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With a title like this I was expecting a little more from this piece. The best responses I've heard to nihilism are from Ernst Becker's Denial of Death [1] whi

With a title like this I was expecting a little more from this piece. The best responses I've heard to nihilism are from Ernst Becker's Denial of Death [1] which argues that the best way to overcome nihilism is to stop thinking so hard. Another way to phrase this is that you need to move away from the abstract and towards the concrete. As you focus on a more specific set of experiences, the bigger existential questions seem to fade. The second is from Jordan Peterson, who argues that nihilism is too easy of a solution. If you find yourself drifting too much into pessimistic nihilism, then you should ask yourself whether this worldview also "conveniently" relieves you of certain responsibilities. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

knuththetruth 9y ago
Let’s please not conflate someone like Becker with the Disney Movie Conspiracy Theory Alt-Right philosopher king.
- loupeabody 9y ago
  Peterson's arguments against Nihilism are substantive and deeply involved with his thesis about individual responsibility. Your description of him is merely hand-waving, uncharitable, and reactionary.
  - knuththetruth 9y ago
    Peterson is a con artist who appeals to desperate and impressionable men that can’t be bothered to read the Nietzsche and Jung that he only skims for sound bites.
    - loupeabody 9y ago
      That you feel he is a con artist does nothing but indicate to me that all you know of Peterson is from headlines and hit pieces. On the contrary, he is probably responsible for droves of new readers of Nietzsche, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Piaget, William James and other important thinkers, which is certainly not a bad thing. Whether you find yourself at odds with what you think his audience is makes no difference to the strength of his arguments. If you were honestly concerned with challenging Peterson's ideas and fans, you could squarely engage his work critically. Others have productively challenged his ideas and, as a result, have added to the progress of the discussion surrounding them. Before you do that, you're just adding to the noise which confuses and obscures issues of actual importance.
    - ahussain 9y ago
      It is a shame that people cannot engage substantively with Jordan Peterson's decent arguments because of his tendency to be inflammatory. What exactly about his argument that nihilism is "the easy way out" is problematic?
      - Buddyzv 9y ago
        are u with or against!
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > What exactly about his argument that nihilism is "the easy way out" is problematic? The fact that it is a polemical characterization and not any kind of argument at all would be the main problem I've seen in his attacks on what he calls “nihilism”. Another problem is that he seems to use the term “nihilist” about as loosely as the average modern North American right-wing propagandist uses the term “Marxist”, so that it becomes very hard to be clear what he is arguing against specifically, which is a real problem because “nihilist” is already a heavily overloaded term that refers to a lot of different and often conflicting belief systems and affiliations. Another problem is that to the extent that one can frame his stream of polemic as an argument at all, it's mostly one which implicitly relies on existential or moral nihilism (by presenting meaning or morality as something which is not intrinsic, but where is preferred morality is merely an idea that arose at a particular historical time and place that has certain utility to the holder to both hold and to have others around them hold) to argue against whatever it is that Peterson is calling “nihilism”. In this respect, it seems a poor, sloppy, and less honest echo of Nietzsche, who overtly embraced nihilism, but rejected passive nihilism for a more active and, in his view, productive for the individual form of nihilism.
    - toren 9y ago
