Slavakion

So I looked it up, and it seems that it's defined as the philosophy where you believe in nothing, and nothing can be communicated. Or something pretty close to that.

Anyone care to expand on that? It seems a bit strange to me that you can believe in nothing. Is it that we cannot achieve anything worthy when compared to the universe, or is it that nothing is real (a la the Matrix).

Jynx

google is your friend: http://www.iep.utm.edu/n/nihilism.htm

seriously, though, nihilism seems to me to be pretty extreme: values mean nothing, you exist for no reason, all is corrosion and destruction. you said it, you believe NOTHING, and nothing has value.

what's most interesting in my mind about nihilism is its total rejection of most peoples' innate desires of belief and optimism.

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SparklingDot

I have been nihilistic, but I can't imagine living my life that way. The times when I value nothing, see no point in anything, want nothing, believe nothing... those are all dark times. Can nihilism really be a way of life? Or just a phase we go through?

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Slavakion

I can't see living your entire life that way. If that's how someone truly feels, it looks like they need some happy pills.

Looking at the website, it looks like the origin of nihilism was simply a rejection of authority in any form. That sounds reasonable (in comparison).

apeman

it's the logical conclusion of certain chains of thought I suppose

which implies that the start of the chain of thought was wrong in the first place?

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ARTelevision

Nihilism is a very popular philosophy among young humans who live in the Free World, as far as I can tell. The fact that it is completely absurd doesn't seem to faze them.

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apeman

many things seem absurd to young people, yet you still have to do them

the thing I've got against Nihilism is that it doesn't lead to any useful results... I suppose I'm a pragmatist at heart

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roachboy

my favorite line about nihilism is from the big lebowski, truly a film for our time. john goodman's character says it, just before the three main characters have a fight with the german nihilists in the parking lot outside a bowling alley: "say what you want about national socialism, but at least it is an ethos" or something like that.

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apeman

good film!

I suppose on the other hand at least nihilists haven't caused the deaths of millions of people

Hitler's National Socialism did indeed make the trains run on time ... until we'd bombed the whole country to shit ... then the trains didn't run anywhere. What a loser!

my favourite sig line is:
"God is dead" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead" - God

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jaco

Nihilism is the disbelief of fate or the afterlife and without those two things the actions we take now have no consequences beyond our existence. If you want, read "Grendel". The dragon I believe was the force of nihilism within the story and explained it much better than has been previously stated.

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Yakk

You can value nothing, believe nothing, and be happy. You just have to believe dispair is nothing. =)

The problem is, if nihilism is true, you might as well have another belief structure. Believing in nihilism and believing in purple candy coated chicken gods are both as useful... So, pick something more interesting.

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gondath

You couldn't really have true value in nothing and be happy because happiness itself is putting positive value in something. i'm somewhat of a nihilist because I believe nothing inherently has value. I don't think it's really possible for a living creature to remove all value in anything, no matter how hard we try. The people who do believe in an afterlife don't tend to be any kinder than those who don't. You could say happiness itself stays internal because it doesn't care much about sharing.

whocarz

Or believeing there is an invisible man hanging out on a cloud judging you.

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khuct

so with all said above, it is also the belief that there is no moral code...no moral right or wrong.

Manic_Skafe

I'd love it if you could expand upon this point. I like what you're saying but I just can't wrap my mind around it if you get what I mean.

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Jubal

No inherent value might be the basis of a very liberating philosophy. What would you do if you absolutely knew that mankind is nothing but an overconfident, pitiful little creature with a meager amount of knowledge about life and environment? Party!!! Live it up. Hedonism! Of course an intelligent man realizes that by setting ultimately meaningless goals and accomplishing them, he can improve lifestyle, health, and happiness, unimportant though they may be.

We're all terminal cancer patients with no chance of survival. Many myths exist to explain what happens after death because the thought of nothing terrifies people. That can be terrifying only to a person who hasn't accepted that possibility in their lives.

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braindamage351

Living with Nihilism for all of your life is like a country being a military state all the time. It is doomed to fail in the end. Communism failed because it was only good for war, and they never really went to war. All they did was drain their money.

gondath

I would say all in all I am pretty nilhilistic. I believe the ultimate purpose of a human is to consume and destroy everything in pusuit of self interest until nothing is left or they all die. Positive thinking is a way to justify self interest and achieve biologically motivated goals. All value is external. The universe is nothing and means nothing outside of the interests of a living thing. That about sums up my association with nihilism.

