2. Readings for the topic of nihilism
o Reading 2: Arthur Schopenhauer, “On The
Sufferings of the World”, (Klemke) p. 45
o Reading 3 (CuLearn): Jean Kazez, Review of
David Benatar’s, “Better Never To Have Lived”,
available on CuLearn
o Reading 4: Albert Camus, “The Myth of
Sisyphus”, (Klemke) p. 72
o Reading 5: Richard Taylor, “The Meaning of
Life”, (Klemke) pp. 134-139
o Reading 6 (Optional): Thomas Nagel, “The
Absurd”, (Klemke) p. 143
3. Let’s start by talking about what
nihilism is and how it might be
defended
4. What is nihilism?
The word ‘nihilism’ comes from the Latin ‘nihil’
meaning nothing.
‘Nihilism’ has come to mean, roughly, the view
that neither the world as a whole, nor human
life, in particular, has any meaning, purpose or
value.
Apparently first used in this sense by the
Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in 19th century,
and this meaning was popularized in Western
culture by the French existentialists Camus
5. Our institutions, attitudes to life and ways of
behaving, rest on basic assumptions that
usually go unquestioned.
We believe some things are right others wrong,
we take ourselves to know many things about
the world, we assume that our lives have
purpose and value.
Nihilism attacks the foundations of all of these
different beliefs, outlooks, and institutions at a
very basic level so they appear arbitrary and
6. Different types of nihilism
Political nihilism – the existing political order is
arbitrary, based purely on power, and should be
destroyed.
Epistemic nihilism – we can never know what
reality is like or have justified beliefs about
anything.
Moral nihilism – there is no such thing as
objective right and wrong, good or bad – “If
God does not exist, then everything is
permitted.” (attributed to Dostoevsky)
Cosmic nihilism – the physical universe as a
whole has no meaning or purpose or value.
7. Political nihilism
Politics involves different levels of power and
authority being exercised by some individuals
over society and peoples’ lives.
These political institutions are supported and
legitimized by underlying political beliefs and
ideologies, e.g., democratic ideals, or the divine
right of kings, or a class structure, and the like.
Political nihilism is sceptical of all such
“legitimizing” beliefs and ideals. All
political/social institutions reduce to some
8. Epistemic nihilism – i.e. skepticism
Although we assume in everyday life that we
know many things about the world, some
philosophers, for example, David Hume, have
questioned this.
It is thought that, for genuine knowledge to be
possible, it must rest on secure foundations,
things that we can know directly with certainty.
But nihilists argue that there are no such
foundational beliefs which makes genuine
knowledge impossible. This (crudely stated) is
9. Moral nihilism
Our beliefs about right and wrong, good and
evil, tend to be embedded in history, tradition,
and religion.
As the influence of tradition and religion wanes
in the face of more secular attitudes, beliefs
about right and wrong are challenged.
Nihilists hold that our ideas of right or wrong
are really just a myth whose function is to get
us to act in ways that benefit society or centers
10. Cosmic nihilism
Cosmic nihilism is nihilism applied to the
cosmos, the universe, as a whole.
The traditional belief here is the religious
outlook that the universe was created by God.
Nihilists reject this idea for a host of different
reasons (The idea of God makes no sense. Who
created God?)
So the universe has no purpose, no function or
value. It isn’t good or bad, right or wrong,
desirable or undesirable. It just exists.
11. Existential nihilism
Apply the same thing now to human existence
and you have existential nihilism. (This form of
nihilism will be our main concern.)
In everyday life we tend to assume that our lives
have meaning and purpose and value. Our
existence is a good and desirable thing, and we
exist for a reason.
Existential nihilists insist that these familiar
assumptions are all an illusion. Like the universe
as a whole, we just happen to exist, but not for
12. Cont’d
Our main concern is with existential nihilism –
we want to know whether our lives have
meaning and purpose, and whether they are
worth living.
And we want to know whether there is any
convincing argument that might be given for or
against existential nihilism.
The other forms of nihilism are relevant mainly
b/c they may seem to provide some basis for
defending existential nihilism.
13. A common “route” to existential
nihilism
1) God does not exist – “God is Dead”, as the
19th century philosopher Nietzsche famously
declared.
2) Therefore, there can be no objective morality
(moral nihilism) and the universe as a whole
has no meaning or purpose (cosmic nihilism).
3) Therefore, human life has no meaning or
purpose.