      Ah the old "Peterson is a con artist/fraud", aka "I automatically disagree with what he says because he's not a left-wing atheist" or some slight variation of that. The more people are told to stay away from his work for such intellectually lazy reasons (such that he's inflammatory, offensive, etc, primarily pushed by journalistic hit pieces), the greater the odds of the uninitiated taking a look at his work and finding some value in it. Ironically, the dynamic somewhat resembles your overly religious parents on that damn devil's music. Note: "finding value in his ideas" does not correspond to agreeing with everything he says. There are many valid critiques of Peterson. It also does not mean that you discard everything he says because you disagree. These strike me as symptoms of lazy ideologically driven thinking, most often political, and particularly speaks volumes of the left vs right divide in America.
      - knuththetruth 9y ago
        I’d be more convinced he wasn’t a con artist if there weren’t swarms of new accounts on HN recommending/defending him every chance they get :)
        loupeabody 9y ago
        It's more telling that you've used your month-old account to drag his name through the mud just as opportunistically as those you accuse. All you're doing is charging up the topic with more contention than you've found it with. The consequences of doing so are regressive for all related causes, especially your own. If you find yourself elsewhere in life championing free thought and open discourse, remember this comment and know that you are a hypocrite and an enemy to your own virtues.
- scythe 9y ago
  I don't watch or study Jordan Peterson, but I'm flabbergasted by how inflammatory he manages to be. I read a critical article about Peterson in a major publication which excoriated his -- apparently awful -- misunderstanding of Derrida and Foucault (whom he apparently faults for modern leftism) but barely even described his theories, whatever they are. I came away fully convinced that Peterson does not understand Derrida, and better aware of the intellectual dispute between postmodernism and Marxism, but unsure of how important this is to refuting Peterson's broader cultural criticisms, and also unsure of what those were. I guess my point is, if you disagree with someone's thinking, try to be clear about why, and don't assume everyone else is familiar with them.
  - ahussain 9y ago
    I guess one of the problems with Peterson (and also with people like Zizek) is that he manages to say some completely indefensible things (i.e. he seems to tie so many of the world's problems to "liberal professors in the universities"), while also managing to say some very poignant and insightful things that do genuinely improve one's thinking. I think the second part is the reason why he has built up such a large following.
    - toren 9y ago
      Exactly. One doesn't have to agree with every single thing he says to find something of value in his ideas. Similarly, it's idiotic to discard his entire set of ideas because you have found some disagreements.
      - throwawayjava 9y ago
        No, I think that's exactly the opposite of the right take-away re: how to think critically about the output of "scholar-celebrity" types. With both him and Zizek, it's idiotic to take their less well-based ideas at face value (ESPECIALLY if you find yourself knee-jerk agreeing with those ideas) just because they manage to say smart and well-informed things from time to time. Zizek knows lots about Lacan and also says lots of stupid random shit for the book sales. Peterson knows a lot about Nietzsche and also says lots of stupid random shit for the book sales. Same game, different customer. (The signal-noise ratio on scholar-celebrities is so out of whack that simply ignoring them isn't a terrible heuristic, unless you're more interested in communication theory and marketing strategies than the subjects they're purportedly discussing.)
- ahussain 9y ago
  I'm not conflating the two. I'm merely citing two examples of people (among many others) who have offered approaches to dealing with nihilism.

