning of the game. Same with the behaviors that you choose given what you have thought yourself into believing the meaning of life is.

Once you conclude however that there is no essential meaning you can wrap your own particular behaviors around, you are still faced with interacting with others in order to sustain access to the things that you need to subsist and the things that you want that will make your life more fulfilling.

That doesn’t change. This existential meaning doesn’t go away just because you are unable to link it to something that ties everything together.

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

Clearly, if an examination of nihilism focuses solely on the “role of philosophical questioning” then the answers themselves can be solely abstract. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph in exchange after exchange after exchange can be devoted to examining the meaning of “transcendence” without once connecting the conclusions reached to the existential meaning that we grapple with in our day to day interactions. In particular, those that precipitate actual conflicting behaviors that precipitate actual consequences. My “thing” here.

How would the conclusion that “nihilism is compatible with the idea of transcendence” be relevant here?

Okay, what “on Earth” does that mean? Existentially, for example. Being conscious of what actual phenomenal interactions? Transcending objective thought in what sense substantively? In a physical universe that we have only just scarcely begun to understand.

Admittedly, I am never quite certain as to what on Earth – the planet I call home and interact with others on – this is actually supposed to mean. For all practical purposes, say. Again, it’s the sort of thing that “serious” philosophers ever seem intent on focusing in on first before they get to that part. If, of course, they ever do, right?

There are things that we can be conscious of that transcend other things. And there may or may not be any number of “things” up there or out there that transcend any particular things that mere mortals down here on planet Earth may think or feel or say or do. For example, given the lives that they actually live from day to day.

But: That is the part I wish to focus in on in regard to what I/“I” think nihilism means.

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

And what could this possibly be other than either God or mere mortals here on planet Earth – or intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe – in possession of free will and able to grapple with and grasp an understanding of existence itself?

Now, with God, it would seem likely that there is a teleological purpose “behind” existence. While for mere mortals in a No God universe, there may or there may not be.

Most tend to forget that part. Or they forget that in regard to the meaning we attach to human interactions we are most likely to pass judgment on, all that is necessary is to believe that your own meaning need be as far as it goes. Then, for those like me, the suggestion that even if you are willing to expose your own meaning to the criticisms of others, there does not appear to be a way in which to substantiate the most rational meaning.

On the other hand…

…this frame of mind evades my own argument about the nature of objective facts able to be accumulated in regard to interactions in the either/or world. There is no way that a community could function coherently if there was not objective meaning able to be assigned to all of the interactions necessary to subsist…to sustain a community from day to day. It’s just that, as distinct from a community of ants, meaning for our species becomes entangled in a vast assortment of “memes” as well.

For example, for some, meaning abounds in their reaction to such things as “March Madness” here in America. While for others it is utterly meaningless.

Go figure, right?

Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality
James Tartaglia
Reviewed byGuy Bennett-Hunter, University of Edinburgh
From the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews webpage

Here, again, I make the distinction “for all practical purposes” between seeming essential meaning able to be successfully communicated regarding things and interactions in the either/or world, and seeming existential meaning only able to be more or less successfully communicated given the arguments I make in my signature threads here. In regard to moral and political value judgments in the is/ought world.

On the other hand, in regard to those things that need to be accomplished – by individuals, by society – in order to merely subsist, does it really matter if something in the way of an essential meaning is found. Providing food, water, clothing, shelter, defense and an environment able to sustain the reproduction of any particular community is simply a given. And in these interactions there are any number of contexts in which we find pleasures and fulfillments and satisfactions. This in and of itself is meaningful enough.

Or “intellectually”:

Point taken?

And then “for all practical purposes”:

But then for the objectivists here, that just won’t do. They insist that, on the contrary, if you think about human interactions in exactly the same way that they do, you have no recourse but to grasp that, in fact, there is an essential, overarching meaning that fully explains, incredible as it might seem, everything.

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

On the other hand, reconfiguring nihilism into Nihilism seems to suggest that if you think about it long enough you can capture the very essence of it’s meaning. The Nihilism. The Nihilism intertwined in Being itself.

Like, for example, was once done with Dasein.

Admittedly, the author here does note this:

"Disclaimer: My writings state my opinion. Feel free to disagree.

But, from my frame of mind, he/she is not off to a good start.

Of course my own nihilism starts with the assumption that 1] the human species embodies free will and 2] that the human condition is embedded in the gap between what any particular one of us have come to believe about it and all that can be/must be known about it going all the way back to an understanding of existence itself.

This and the assumption that the “free man” or the “free woman” is largely an existential contraption rooted inter-subjectively in dasein.

