nihilism

Nature to iambiguous:

Not to worry. It’s okay to respond to pood on this thread.

Click.

Yes, but then I ask myself, “where do those shades come from if not from the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein in my signature threads here?” There are historical, cultural, and experiential assessments rooted in the actual experiences we have as individuals.

The distinction I then make are between those who recognize the subjective/subjunctive elements involved here and those who insist that, no, only their own understanding of nihilism actually does pin it down…philosophically?

Then the part where I insist that we’ll need an actual context.

As for Christianity, it is precisely because any number of Christians insist that only their own denomination reflects the one authentic meaning of God that they become exactly the opposite of nihilists to me. Then there’s Nietzsche’s will to power and the ubermensch. How is belief in them not analogous to a religion to some here?

Well, regarding the first part, I don’t agree. Or, rather, I don’t see how any of us as “mere mortals”, infinitesimally tiny specks of existence in the staggering vastness of all there is, can possibly demonstrate that in fact, there is no objective morality period.

Instead, my approach here is this: So, you do believe that there is an objective morality? Okay state your argument. Then note the manner in which you would go about demonstrating how, regarding this argument, all rational and virtuous human beings are obligated to think as you do. Especially how you go about demonstrating it to yourself.

Of course the scary thing here is that for those objectivists who do gain access to actual power in any particular community, they don’t have to demonstrate anything at all. They need only to believe it themselves and then go about the task ridding the community of those who refuse to toe the line.

The surreal example in Afghanistan right now. The objectivist Taliban are being challenged by the even more objectivist ISIS-K fanatics!

On the other hand, I never fail to point out that it’s the “show me the money” moral nihilists who own and operate the global economy that probably bring about the most human pain and suffering around the globe.

Though I certainly agree with you that there is no getting around the existence of meaningful morality per se in a world where human wants and needs ever come into conflict; making one or another set of “rules of behavior” all but mandatory. Then it just comes down to which particular combination of might makes right, right makes might and/or democracy and the rule of law prevails in any specific community.

Again, though, we need the discussion to shift to an actual set of circumstances in which “conflicting goods” give rise to conflicting behaviors give rise to actual consequences in human interactions.

Here my own existential self rooted in dasein is “fractured and fragmented” given the manner in which “I” have thought myself into thinking this:

Nihilism is purity.
Belief is the death of reason:
"Doubt as sin. — Christianity has done its utmost to close the circle and declared even doubt to be sin. One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements: even a glance towards land, even the thought that one perhaps exists for something else as well as swimming, even the slightest impulse of our amphibious nature — is sin! And notice that all this means that the foundation of belief and all reflection on its origin is likewise excluded as sinful. What is wanted are blindness and intoxication and an eternal song over the waves in which reason has drowned.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Reject belief in all things and embrace knowledge.

When I say that there is no objective morality, I am using a kind of shorthand. I don’t insist that there is no objective morality, or that there cannot be any. I just lack a belief in any kind of objective, mind-independent morality. If there is such a thing, I would need to see evidence of it. I can’t even imagine what such evidence would look like. In a matter like this, I think the burden of proof lies not on the moral nihilist — the person who disbelieves that there is an objective, mind-independent morality — but on the person who believes that there IS such a thing. It’s exactly the same with atheism. The atheist has no burden of proof to demonstrate that there is no God. Rather, the burden of proof lies with the theist who claims that there is a God.

Morality and God are tied together because generally objective morality is entwined with God belief. God is supposed to provide the objective ground of morality. Yet way back in ancient Greece the Euthyphro dilemma showed how problematic this is.

Many species apart from humans display what we would call moral behavior, including reciprocal altruism, which even distant human relatives like bats exhibit. However, I would say that humans invented morality as a concept — and then identify traits that we call moral among ourselves, and in other animals. Animals may exhibit moral behavior but it is doubtful they have a concept of morality, though I’m not too sure this is so for animals like chimps, elephants and cetaceans. I think it is possible that they and perhaps others do have such a concept.

But the behaviors, and the concept, and the descriptions of moral behavior, are limited to sentient creatures. We can imagine, without contradiction, a universe devoid of sentience. Where, in such a case, is morality located? Is Saturn moral? Is quantum mechanics? Is the Milky Way galaxy, or any galaxy, moral? The idea seems absurd. To argue that objective morality exists outside of minds would be to claim the stance of a moral Platonist. I see no reason to accept Platonism in any form, and certainly not in matters of morality.

More later.

