1.Fredrich Nietzsche

When Nietzsche declared “God is dead” he meant that Judeo- Christianity had been lost as a guiding force in their lives and there is nothing to replace it. People are creative they will find something, sex, science, education, an alternative ethical system, something. Science may have pushed God off to the sidelines and taken over the reigns, maybe, yet I believe there is still a very strong religious contingent still at work out there. I’ll explain later why I don’t think that this is a valid comparison, religion vs nihilism. People still have faith, as misplaced as it is it is theirs. This faith does not necessarily need to be placed on religions doorstep. We can put that faith to work in real places. With approximately 6.8 billion people on the planet approximately 6 billion are of some religious faith. That is about 90% of the planet! It’s not the faith that bothers me it is the religiosity. We are still arguing Wade vs Roe and Creationism vs Evolution and this is 2011 not 1850. If it takes 150 years for 10-14% of the population to choose to leave God out of the game I’d bet the other 86-94% are a little reticent about exchanging their faith for science or sex or nihilism or even the ‘Yes’ version of nihilism Nietzsche professed. I will explain his Copernican revolution further on. There are a few versions of nihilism all negative and pessimistic. Nietzsche turns the no of nihilism into a life affirming ‘yes’.

World Religions
Four largest religions	Adherents	% of World Population	Wikipage
World Population	6.8 billion	Figure used by individual articles
Christianity	1.9 billion - 2.1 billion	29% - 32%	Christianity by country
Islam	1.3 billion - 1.57 billion	19% - 21%	Islam by country
Hinduism	800 million - 900 million	14% - 20%	Hinduism by country
Buddhism	500 million - 1 billion	7% - 19%	Buddhism by country
Total	4.65 billion - 6.17 billion	68.38% - 90.73%

Adherents.com says "Sizes shown are approximate estimates, and are here mainly for the purpose of ordering the groups, not providing a definitive number."

Religion	Adherents
Christianity	2.1 billion
Islam	1.5 billion
Irreligious/agnostic/atheism	1.1 billion
Hinduism	900 million
Chinese traditional religion	394 million
Buddhism	376 million
Animist religions	300 million
African traditional/diasporic religions	100 million
Sikhism	23 million
Juche	19 million
Spiritism	15 million
Judaism	14 million
Baha'i	7 million
Jainism	4.2 million
Shinto	4 million
Cao Dai	4 million
Zoroastrianism	2.6 million
Tenrikyo	2 million
Neo-Paganism	1 million
Unitarian Universalism	800,000
Rastafari Movement	600,000

What is the meaning of Nihilism in America today? Can a movie like Pulp Fiction really convince anyone that Nihilism is a good thing and its going to take the place of peoples faith. The problem with these types of genre films is that they subversively get us to turn our heads away from real bullet and they cause more harm than good. Like the Rocky Horror Picture show it will be trotted out each year as the cult movie de-jure although The Rocky Horror Picture show had its redeeming qualities. It was funny. Tarantino’s flick would scare even Richard Dawkins back to Jesus but he knows there are livable real time solutions to dogma, mysticism, existentialism, materialism and all the other schisms religion has perpetrated on the world for hundreds and hundreds of years. The question is can a small population of nihilists exist without an objective source for its ethics and morals without disturbing the mainstream? Traditionally Nihilist ‘movements’ have incorporated violence as their modus operendi, a means to advance their objectives getting noticed, the new avaunt guard. Turgenev’s ‘Fathers and Sons’ was a portrait of a Russian Nihilist Movement in the 19^th century(1850-1860) which was just a movement of disgruntled kids demonstrating their dissatisfaction with everything their parents and authority stood for. There were numerous factions within the movement where their divisiveness was mainly due to the choice of whether to use violence or not and that was the movement, 150 years ago, in a remote location in Russia. They probably had good reason to be pissed off. The younger crowd was all for using violence but the older members understandably vowed against it. I’m sure Tarantino researched that aspect carefully because Pulp Fiction is lawless, sociopathic and pandered to the young urban sub culture with endless mindless gratuitous violence. Violence for violence’s sake. Because we no longer believe in God doesn’t mean we don’t need police or courts or laws, all absent in the film. It is curious why Tarantino chose this particular brand of Nihilism, well not really. That crap sells big time in LA, hence Bruce Willis and John Travolta. The only missing character was Al Pacino blazing away with a bazooka and grenades blowing up kindergarten schoolyards and banks. If you consider Camus and Nietzsche nihilists neither of them advocated a violent type of nihilism. In fact Nietzsche’s brand was a ‘yes’ type of nihilism not a ‘no’ type. His was a Copernican revolution. No guns. It begs the question. Would we have more violence than we’ve already have? It seems that God is not quite dead yet though with 68%-91% of the worlds population still practices some kind of religion and a mere 14% not practicing. That is 1 billion people or 1/7 of the world’s population spread all over the world. Hardly a revolution .When we talk about Nihilism it is usually philosophically and many people do not read or understand it. It is difficult to explain. It drove Nietzsche mad. But there is evidence of such a movement in the US and you can always tell when something is a hot button issue if it ends up on the big screen as a cult classic ergo Pulp Fiction. Or the sub culture names songs or bands around the idea ergo The Nihilist Spasm Band or the group who wrote the Monday Night Football Theme ‘Absurd’ from Fluke. It is understandable why these movements originate at universities and filter down to the sub culture although I wouldn’t consider John Travolta or Quentin Tarantino students or sub culture but it is a good indicator as to who they are targeting.

