The Misunderstanding of Nihilism
That tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the death of the soul — that is to say a complete detachment from all that moves and interests other men?
— Chamfort, The Cynic’s Breviary
What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism.
— Nietzsche, The Will to Power
INTRODUCTION
Nihilism is one of those words that everyone has heard, yet which most have difficulty in defining. When they do, it tends to be something to the effect of: “Since nothing matters, you can do what you want.” Or worse: “Since nothing has any meaning, you can create your own meaning.” In other words, most people — at least in the Western world — seem to be somewhat in agreement with nihilism’s basic premise — the understanding that everything is, ultimately, without meaning. And yet, as with many things, they cannot help but put a positive spin on it.
In this article, I will try to explain to you why terms such as “cheerful nihilism” and “optimistic nihilism” are a gross misunderstanding of the real meaning of nihilism and its actual implications, which are far from positive.
Let’s start with the origin of the term.
ORIGIN OF NIHILISM
Although the overall idea behind nihilism may go back much further, it was Friedrich Jacobi (1743-1819), a religious thinker and critic of rationalism and Enlightenment philosophy, who was the first to popularize the term “nihilism” — which was meant as an attack on philosophers such as Spinoza and Kant, whose philosophies, according to him, tried to move away from the importance of God and faith in philosophical systems. Such philosophies, Jacobi said, taken to their extreme, ultimately led to a world where God was replaced by ego and faith in the “miracle of nature” by a meaningless mechanical world.
Nihilism, in other words, strips one’s life of purpose, and the world of meaning, where the only thing left to follow is merely the subjective whims of our egos. And considering that humans have lived most of history by believing in things — in God, family, community, country, idealism, Santa Claus, etc —which give their lives meaning, then nihilism should be considered as something inherently negative; as something destructive; as something that takes away, without giving anything in return — even if all that it takes away are your illusions.
Of course, the fact that Jacobi used it as a form of criticism doesn’t mean that a nihilistic worldview isn’t inherently true; it simply means that the term has had a negative connotation from the start. Which, indeed, we can plainly see when we open a dictionary.
DEFINING NIHILISM
What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; “why?” finds no answer.
— Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Although it is increasingly popular in our postmodern era to redefine words and to rewrite history, nihilism as a concept is more than two hundred years old by now and has a rather specific definition, which, in my opinion, suffices; there’s no need to redefine it. As an example, here are some dictionary definitions of nihilism:
And just to show you that it doesn’t really matter what language the definition comes from, here’s the Estonian dictionary definition of nihilism by the Institute of the Estonian Language:
Since you probably don’t speak any Estonian, here’s an English translation:
Here’s a more in depth explanation of nihilism from the peer-reviewed Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Lastly, just for laughs, here’s a definition from Urban Dictionary:
The conclusion here is — or should be — that there’s a fairly standard and consistent definition of nihilism, and that the definition in no way implies it as something positive — as, indeed, it didn’t for Jacobi.
So far from saying, “nothing has inherent meaning, so you can create your own meaning,” what nihilism actually says — and always has — is that no meaning, including your own, is in any way meaningful. What this further implies is that, having achieved a truly nihilistic worldview, the subsequent loss of the illusions that have sustained mankind throughout the ages will, inevitably, lead towards despair.
If, on the other hand, you’ve been misinterpreting nihilism to mean that you can create your own meaning and happiness in life, then what you’re probably referring to is existentialism or absurdism, both of which are, in fact, defenses against nihilism.
Which brings me to my next point.
EXISTENTIALISM & ABSURDISM
A lot of the misinterpretation of nihilism comes from Sartre and Camus, and their subsequent philosophies of existentialism and absurdism. Although both of these philosophers and their philosophies stem from nihilism, they are, essentially, attempts at giving a “solution” to the problem that nihilism presents—in other words, why should we do anything in a world with no meaning or purpose? Why should we go on, both on an individual and species level?