BTW, you don’t need nature’s permission to respond to me. It’s as silly as asking God’s permission. God doesn’t exist and there is no reason to think that nature or its so-called laws have any control over you whatsoever. I am glad to see you are reading and working through the paper on regularity theory that I linked.

Well, we are certainly on the same page here. This is pretty much my own thinking on the matter. Only here “I” put more emphasis on the manner in which any particular individual will draw their own conclusions about morality from the assumptions I make in my signature threads.

In other words, how, in regard to my own value judgments, “I” am considerably more “fractured and fragmented” than most who, like me, do not believe “here and now” in an objective/universal morality. Thus the most intriguing exchanges I have had here at ILP are with those like moreno/karpel tunnel. Those who are pragmatists by necessity in rejecting objective morality, but who still seemed to believe [in a way I never really understood] that their own moral and political prejudices were, what, still superior to those on the “other side”?

And, just as crucially, with God [most of them] there is Judgment Day. Not only [on this side of the grave] is objective morality Scripted for you in one or another Good Book, but, if you stay on the righteous path, you gain access to both immortality and salvation [on the other side] as well. And, who knows, perhaps when you do get to Heaven, God’s “mysterious ways” will be explained as well.

Perhaps. But they don’t congregate and exchange philosophies. Their behaviors would seem to be far more rooted in biological imperatives, instincts, drives. Thus little in the way of a “concept of morality”. But that’s when you bump into those like Satyr at KT who insist that “natural behaviors” – biological imperatives – are applicable in regard to, well, everything under the sun.

This is where things can get downright…spooky? Suppose human beings are the only sentient creatures in the universe. Suppose next week, month, year, decade, century the really, really, really Big One comes hurling down out of the sky, smashes into the planet and all of human existence is obliterated.

What then of morality? What then of anything at all if, in a No God universe, there are no minds around?

How do we with minds here and now wrap those minds around this?

Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website

Again, philosophically? To the extent that you don’t just act out a set of values, but stop and think about why you are acting out one set and not another? And how values themselves become a necessary part of human interactions?

Yes, this is as good a description of nihilism as any. But alienation becomes rooted in having thought through values in a No God world. It’s reasonable to feel this alienation because Humanism in all its many moral and political manifestations over the centuries is never able to establish that one “ism” is necessarily more rational than any other. Then those like me who think up arguments to encompass nihilism as they have come to understand it.

But there are still any number of things “out there” in the world that you can pursue such that this alienation doesn’t really bother you much at all. Sports, the arts, food, hobbies, music, sex, politics, friendships, love, lifestyle distractions. Anything you are able to imagine doing that can bring you fulfillment and satisfaction.

Until of course in interacting with others, your own particular existential values rooted in dasein make contact with the subjective or objective value judgments of others and a conflict ensues.

That’s the dilemma of being fractured and fragmented morally “out in the world with others”. You are unable to believe in right and wrong, or good and bad as the objectivists do, but if you choose to interact in society the moral and political prejudices that you have taken an existential leap to, can still come into conflict with those of the objectivists [and the Maias] of the world. They have a font but you don’t.

Again, this would seem to exclude the either/or world which is no less real to the moral nihilists as to the moral objectivists.

Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website

Well, from my frame of mind [and you know what’s coming], that depends entirely on how “fractured and fragmented” you become. And that is predicated largely on the extent to which you come to view your own moral values as the embodiment of this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

In other words, you may come to distance yourself from the ideals of the past but you have no new ideals to put in their place. Other than one or another rendition of the Uberman: that your value judgments however fractured and fragmented – nihilistic – they might be must prevail over the scriptures embraced by the bleating sheep.

Then this distinction again…

Of course there are those who argue that the Nazis used their own “transitional stage” to mount, among other things, the “final solution”. National socialism as the “active” nihilism. So, as nihilism goes, which is the least dangerous kind…passive or active?

In any event, this part where “all is meaningless” pertains only to the assumption that, in a No God world, there does not appear to be a “transcending font” for any essential – ontological, teleological – meaning.

And even here any particular nihilist is no more able to demonstrate that than those claiming that their own font establishes that their own essentially meaningful take on human existence is the One True Path.

Their very own Coalition Of Truth.

Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website

Here, however, we are always confronted with the [at times] complex interaction between someone’s “philosophy of life” and the set of circumstances they find themselves embedded in. That and having actual viable options in which to change those circumstances. After all, it’s easy enough to convince yourself it’s your “passive nihilism” that is impaling you when in fact it’s really more that your life is in the toilet and all you seem motivated to do is to flush it all away.