4) Therefore, human life has no value, and we
14. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-
1900)
o German philosopher, writer,
poet, composer …
o Became a professor at age 24
o Alienated his colleagues by
the radical tone of his writings
o Suffered from dementia,
syphilis, heart attack, led to
death at 56
o Major works: Birth of Tragedy,
Beyond Good and Evil, Thus
Spoke Zarathustra
o Nietzsche has become a cult
By Edvard Munch
15. “God is Dead” – Nietzsche
Taken literally, this is impossible – God couldn’t
die.
But what Nietzsche meant by the slogan is that
the European intellectual class of his time had
largely ceased to believe in God – and so God,
as a social and intellectual force, you might say,
had ceased to exist.
Nietzsche felt this gave rise to a crisis of values.
The old religious approach to meaning, to good
16. Famous graffiti
"God is dead."
-signed, Nietzsche, 1883
"Nietzsche is dead."
-signed, God, 1900
17. Nihilism and Theism
The “God is dead” slogan reveals a close
relationship between nihilism and theism:
Traditional theism and nihilists share the belief
that, if there is no God and no afterlife, then
nihilism would be the result.
They differ on the factual issue of whether God
does exist, and whether there is an afterlife.
But they agree that the possibility of meaning
and purpose depends on the existence of God.
This is why Nietzsche described theism as a
“passive form of nihilism”.
18. Nietzsche’s critique of tradition
Nietzsche embraced each of the nihilistic
critiques described above.
All order and structure that is commonly
thought to exist objectively in the world –
knowledge, political ideologies, morality, etc. –
were dismissed by Nietzsche as mere myths
and falsehoods that we humans impose on the
world.
So they should be destroyed as they prevent us
from having an authentic existence.
19. But Nietzsche was not a nihilist
A true nihilist would simply advocate the
destruction of our conventional myths about
politics, knowledge, morality, meaning and stop
there.
But Nietzsche believed we must create a new
system of values, for example, a new vision of
morality, a new conception of good and evil, a
“master morality” to replace traditional “slave
morality”…
This positive side of Nietzsche’s thought is not
20. Turn now to step 2) Science and cosmic
nihilism
Scientific cosmology: the universe, including
space and time, came into existence some 13.7
billion years ago as a result of a quantum
fluctuation in the vacuum – the Big Bang.
Darwinian evolution: humans are purely physical
organisms who have come into existence
through the process of evolution – natural
selection acting on random genetic mutations.
Neither big bang cosmology, nor evolution,
involves purposes or goals. Our existence is
purely accidental.
21. So step 3) follows
So the physical universe as a whole has no
meaning, purpose or goal – It doesn’t exist for
any reason or purpose. This is cosmic nihilism.
And there is no purpose or goal behind the
existence of the human species as a whole – we
are the outcome of the “blind” physical process
of evolution.
Nor is there any purpose or goal behind the
existence of individuals. This is existential
nihilism.
22. One more step to reach 4)
What we have so far does not quite amount to
nihilism.
Some people accept that neither the universe,
nor the human race, nor individuals, involve
any meaning or purpose, without drawing any
pessimistic conclusion from this fact. Surely
they are not nihilists.
Nihilism includes step 4) above, the claim that it
is a bad thing that our lives have no meaning –
that once we recognize the absence of
23. But this further step is
problematic
Nihilism therefore must involve a further
component. To be a nihilist you must hold
that:
1) Life has no meaning or purpose or goal,
and, because of this
2) Life has no value, is not a good, is not
worth living, and we would be better off
never having come into existence in the
24. But how do you get from 1) to 2)?
2) does not follow in any straightforward way
from 1).
The mere fact that life has no meaning does
not, in and of itself, entail that life isn’t worth
living. Some argument is needed to justify this
inference, and it is far from clear what this
argument would be.
25. Problem for the inference from 1) to 2)
Distinction between:
Descriptive (or factual) statements – merely
try to describe how things are in some
respect
Normative statements – try to give an
evaluation of something in some respect as
good or bad, right or wrong…
26. The problem – Cont’d
So part of the problem about making the
inference noted above from 1) to 2) is that
1)is essentially a descriptive or factual claim –
it’s just a fact, science tells us, that our
existence has no purpose or goal, while
2)is normative – that life has no value.
And it is commonly thought (due to David
Hume) in philosophy that normative claims can
never be inferred or deduced from purely
descriptive or factual claims.
