👋 Hey phi-lazy-phers
Nihilism is a philosophy that rejects many aspects of human existence, such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values, meaning, and religion/deities. It essentially means “nothingism” — or a lack of belief. Don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be as dark as it may sound.
This philosophy posits the reality of our universe is unstable. It's impossible to assert any one meaning, truth, doctrine, or way of thinking as correct because everything is constantly changing and evolving.
Existential Nihilists believe meaning doesn't exist at the Universe-level. Rather, they argue meaning is man-made, not some predetermined treasure for which we must spend our lives searching. That can be bleak on its own, but we could also draw on what we learned about Existentialism and create our own personal meaning from there.
Let’s pause for a second, though, and see what a few Nihilists have said about this philosophy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.
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Rick Sanchez (yes, from Rick and Morty 😅)
When you know nothing matters, the universe is yours.
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Albert Camus
If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.
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Hannah Arendt
Nihilism is but the other side of conventionalism; its creed consists of negations of the current so-called positive values, to which it remains bound.
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Emil Cioran
For animals, life is all there is; for man, life is a question mark. An irreversible question mark, for man has never found, nor will ever find, any answers. Life not only has no meaning; it can never have one.
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Simone de Beauvoir
Man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.
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Siddharth Gupta
I still believe there is no inherent meaning in life, but I now believe that because of this, there is no reason not to give everything I have and try to create my own meaning in this most likely hollow existence.
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Jon Stewart
I have complete faith in the continued absurdity of whatever’s going on.
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Søren Kierkegaard
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand... The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. That is what I now recognize as the most important thing.
I resonate with what Kierkegaard says there because I've found it helpful to pull ideas from a variety of philosophies to shape my philosophy, meaning, and worldview. It’s likely different from yours and that’s okay. The beauty in this is when I learn, experience, and evolve, my personal philosophy evolves as well.
The main message of Nihilism, I think, is summed up by a word Simone de Beauvoir used in her quote above, ambiguity: the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness. There are countless interpretations and belief systems for why we're here. There are even sects within religious, political, and philosophical groups that believe something slightly different from their overarching belief system. Admitting that your beliefs do not make up the entire answer—or that there even is one answer to find—thus accepting the ambiguity of our reality, is healthy and should be practiced regularly according to Nihilists.
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✌️ Until next week, happy philosophizing.
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