Everyone’s situation is unique in this regard. The “spirit” able to attach itself to any number of fulfilling distractions in life can send that passive nihilist philosophy packing to the back burner. Here one’s “existential meaning” from day to day makes all the difference in the world. Just as someone with an upbeat philosophy can tumble into a shitstorm of setbacks and be unable to fall back on that optimistic philosophy to pull them through. Here it’s often dasein down to the bone.

That and the distinction one makes between essential meaning and purpose in their life and existential meaning and purpose. These can become two very, very different things.

Or you can try something like this:

Hollow of course being in the mind of the beholder. And escapes that work and can be sustained are better than the alternative. Again, the emptiness might revolve only around the extent to which you allow yourself to dwell on the lack of essential meaning and purpose in your life. And, besides, to the extent you abandon the One True Path you are providing yourself with many more options in which to find existential meaning and purpose. And this doesn’t necessarily entail “resignation, generalizations, petty things, debauchery and fanaticism”.

Instead, this is often only how the objectivists construe passive nihilism. How bleak it must seem to them because they put all of their eggs – comfort and consolation – in the One True Path basket.

Also, in “revaluating values” you can dupe yourself into falling for all the Übermensch bullshit that some Nietzscheans use to divide up the world between the Masters and the Slaves. The Satyr Syndrome.

Nietzsche’s Analysis of Nihilism
by Vered Arnon
At the The World Is On Fire website

The spirit. The will. Employed to bring about and then to sustain, among other things historically, the “final solution”. Action is spades as it were.

In other words, “active nihilism” is no less in search of a context in order to be assessed and then judged. And those who call themselves active nihilists are no less entangled in a set of value judgments derived subjectively from dasein.

It’s not like we can plot the lives of those who call themselves active nihilists and then pin down those who actually come closest to being what a true active nihilist really is.

In other words, there is no objective moral system around that is not essentially empty and meaningless but any and all human communities need behavioral prescriptions or proscriptions in order to yank itself up out of a world that is ruled basically by the “law of the jungle”. A dog eat dog survival of the fittest moral wasteland. If morality is to be entirely existential at least let it revolve around democracy and the rule of law.

Then back up into the clouds where the assessment of Nietzsche and nihilism becomes entangled in a world of words.

Yes, simplification and lies. But simple from what frame of reference and whose lies? Empty in what sense given particular sets of circumstances? As for what the nihilist embraces, same thing: what on earth does embracing “irrationality and freedom from logic” mean to this active nihilist here and to that active nihilist there?

In fact, if you embrace Nietzsche’s general philosophy, I assign you the task of noting where Nietzsche himself applied all of this “philosophical stuff” to a particular context such that we can explore what he described to be “both destructive and ironic”. Actual examples of how the active nihilists seizes the “opportunity to assert [their] strength and power to deny all authority and deny goals and faith––to deny the constraints of existence.”

Iambigious says:

"In fact, if you embrace Nietzsche’s general philosophy, I assign you the task of noting where Nietzsche himself applied all of this “philosophical stuff” to a particular context such that we can explore what he described to be “both destructive and ironic”. Actual examples of how the active nihilists seizes the “opportunity to assert [their] strength and power to deny all authority and deny goals and faith––to deny the constraints of existence.”

Guidence please, the literature is so vast, and to find specifics among general contexts would entail some labor.

His vocabulary not exactly specifying directions going upward, but usually pointing toward lesser ‘slaves’ to look for signs that could show the way.

I am trying to insert the least amount of facetiousness here, incidentally , where has our expert Nietzchien gone , hasn’t posted for a very long time.

Nietzsche & Values
Nietzsche rejected all conventional morality but he wasn’t a nihilist – he called for a “re-evaluation of all values”. Alexander V. Razin describes the gulf separating him from that other great moralist, Immanuel Kant.

This supposedly is why in the intro above we are to accept that Nietzsche, while rejecting conventional morality [derived as often as not from one or another God or No God religion/deontology/political ideology] was not a nihilist. The Ubermensch are able to transcend, among other things, a fractured and fragmented “I” in interacting with others in regard to moral and political values.

On the other hand, I can’t help be wonder how Nietzsche might have reacted to my own arguments here. Instead, all I can do is to go in search of those who do subscribe to his master class embodying the “will to power” and given their own “reevaluation of values” how they manage to elude this predicament:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

As, for example, others do:

Ultimately indeed.

For the life of me I can’t imagine how someone with a mind like his could ever have managed to think himself into accepting all of those highly improbable assumptions.

