Talk:Nihilism

Nietzsche is not a nihilist by his own description. Rather, he would have said that people are free to create their own values. Nihilism might instead be viewed as the refuge of people who reject traditional values but won't bother with effort of actually substituting their own.
 * Yeah, it might be. In the same way that atheism might be viewed as the refuge of people who reject traditional religions but won't bother with effort of actually substituting their own.   19:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't particularly understand nihilism, mostly because the definitions I've seen of it fail to differentiate between objective meaning and subjective meaning. I mean, obviously there's no objective purpose or morality, but how can someone believe that there isn't any subjective purpose/morality? -- that's like thinking the Earth is flat. Is nihilism a personal rejection of purpose and morality? Is nihilism whatever people want it to be and it's actually a fairly ambiguous term? Fucker talk to me :D 05:24, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

You are falling prey to an astonishing logical error by claiming that the definitions of nihilism you have seen do not differentiate between objective and subjective meaning. By definition, nihilism is the belief that man, life, nature, the universe etc. all have no fixed, inherent meaning to them other than what humans decide to bestow to them as the only being known who claims (expressly or not) that such objective values exist. All religious and all ideological systems presuppose and claim exclusively for themselves to be able to inform you on what the true, the worthy, the better etc. values are, which unsurprisingly just happens to be their own espoused values. So a separation between objective and subjective is inherent in the very definition of nihilism. There are not and cannot be multiple definitions of nihilism. There can only be one. What however may differ is the personal conclusions that might be derived out of nihilism. These are indeed many and can vary greatly and indeed mutually exclude each other because in the final analysis none of them is derived necessarily out of the nihilistic worldview. For instance, a nihilist might conclude that he'd better kill himself, or that nothing stops him from oppressing others for the kicks of it, or that because we lack objective supports to hold onto, we must each feel compassion for the mortality and vulnerability of the other, hence developing a moral stance akin to that which Schopenhauer had in mind. All of those, and more still, are possible and historically attested stances. Your error equals saying that social or moral relativism are self-defeating because supposedly they deny that individual societies or values exist. We should not confuse the words for the things. Existentialist philosophy, with which the term nihilism is most often associated thanks to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, has in fact little to do with nihilism per se although it's true that during the time of the existentialists, normative (value-based thinking) thinking was in deep crisis for reasons I cannot delve into here. In any case, existentialists far from accepting nihilism sought a way out of it. And that's what Nietzsche did in his later work with his ideal of the superhuman. A serious study of such authors as La Mettrie, De Sade, Hobbes, Max Stirner, Marx-Engels (the non-dogmatic aspects of their work), Thucydides and the ancient Sophists, in short, a better acquaintance with the history of ideas will be of enormous help. Gewgtweg (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to point out that you just resurrected a discussion that is nearly five years old. Carry on, by all means — just don't stay up all night waiting for reply. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 21:31, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I should carry on by further adding that the deeper reason people bother with trying to impute the practical consequences of nihilism for practical life is because that's exactly what they're hard-wired to do as humans; to look for meaning in things where there is fundamentally none. Thus in trying to make the point that nihilism is incoherent or nonsensical because it's meaningless i. e. provides an individual subject with no concrete directing order, they are actually and unwittingly confirming it. In fact the divide between objective and subjective was invisible to the user I previously replied to because he fails to distinguish between incoherence and illogicality on one hand and meaninglessness on the other. Gewgtweg (talk) 18:18, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Kierkegaard a Nihilist?
Everything I've read of his reads straight out of "modern" theology. Can someone provide a cite for this? I'm not an expert on SK, and have not studied him formally. But the three books i've read of his, "Works of love", "Christian discourse", and "Practice" really seem focused on god, a love of god, and the deep love of self giving rise to the love of others.--En attendant Godot 21:08, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Possible Quote
Someone needs to add Kefka's quote from Final Fantasy VI:

"Life... Dreams... Hope... Where do they come from? And where do they go? Such meaningless things... I'll destroy them all!"

What's the wiki's stance on fictional characters? 06:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Must-watch: Kurzgesagt on "Optimistic nihilism"
The dictionary definition of "high production value". Reverend Black Percy (talk) 11:59, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
 * That’s not nihilism and falls prey to the circular reasoning of trying to solve nihilism with human fabrications.Machina (talk) 01:23, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

Nihilism as a precursor to Nazism
Given that political nihilism wants to completely destroy hierarchies, while fascists seek to shore up hierarchies and crush any perceived threats to said hierarchies as much as possible, this statement reeks of straw. Like I said in my edit summary: this article is garbage. Vee (talk) 21:11, 31 December 2022 (UTC)