Questions on nihilism

[Matthias M.]

I have some questions on nihilism. Some of them I have still posed in a slightly different form here. But I think they are now more concrete. I look forward to your answers:

1. Could we say that the prevalent nihilist view on personal immortality is that consciousness and personality are utterly extinguished at physical death?

2. Could an alternative nihilist stance on life after death (souls in heaven / wandering souls from one body to another or whathaveyou) be that existence might continue after death, but it would be as meaningless as existence before death?

3. What would it exactly mean when we say that existence before and after death is meaningless?

4. If we view life as meaningless as nihilism does, both life before death and a possible life after death, what would follow from this view for our 'fear of our personal, individual death and extinction'? If everything is meaningless, would even our fear of death be meaningless? Would this lessen our fear?

5. Are there famous nihilist thinkers you know of who believed in an afterlife?

6. Where is the connection between rationality and nihilism? Could we say that nihilism is an aftermath of the rational, reasonable will to truth, so that the idea of immortality makes no sense any more due to our rational refutability of immortality?

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Matthias M.

I have some questions on nihilism. Some of them I have still posed in a slightly different form here. But I think they are now more concrete. I look forward to your answers: 1. Could we say that the prevalent nihilist view on personal immortality is that consciousness and personality are utterly extinguished at physical death? 2. Could an alternative nihilist stance on life after death (souls in heaven / wandering souls from one body to another or whathaveyou) be that existence might continue after death, but it would be as meaningless as existence before death? 3. What would it exactly mean when we say that existence before and after death is meaningless? 4. If we view life as meaningless as nihilism does, both life before death and a possible life after death, what would follow from this view for our 'fear of our personal, individual death and extinction'? If everything is meaningless, would even our fear of death be meaningless? Would this lessen our fear? 5. Are there famous nihilist thinkers you know of who believed in an afterlife? 6. Where is the connection between rationality and nihilism? Could we say that nihilism is an aftermath of the rational, reasonable will to truth, so that the idea of immortality makes no sense any more due to our rational refutability of immortality?

Briefly:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. See potato masher section in CATHR.
4. Yes, but it wouldn't lessen our fear unless we have experienced "ego death."
5. No
6. Will to truth isn't nihilistic; it values truth. Immortality is hard to believe in, at least for me, but rational thought, in our current state of knowledge, hasn't even come close to refuting it.

[Speaking Mute]

1. Nihilism has no set meaning; the term is still primarily used in the perjorative sense. Most contexts where one might be called a nihilist have very little, if anything, to do with mortality; ethical nihilism denies the meaning of ethical statements, epistemic nihilism knowledge claims, and so on. There has been popular sentiments that death and extinction implicate nihilism(s), but only sentiments - most materialists and atheists would vehemently deny that they are nihilists. The only "serious" thinker I'm aware of who assents to being called a nihilist is Brassier - he doesn't believe in an afterlife, but he also doesn't seem to believe in life existing either

2-4. I've never understood the notion of purpose to begin with. Religious and social meaning seems to hinge on the individual serving as a means to an end for another, supposedly greater, purpose. This strikes me as tantamount to saying that a john gives a hooker's life meaning.

5. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hobbes can all be considered nihilistic thinkers - and all believed in some form of immortality.

6. I see nihilism - or at least epistemic nihilism - as resting in part on the denial of rationality. Nihilism is thus incompatible with Scientific Realism, which rests heavily on humans being able to grasp and/or figure out "how things are." I think nihilism would have to follow (Greek) Skepticism in suspending judgement on any matter of fact, including the afterlife.

[Arthur Staaz]

Some thoughts on some really thought-provoking questions.

Quote Originally Posted by Matthias M.

3. What would it exactly mean when we say that existence before and after death is meaningless?

I think the problem here is one of terminology. I think the assignment of meaning is an inherently human activity. For example, we assign meaning (or meanings) to the word “meaning.” The word “meaning” is representational of a concept and, in fact, has been arbitrarily assigned by humans to represent this squirrelly concept. There is no inherent connection between the word “meaning” and the concept it represents. Same goes for any other word. I think, when we talk about whether or not existence has any meaning, what we are really talking about is whether it has any purpose. The nihilist would argue that there is no reason to believe that there is any purpose to our existence or to existence in general. There is no one or thing purposefully directing things. Things just are. And things appear to have no regard for human well-being on an individual, community, or species level. The problem the nihilist sees is that not only are we in this situation, but we are in it consciously. In a sense, we are cursed with an existence in which we have to make meaning and in which we have to maintain conscious awareness of our existence in order to survive. This means we live with the consciousness of our pain, suffering, and death (and that of others) in a society that once assigned purpose to these things but no longer does. The nihilist rejects the ascribing of purpose by society as illusions that are easily exposed upon deeper consideration.