*(Simplified) Relationship between existentialism, absurdism and nihilism*
	Atheistic existentialism	Theistic existentialism	Absurdism	Nihilism
1. There is such a thing as meaning or value	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
2. There is inherent meaning in the universe (either intrinsic or from God)	No	Maybe, but humans must have faith to believe there is	Maybe, but humans can never know it	No
3. Individuals can create meaning in life themselves	Yes, it is essential that they do	Yes, but that meaning must incorporate God	Yes, but it is not essential	No, because there is no such meaning to create
4. The pursuit of intrinsic or extrinsic meaning in the universe is possible	No, and the pursuit itself is meaningless	Yes, and the pursuit itself may have meaning	No, but the pursuit itself may have meaning	No, and the pursuit itself is meaningless
5. The pursuit of constructed meaning is possible	Yes, thus the goal of existentialism	Yes, thus the goal of existentialism	Maybe	No
6. There is a solution to the individual's desire to seek meaning	Yes, the creation of one's own meaning	Yes, the creation of one's own meaning before God	Yes, to some extent (or possibly completely) through acknowledging though continuing to revolt against the Absurd	No

I’ve been contrasting nihilism with religion as an objective framework or foundation of values and meaning, but there are other objective systems of ethics however. We might compare nihilism to Aristotelian ethics as an example. I won’t talk about Aristotle suffice it say he says that things have natures or essences and that what is best for a thing is to achieve or realize its essence. A bit metaphysical for me but it could be an objective yard stick to stave off nihilism. This suggests things have capacities and capabilities like humans who have a set that no other creature or thing has that we are aware of and that is reason. This is our essential ability. Here is where Nietzsche’s Copernican turn comes into play. He turns the ‘NO’ in nihilism into an affirming ‘yes’ even though his brand of nihilism is more negative than the Oriental Schopenhauer version.

It is sometimes thought or hoped that in addition to the commonly acknowledged modes of achieving positive knowledge of the world –through sense experience and scientific investigation – art provides us with a special way of attaining to perhaps a special class of truths; and these are said to have as great a claim to objectivity as any other. ART together with its escapes and pleasures has been thought to yield intellectual benefits as well of possibly a very high order conducting us to factual insights perhaps not otherwise accessible to mere human cognition.

The radical nature of Nietzsche’s thought even in its first significant expression may be seen in the fact that he is indeed prepared to allow that art has no less a claim than sense or science to objective truth. But this is because neither sense nor science can make any stronger claim to truth than art.

There is an analogy to be found between art and cognition (so called) regarding both their provenance and their function : each consists in illusions, the illusions of science and sense making life possible, the illusions of art making it bearable.

Nietzsche’s reasons for these highly skeptical conclusions consist in certain epistemological analysis rather like those often urged later by Bertrand Russell according to which our perceptions are said not to resemble their causes so that the language we employ learned in connection with the having of perceptions does not describe the world as it really is. Language rather describes- insofar as in Nietzsche’s view we may think of language as descriptive at all-the illusions we take for reality.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

18 May 1872(1872-05-18)

2 February 1970(1970-02-02) (aged 97)
Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK

20th century philosophy

Western philosophy

Analytic philosophy
Nobel Prize in Literature
1950

Metaphysics, epistemology, logic, mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, ethics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy

Analytic philosophy, logical atomism, theory of descriptions, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description, Russell's paradox, Russell's teapot

At this point Nietzsche was supposing that there might be an order or structure in the world which we were capable of capturing. Yet given his ideas concerning the origin and function of our language, we could not say what the world might be in fact like even if , per impossible , we were in the position to experience whatever causes our perceptions. We plainly could not apply our terms to these causes.

Our primitive mode of contact with the world is essentially as artists, as more or less unwitting makers of images and metaphors transforming rather than reproducing our experiences, themselves transformations and not duplications of their causes and objects. But 'metaphors' through time and use become resolved into concepts and concepts elaborated into systems and ultimately these "edifices of concepts exhibit the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium." One must vastly admire the architectural genius of mankind which builds "an infinitely complex cathedral of concepts upon shifting foundations and flowing waters, so to speak." But this admiration must be restricted to the structuring genius of the collective human intellect not to its capacity for discovering truth in any conventional sense of the term because at bottom our concepts are the residue of metaphors and the architecture of our conceptual structure is "anthropomorphic through and through and contains not a single point of which is 'true-in-itself,' objective and universal apart from man." We dwell in a structure we have built for ourselves and could not for a moment survive as recognizably ourselves "outside the prison walls of these beliefs."

2. Introduction to Nietzschean Nihilism

Nihilism connotes Negativity and Emptiness; in fact it denotes two bodies of thought that although distinct from Nietzsche’s never the less bear it some partial resemblance. The Nihilism of Emptiness is essentially that of Buddhist or Hindu teaching both of which hold that the worked w e live in an seem to know has no ultimate reality and that our attachment to it is an attachment to illusion. Reality itself has neither name nor form and what has name and form is but a painful dreaming from which all reasonable men would wish to escape if they knew the way and knew that their attachment was to nothingness. Life is without sense and point there is a ceaseless alternation of birth and death and birth again the constantly turning wheel of existence going nowhere eternally; if we wish salvation it is salvation from life that we must seek. This Oriental pessimism articulated in Europe in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer is based upon a set of metaphysical views which are closely akin to those that Nietzsche advanced as his own. He sought, he tells us ,"to get to the bottom of the question of [European] pessimism and liberate it from the half-Christian , half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to our century."3 He did not however draw the same consequences which Schopenhauer and the Oriental philosophers did and Nietzsche adds that whoever had analyzed pessimism " has perhaps just thereby without really desiring it opened his eyes to behold the opposite ideal : the ideal of the most world-approving exuberant and vivacious man."4 Was this a Copernican revolution?