I am not going to attempt at a definition of existentialism or absurdism here as that goes beyond the scope of this article. What is important to realize here, however, is that both existentialism and absurdism, as well as their most well-known philosophers — generally considered to be Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus — fought against nihilism.
To illustrate this, here’s a rather useful chart from Wikipedia. Yes, I know Wikipedia is not usually considered a reliable source, and I would generally not use it (even as the concern over its reliability is largely overblown). Yet for the scope of this article, the below chart is perfectly adequate in explaining the fundamental differences between the philosophies of Kierkegaard (Monotheistic existentialism), Sartre (Atheistic existentialism), and Camus (Absurdism) as compared to just regular plain old nihilism:
As we can see, nihilism in itself has neither meaning nor value to offer, not even the potential of them. It therefore in no way implies positivism or cheerfulness about the utter meaninglessness and purposelessness of life — about the mess we find ourselves in having been forced on this earth. Rather, it is absurdism which, though somewhat nihilistic, still offers some hope for meaning and therefore the potential for happiness; not to mention the even softer existentialism, which offers this in abundance (hence why it became so popular).
Both of these philosophies start at a similar nihilistic premise — that the apparent lack of meaning in the universe is a problem. However, it is only pure nihilism that does not even attempt to provide any solutions; in this sense, it is like science — it explains, without offering a solution to whatever problem the explanation might existentially create.
And why is nihilism not neutral? Because, as should be apparent, human beings have an inherent and built-in need for meaning; they must feel that they are special and that their lives are meaningful. Indeed, is there a better age than our social media obsessed one, where all are constantly trying to seem infinitely better online than they are in real life, to illustrate this?
Unfortunately, a nihilistic view — which, as Nietzsche foresaw, our age is inevitably drawn towards — severely lacks meaning and purpose; it is a crisis. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why there’s currently a global pandemic of rising rates of anxiety and depression. It isn’t so much Covid that is causing this directly, but rather the nihilistic view that the pandemic paints of the world — that such a catastrophe can come along at any time, without warning, without fix, and fuck everything up — precisely the kind of meaningless chaos that will make a person question the stability of reality.
Well, question it enough and you will ultimately find in this world only emptiness, superficiality, boredom, futility, chaos, and aimlessness. Not to mention the utter senselessness of our suffering — and we all suffer.
Which brings me to my next point.
NIETZSCHE AS “NIHILIST”
What actually arouses indignation over suffering is not the suffering itself, but the senselessness of suffering. . . .
— Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
Although Nietzsche may be the philosopher most often associated with nihilism — and, indeed, he had a rather good understanding of it — he was, ultimately, anything but. At best, he was a nihilist only for a time and even then it was only as a means towards an end. As he himself said:
He that speaks here, conversely, has done nothing so far but reflect . . . as the first perfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through the whole of nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself.
— Nietzsche, The Will to Power
For Nietzsche, nihilism was an historical inevitability — looking around our current world, I believe he was largely right. Nihilism was something one had to live through after the death of Christianity and God, when our old values couldn’t sustain themselves anymore, when they self-destructed. As he put it:
I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism’s] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength. It is possible. . . .
— Nietzsche, Saemtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe (15 Volumes), (English translation from The Banalization of Nihilism: Twentieth-Century Responses to Meaninglessness
So as you can see, much like for Jacobi, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Camus, nihilism for Nietzsche was a problem—indeed, it was “one of the greatest crises.”
In other words, Nietzsche didn’t revel in it. He did not “like” nihilism. And his solution to the problem of nihilism was what he called the “Revaluation of All Values” — as in, to put a hammer to our old values, and after having destroyed them, to create new values in their place.
Although Nietzsche was quite good at destroying old values, he had a much harder time in replacing them. Indeed, he went insane before finishing — or even properly starting — his magnum opus of “Revaluation of All Values,” meaning we can only guess at this point at what his particular solution to the very serious problem of nihilism would have been. My guess is that it would have been something akin to existentialism and absurdism — in other words, contradictory, vague, unprovable, and, as was customary to Nietzsche’s later writings, increasingly megalomanic.