27. A second problem for nihilism
We might also raise questions about the concept
of meaning that is employed in the argument for
nihilism.
Cosmic nihilism, the view that the universe as a
whole has no function or purpose, may entail
that human life has no “external” meaning – the
human race wasn’t created for any purpose or
function.
But life might still be meaningful in some other
sense – meaning may be “internal” to human
28. So, whatever else we say about nihilism,
it is not at all obvious that it is correct.
We will have to see if Schopenhauer or
Benatar or Camus has an argument that
would take us from 1) to 2).
30. From the play Macbeth
“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.”
- William Shakespeare, from Macbeth,
Act 5, Scene 5
31. “The Hollow Men” (first stanza)
1925
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with
straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken
glass
33. But maybe the painting has
nothing to do with nihilism
“The tumultuous sky in Edvard Munch's "The
Scream" painting may have been inspired by so-
called nacreous clouds. ... A new hypothesis
holds that Munch may have been inspired to
paint the masterpiece by "mother-of-pearl
clouds" (also called nacreous clouds). Apr 25,
2017”
Taken from: “Did Edvard Munch See ‘the
Scream’ in Spectacular Rare Clouds?”,
Stephanie Pappas, from LiveScience website at:
36. Cont’d
But Seinfeld doesn’t seem to be nihilistic.
The idea that life has no meaning or purpose
may be implicit in the show.
But there’s really no suggestion that, for this
reason, life isn’t worth living.
So the show may illustrate the problem for
nihilism of getting from from 1) to 2) discussed
above – after all, they can always have a good
time at the coffee shop.
37. Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
38. Samuel Becket (1906-1989)
o Irish playwright
o Lived much of his life in
Paris
o Worked for the French
resistance in WW II
o Most famous work Waiting
for Godot, first performed
in 1953
o Initially got poor reviews
but the tide soon turned
and now recognized as a
39. Waiting for Godot
Brief description of the play:
- Two main characters, Vladimer (Didi) and
Estragon (Gogo) are waiting by a road for
someone named Godot
- Didi and Gogo are dressed like tramps.
- The stage is empty except for a small tree.
- They are not clear why they are waiting for Godot,
they don’t seem to have met him, don’t know
what he looks like or what he might do for them.
- The play consists of two acts in which pretty
much the same things happen, or as one
40. Cont’d
To occupy their time while waiting for Godot, the
two characters engage in endless banter, they
eat, fall asleep, argue, play games, sing, take off
their boots, consider suicide, and so on, and
on.
About the middle of each act, two odd characters,
Pozzo (pronounced Potzo) and his slave Lucky
come by. Conversation with these two helps
pass the time.
At the end of each act a boy appears with the
41. Characteristics of the play
Pointless activity, boredom
Nothing is accomplished
Disappointed expectations
Characters don’t know anything, no
certainty
Silence, emptiness, fear
Pain and suffering
But the play is also very funny, and b/c of
this, very entertaining.
It is packed full of allusions and symbols,
not least, the title itself.
42. The message of the play seems to be that our
lives are really no different than this play.
Like Vladimir and Estragon, we occupy our time
on earth engaging in pointless, meaningless
activity until we finally die.
But note that the play does not contain any
argument to show that nihilism is true. At
most, it expresses Becket’s view of human
existence.
44. Two Types of argument for
Nihilism
Life is mainly just pain and suffering
arguments – Here we will look at
Schopenhauer and the contemporary
philosopher David Benatar.
Life is absurd and meaningless – Here we
will look at the French existentialist thinker,
Albert Camus.
46. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-
1860)
German, but born in Gdańsk
Estranged from his mother,
a well known romance
novelist
Never married: "Marrying
means to halve one's rights
and double one's duties”
Lived alone with his
poodles
Major philosopher,
influenced Freud, Nietzsche
and others
Major work: The World as
Will and Representation
47. Schopenhauer in old age
German, but born in Gdańsk
Never married: "Marrying
means to halve one's rights
and double one's duties”
Estranged from his mother,
lived alone with his poodles
Failed to get university
position when he defiantly
scheduled his class at same
time as Hegel’s
Major work: The World as Will
and Representation
A pessimist, but not a nihilist
48. Influenced many later thinkers
Including Freud, Nietzsche and Becket:
“As a young man, Beckett read Schopenhauer
again and again, and not only because of his
beautiful style, despite his claims to the
contrary. Schopenhauer's pessimism was very
close to Beckett's own, and he was to heed the
three ways of enduring the misery of existence
that Schopenhauer recommended: art, or
aesthetic contemplation, compassion, and
resignation.” (Gottfried Büttner)
49. The tone of Schopenhauer’s thought
Enormous amount of suffering in the world –
think of disappointment, poverty, disease,
death, war, etc.
