Nihilism

[Anonymous No.10843772]

Why exactly do nihilists find life meaningless? Could they conceive a world in which there IS meaning and purpose? Or is meaning simply impossible to them?

Are there any philosophical works defending nihilism that also define what meaning is and whether or not it's possible?

[Anonymous No.10843778]

These days it's mostly because of work.

[Anonymous No.10843801]

>>10843778
But work has always existed. I think the main influence is the modern obsession over materialist pleasures that are more abundant than ever. It's hard to form conceptions of meaning when you're conditioned to aim for temporary dopamine rushes. This is all they have, but even they realize this has no real meaning, so they claim all is meaningless. But I would like to find a more philosophical defense of nihilism, if it exists, preferably from someone before the modern age.

[Anonymous No.10843827]

>>10843772
many nihilists do find life meaningful, just not in any objective sense.

[Anonymous No.10843839]

>>10843801
you are contributing to the aggregate nihilism of this board with your pointless inanities

[Anonymous No.10843860]

The only reasonable objection to the Egoist challenge of why care is rational self-interest. But then why care about rational self-interest? There is ultimately no logical reason to pursue pain or pleasure and therefore no reason to pursue morality or meaning. You can give me sex but it won't make my life objectively better. You can torture me but it won't make my life objectively worse. The accountant, the mass-murderer, the activist for lost-causes, the successful business man and the happy and virtuous person seem to have no less or more valuable lives to me. No satisfaction of desires or happiness or virtue or meaning seems to make one life worth more than one other. the only reason to live is because you want to live. And if my life is not somehow more valuable and makes me more want to live for being moral than why care?

[Anonymous No.10843923]

>>10843772
Do I understand nihilism wrong? The way I understand nihilism, it's that there is no objective meaning to life: but gaining this insight allows the person to create their own set of meaning to life. It doesn't mean the person can go total edgy on how they will live their life, but they will adopt a set of morals which are not compatible with the general consensus of the society, and thus might earn the scorn of the rest of the population.

[Anonymous No.10843994]

>>10843801
The work we do today is not anywhere close as work in the middle ages.

[Anonymous No.10844010]

>>10843801
Ecclesiastes, Gorgias, Thrasymachus

[Anonymous No.10844022]

Friendly reminder that Dostoyevsky was a nihilist at heart and all the anti-nihilist monologues in his books are an effort to convince himself.

[Anonymous No.10844029]

>>10843772
If God (an objective giver of meaning) does not exist, then there is no objective meaning. Nihilists end the conversation there.

[Anonymous No.10844087]

>>10844022
N...no.

[Anonymous No.10844128]

>>10844087
Y...yes.

[Anonymous No.10844221]

>>10843923
Yes, that is more in the line with existentialism. Nihilism, generally speaking, is the rejection of meaning in a total sense. There is no creation of one's own meaning in the nihilistic viewpoint.

[Anonymous No.10844337]

Meaning is subjective and different for everyone. People think their meaning is objective which causes conflict with other people who think their meaning is also objective. Since no two meanings can be objective people will always clash with one another. I find peace in the black stillness of nihilism

[Anonymous No.10844405]

I've really started to think the more I investigate authors who deal with this kinda thing like N and Dosto that no human can really actually be a nihilist and that nihilism is when an entire culture or tradition loses its center in a narrative or at least loses god or a highest value. People think their nihilists because they cannot transvalue their meaningless suffering into purposeful suffering (transcendence through voluntary acceptance). This of course is made much harder in our modern technocapital hellworld mediated by image and ideology, poster above mentioned work and thats partly true its just that work now is part of a cyclical machination instead of voluntary sacrifice nested inside of a narrative that leads from god to country to community to family to self. These mislead 'nihilists' really just see suffering as the only meaning, which it is a meaning, and follow it to logical rational conclusions of meaninglessness when really they are still unconsciously reaching always for faith.

[Anonymous No.10844411]

>>10844405
they're*** woops

[Anonymous No.10844456]

>>10844128
t. Hasn't read D.

[Anonymous No.10844530]

>>10843801

[Anonymous No.10844737]

>>10844405
>modern technocapital hellworld media
Preach brother!

[Anonymous No.10844860]

>>10843772
>Why exactly do nihilists find life meaningless?
Because they want to return to the nothingness of pre-creation, the ex nihilo of creatio ex nihilo. Nihilism is a Satanic rejection and rebellion against God and his creation, a death drive to regress to ante-creation. See Seraphim Rose, Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/314161.Nihilism
http://www.oodegr.com/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm

[Anonymous No.10844885]

>>10844860
No its not lol

[Anonymous No.10844906]

>>10844860
polemical cathodox mysticists are such brainlets these days....................

[Anonymous No.10845817]

>>10844022
You absolute faggot

[Anonymous No.10845933]

>>10843772
I don't understand why some people are so threatened by nihilism. If nothing matters, then it also doesn't matter that nothing matters. There's no reason to feel any particular emotion about it, positive or negative. Nothing tragic or liberating. Just go on living your life.

It's also worth making a distinction between metaphysical "meaning" and the emotional state of meaningfulness. The latter is something that everyone ends up achieving if they life a content life, regardless of their metaphysical views - someone can feel the things they pursue are meaningful, even if it ultimately doesn't rest on any metaphysical foundation. In that sense it's closer to motivation and generally positive feelings of achievement. I don't think the metaphysical sense can seriously threaten someone unless they're already depressed.