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4. If we view life as meaningless as nihilism does, both life before death and a possible life after death, what would follow from this view for our 'fear of our personal, individual death and extinction'? If everything is meaningless, would even our fear of death be meaningless? Would this lessen our fear?

Someone once said, “Life is suffering.” As meaning-making (meaning-demanding?) animals, seeing our lives, deaths and extinction as having a purpose appeals to the part of us that wants to believe there is a greater pattern. It allows us to believe there is a point to the story of our lives. I think your question really gets at the central issue of nihilism, one that Nietzsche tried to address with the introduction of the overman. Now that Western civilization is no longer organized around the illusion of an omniscient, omnipotent and loving personal god, how do we organize our lives? Can we live meaningful lives in a purposeless world? My own inclination is that we can have meaningful relationships with people and things around us in a purposeless world. Perhaps a sort of neo-Stoicism can get us to accept this very purposelessness and our human limitedness. John Gray seems to suggest this approach. Maybe. Nonetheless, I find life tinged with melancholy. I also find great pain in the suffering that I and others experience as a result of our self-awareness, suffering that many explain by appeals to strong, cultural meanings (god, religion, science, etc.)

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6. Where is the connection between rationality and nihilism? Could we say that nihilism is an aftermath of the rational, reasonable will to truth, so that the idea of immortality makes no sense any more due to our rational refutability of immortality?

Perhaps we can say that the nihilist believes that, in the history of human experience (particularly the Western point of view), reason has gone as far as it can go, reaching a point at which it exposed its own limitations and weaknesses as an examiner of truth. I’m not sure it ties explicitly to the refutation of immortality as it does to the recognition of inherent human limitations and biases that shape our reasoning. When given deep consideration, the nihilist concludes that truth and human reason are two very different things.

[Druidic]

Appetites have purpose. They may be extensions of pure subjectivity but if anything has Purpose it is the organisms biological drives. Not external purpose but purpose no less real...

And because of that nihilism is just an Ideal that like every other Ideal cannot be lived.

[Druidic]

Desire commands its own death; Desire for food, sex, shelter,desire for relief from intolerable pain...all Desires desire to be extinguished. When cessation is momentarily achieved, Consciousness experiences a feeling of fulfilment...and, yes, even meaning.

Durrenmatt claims all thought is nihilistic; but he's playing a little game. All thought is relativistic, the only kind of 'nihilism' a human being is allowed..

But what I really want to know: When the hell is Willie Nile going to put out an album titled "Nile-isms"? Eh?

[Matthias M.]

Thanks for your great answers so far. I think it is an important topic and I hope I can encourage some more voices here to answer the questions.

Concerning Bahnsen:

His view is: We are entities which have been torn apart previously and now reunited in the eternal quagmire of cyclical time. As individuals, we only ever exist when we are organically whole, but our individuality, upon our deaths, is torn asunder again to become part of other organisms (plural), or the free-floating particles of matter/will-substance in this universe.

What he has in mind is clearly not a form of personal immortality. Our individuality is torn asunder in a gazillion pieces. Some pieces become part of this, other pieces become part of that and so on. So there is no individual survival here.

[Revenant]

And were you ever really an individual in he first place? If not, nothing ever existed and therefore there was nothing to survive your end.

[Speaking Mute]

Quote Originally Posted by Matthias M.

What he has in mind is clearly not a form of personal immortality. Our individuality is torn asunder in a gazillion pieces. Some pieces become part of this, other pieces become part of that and so on. So there is no individual survival here.

Personal immortality insofar as those pieces come together again and again in the cycle of eternity - i.e. Bahnsen believes in eternal recurrence.

[Matthias M.]

SpeakingMute,

it is indeed Bahnsen's view that "...those pieces come together again and again", but not in one place, as e.g. in an individual. The single pieces that made up an individual get widely distributed in many different places. So in some sense this is an immortality of single pieces that form individuals when they come together in one location. But because of their always new distribution at an individual's death, that's not a kind of personal immortality.