Okay, you see through “society” and you set out to live more “authentically”. As a Nihilist. But then you bump into other Nihilists hell bent on doing the same. Only their own moral and political value judgments come into conflict with yours. So, how do all of these true Nihilists resolve those conflicts?

Or does this true Nihilist insist that in order to be free authentically all of the other Nihilists must think and behave as he or she does?

If you get my drift.

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

Ironically enough, that is one way to go about it. You set out as a philosopher to find meaning in life and, eventually, in reading all of the other philosophers attempts to do so, you conclude that ultimately, essentially, ontologically, teleologically, etc., there just isn’t any. Or not the meaning of life. That was basically my own path. Meaning embodied in both the God and the No God world collapsing under the weight of actual existential reality. If only in the is/ought world that encompasses moral and political value judgments.

Reason? Nope.

But then faith?

Yep for some, nope for others.

Yes, that works for me as well. In particular in regard to those who insist that they are the authority on which particular behaviors allow you to become “one of us” and not “one of them”.

They are still everywhere here. Though, given my own contributions over the years, not nearly as many as there used to be. At least not the ones I respected as philosophers. Now they are mostly Kids and the fulminating fanatic rot. Minds that, in my view, only a fool would respect.

Unless of course I’m wrong.

There is destruction of meaning.
Then there is neutrality towards meaning.
Neutrality is different than anti.
I think a good nihilist will be as neutral as possible about everything.
Doing this will conserve so much mental energy that it will
change the character of the nothingist, on nearly every level.
It would be an experiment to apply nothingness to ourselves and all our mandatory meanings.
We would still eat, drink and go poo, but neutrality leads to idleness.
Idleness leads to refocus of the energy and self.
It centers a person and balances their energy.

Or as I’d like to say…

To much stimulus doesn’t allow the natural healing of the mind and spirit.

We’ll need an actual context of course.

How can you even say that?
To me my post was plain as day.
No need to say any more.

You actually mean that, don’t you?! :sunglasses:

Every once in a while the word nihilism will make an appearence in the news media.

Here’s one I just came across at the New York Times:

“I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.” David Brooks

Here’s the “context”: nytimes.com/2021/04/22/opin … e=Homepage

An assessment of those right wing extremists “out there” basically intent on making Donald Trump America’s first Führer.

But, again, I suspect that his use of the word revolves more around means than ends. The end, in other words, justifying any and all means.

On the other hand, there are those who don’t make this distinction. Nazis and Communists and Anarchists – all extremists – are construed to be nihilists.

Just the opposite of my own subjective assessment. For moral and political nihilists of my ilk, all ends are interchangeable given the “psychology of objectivism” here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296

Here’s the latest intellectual contraption from Satyr:

Again, all I can do is to challenge him – or those who subscribe to whatever they think he means here – to come to an agreement on a particular reality [set of circumstances] in which we can explore nihilism given the components of our own philosophies.

In particular as it relates to moral and political value judgments that come into conflict out in the real world.

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

In other words, the Capital N Nihilists. Whereas for me, as with Dasein, I prefer the lower case rendition. That way it can be attributed more to the existential parameters of the life that one lives rather than to some Philosophical Contraption in which Nihilism is Defined to Mean only what any particular Intellectual says it Means.

As though the Nihilist Movement and only the Nihilist Movement gets to decide who and what the authorities are and who or what is to be put in their place.

But even to call this “distorted” is to suppose that there is an understanding of it that is not distorted.

One in particular given my own little “n” propensity: “I” in the is/ought world.

The part where a failure to agree on what either is or is not the right thing to do – given the disjunction between what people say things mean and the inability to establish what they ought to mean – results in actual dire consequences at times.

See how he goes about it? He bitches about nihilists being only about the idea, the theoretical, the logos, the ideological, the social/memetic constructs.

It is as though he has the nihilist in his pocket. He pulls him out and says, “look everyone, I have the ‘all is nil, meaningless and illusory’ nihilist here”.

As though anyone who dares to construe nihilism as anything other than in how he encompasses it up in the fluffy white clouds that are his own serial intellectual contraptions is necessarily wrong. By definition.

And, over and again, I challenge him to come here and defend the components of his own argument against the components of mine.

How about it, Satyr? Or anyone else there or here who defends his point of view. Let’s agree on a particular set of circumstances and see what unfolds.

Here in the philosophy forum or over at Rant.

Satyrs dick is so tiny he has to sit down to pee. He is a Canadian atheistic, hippie-inbred materialist too who has his own evolution, his own nihilism, his own history and his own pretty much everything else since he is a complete goon.

Removed for irrelevance.

Me too!

Ha!