Part of what we must clarify then is the manner in which Nietzsche was able on the basis of a metaphysical Nihilism of the most uncompromising sort to justify an attitude toward life which in its affirmative was in every respect discordant with the Nihilism of Emptiness: his “new way to ‘YES’”

Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev, 1872 portrait by Vasily Perov
Born	October 28, 1818(1818-10-28) Oryol, Russian Empire
Died	September 3, 1883(1883-09-03) (aged 64) Bougival, Seine-et-Oise
Occupation	Novelist and Playwright
Genres	Realism
Notable work(s)	A Sportsman's Sketches • Fathers and Sons • A Month in the Country

The Nihilism of Negativity as I shall call it is exemplified in the movement properly known as 'NIHILISM', which flourished in the latter decades of the 19th c in Europe especially in the 1850's -1860's in Russia and which found it most respectable expression in Turgenev's 'Fathers and Sons' (1861). Russian Nihilism was essentially a negative and destructive attitude against a body of moral, political and religious teachings found or felt by the Nihilists to be confining and obscurantist. As against their elders, Nihilists claimed that they believed in nothing, though what this specifically meant was that they held in total discredit the beliefs, tastes, and attitudes of their elders and those in current authority. Shades of most revolutions "Nihilism in the St. Petersburg style- i.e., belief in unbelief to the point of martyrdom for it, shows always and above all the need for belief...."6 In actual fact they believed, in an uncritical and wholesale manner, in a crudely materialistic interpretation of science. Materialism, the word is often used to stand for the view that everything is material and that there is nothing mental at all: "All matter, no mind." What exactly does this mean? This materialistic interpretation of science will be discussed later. It is the typical 'mind-body' problem that faced Descartes when he presented his solution: cogito ergo sum - "I think therefore I am". It was basically in the name of science that they proclaimed, as invalid, the principles they inveighed (violently attacked) against. But inasmuch as their understanding of science was filtered through a version of materialism which they mistook for science itself or which if more sophisticated they took to be the only attitude compatible with and justified by science there was an undeniable component of belief indeed faith which interpenetrated their nihilism and rendered it halfhearted. Nihilists believed that there was no such thing as meaning or value, no inherent value in the universe, pursuit of meaning was not possible, the pursuit of constructed meaning was not possible, there is no solution to the individuals desire to seek meaning and there should be no room here for the kind of faith or belief posed here!

The 19th c, in its way was as much an age of faith as was the 12th c. Almost any European thinker of this epoch appears to us today as a kind of visionary committed to one or another program of salvation and to one or other simple way of achieving it. It was as though the needs and hopes which had found satisfaction in religion still perdurable (permanently durable) in an era when religion itself no longer could be credited and something else - science, education, revolution, evolution, socialism, business enterprise or, latterly, sex -must be seized upon to fill the place left empty and to discharge the office vacated by religious beliefs which could not now sustain. And so it was with Nihilism.

In Fathers and Sons, Barazov repudiates everything that cannot be explained by the laws of natural science, striving for reality rather than negation and he embodies the spirit of revolution. This gives you a clue as to the true nature of this touchingly adolescent attitude that relied on science and faith through revolution to form a new society. This type of Russian Nihilism took place locally about 1850 to 1860

3. The Enlightenment Ideal and Nietzsche's more Negative Nihilism, “The Copernican Twist.”

Nihilism

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an(impulse to destroy.? )While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes–epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness–have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.

Nietzsche's more Negative Nihilism, “The Copernican Twist”

Nietzsche was not less but more negativistic than his Nihilistic contemporaries (though he was not part of that movement in any sense whatsoever) and he is celebrated, attacked or applauded for his bitter denunciations of many of the same traditions, beliefs and institutions which they explicitly repudiated.

His Nihilism nevertheless is not an ideology (the body of ideas characteristic of a particular individual, group or culture) but a metaphysic (the underlying nature of things) and in no respect is his difference from Nihilists more marked than in his attitude towards science.

n“Science he regards not as a repository of truths or a method for discovering them but as a set of convenient fictions of useful conventions, which has as much and as little basis in reality as any alleged set of fictions which might be thought to conflict with it. Science, no more and no less than religion, morality and art was an instance of what he termed Will-To-Power, an impulse and a drive to impose upon an essentially chaotic reality a form and structure to shape it into a world congenial to human understanding while habitable by human intelligence. But this was its sole justification and any imposed form which worked to the same purpose would be equally justifiable, content counting for less than function –counting, indeed for nothing at all”.

Science in a sense of truth is not true. But in the sense in which it is not true, neither is anything else; and relative to this theory of truth which was his, Nietzsche must say that he did not, because in metaphysical honesty he could not believe in anything. His was accordingly a deep and total Nihilism, from the vantage point of which the contest of the Russian Nihilists with their declared ideological enemies was but an instance in the struggle of wills, a struggle for power and form which, as Nietzsche saw it, characterizes human life everywhere and always and, in a sense was the single characteristic he was prepared to ascribe to the universe at large, which he saw as an eternal strife of will with will.

Both of the non-Nietzschean forms of Nihilism derive from much the same attitude. Each believes that there ought to be some order or external purpose in the world.” The Nihilism of Emptiness”, Schopenhauer’s Nihilism presupposes an outlook, become habitual, in accordance with which purposes are established from without.

This Nihilism expresses a disappointment that there is no such purpose when in fact the state of mind that demands that there be one ought to be overcome. With its overcoming, the grounds for pessimism and despair are disqualified. “Russian Nihilism”, meanwhile is typical of thought that derives from the same habit just mentioned that there is an external authority to whom or to which we must appeal in order to determine the purpose of life: “having learnt not to believe in one authority, [it] sought to find another” – in this case Science. But men find it difficult to function in this world without supposing one or another external source of authority and significance, “if not God or Science, then Conscience, Reason, Social Instinct or History”, conceived of as “an immanent spirit with built-in purpose to which one may surrender”. It is a general tendency of the human mind which to Nietzsche is ultimately a disastrous disposition to imagine and to seek to identify a purposive armature a basis for significance in the world itself something objective to which men may submit and in which they may find a meaning for themselves.

