There are several philosophical positions known as nihilism. I’ll take a quick crack at the moral dimension. I will first give reference to the doctoral thesis of Richard Volkman, “Why be Moral? The Ethical Individualist Response to Alienation from Morality”, conveniently available in closed stacks at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The fully general solution starts with understanding morality as simply asking, “What do I have the most reason to do or want?” (credit to Sidgwick). Then, in noting regularities in my own behavior I should be forced to admit that I actually do act as though there’s a fact of the matter here. Even when pretending to take nihilism seriously, I eat food instead of scrap metal or drain-o; I say, “I am a nihilist” instead of “Unrepentant the fish ba-zoop whirrr gharble!”
Now that it’s apparent that even the supporters of nihilism necessarily regard nihilism as false, one can proceed to ask “What do I care about?” and work from the obvious things like food and TV up to more complicated notions such as friendship and awesomeness. Along the way one might notice that one must develop good habits of behavior (what we call ‘virtues’) in order to actually succeed at things like having friends and consistently acquiring food.
Nihilism, as a philosophical position, can be treated by reading better philosophy.
Got any suggestions?
I should have forseen that someone would ask that question.
Well, actually, I know almost nothing about “meaning of life” philosophers, except that there is this position called Existentialism. According to wikipedia:
The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism, maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.
I’ve never read Kierkegaard, but I first heard about him in my teens, learned roughly what that wikipedia quote says, and have ever since then called myself an existentialist regarding the meaning or purpose of life. It just made sense to me. And I now realize, to my embarrassment, that I never bothered to ask the question: “Why bother making up a meaning for life, if it doesn’t already have any intrinsic meaning?” Or, if I did ask, I must have answered the question in the obvious way.
“Why not?”
Maybe Kierkegaard has a better answer. Though I don’t see how he could.
You may find this hard to believe, but Nietzsche (in his better works) is a better philosophical remedy to nihilism. Kierkegaard invests too much in a particular (religious) form to the meaning that one can create.
I started reading Nietzsche when I thought only nihilism might be coherent; and by the time I realized he wasn’t actually a nihilist, neither was I.
ETA: However, I’m not sure I’d recommend Nietzsche to someone grappling with this problem. His tone is still too dark for most readers, unless the rest of their life is in good shape (as mine was).
I recommend The Gay Science- it was written at his peak. But whatever you read, it needs to be a Walter Kaufman translation (or else a very modern one); most translators mangle him.
this is tangential to the thread; but Nietzsche’s writings frequently seem to be quite religious actually, take his Übermensch theme for e.g., which makes the absolute/divine/god/etc become part of man, a theme prevalent in Christianity as well.
Well, he was going insane by the time of his later writings (especially by the point of Ecce Homo, which still contains some brilliance); and furthermore, Zarathustra (where some of the least rationalist quotes come from) was intentionally written in a religious style. But the point is otherwise well taken.
We don’t have to make up a meaning for life; evolution has already provided us with several built in. The real work is reconciling them and filling in details, because evolution left some parts of our utility functions to be acquired from the environment, and never bothered to optimize for internal consistency.
Check out Learning Methods—it’s something like Cognitive Behavior Therapy, except that the idea is that if you pin down a habitual obstructive thought very precisely and then analyze it thoroughly, it’s no longer attractive.
Learning Methods is a lot more meticulous about tracking down exactly what people are thinking that gets in their way, and identifying errors in that thinking.
What I’ve seen of CBT seems like much simpler pattern matching.
Got any suggestions? I’m pretty sure my own nihilism is caused by certain irrational beliefs I hold, but more weapons to use against it never hurts.
There are several philosophical positions known as nihilism. I’ll take a quick crack at the moral dimension. I will first give reference to the doctoral thesis of Richard Volkman, “Why be Moral? The Ethical Individualist Response to Alienation from Morality”, conveniently available in closed stacks at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The fully general solution starts with understanding morality as simply asking, “What do I have the most reason to do or want?” (credit to Sidgwick). Then, in noting regularities in my own behavior I should be forced to admit that I actually do act as though there’s a fact of the matter here. Even when pretending to take nihilism seriously, I eat food instead of scrap metal or drain-o; I say, “I am a nihilist” instead of “Unrepentant the fish ba-zoop whirrr gharble!”
Now that it’s apparent that even the supporters of nihilism necessarily regard nihilism as false, one can proceed to ask “What do I care about?” and work from the obvious things like food and TV up to more complicated notions such as friendship and awesomeness. Along the way one might notice that one must develop good habits of behavior (what we call ‘virtues’) in order to actually succeed at things like having friends and consistently acquiring food.
I should have forseen that someone would ask that question.
Well, actually, I know almost nothing about “meaning of life” philosophers, except that there is this position called Existentialism. According to wikipedia:
I’ve never read Kierkegaard, but I first heard about him in my teens, learned roughly what that wikipedia quote says, and have ever since then called myself an existentialist regarding the meaning or purpose of life. It just made sense to me. And I now realize, to my embarrassment, that I never bothered to ask the question: “Why bother making up a meaning for life, if it doesn’t already have any intrinsic meaning?” Or, if I did ask, I must have answered the question in the obvious way.
“Why not?”
Maybe Kierkegaard has a better answer. Though I don’t see how he could.
You may find this hard to believe, but Nietzsche (in his better works) is a better philosophical remedy to nihilism. Kierkegaard invests too much in a particular (religious) form to the meaning that one can create.
I started reading Nietzsche when I thought only nihilism might be coherent; and by the time I realized he wasn’t actually a nihilist, neither was I.
ETA: However, I’m not sure I’d recommend Nietzsche to someone grappling with this problem. His tone is still too dark for most readers, unless the rest of their life is in good shape (as mine was).
Ok, I guess reading some Nietzsche won’t kill me.
Indeed, it might make you stronger.
I recommend The Gay Science- it was written at his peak. But whatever you read, it needs to be a Walter Kaufman translation (or else a very modern one); most translators mangle him.
As I recall, Nietzsche was good about the impulse to action, but had the drawback of setting the threshold of respect too high.
this is tangential to the thread; but Nietzsche’s writings frequently seem to be quite religious actually, take his Übermensch theme for e.g., which makes the absolute/divine/god/etc become part of man, a theme prevalent in Christianity as well.
Well, he was going insane by the time of his later writings (especially by the point of Ecce Homo, which still contains some brilliance); and furthermore, Zarathustra (where some of the least rationalist quotes come from) was intentionally written in a religious style. But the point is otherwise well taken.
We don’t have to make up a meaning for life; evolution has already provided us with several built in. The real work is reconciling them and filling in details, because evolution left some parts of our utility functions to be acquired from the environment, and never bothered to optimize for internal consistency.
Check out Learning Methods—it’s something like Cognitive Behavior Therapy, except that the idea is that if you pin down a habitual obstructive thought very precisely and then analyze it thoroughly, it’s no longer attractive.
Thanks! I’m already CBTing but as I said, more weapons never hurt. :) What would you identify as the main differences between the two?
What flavor of CBT? Burns? MoodGym?
There are flavours?
Anyway, my therapist likes to use modules from the Centre for Clinical Intervention.
Thanks for the reference to MoodGym, I’ll check it out over the next couple of days.
Learning Methods is a lot more meticulous about tracking down exactly what people are thinking that gets in their way, and identifying errors in that thinking.
What I’ve seen of CBT seems like much simpler pattern matching.