knuththetruth 9y ago

Let’s please not conflate someone like Becker with the Disney Movie Conspiracy Theory Alt-Right philosopher king.

loupeabody 9y ago
Peterson's arguments against Nihilism are substantive and deeply involved with his thesis about individual responsibility. Your description of him is merely hand-waving, uncharitable, and reactionary.
- knuththetruth 9y ago
  Peterson is a con artist who appeals to desperate and impressionable men that can’t be bothered to read the Nietzsche and Jung that he only skims for sound bites.
  - loupeabody 9y ago
    That you feel he is a con artist does nothing but indicate to me that all you know of Peterson is from headlines and hit pieces. On the contrary, he is probably responsible for droves of new readers of Nietzsche, Jung, Solzhenitsyn, Piaget, William James and other important thinkers, which is certainly not a bad thing. Whether you find yourself at odds with what you think his audience is makes no difference to the strength of his arguments. If you were honestly concerned with challenging Peterson's ideas and fans, you could squarely engage his work critically. Others have productively challenged his ideas and, as a result, have added to the progress of the discussion surrounding them. Before you do that, you're just adding to the noise which confuses and obscures issues of actual importance.
  - ahussain 9y ago
    It is a shame that people cannot engage substantively with Jordan Peterson's decent arguments because of his tendency to be inflammatory. What exactly about his argument that nihilism is "the easy way out" is problematic?
    - Buddyzv 9y ago
      are u with or against!
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > What exactly about his argument that nihilism is "the easy way out" is problematic? The fact that it is a polemical characterization and not any kind of argument at all would be the main problem I've seen in his attacks on what he calls “nihilism”. Another problem is that he seems to use the term “nihilist” about as loosely as the average modern North American right-wing propagandist uses the term “Marxist”, so that it becomes very hard to be clear what he is arguing against specifically, which is a real problem because “nihilist” is already a heavily overloaded term that refers to a lot of different and often conflicting belief systems and affiliations. Another problem is that to the extent that one can frame his stream of polemic as an argument at all, it's mostly one which implicitly relies on existential or moral nihilism (by presenting meaning or morality as something which is not intrinsic, but where is preferred morality is merely an idea that arose at a particular historical time and place that has certain utility to the holder to both hold and to have others around them hold) to argue against whatever it is that Peterson is calling “nihilism”. In this respect, it seems a poor, sloppy, and less honest echo of Nietzsche, who overtly embraced nihilism, but rejected passive nihilism for a more active and, in his view, productive for the individual form of nihilism.
  - toren 9y ago
    Ah the old "Peterson is a con artist/fraud", aka "I automatically disagree with what he says because he's not a left-wing atheist" or some slight variation of that. The more people are told to stay away from his work for such intellectually lazy reasons (such that he's inflammatory, offensive, etc, primarily pushed by journalistic hit pieces), the greater the odds of the uninitiated taking a look at his work and finding some value in it. Ironically, the dynamic somewhat resembles your overly religious parents on that damn devil's music. Note: "finding value in his ideas" does not correspond to agreeing with everything he says. There are many valid critiques of Peterson. It also does not mean that you discard everything he says because you disagree. These strike me as symptoms of lazy ideologically driven thinking, most often political, and particularly speaks volumes of the left vs right divide in America.
    - knuththetruth 9y ago
      I’d be more convinced he wasn’t a con artist if there weren’t swarms of new accounts on HN recommending/defending him every chance they get :)
      - loupeabody 9y ago
        It's more telling that you've used your month-old account to drag his name through the mud just as opportunistically as those you accuse. All you're doing is charging up the topic with more contention than you've found it with. The consequences of doing so are regressive for all related causes, especially your own. If you find yourself elsewhere in life championing free thought and open discourse, remember this comment and know that you are a hypocrite and an enemy to your own virtues.
scythe 9y ago
I don't watch or study Jordan Peterson, but I'm flabbergasted by how inflammatory he manages to be. I read a critical article about Peterson in a major publication which excoriated his -- apparently awful -- misunderstanding of Derrida and Foucault (whom he apparently faults for modern leftism) but barely even described his theories, whatever they are. I came away fully convinced that Peterson does not understand Derrida, and better aware of the intellectual dispute between postmodernism and Marxism, but unsure of how important this is to refuting Peterson's broader cultural criticisms, and also unsure of what those were. I guess my point is, if you disagree with someone's thinking, try to be clear about why, and don't assume everyone else is familiar with them.
- ahussain 9y ago
  I guess one of the problems with Peterson (and also with people like Zizek) is that he manages to say some completely indefensible things (i.e. he seems to tie so many of the world's problems to "liberal professors in the universities"), while also managing to say some very poignant and insightful things that do genuinely improve one's thinking. I think the second part is the reason why he has built up such a large following.
  - toren 9y ago
    Exactly. One doesn't have to agree with every single thing he says to find something of value in his ideas. Similarly, it's idiotic to discard his entire set of ideas because you have found some disagreements.
    - throwawayjava 9y ago
      No, I think that's exactly the opposite of the right take-away re: how to think critically about the output of "scholar-celebrity" types. With both him and Zizek, it's idiotic to take their less well-based ideas at face value (ESPECIALLY if you find yourself knee-jerk agreeing with those ideas) just because they manage to say smart and well-informed things from time to time. Zizek knows lots about Lacan and also says lots of stupid random shit for the book sales. Peterson knows a lot about Nietzsche and also says lots of stupid random shit for the book sales. Same game, different customer. (The signal-noise ratio on scholar-celebrities is so out of whack that simply ignoring them isn't a terrible heuristic, unless you're more interested in communication theory and marketing strategies than the subjects they're purportedly discussing.)
ahussain 9y ago
I'm not conflating the two. I'm merely citing two examples of people (among many others) who have offered approaches to dealing with nihilism.