The Nihilism of Emptiness as a mood of thought and as a psychological condition arises in direct consequence of the realization or suspicion that really there is no such thing to be found no world order in which we ourselves are integral parts and such that our entire value derives from being related to it in determined ways.

Perhaps we then like the Buddhists write off the entire thing as a dream and seek no longer to be bothered by what has no substance. Or, like so many philosophers and visionaries we invent in compensation, “a world which lies beyond this one a true world “, in contrast with which this world is completely disvalued.

But once a man attains a realization that the alleged real or true world is of human provenance created in response to certain unfulfilled human needs, a fabrication which is philosophically unjustified if psychologically comprehensible then he achieves the final form of Nihilism: a disbelief in any world alternative and metaphysically preferable to this one. At the same time he regards this world as the only one however unstructured and purposeless it may be and however valueless.

The claim that the world is valueless is not to say that it has some low value in the scheme of values as when we say of something that it is of little worth or none but rather it is not the kind of thing of which it logically makes sense to say either that it is worth little or that it has such and such a higher value. Values have no more application to the world than weights do to numbers : to say that the number two is weightless is not to say that it is very light but that it is senseless to assign it any weight at all.

This would be Nietzsche’s view. Strictly it follows that the world has no value from the fact that there is nothing in it which might sensibly be supposed to have value. There is neither order nor purpose, things nor facts, nothing there whatever to which our beliefs can correspond so that all our beliefs are false. This he regards as “the extremist form of nihilism –the insight that every belief every taking for true is necessarily false: because there is no true world at all”.

G.W.F. Hegel is considered to be one of the early anti-foundationalists.

“Nihilism” comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. It appears in the verb “annihilate,” meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Early in the nineteenth century, Friedrich Jacobi used the word to negatively characterize transcendental idealism. It only became popularized, however, after its appearance in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons (1862) where he used “nihilism” to describe the crude scientism espoused by his character Barazov who preaches a creed of total negation.

In Russia, nihilism became identified with a loosely organized revolutionary movement (C.1860-1917) that rejected the authority of the state, church, and family. In his early writing, anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) composed the notorious entreaty still identified with nihilism: “Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life–the passion for destruction is also a creative passion!” (Reaction in Germany, 1842). The movement advocated a social arrangement based on rationalism and materialism as the sole source of knowledge and individual freedom as the highest goal. By rejecting man’s spiritual essence in favor of a solely materialistic one, nihilists denounced God and religious authority as antithetical to freedom. The movement eventually deteriorated into an ethos of subversion, destruction, and anarchy, and by the late 1870s, a nihilist was anyone associated with clandestine political groups advocating terrorism and assassination.

The earliest philosophical positions associated with what could be characterized as a nihilistic outlook are those of the Skeptics. Because they denied the possibility of certainty, Skeptics could denounce traditional truths as unjustifiable opinions. When Demosthenes (c.371-322 BC), for example, observes that “What he wished to believe, that is what each man believes” (Olynthiac), he posits the relational nature of knowledge. Extreme skepticism, then, is linked to epistemological nihilism which denies the possibility of knowledge and truth; this form of nihilism is currently identified with postmodern antifoundationalism. Nihilism, in fact, can be understood in several different ways. Political Nihilism, as noted, is associated with the belief that the destruction of all existing political, social, and religious order is a prerequisite for any future improvement. Ethical nihilism or moral nihilism rejects the possibility of absolute moral or ethical values. Instead, good and evil are nebulous, and values addressing such are the product of nothing more than social and emotive pressures. Existential nihilism is the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, and it is, no doubt, the most commonly used and understood sense of the word today.

Max Stirner’s (1806-1856) attacks on systematic philosophy, his denial of absolutes, and his rejection of abstract concepts of any kind often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. For Sterner, achieving individual freedom is the only law; and the state, which necessarily imperils freedom, must be destroyed. Even beyond the oppression of the state, though, are the constraints imposed by others because their very existence is an obstacle compromising individual freedom. Thus Sterner argues that existence is an endless “war of each against all” (The Ego and its Own, trans. 1907).

What is Existential Nihilism?

Existential Nihilism embraces the notion that the world lacks meaning or purpose. All existence itself -- actions, suffering, feelings -- is senseless, nothingness.

The existential nihilist regards all thoughts and feelings as merely the effects of prior causes. In other words, free will is denied. Neither heredity nor environment is attributed to the nihilist’s futile existence.

The philosopher and poet, Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily, c. 492-432 BC), reveals this skepticism in that "the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life." This embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism.

Other philosophers such as Hegesis (c. 250 BC) believed misery’s domination over pleasure made happiness impossible, leaving suicide as the only recourse.

Existential Nihilism chooses to abandon any foundation for an essential self or human nature. The nihilist is then left with anguish as their “nothingness,” plunges them into isolated, unresponsive universe. Centuries later, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) popularized the atheistic existentialist nihilist movement in France as “existence precedes essence.”

Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism

Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism. For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. Penetrating the façades buttressing convictions, the nihilist discovers that all values are baseless and that reason is impotent. “Every belief, every considering something-true,” Nietzsche writes, “is necessarily false because there is simply no true world” (Will to Power [notes from 1883-1888]). For him, nihilism requires a radical repudiation of all imposed values and meaning: “Nihilism is . . . not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys” (Will to Power).