“We find pleasure to be less than we expected,
pain to be worse than we expected.”
“Evil is positive, good is negative.” He means
that evil/suffering are the norm, good or
happiness are the exception, or merely
temporary relief from suffering.
“Work, worry, labour and trouble form the lot of
almost all men their whole life long.”
50. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics
Schopenhauer’s metaphysics underpins his
pessimism:
The essence of the world is will – not a
rational, intelligent will, but a blind, ceaseless,
physical, instinctive striving/desire, unguided
by any rational purpose or goal.
This is evident (he thinks) from two sources:
- introspection, when we look into our
minds/souls.
- observation of nature: evolution has given all
51. This will is the real source of our
unhappiness
Our will drives us relentlessly to seek many
things – food, sex, love, power, fame, fortune,
prestige …
But the world, nature, isn’t designed to satisfy
these desires. So most of the time our desires
are frustrated.
Here there is a fundamental conflict, or
incompatibility, between our human nature and
reality which dooms us to unhappiness.
(Camus, Reading 4, also emphasizes this type
52. The “pendulum” of pain and
boredom
"Life swings like a pendulum backward and
forward between pain and boredom?”
In other words, life is like a pendulum that swings
back and forth between desire – which is
dissatisfaction, and so is a form of pain – and
the satisfaction of desire – which
Schopenhauer regards as boredom, and so
also a form of pain.
So in life we go from one kind of pain to another.
(Compare this metaphor of the pendulum to the
53. Boredom – a major source of
unhappiness
“Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to
brutes … whereas in the case of man it has
become a downright scourge. The crowd of
miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to
fill their purses but never to put anything into
their heads, offers a singular instance of this
torment of boredom. Their wealth becomes a
punishment by delivering them up to the
misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape
it, they will rush about in all directions,
travelling here, there and everywhere. No
sooner do they arrive in a place than they are
anxious to know what amusements it affords;
54. The expectations of youth
“In early youth, as we contemplate our coming
life, we are like children in a theatre before the
curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and
eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a
blessing that we do not know what is really
going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are
times when children might seem like innocent
prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life,
and as yet all unconscious of what their
sentence means. Nevertheless, every man
desires to reach old age; in other words, a state
of life of which it may be said: “It is bad today,
55. Disappointment
“Again, you may look upon life as an
unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed
calm of non-existence. And, in any case,
even though things have gone with you
tolerably well, the longer you live the more
clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is
a disappointment, nay, a cheat.”
56. Opinions of others another source of
pain
“… there is a separate and peculiar source of
pleasure, and consequently of pain, which
man has established for himself, also as the
result of using his powers of reflection; and
this occupies him out of all proportion to its
value, nay, almost more than all his other
interests put together — I mean ambition and
the feeling of honor and shame; in plain
words, what he thinks about the opinion other
57. Sexual relations
“Finally, I may mention that as regards the
sexual relation, a man is committed to a
peculiar arrangement which drives him
obstinately to choose one person. This
feeling grows, now and then, into a more or
less passionate love, which is the source of
little pleasure and much suffering.”
58. “But all this contributes to increase the
measures of suffering in human life out of all
proportion to its pleasures; and the pains of
life are made much worse for man by the fact
that death is something very real to him.”
“The delight which a man has in hoping for and
looking forward to some special satisfaction is
a part of the real pleasure attaching to it
enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards
deducted; for the more we look forward to
59. The suffering of animals
“We shall see later that by taking a very high
standpoint it is possible to justify the
sufferings of mankind. But this justification
cannot apply to animals, whose sufferings,
while in a great measure brought about by
men, are often considerable even apart from
their agency. And so we are forced to ask,
Why and for what purpose does all this
torment and agony exist? There is nothing
here to give the will pause; it is not free to
60. Life as a prison
“If you want a safe compass to guide you through
life, and to banish all doubt as to the right way
of looking at it, you cannot do better than
accustom yourself to regard this world as a
penitentiary, a sort of a penal colony …”
This metaphor of life as a prison might be cashed
in terms of biology and evolution theory. We are
really the prisoner of our biological nature, over
which we have no control. This nature, and not
any love of life, is what drives us to continue
existing. (We are the prisoner of our genes.) Our
61. No God (according to
Schopenhauer)
“There are two things which make it
impossible to believe that this world is the
successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and,
at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly,
the misery which abounds in it everywhere;
and secondly, the obvious imperfection of
its highest product, man, who is a burlesque
of what he should be. These things cannot
be reconciled with any such belief.”