ManWithAPlan

even at worst times i've always valued love. to me, if you break it down to the basic level,we're all here to reproduce and allow our species to survive.

procreation is the single thing which can decide our fate on a timeline

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Master_Shake

I am also pretty nihilistic, certainly as far as external forces go; but I do recognize that some things feel good, while others do not. I pursue things that feel good and reject those that do not. Unlike committed hedonists I also recognize that there is a pretty good chance of living for a decent stretch of time 60-80 years, and that a good slow burn is better overall than a short flameout.

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

rsl12

nihilism is depressing only if you want to believe in something. for that reason, nihilism shares much in common with taoism.

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ManWithAPlan

taoism?

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Master_Shake

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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

tingly

like most philosophical debates this one ends in semantics. nihilism can be taken to mean belief in nothing at all at one extreme or it can only mean belief in no inherent values which do not predicate on biological and social prerequisites. it's a continuum of belief or better yet the lack thereof. one saying one's self is a nihilist is fairly useless although i have done it myself. honestly, the term is best used for name calling and slander. it's a label perfectly illustrated in the big lebowski. was hitler a nihilist? under some definitions he was. under another definition it could be said that hitler had very strong beliefs. do i agree with them? no. that doesn't change the fact that he had beliefs. just like master shake said above, there is definitely room in a nihilist structure to have healthy ethics based on the realization that we are going to live for quite some time and so are our relatives and friends. i think nihilism is a dangerous term and can be a very popular belief used by the uneducated to justify carnal immediate desires. in a more contemplative atmosphere it can explain a lot and help an individual such as myself achieve happiness.

basmoq

OMG I just saw this topic on an old MCAT test, you all sound like your on the right track, but that passage in the test was pretty wicked, so I'm not gonna comment. Let's just say I didn't do well on it

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skullfunk

What does it matter anyway?

repeater

I think someone into nihilism should be happy, but they're always quite depressed. If nothing really has value then should you just be doing stuff you enjoy? What I mean is, nothing has any value or significance right? So why not just ride a bike, or read or have sex all day? They may not have any value, but wouldn't they still make you feel good? It seems almost contradictory to me for nihilists to believe nothing has value, but be really upset by that.

Here is another link for you, but it's just for humor. http://www.strindbergandhelium.com/

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wilbjammin

Nietzsche is quoted of saying something along the lines of: "I cannot believe in a God because I am not he."

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wilbjammin

Living in a world with no teleological explanations and guidelines that have any value does not remove the possibility to live a meaningful life. An understanding of nihilism and the despair of living a meaningless existence is a key step towards moving towards an actively created belief system for yourself. Nihilism leads to absurdity, and from absurdity we are led to a completely different set of choices about existence than before.

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Fireshiru1

Nihilism coloapses with the notion that every human being has some sort of norms and values that you believe, whether you want to or not. No one can ever truely believe in nothing. Nihilism is very cowarlike in the sense that it says our existance is meaningless and our actions are meaningless, although despite that the Nihilist just need to move past that fact and "get over it." The beliefin Nihilism doesn't deter people from having fulfilling lives, which is what matters, your life. Nothing really matters after you die, or before you were born. You were either dead or non-existant.

Moreover a Utilitarian or perhaps a Hedonist could easly disprove Nihilism.

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ratbastid

As far as I can tell, Nihilism only has it half right.

Let's say I'm a Nihilist. I believe that nothing has value. That depresses me and I'm basically negative.

Problem is, that negativity and depression comes from me valuing value itself. The lack of value leaves me negative. But that's not nihilism any more, that's ordinary value-based thinking reacting to nihilism.

If I'm properly nihilistic, then it's inherantly meaningless to me that life is meaningless. At which point I'm totally free.

And, as long as I remember that it's just me assigning meanings to things (as I'm wired to do, as a human being), I can invent specific meanings for things that empower me. I can create and fulfill goals for myself--not because fulfilling those goals is "better" than not fulfilling them, but because I chose to make a goal and fulfill it! I'm now able to do stuff and produce results without a shred of burden or obligation about it.