The caustic strength of nihilism is absolute, Nietzsche argues, and under its withering scrutiny “the highest values devalue themselves. The aim is lacking, and ‘Why’ finds no answer” (Will to Power). Inevitably, nihilism will expose all cherished beliefs and sacrosanct truths as symptoms of a defective Western mythos. This collapse of meaning, relevance, and purpose will be the most destructive force in history, constituting a total assault on reality and nothing less than the greatest crisis of humanity:

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. . . . For some time now our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end. . . . (Will to Power)Since Nietzsche’s compelling critique, nihilistic themes–epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness–have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Convinced that Nietzsche’s analysis was accurate, for example, Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1926) studied several cultures to confirm that patterns of nihilism were indeed a conspicuous feature of collapsing civilizations. In each of the failed cultures he examines, Spengler noticed that centuries-old religious, artistic, and political traditions were weakened and finally toppled by the insidious workings of several distinct nihilistic postures: the Faustian nihilist “shatters the ideals”; the Apollonian nihilist “watches them crumble before his eyes”; and the Indian nihilist “withdraws from their presence into himself.” Withdrawal, for instance, often identified with the negation of reality and resignation advocated by Eastern religions, is in the West associated with various versions of Epicureanism and stoicism. In his study, Spengler concludes that Western civilization is already in the advanced stages of decay with all three forms of nihilism working to undermine epistemological authority and ontological grounding.

In 1927, Martin Heidegger, to cite another example, observed that nihilism in various and hidden forms was already “the normal state of man” (The Question of Being). Other philosophers’ predictions about nihilism’s impact have been dire. Outlining the symptoms of nihilism in the 20th century, Helmut Thielicke wrote that “Nihilism literally has only one truth to declare, namely, that ultimately Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless” (Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer, 1969). From the nihilist’s perspective, one can conclude that life is completely amoral, a conclusion, Thielicke believes, that motivates such monstrosities as the Nazi reign of terror. Gloomy predictions of nihilism’s impact are also charted in Eugene Rose’s Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age (1994). If nihilism proves victorious–and it’s well on its way, he argues–our world will become “a cold, inhuman world” where “nothingness, incoherence, and absurdity” will triumph.

Existential Nihilism

While nihilism is often discussed in terms of extreme skepticism and relativism, for most of the 20th century it has been associated with the belief that life is meaningless. Existential nihilism begins with the notion that the world is without meaning or purpose. Given this circumstance, existence itself–all action, suffering, and feeling–is ultimately senseless and empty.

In The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life (1994), Alan Pratt demonstrates that existential nihilism, in one form or another, has been a part of the Western intellectual tradition from the beginning. The Skeptic Empedocles’ observation that “the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life,” for instance, embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. In antiquity, such profound pessimism may have reached its apex with Hegesis. Because miseries vastly outnumber pleasures, happiness is impossible, the philosopher argues, and subsequently advocates suicide. Centuries later during the Renaissance, William Shakespeare eloquently summarized the existential nihilist’s perspective when, in this famous passage near the end of Macbeth, he has Macbeth pour out his disgust for life:

Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Shakespeare portal

Although existentialism is not by necessity nihilistic, nihilism does share a close affinity with existentialism because it depicts human life as ultimately trivial and meaningless. Where it parts company with existentialism, however, is in the level of resulting despair and the conclusion that therefore perhaps the best course of action is suicide.

We can find a good expression of the nihilistic existentialism in work by Dostoyevsky. In The Possessed, his character Kirilov argues that if God does not really exist, then only individual freedom in life is genuinely meaningful. However, he also adds that the freest thing that a person could do would be to end that life rather than live under the control of social systems created by others. Albert Camus explored a the same issue in The Myth of Sisyphus, published in 1942, where he addressed the question: should we commit suicide?

There are two aspects to this position which merit attention: whether the absence of any gods renders human life meaningless and whether that meaninglessness forces us to conclude that suicide is the best course of action. The first aspect is technical and philosophical in nature. The second, though, is much more psychological.

Now, it is certainly true that large numbers of people throughout history and even today have believed that the existence of some divine purpose to the universe is necessary for them to have purpose and meaning in their lives. What that majority believes to be true for them is not, however, dispositive for the rest of humanity. Quite a few people have managed to live very purposeful and meaningful lives without any belief in any gods — and no one is in a position of authority that would allow them to contradict what those people say about meaning in their lives.

For the same reason, the fact that people have experienced great anguish and despair over the apparent loss of meaning in life when they have doubted the existence of God does not, therefore, mean that everyone who doubts or disbelieves must necessarily go through similar experiences. Indeed, some treat that doubt and disbelief very positively, arguing that it provides a superior basis for living that do faith and religion.

Not all claims that life today is meaningless are entirely dependent upon the assumption that there is no God. There is, in addition, the vision of the “postmodern man,” the image of the conformist who has become dehumanized and alienated by the nature of modern industrial and consumer society. Political and social conditions have rendered him indifferent and even baffled, causing him to direct his energy towards hedonistic narcissism or simply a resentment that might explode in violent behavior.

This is a nihilism depicts human beings who have become stripped of even the remotest of hope for meaningful lives, leaving only the expectation that existence will be little more than sickness, decay, and disintegration. It must be pointed out here, though, that there are some differences in how the concept “meaningful life” is being used. Those who insist that a meaningful life depends upon God mean it in the sense of a life that is meaningful from an objective perspective.

