Philosophy of Pragmatism: Nihilism
We’re continuing our exploration of pragmatism with one of the least-understood concepts in all of philosophy. While this brief post can’t do it justice, it should give you a general idea of what it is - and isn’t.
Nihilism is the rejection of beliefs and values.
You can think of nihilism as an extreme form of skepticism. It doesn’t prove that beliefs are wrong, it simply rejects them.
Nihilists don’t believe in an answer to “life, the universe, and everything.” If you do believe in that, this philosophy can be very difficult to understand. It may even be horrifying. That’s normal! Nihilists are horrified by nihilism, too.
Nihilism’s rejection of meaning does, itself, offer a kind of meaning. It can be distilled into a single word: freedom.
If you weren’t born with a destiny, you can make your own. If there is no right or wrong, you can do whatever you want. Nihilists actively “deprogram” themselves from what they see as socially-conditioned beliefs about God or morality. They break taboos to teach themselves that everything is allowed.
“With thee have I pushed into all the forbidden, all the worst and the furthest: and if there be anything of virtue in me, it is that I have had no fear of any prohibition. With thee have I broken up whatever my heart revered; all boundary-stones and statues have I o'erthrown; the most dangerous wishes did I pursue,— verily, beyond every crime did I once go. With thee did I unlearn the belief in words and worths and in great names … 'Nothing is true, all is permitted': so said I to myself.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spake Zarathustra”
That’s right - the Assassin’s Creed was actually published in the late 1800s.
Does that make all nihilists evil? Not automatically (depending on your definition of evil). If a nihilist chooses not to steal, it’s because they don’t feel like stealing - not because they respect the right to property. Nihilists do tend to want to destroy anything that suggests values, dogma, or beliefs.
Having absolutely no beliefs is effectively impossible - no matter how hard you try, you’ll probably wind up believing something. It’s also paradoxical: “I believe that I should not believe.” Perhaps worst yet, nihilism is vertigo-inducingly disorienting. It provides no real tools for navigating life beyond the urge to destroy.
Even Nietzsche didn’t consider himself a nihilist. In the next post, we’ll look at one of the prevailing answers to the problems created by absurdism and nihilism.
That’s right: it’s time to talk about existentialism.