RedbeardUH

Nihilism is the belief system of nothingness. Nietzsche did not want a nihilistic world. He warned us against it. Nihilists believe that all "power" (think noble power, as in noble romans or noble greeks) should be dissipated. Nietzsche called it slave morality because the weak majority fettered the strong noble majority. Nietzsche, more than any philosopher since Plato, has shaped modern culture. He influenced Derrida and Foucault. Both who have proven that everything is relative to perspective.

For example: Someone mentioned ealier that sex is the basis for life. Foucault in his book "The History of Sexuality" shows us that sexuality has meant myriad things over time. That there has been a huge discourse on sexuality that has changed the connotation of it immeansely. Now-a-days we have a sex-life. We can discuss our sexlife amongst each other. In, say, the 1500s if you asked someone about their sexlife (or connotational equivilant) they'd look at you like you were crazy. To them a 'sexlife' was no different than a 'sleep life.' Sex was something as natural as sleep, or eating or whatever.

Nietzsche did the same thing for morality. In his book "Genealogy of Morals" he traces western concepts of "Good" and "Bad" to their pre-christian roots.


Saussure wrote an essay on the fact that all language is relative. That no language has any a priori essence. That if we call something a tree, the sound "tree" is relative to the word "tree" which is relative to the object of a "tree."

Derrida used this to show that despite the entirety of abitraryness, we still have to impose some sort of quasi-metaphysics because of the connotation associated with every word.

If anyone cares I'll explain in more detail, but hopefully this explains a little

Suave

Why believe in absolutely nothing, when you can believe in something? That's my question; why would one want to be nihilistic?

yster

Nihilism isn't generally something someone 'wants' to have as a belief system. It probably can never be truly manifested, just touched upon briefly in passing as one slides down the philosophical scale. As for it being cowardly, it is probably the visceral truth of it that makes it impossible to hold on to. No one can live as a nihilist, even if they recognize the truth in it. They either snap back to a more ego-protective/cultivative ethos or die. People need goals and values, even if they are all completely arbitrary or biological, we can't function without them. Still, having touched on something approaching nihilism makes a person much less susceptible to Mortality Salience type of manipulation by others.
Mortality Salience is when something like terrorism is used to make one's death a conceivable reality, and in that consideration and immediacy of the moment, we alter our risk/benefit analyses and many other behaviors, such as how we vote in elections.

d*d

DUDE
They're nihilists.

WALTER
Huh?

DUDE
They kept saying they believe in
nothing.

WALTER
Nihilists! Jesus.

WALTER
Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism,
Dude, at least it's an ethos

gondath

No one really chooses a belief system. It comes from examining the world and coming to a conclusion. I'm fairly nihilistic. I believe nothing has value unless it is assigned it by a living creature, and generally, people will only value something to their own advantage and the detriment of everyone else. I think the ultimate conclusion of nihilism is death if you cannot reconcile he negative with the positive. I walk the line somewhere in there.

josobot

I prefer: Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.

wocidej

Nobody can be completely nihilistic. To believe in nothing is to say you have beliefs, and beliefs are something. Obviously a nihilist places enough value on thier belief system to claim it as a belief system, value that makes thier beliefs no longer be nothing. Its a self defeating philosophy, which could only be prolonged by ignorance to this fact.

Fate

I went ahead and pulled out the definition from www.m-w.com
1 a and 2 a (1), opened my eyes a little to what nihilism is.
What kind of belief would eat itself to provide justification as an exsistance?

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ravenradiodj

Poor Nietzsche, he didn't realize he WAS God. We all are. Oh hell, that's a whole different thread.

Anyone wanting to learn about nihilism could start with just about any Nine Inch Nails CD, lol.

Nihilism is a common phase for disenfranchised teenagers to go through, and some never leave it. You'll find a small percentage of us goths are nihilistic as well, though most of us are far more average than you think we are. As a philosophy, nihilism seems to be a dead end, an excuse for amoral hedonism. But the fact is, most true nihilists either commit suicide, or lead ordinary, everyday, harmless, unnoticed lives like the rest of us. I agree with whoever said that if you believe in nothing, you might as well select an amusing personal mythology and play with it. I don't think believing in the purple chicken gods is really ultimately any more absurd than worshipping invisible old white men in the sky, a dead rabbi, or the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet - whom I include because she happens to be one of the deities in my personal pantheon. Didn't want anyone to think I was leaving myself out of the mix.....