In the twentieth century, it’s the atheistic existentialist movement, popularized in France in the 1940s and 50s, that is responsible for the currency of existential nihilism in the popular consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905-1980) defining preposition for the movement, “existence precedes essence,” rules out any ground or foundation for establishing an essential self or a human nature. When we abandon illusions, life is revealed as nothing; and for the existentialists, nothingness is the source of not only absolute freedom but also existential horror and emotional anguish. Nothingness reveals each individual as an isolated being “thrown” into an alien and unresponsive universe, barred forever from knowing why yet required to invent meaning. It’s a situation that’s nothing short of absurd. Writing from the enlightened perspective of the absurd.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) observed that Sisyphus’ plight, condemned to eternal, useless struggle, was a superb metaphor for human existence (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

The common thread in the literature of the existentialists is coping with the emotional anguish arising from our confrontation with nothingness, and they expended great energy responding to the question of whether surviving it was possible. Their answer was a qualified “Yes,” advocating a formula of passionate commitment and impassive stoicism. In retrospect, it was an anecdote tinged with desperation because in an absurd world there are absolutely no guidelines, and any course of action is problematic. Passionate commitment, be it to conquest, creation, or whatever, is itself meaningless. Enter nihilism.

Camus, like the other existentialists, was convinced that nihilism was the most vexing problem of the twentieth century. Although he argues passionately that individuals could endure its corrosive effects, his most famous works betray the extraordinary difficulty he faced building a convincing case. In The Stranger (1942), for example, Meursault has rejected the existential suppositions on which the uninitiated and weak rely. Just moments before his execution for a gratuitous murder, he discovers that life alone is reason enough for living, a raison d’être, however, that in context seems scarcely convincing. In Caligula (1944), the mad emperor tries to escape the human predicament by dehumanizing himself with acts of senseless violence, fails, and surreptitiously arranges his own assassination. The Plague (1947) shows the futility of doing one’s best in an absurd world. And in his last novel, the short and sardonic, The Fall (1956), Camus posits that everyone has bloody hands because we are all responsible for making a sorry state worse by our inane action and inaction alike. In these works and other works by the existentialists, one is often left with the impression that living authentically with the meaninglessness of life is impossible. Camus was fully aware of the pitfalls of defining existence without meaning, and in his philosophical essay The Rebel (1951) he faces the problem of nihilism head-on and incalculable violence and death.

In it, he describes at length how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilism, characterized by profound hatred, pathological destruction,

G.W.F. Hegel is considered to be one of the early anti-foundationalists

Anti-foundationalists

4. Antifoundationalism and Nihilism

Anti-foundationalism (also called nonfoundationalism) as the name implies, is a term applied to any philosophy which rejects a foundationalist approach, i.e. an anti-foundationalist is one who does not believe that there is some fundamental belief or principle which is the basic ground or foundation of inquiry and knowledge. Anti-foundationalists use logical or historical/genealogical attacks on foundational concepts (see especially Nietzsche and Foucault), often coupled with alternative methods for justifying and forwarding intellectual inquiry, such as the pragmatic subordination of knowledge to practical action.

Anti-foundationalists oppose metaphysical methods. Moral and ethical anti-foundationalists are often criticized for moral relativism, but anti-foundationalists often dispute this charge, offering alternative methods of moral thought that they claim do not require foundations.

By the late 20th century, “nihilism” had assumed two different castes. In one form, “nihilist” is used to characterize the postmodern man, a dehumanized conformist, alienated, indifferent, and baffled, directing psychological energy into hedonistic narcissism or into a deep resentment that often explodes in violence. his perspective is derived from the existentialists’ reflections on nihilism stripped of any hopeful expectations, leaving only the experience of sickness, decay, and disintegration.

In his study of meaninglessness, Donald Crosby writes that the source of modern nihilism paradoxically stems from a commitment to honest intellectual openness. “Once set in motion, the process of questioning could come to but one end, the erosion of conviction and certitude and collapse into despair” (The Specter of the Absurd, 1988). When sincere inquiry is extended to moral convictions and social consensus, it can prove deadly, Crosby continues, promoting forces that ultimately destroy civilizations. Michael Novak’s recently revised “The Experience of Nothingness” (1968, 1998) tells a similar story. Both studies are responses to the existentialists’ gloomy findings from earlier in the century. And both optimistically discuss ways out of the abyss by focusing of the positive implications nothingness reveals, such as liberty, freedom, and creative possibilities. Novak, for example, describes how since WWII we have been working to “climb out of nihilism” on the way to building a new civilization.

In contrast to the efforts to overcome nihilism noted above is the uniquely postmodern response associated with the current antifoundationalists. The philosophical, ethical, and intellectual crisis of nihilism that has tormented modern philosophers for over a century has given way to mild annoyance or, more interestingly, an upbeat acceptance of meaninglessness.

French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard characterizes postmodernism as an “incredulity toward metanarratives,” those all-embracing foundations that we have relied on to make sense of the world. This extreme skepticism has undermined intellectual and moral hierarchies and made “truth” claims, transcendental or trans- cultural, problematic. Postmodern antifoundationalists, paradoxically grounded in relativism, dismiss knowledge as relational and “truth” as transitory, genuine only until something more palatable replaces it (reminiscent of William James’ notion of “cash value”). The critic Jacques Derrida, for example, asserts that one can never be sure that what one knows corresponds with what is. (The Correspondence Theory of truth) Since human beings participate in only an infinitesimal part of the whole, they are unable to grasp anything with certainty, and absolutes are merely “fictional forms.”

5.The Correspondence Theory of Truth

The strictest form of the theory defines truth as a structural correspondence between what is true (a belief, judgment, proposition, sentence, and so on) and what makes it true (an event, fact, state of affairs, and so on).Because of difficulties in defining such a relation (difficulties also facing the PICTURE THEORY OF MEANING), the theory is often weakened to saying simply that what is true is so because there is a relevant fact, without any correspondence of structure. In an even weaker version (held by Aristotle) something is true if it simply 'says things as they are,' a view which approaches the REDUNDANCY THEORY OF TRUTH (also see: SEMANTICS, TRUTH-CONDITIONAL). Like the COHERENCE THEORY, the correspondence theory may offer merely a criterion (rather than an analysis) of truth . Whether what is said about the world is true surely must depend on how the world is. This simple observation appears to offer strong intuitive support to one of the major philosophical accounts of truth, the correspondence theory, according to which propositions are true if and only if they correspond with the facts. However, despite its immediate appeal, the account has met with a number of objections, both the conception of facts as worldly items, and the construal of truth as a relation, drawing criticism.