At the end, however, all we have of Nietzsche’s “Revaluation of All Values” is a bunch of rambling and unfinished notes that were rewritten from his illegible handwriting by his longtime friend, and edited and published by his Nazi sister in a rather questionable volume called The Will to Power. Considering it consists of just a bunch Nietzsche’s notes that were never necessarily meant for publication, which were then arranged in an order of his sister’s choosing, the value of this “book,” aside from some memorable paragraphs in it (as quoted above), is . . . questionable. And it certainly does not solve the problem of nihilism.
SOLUTION TO NIHILISM
So what is the solution to nihilism?
Considering that I view nihilism as something inherently negative, you might think that the purpose of this article is to defend Jacobi, religion, traditional values, etc. This, however, is far from the truth. In fact, not only do I consider myself a nihilist in the dictionary definition, I’ve considered myself as such for more than a decade by now.
Why, you ask, would anyone willingly want to view the world according to such an unpleasant view as unadulterated nihilism? Well, that assumes that there is a choice — there isn’t. One’s views naturally develop over time, depending on their genes, experience, knowledge, and environment. Mine led me to become a nihilist. And though I don’t necessarily like the view, I consider it true — hence why I am unable to change it.
So what is my solution to nihilism? Well, it is neither existentialism, absurdism, religion, science, or even hedonism — well, perhaps a little bit of the latter. It’s not anything really. I am a nihilist precisely because I do not see nihilism as a problem to be solved; I see it as it just is — an objective view of the world from which human bias has been removed.
At least objectively speaking. Subjectively, my nihilism has led me to philosophical pessimism — a worldview which, to put it simply, condemns existence as something undesirable. You may read an article I wrote back in 2016 about some of its proponents.
And where does philosophical pessimism lead? What is its “final proclamation”? Well, if we follow it logically to its final, practical conclusion, then it is the philosophy of antinatalism — the idea that we should put an end to procreation, and, as Rust Cohle put it in True Detective, “walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”
This, ultimately, is what I believe. And without philosophical or religious befuddlement, this, I think, is what nihilism — in other words an accurate picture of reality which is divorced from human bias — logically leads to.
In other words, if existence is a problem, and the problem is its fundamental lack of meaning and purpose, including a lack of point to our suffering, then it is only logical to condemn existence itself as something bad — which is precisely what philosophical pessimism does — and to end up with a practical solution to put an end to the suffering — which is where antinatalism comes into play.
So you see, there is a solution to the problem of nihilism. A rather simple one at that, even though it is taboo — to remove the thing that creates the problem in the first place. And who creates the problem? We do. Us humans.
The problem may have started without choice through a senseless primordial muck billions of years ago and “evolved” to what we are now. However, if we’re truly so “evolved,” then we should be able to see plain as day that this random chemical experiment called life has no end goal — it started incidentally, is completely without objective meaning or purpose, and is only perpetuated through the illusions and lack of consciousness and wisdom of the human animal. And there is no way that this random and meaningless chemical coincidence is going to end up in any “good” way, despite the optimistic dreams of techno-utopists like Ray Kurzweil.
Just look at our history. And we don’t need to look far. At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Or let’s look at some yearly statistics. For instance, up to a million people die each year of suicide. Around 1.35 million people die each year from car accidents. Around 9 million die of hunger. And up to 1.6 million die of diarrhea. What kind of a world is that? An extremely lousy one, that’s what.
Of course, we can try to explain away all these things by various reasons, but the truth is that all of this, as well as all the other horrors of life, including rape, murder, and disease, has one thing in common — existence. And so, if existence is already objectively pointless — as both science and philosophy show in abundance — as is the endless, pointless, and undeserved suffering and death in it, what could be a more logical, rational, and reasonable conclusion than to put an end to the vicious and random biological cycle that sustains life? Especially now, in the age of Covid and climate change and impending resource collapse.
As the philosophical pessimist and antinatalist Peter Wessel Zapffe said:
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house.
And, as put by Anatoly Rybakov in Children of the Arbat:
Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.