And then I remember that I once did myself.

And, as well, there are in turn some really sophisticated minds here able to trick themselves into believing in a path to immortality and salvation.

If it is a trick.

Nietzsche & Values

Nietzsche rejected all conventional morality but he wasn’t a nihilist – he called for a “re-evaluation of all values”. Alexander V. Razin describes the gulf separating him from that other great moralist, Immanuel Kant.

Here, of course, I can only come back to this:

And since Nietzsche and the author aren’t around to explore that, I can only ask those who agree with the author about Nietzsche and moral nihilism, to examine it in their place.

It’s never a questions of doubting everything in regard to value judgments. The either/or world, the world of empirical, material, phenomenological facts is all around us. Instead, it’s the extent to which all that you don’t doubt – and in fact all that those on both sides of any particular moral conflagration can agree on – permit you to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think as you do.

On the other hand, each individual who starts there, has to deal with the fact that in interacting with others, situations can arise where the life you prefer revolves around denying others the life that they prefer.

On the other hand, your freedom to do what you want when it interferes with my freedom to do what I want?

On the other hand, the value judgments of staunch capitalists or the value judgments of the staunch socialists?

On the other hand, compassion for the Nazis or compassions for the Jews?

On the other hand, my emotions sustaining my happiness, or your emotions sustaining your happiness…when both are mutually exclusive.

On the other hand, I quote human history to date in order to note the gap between this as a general description intellectual contraption and this out in the real world.

Your rational arguments or mine? In the absence of a philosophical assessment that makes moral nihilism just vanish into thin air.

Does Philosophy Cause Nihilism?
by Rick Lewis

Anyone argue mentally with me? And I am certainly of the opinion that philosophy is the root cause behind my own belief in moral nihilism. The more you try to think through [as rationally as you are able] the world of human interactions in a No God universe the more reasonable it seems to be fractured and fragmented. Only I’ve found that it is almost impossible to actually get others to grasp a full understanding of that.

After all, as a moral nihilist, look at all of the assumptions I challenge the moral objectivists among us to question. Not just their own sacrosanct value judgments themselves but the profoundly problematic manner in which they come to acquire them in a world where there may well not be a font to anchor the Self to.

Indeed, if philosophy revolves around the love of wisdom, make sure this wisdom is compatible with something at least in the general vicinity of peace of mind. Right, Mr. Objectivist?

“If you think like me, not only will you be right but you will just feel so darn good.”

And do we or don’t we have a shit load of these satisfied minds here?

And some will actually accuse me of intentionally seeking to undermine the comfort and consolation derived from their own One True Path. As though in delving into the possibility that human existence might be essentially meaningless and purposeless, I refused to countenance anything that did not confirm it. As though my motive was sinister.

When, in fact, the only reason I came to accept that moral nihilism in a No God was a rational frame of mind is because I honestly, introspectively pursued it philosophically. It seems to be the most reasonable frame of mind in contemplating the “human condition”.

Does Philosophy Cause Nihilism?
by Rick Lewis

Socrates, meet iambiguous?

Sort of. Socrates seemed interested in getting folks to think about the thing that we call philosophy for the first time. Also, in getting them to go a little deeper in exploring the answers that they gave to those philosophical questions they actually never really thought much about at all. Or simply parroted what they had been brainwashed by others to believe.

Me, I’m more inclined to go after those who already like to think of themselves as philosophers. Those seekers of wisdom who assume that the endless hours they spent coming up with answers that they give in regard to questions like “how ought one to live?” is the same one that all rational men and women are obligated to share in turn.

The gadfly in me then is less interested in the answers they give and more interested in how they arrived at those answers given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein. As that pertains to “I” in the is/ought world.

Hedonism, nihilism…what’s the difference? If you are a philosopher and you come to the conclusion that it is actually reasonable to subscribe to either one…what can you really know of the true search for wisdom.

Only, of course, the hostility among philosophers can become all the more fierce when the search for truth leads them in a more positive direction but they then insist it must their own direction. Their God, their ethics, their ideology, their political agenda, their deontological constructs.

Still, one thing they can all share in common is their visceral reaction to someone like me.

In Defense of Humorous Nihilism
John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness.

Trust me: bump into any particular nihilist and you will get all manner of interpretations regarding what each one of these things mean. And, for a few, something analogous to perfection is basically what nihilism provides you with. At least on your sojourn from the cradle to the grave. After that, well, nihilists are as much in the dark as everyone else.