The theory maintains that the truth of a proposition p requires the following two conditions to be met: (1) it is a fact that p, and (2) the proposition corresponds to that fact. Attention may now shift to the relation of correspondence—e.g. must a proposition mirror the structure of the fact?—but such an enquiry can reasonably be short-circuited, since condition (2) is surely superfluous: p being true if and only if it is a fact that p, all that is required by way of correspondence is that for each true proposition there should be a fact. Still, the reduced equivalence remains of significance if, as the theory would have it, the association of a true proposition with a fact is an association of words with world.

To confuse things further, a distinction between mind and matter was made, which produced the question: how our ideas, belonging to mind, can reflect objects belonging to the realm of matter.

Compare our cybernetic epistemology with the classical reflection-correspondence theory of meaning and truth. One of the oldest questions of philosophy is: “What is the meaning of words and phrases of a language?” The naive answer is: those things which the words denote. This is known as the reflection theory of language. Language, like a mirror, creates certain images, reflections of the things around us. With the reflection theory of language we come to what is known as the Correspondence Theory of Truth: a proposition is true if the relations between the images of things correspond to the relations between the things themselves. Falsity is a wrong, distorted reflection. In particular, to create images which correspond to no real thing in the world is to be in error

With this concept of meaning and truth, any expression of our language which cannot be immediately interpreted in terms of observable facts, is meaningless and misleading. This viewpoint in its extreme form, according to which all unobservable must be banned from science, was developed by the early nineteenth-century positivism (Auguste Comte). Such a view, however, is unacceptable for science. Even force in Newton's mechanics becomes suspect in this philosophy, because we can neither see nor touch it; we only conclude that it exists by observing the movements of material bodies. Electromagnetic field has still less of reality. And the situation with the wave function in quantum mechanics is simply disastrous.

The history of the Western philosophy is, to a considerable extent, the history of a struggle against the reflection-correspondence theory. We now consider language as a material to create models of reality. Language is a system which works as a whole, and should be evaluated as a whole. The job the language does is organization of our experience, which includes, in particular, some verifiable predictions about future events and the results of our actions. For a language to be good at this job, it is not necessary that every specific part of it should be put in a direct and simple correspondence with the observable reality.

Unlike our dynamic concept of modeling as production of predictions, the classical concept of reflection is static. It immediately raises the questions like what does it actually mean that one thing "reflects" another. Also, how do we know that reflection takes place?

The cybernetic understanding of knowledge is much more precise. This precision is achieved by introducing dynamics into the picture. The mapping form the world to language present in the homomorphism picture is not required to be a "reflection"; we need not compare these two strata of reality. To see that the model works, we only have to compare things from the stratum of language.

All that has been said about language can be applied also to human thought. In cybernetic view, thought works because it implements some models of the world, not because it somehow statically reflects it. The difficult questions of the correspondence between the thought and its object simply do not arise.

In a static world no knowledge, no reflection or correspondence would be possible. Correspondence make sense only if we indicate a procedure which establishes what we want to call correspondence; and a procedure inescapably includes a time dimension

American antifoundationalist Richard Rorty makes a similar point: “Nothing grounds our practices, nothing legitimizes them, and nothing shows them to be in touch with the way things are” (“From Logic to Language to Play,” 1986). This epistemological cul-de-sac, Rorty concludes, leads inevitably to nihilism. “Faced with the nonhuman, the nonlinguistic, we no longer have the ability to overcome contingency and pain by appropriation and transformation, but only the ability to recognize contingency and pain” (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989). In contrast to Nietzsche’s fears and the angst of the existentialists, nihilism becomes for the antifoundationalists just another aspect of our contemporary milieu, one best endured with sang-froid.

In The Banalization of Nihilism (1992) Karen Carr discusses the antifoundationalist response to nihilism. Although it still inflames a paralyzing relativism and subverts critical tools, “cheerful nihilism” carries the day, she notes, distinguished by an easy-going acceptance of meaninglessness. Such a development, Carr concludes, is alarming. If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. Worse still, the banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies. It’s a conclusion that dovetails nicely with Nietzsche’s, who pointed out that all interpretations of the world are simply manifestations of will-to-power.

6. Conclusion

It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilism’s impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of post modernity. It’s helpful to note, then, that he believed we could–at a terrible price–eventually work through Nihilism as did Descartes in his dilemma. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind:

I praise, I do not reproach, [nihilism's] arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest (sleepiest) 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.

7. Synopsis

Nihilism – Abandoning Values and Knowledge
Nihilism derives its name from the Latin root nihil, meaning nothing, that which does not exist. This same root is found in the verb “annihilate” -- to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Nihilism is the belief which:

labels all values as worthless, therefore, nothing can be known or communicated.
associates itself with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism, having no loyalties. .

Nihilism – A Meaningless World:

Philosophers’ predictions of nihilism’s impact on society are grim. Existentialist, Albert Camus (1913-1960), labeled nihilism as the most disturbing problem of the 20th century. His essay, The Rebel¹ paints a terrifying picture of “how metaphysical collapse often ends in total negation and the victory of nihilism, characterized by profound hatred, pathological destruction, and incalculable death.” Helmut Thielicke’s, Nihilism: Its Origin and Nature, with a Christian Answer² warns, “Nihilism literally has only one truth to declare, namely, that ultimately Nothingness prevails and the world is meaningless."

