Nihilism

Last Updated on February 18, 2022

I’m a bit of a nihilist at heart. But an optimistic nihilist. (With a hedonistic streak. I think I’m in some denial about the hedonist streak.)

As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.

Sapiens

Nihilistic Angst

This led me to read Albert Camus and learn about absurdism, which I find funny and comforting.

Absurdism

I like the ideas of absurdism even more than those of nihilism.

Albert Camus

Albert Camus is the major proponent of the absurdism philosophical ideas.

The essential paradox arising in Camus’s philosophy concerns his central notion of absurdity. Accepting the Aristotelian idea that philosophy begins in wonder, Camus argues that human beings cannot escape asking the question, “What is the meaning of existence?” Camus, however, denies that there is an answer to this question, and rejects every scientific, teleological, metaphysical, or human-created end that would provide an adequate answer. Thus, while accepting that human beings inevitably seek to understand life’s purpose, Camus takes the skeptical position that the natural world, the universe, and the human enterprise remain silent about any such purpose. Since existence itself has no meaning, we must learn to bear an irresolvable emptiness. This paradoxical situation, then, between our impulse to ask ultimate questions and the impossibility of achieving any adequate answer, is what Camus calls the absurd. 

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The Stranger

I think Albert Camus books are some of the greatest things I’ve ever read. Particularly The Stranger.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again

The Stranger

The Myth of Sisyphus

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.

The Myth of Sisyphus

This is a nice summary:

Camus uses the Greek legend of Sisyphus, who is condemned by the gods for eternity to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again once he got it to the top, as a metaphor for the individual’s persistent struggle against the essential absurdity of life. According to Camus, the first step an individual must take is to accept the fact of this absurdity. If, as for Sisyphus, suicide is not a possible response, the only alternative is to rebel by rejoicing in the act of rolling the boulder up the hill. Camus further argues that with the joyful acceptance of the struggle against defeat, the individual gains definition and identity.

The Myth of Sisyphus Summary

Thomas Nagel

I have recently been reading Nagel and I think I like it even more that Camus.

If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

Thomas Nagel

I like this from Philosophy Break:

Like the existentialists and absurdists of the 20th century, Nagel believes the human condition is ultimately absurd. For Nagel, this absurdity arises not because anything we do won’t matter in, say, a million years. Nor because we are small or insignificant in the eyes of the universe. No: these are inadequate expressions of absurdity.

Rather, Nagel believes our absurd condition arises from a collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives, and our capacity to step back, look at things from a wider perspective, and see how ridiculously contingent the activities that fill our lives really are.

…

The appropriate response to the human condition is a slightly bemused smile — a celebratory laugh that we understand life’s absurdity, yet carry on regardless.

In summary, then — yes, life is absurd. But hey! — it’s interesting, and we can help each other through it by championing our enlightened cognitive condition with an ironical, humorous stance, and let our amused fascination light up the dark.