[MD] Thoughts on Nihilism

Sun Jul 25 20:24:51 PDT 2010

Steve said to dmb:
What I was trying to portray is what a complete lack of nihilism would be like. It is not to to say that meaning is not worth asking about. The complete lack of nihilism is the perspective where the question of meaning is not a question one even has. It is not a question when meaning is self-evident. One who is complete in the lack of nihilism never thinks to go looking for the justification for the world in some other more true world because life is already meaningful.

dmb says:

Still seems pretty fishy, Steve. Yes, the question of meaning is not going to come up if you think life is already meaningful, when the meaning of life is "self evident". This is a logically sound assertion. But who are these people? Who thinks the meaning of life is obvious or that life is obviously meaningful? I mean, it seems to me that the issue is very much present in the culture, that a widespread sense of meaninglessness has been identified by artists and philosophers in various ways over the last century or so. Nietzsche's announcement about the death of God and re-valuation of all values might mark the spot where our kind of nihilism was hatched. Aren't you're talking about trying to come to terms with that? The loss of that externally imposed meaning has been widely reported as painful and perplexing, you know? So the idea that some people find that life is obviously meaningful doesn't seem very realistic. I think you have a relative few people who are comfortable without it and then you have a whole lot of people who turn back to the old inherited meanings or they find something even crazier to replace it. 

Steve said:
... To say "what does this mean?" or "what is this for?" whether talking about the usage of a term or the purpose of a hammer amounts to "how is this used?" So, to ask, "what is the meaning or purpose of life?", is to ask, "how is life used?" Life is clearly used in lots and lots of different ways. We can talk about what ways are better and worse than others, but on this view where meaning and purpose are pragmatically understood as use the complete lack of meaning can never be a problem for anyone who lives and thus uses life.

dmb says:

I want to be sympathetic the pragmatic approach but this doesn't work for me either. Here "meaning" is used in a different sense of the word. To say how it's used would explain its instrumental value or its functional purpose. That's the same kind of nihilism of the religious who "use" their lives as an instrument to obtain a higher purpose, to get to heaven and all that. The non-nihilist is going to say that life is inherently meaningful, right?  

Steve said:
As Yann Martell wrote, just as music is noises that make sense and art is colors and lines that make sense, so stories are life that makes sense. Having meaning or making sense of life is then a matter of being able to tell a story of progress toward a better world. Some attach themselves to a grand epic offered to them by one of the world's religions or a down to earth political cause or performing a particular social role or in some other way of having meaning that is offered to us by our societies, and some, the poets of life among us, even eschew such existential comforts and heroically make their own new stories such that others may later find meaning in unheard of ways that no one before ever imagined. Perhaps the future will not just be better, it will be unimaginably better. This is a hope I share with many of the religious.

dmb says:

Yea, I don't know if that's what meaning means but I can relate to the desire to get in there somewhere and do something that matters. My old friend Frank used to say that sex is about 10% of a rich, full life - and 90% of an empty one. As the classic mid-life scenario goes, the crisis hits when you get all the "stuff" you thought you wanted - or more likely - the stuff you thought you were supposed to want. You even have love at home, some level of respect at work but then you wake up one day and say to yourself, "is this it?" "Is that all there is to life?" One guy I know studied a lot of existential theater and literature, fancies himself a philosopher. If you ask him what the meaning of life is, he'll say, "You eat, you shit, you fuck and then you die". He seemed quite sincere. That's a nihilist. He lives in the suburbs. Paints houses for money and does pretty well. I suppose it's a bit precious to worry about such things. Maybe it's just me being a snob, but it seems that most people are much more interested in being important or powerful and confuse that with meaning. You know, everybody wants to a player. Everybody wants to be star. 

Wiki says, "In Platonism, the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, which is the Idea (Form) of the Good, from which all good and just things derive utility and value. Human beings are duty-bound to pursue the good, but no one can succeed in that pursuit without philosophical reasoning, which allows for true knowledge."

Aristotle said: "Every skill and every inquiry, and similarly, every action and choice of action, is thought to have some good as its object. This is why the good has rightly been defined as the object of all endeavor [...]Everything is done with a goal, and that goal is 'good'."  —Nicomachean Ethics 1.1

Not to change the subject, but doesn't seem like a much more sensible question? Instead of asking what life means, maybe we should be asking about the good life, about the best way to live. Despite their differences, Plato and Aristotle are both connecting "the good" with a meaningful and happy life. It's an awfully vague goal, and that's what's so good about it. If it gets much more specific, then we're right back in the soup and it's just another externally imposed meaning. Good is goal of all endeavor. Add that to Pirsig's idea that art is any high quality endeavor. They add up to an idea that the meaning of life is to live artfully. 

Or something like that.

_________________________________________________________________
The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox.
http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_3