Trust me: not according to this nihilist. Also, this nihilist still makes that crucial distinction between meaning and purpose in the either/or world and our reactions to all the conflicts that erupt as “I” in the is/ought world. When, in other words, interpretations of how the either/or world should be instead collide: one of us vs. one of them.

Trust me: he’s right.

Only trust me as well that when nihilists themselves become objectivists, they exclude themselves from their own point of view.

So far I’ve managed to avoid that myself.

In Defense of Humorous Nihilism
John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness.

Again, this is the part where I tend to vacate any premises owned and operated by the existentialists.

“Bad faith”. And the other one: “authenticity”.

Now, I do agree with the part where these things revolve around how I construe the meaning of Sartre’s “Hell is other people”. In other words, they objectify us. Thus, for those who objectify others and, as well, objectify their own moral and political values, yes, it seems reasonable to ascribe their motivation here as in bad faith or inauthentic.

But: my point goes further. And that is to the extent to which others objectify themselves…and their own value judgments. The manner in which they are able to avoid being fractured and fragmented in the is/ought world. What of bad faith and authenticity there?

Right, like the only manner in which nihilism is to be “authentically” understood is in the gap between “I” and perfection. And isn’t it true that in regard to accomplishments in the either/or world, we can achieve perfection? And not just in bowling the “perfect game”. Instead, for “I” in the is/ought world, there are any number of objectivists who insist that perfection can be achieved here as well. Others need merely to think as they do to acquire it. For some that revolves around God’s will, for others being members of “the Party”. Or, in places like Know Thyself remaining in good favor with Satyr. Or, here, meeting with the approval of those who own and operate one or another “Coalition of Truth”.

In Defense of Humorous Nihilism
John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness.

And just as with those who are able to think themselves into believing in God, those who are not are still able to think themselves into believing in a more or less constructive alternative to the sort of nihilism that [consciously or otherwise] is embodied by, say, the sociopath. As long as you can convince yourself that nihilism is actually the start of something better than God and religion all you have to do is sustain the belief itself. For example, my own assumption that as a moral nihilist you are in a position to acquire so many more options in life. Why? Because unlike with the moral and political and spiritual objectivists, you don’t have to ask yourself “what would Jesus do?” or “what would Kant do?” or “what would Marx do?” or “what would Satyr do?”

Any behavior can be rationalized because no behavior is judged by God or, as an atheist, by his political and philosophical equivalent.

Why? Because the more problematic God and religion becomes in an increasingly secular world, the more ominous the fact of it becomes. If no transcending font, mere mortals are on their own. But there are as many secular narratives here as there are religious ones. And if that wasn’t ambiguous enough there’s the part where pop culture, mindless consumption and sex! sex! sex! become the new Gods for many. Also, how is “social media” not in many ways just another manifestation of nihilism?

Trust me though: Only if that is actually possible.

In other words, it is one thing to trump the philosophical despair that can flow profusely from nihilism with humor. And another thing all together to trump it when that philosophical component is also deeply embedded in circumstantial despair as well.

In Defense of Humorous Nihilism
John Marmysz looks on the funny side of absolute nothingness.

Hmm…

Suppose Bob the revisionist Christian here were to create a new thread entitled “God does not exist”.

Would that stike you as humorous?

Me neither.

I’m sorry but, personally, I would definitely need a context here. Yes, no doubt, sometimes contradiction and contrariety and irony can be downright hilarious. But nothing pops into my head in regard to nihilism. Especially moral nihilism. I can’t recall the last time I laughed uproariously in being “fractured and fragmented” when confronting conflicting goods.

And, again, none of them strike me as particularly risible.

Next up [hopefully] actual instance of this.

No us…you want subjectivity…then learn to live with it.
No “us” but I get to rely on you for my fuck-ups.
No us, if you intervene to protect me from my idiocy.

Subjectivity?..right. Good. I’m all for it.
So, you live by the consequences of your subjective judgements…and I with mine.
Let’s see what happens.
But that’s not what a hypocrite and liar and coward, like you, is saying, is it?
No, it’s inter-subjectivity…collectivism…
You can fuck up, as much as you like, and I get to pay for it, so that you can continue fucking up.

Ummmm…no thanks.
Its my choice…you know, it’s been determined that I reject this communist, postmodern bullshyte.
Not my fault.

Hmm…slots don’t last long. They need to work in between trysts. They soon become hookers, might as well, to finance boy toys when they are tired and unattractive hags later on.

So sorry to offend, and males are just as bad or worse

I need more obscure ambiguity from you.
This will not do.

Write me prose.