And yeah, we probably couldn't even conceive of what an "ultimately meaningful life" would be. Follow the laws of God? Morality? Satisfy your own goals? What do those rest on? And most commonly devised meanings end up excluding most of the human population if you think about it, or else they're so trivial that everyone achieves them. There's not really any decent way to answer that question that isn't totally artificial.

[Anonymous No.10845953]

>>10845933
>I don't understand why some people are so threatened by nihilism
Because they understand it dialectically.

[Anonymous No.10845956]

>>10843772
>Why exactly do nihilists find life meaningless?

This is nonsensical question, you can not "find" meaninglessness. What you should ask is why do nihilist not see any meaning in life

[Anonymous No.10845959]

>>10845933
Also, the idea that realizing the truth of nihilism is going to turn you into a basement dwelling mooch is absurd. People become that way for more immediate reasons, such as frustration of goals, lack of career prospects, low self-esteem, addiction, etc., not because of some spooky abstract metaphysical thing.

[Anonymous No.10845960]

>>10843778
Fpbp

[Anonymous No.10845966]

>>10845933
>Just go on living your life.
WHY!?????????/ YOU FUCKING IDIOT

asf;k'ladfsm;lfads,;'asdf ./,afds /,.mfdsaM;

[Anonymous No.10845971]

>>10845933
>It's also worth making a distinction between metaphysical "meaning" and the emotional state of meaningfulness.

No there isn't. One inevitably leads to the other. Emotions are not some magical thing independent of the universe, they're a form of logic relationship and are ultimately predicated on the facts of the world
You can only live in delusion for so long before reality comes creeping through the floorboards

[Anonymous No.10846055]

>>10845966
Well, why not? Worrying about it will cause you discomfort, and if you want to avoid that you can try to see that it's pointless to worry about it.

"Just live your life" means "just don't worry about it", assuming you want to live a fulfilling life. There's no logical reason to feel one way or the other.

>>10845971
Well part of that's an empirical claim, isn't it? And I never claimed emotions, which are physical brainstates, are independent of the universe. But they are certainly only predicated on a tiny slice of the physical universe, that which we see and care about. And more directly, they're predicated on your life circumstances, e.g. your relationships, goals, etc. Not on some abstract metaphysical thing like "meaning" (which, again, is different from the psychological construct that scientists study, which has more to do with achievement and motivation). I also never denied that nihilism can affect your emotions - that much we see in this thread. But it's not going to ruin your life by itself, it's not strong enough psychologically speaking.

As for the empirical part of your claim, I highly doubt you can reason someone out of living a fulfilling life. If you go up to some random guy living a productive, fulfilling life and try to intellectually argue that life is meaningless, it's probably not going to turn him into a depressed wreck. He might resist it, or else he'll just go "whatever" and forget about it an hour later. Or else he'll go for existentialism, which is false in the metaphysical sense but true in the psychological sense.

I think it's probably only depressed intellectual-leaning people who get worried about this. I also fail to see where the "delusion" is, considering everything I've said is logically cogent (and in fact probably more coherent than most conceptions of nihilism).

[Anonymous No.10846073]

>>10846055
>But it's not going to ruin your life by itself, it's not strong enough psychologically speaking.
For you

[Anonymous No.10846085]

Because some French idiots said so. Nihilism is invalid navel-gazing.
>>10844029
That's a hilarious misreading of Nietzsche.
>>10844860
There is no creatio ex nihilo you dupe

[Anonymous No.10846087]

>>10845971
>Facts of the world
No such thing exist. kys please

[Anonymous No.10846090]

>>10846073
Well, if only there were some studies on that.

But ok, how did nihilism "ruin" your life? Are you sure you were perfectly content without issues before, and are you sure that you won't feel this way after you get a gf and a decent paying job?

[Anonymous No.10846476]

>>10844029
Even if God exists there is no reason to care

[Anonymous No.10846478]

>>10846085
>That's a hilarious misreading of Nietzsche.
It's practically the contrary of that, kek. He was the true fighter of passive nihilism.

There are multiple "nihilisms". It only means the lack of meaning to a certain extent. This may mean "lack of metaphisical meaning of the existence", "lack of meaning of life" and so on.
Once stated that, it's improper to say that there is a coherent nihilism, since human brain is obligated to follow certain rules. True nihilism (nothing matters, nothing has meaning) cannot be pursued. All actions (and the lack of actions) are linked to a implicit meaning.
All a nihilist can do is to try to reject a given meaning and struggle to live without it, or create a new one knowing that is only a useful construct.
So answering to your questions:
1) Because meaning itself does not exist. It's an abstract term defining a certain type of appealing relation between the single and the given situation. All further sophistications are useless.

2) We are born to give things a meaning (being appealed by life or some things in life). A nihilist have to find some meaning in life necessarily. That does only mean that the meaning will not be recognized as universal or anything else than a temporary and constructed raison d'etre

3)Nietzsche's work, since everything is pretty much based on the assumption that the act of desire can be conscious and that the nihilism, considered only as the deprivation of meaning, is just plain stupid

[Anonymous No.10846566]

>>10846478
>we are born to

spooky

[Anonymous No.10846633]

>>10846478
Oh look, you can't fucking read. Good jon