62. “If you accustom yourself to this view of life
you will regulate your expectations
accordingly, and cease to look upon all its
disagreeable incidents, great and small, its
sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything
unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that
everything is as it should be, in a world where
each of us pays the penalty of existence in his
63. Schopenhauer wrote a self-help
book
Live in the present, making it as painless as possible.
Make good use of the only thing we control, our own
minds.
Try, especially, to control your desires and expectations.
Set limits everywhere: limits on anger, desires, wealth
and power. Limitations help to avoid unhappiness.
Accept misfortunes: only dwell on them if you're
responsible for them.
Seek out solitude, other people rob us of our identities.
Keep busy (to avoid boredom).
For more on S’s self-help book see:
http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/01/schopenhauers-extreme-self-help-
64. Some criticisms of Schopenhauer
1)Isn’t Schopenhauer to
some extent just seeing
the glass as half empty,
i.e. he is exaggerating the
amount of pain and
suffering in life as
compared to the amount
of pleasure?
Compare his outlook to
Woody Allen’s comment
on the next slide about
65. Ike’s account of what makes life valuable
– from Woody Allen’s movie Manhattan
“Well, all right, why is life worth living? "That's a very
good question. Well, there are certain things, I guess,
that make it worthwhile. Like what? OK... for me...
Ooh, I would say Groucho Marx, to name one thing.
And Willie Mays.
...And... the second movement of the Jupiter
Symphony.
And... Louis Armstrong's recording of Potato Head
Blues.
Swedish movies, naturally.
Sentimental Education by Flaubert.
Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra.
Those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne.
66. Objection 2
Schopenhauer is right in claiming that there is
much suffering in the world.
But much of this suffering is merely contingent
– that is, it does exist in the world but it doesn’t
have to exist. Through his metaphysics
Schopenhauer tries to turn the suffering into an
inevitable consequence of the way the world is,
into a necessary fact, when it isn’t.
67. Objection 3
Schopenhauer appears to assume that
suffering is bad in an unqualified way.
But some have argued that this attitude is too
simplistic and that suffering, viewed from a
broad perspective, can be a good thing.
As we will see later, the existentialist thinker,
Victor Frankl held that suffering can play an
important role in making life meaningful.
68. From Frankl
“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as
Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred
Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The
greatest task for any person is to find meaning in
his or her life. [There are] three possible sources
for meaning: in work (doing something
significant), in love (caring for another person),
and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in
and of itself is meaningless; we give our
suffering meaning by the way in which we
69. Viktor Frankl – Suffering can have
meaning
“We must never forget that we may also find
meaning in life even when confronted with a
hopeless situation, when facing a fate that
cannot be changed. For what then matters is to
bear witness to the uniquely human potential at
its best, which is to transform a personal
tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s
predicament into a human achievement. When
we are no longer able to change a situation—
just think of an incurable disease such as
inoperable cancer—we are challenged to
70. Objection 4
Schopenhauer mischaracterizes the will when
he describes it as “blind, dumb, unguided by
reason”.
This does not agree with the evidence of
introspection. Desire in itself may be non-
rational, but the will, that is, our decision making
faculty, is largely goal-directed and under the
guidance of rationality.
We have a desire for X; we believe we can
71. Objection 5
Schopenhauer’s view of life is inaccurate: It is not
like a pendulum swinging between the state of
desire – which is dissatisfaction, and so pain –
and the satisfaction of desire, which is boredom,
and so also pain.
This is inaccurate in several respects: 1) desire
cannot be equated with pain; 2) satisfied desire
isn’t the same as boredom; 3) the process of
satisfying a desire usually takes time and may be
pleasurable; and 4) Schopenhauer omits the state
or process of striving to achieve goals, which can
72. Objections – cont’d
Contrast Schopenhauer’s
view of life with that of the
great German poet Johannes
Goethe.
One of the main themes in
Goethe’s epic poem Faust is
that what make’s life
valuable is not any end
point/goal we’re aiming for,