Nihilism – Beyond Nothingness
Nihilism--choosing to believe in Nothingness--involves a high price. An individual may choose to “feel” rather than think, exert their “will to power” than pray, give thanks, or obey God. After an impressive career of literary and philosophical creativity, Friedrich Nietzsche lost all control of his mental faculties. Upon seeing a horse mistreated, he began sobbing uncontrollably and collapsed into a catatonic state. Nietzsche died August 25, 1900, diagnosed as utterly insane. While saying Yes to “life” but No to God.

Forms of Nihilism

The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), is most often associated with nihilism. In Will to Power [notes 1883-1888], he writes, “Every belief, every considering something true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.” For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. The objective of nihilism manifests itself in several perspectives:

Moral nihilism, also known as ethical nihilism, is the meta-ethical view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. Other nihilists may argue not that there is no morality at all, but that if it does exist, it is a human and thus artificial construction, wherein any and all meaning is relative for different possible outcomes. As an example, if someone kills someone else, such a nihilist might argue that killing is not inherently a bad thing, bad independently from our moral beliefs, only that because of the way morality is constructed as some rudimentary dichotomy, what is said to be a bad thing is given a higher negative weighting than what is called good: as a result, killing the individual was bad because it did not let the individual live, which was arbitrarily given a positive weighting. In this way a moral nihilist believes that all moral claims are false.

Existential nihilism

Existential nihilism is the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence.

Epistemological nihilism

Nihilism of an epistemological form can be seen as an extreme form of skepticism in which all knowledge is denied.

Metaphysical nihilism

Metaphysical nihilism is the philosophical theory that there might be no objects at all, i.e. that there is a possible world in which there are no objects at all; or at least that there might be no concrete objects at all, so even if every possible world contains some objects, there is at least one that contains only abstract objects.

An extreme form of metaphysical nihilism is commonly defined as the belief that existence itself does not exist. One way of interpreting such a statement would be: It is impossible to distinguish 'existence' from 'non-existence' as there are no objective qualities, and thus a reality, that one state could possess in order to discern between the two. If one cannot discern existence from its negation, then the concept of existence has no meaning; or in other words, does not 'exist' in any meaningful way. 'Meaning' in this sense is used to argue that as existence has no higher state of reality, which is arguably its necessary and defining quality, existence itself means nothing. It could be argued that this belief, once combined with epistemological nihilism, leaves one with an all-encompassing nihilism in which nothing can be said to be real or true as such values do not exist. A similar position can be found in solipsism; however, in this viewpoint the solipsist affirms whereas the nihilist would deny the self. Both these positions are forms of anti-realism.

Mereological nihilism

Mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism) is the position that objects with proper parts do not exist (not only objects in space, but also objects existing in time do not have any temporal parts), and only basic building blocks without parts exist, and thus the world we see and experience full of objects with parts is a product of human misperception (i.e., if we could see clearly, we would not perceive compositive objects).

Political nihilism

Political nihilism, a branch of nihilism, follows the characteristic nihilist's rejection of non-rationalized or non-proven assertions. In this case the necessity of the most fundamental social and political structures, such as government, family, law and law enforcement. The Nihilist movement in 19th century Russia espoused a similar doctrine. Political nihilism is rather different from other forms of nihilism, and is actually more like a form of Utilitarianism, albeit an extreme and radical one.

Cultural manifestations

Television

Thomas Hibbs, professor and chair of philosophy at Boston College, suggested that the show Seinfeld is a manifestation of nihilism in television. The very basis of the sitcom is that it is a "show about nothing". The majority of the episodes focused on minutiae. The view presented in Seinfeld is arguably consistent with the philosophy of nihilism, the idea that life is pointless, and from which arises a feeling of the absurd that characterizes the show's ironic humor.

Dada

The term Dada was first used by Tristan Tzara in 1916. The movement, which lasted from approximately 1916 to 1922, arose during World War I, an event that influenced the artists.^[The Dada Movement began in Zürich, Switzerland -known as the "Niederdorf" or "Niederdörfli"- in the Café Voltaire. The Dadaists claimed that Dada was not an art movement, but an anti-art movement, sometimes using found objects in a manner similar to found poetry. The "anti-art" drive is thought to have stemmed from a post-war emptiness. This tendency toward devaluation of art has led many to claim that Dada was an essentially nihilistic movement. Given that Dada created its own means for interpreting its products, it is difficult to classify alongside most other contemporary art expressions. Hence, due to its ambiguity, it is sometimes classified as a nihilistic modus vivendi.

Modus means mode, way. Vivendi means of living. Together, way of living, implies an accommodation between disputing parties to allow life to go on. It usually describes informal and temporary arrangements in political affairs. For example, where two sides reach a modus vivendi regarding disputed territories, despite political, historical or cultural incompatibilities, an accommodation of their respective differences is established for the sake of contingency. This sense of the term has been used as a keystone in the political philosophy of John Gray.

Diplomatically, a modus vivendi is an instrument for establishing an international accord of a temporary or provisional nature, intended to be replaced by a more substantial and thorough agreement, such as a treaty. It is usually fashioned informally, and so never requires legislative ratification. Typically armistices and instruments of surrender are modi vivendi.

Music

A 2007 article in The Guardian noted that "...in the summer of 1977, ...punk's nihilistic swagger was the most thrilling thing in England."^[57] The Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen", with its chant-like refrain of "no future", became a slogan for unemployed and disaffected youth during the late 1970s.

Nihilism is also expressed in some gangsta- rap, as part of a "street code", but it is only one of many viewpoints or perspectives presented in such music.

Black metal and death metal music often emphasizes nihilistic themes.