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> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning

> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. My working definition of nihilism is not "life without meaning". Rather, it is "life without values." Values, here, means personal values. That which we seek to acquire and keep. While some may have their own definitions that are at odds with mine, my view of nihilism is that it is a philosophy of self-sacrifice, because a nihilist (at least a logically consistent nihilist) does not value life, let alone anything else. We have many examples of nihilist philosophies that are prevalent today. To give one: a particular variant of "envrionmentalism." Don't get me wrong, not all variants are nihilistic. But there is a specific variant that views humans as inherently destructive and at odds with "nature", and genuinely believes that humans ought to go extinct for the sake "nature", which is everything non-human. This is nihilistic because human life is what makes value possible in the first place, therefore without life you can't value anything, let alone "the planet." > Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. This is not nihilism, it is hedonism. There is a value there, albeit irrational ones (what if I feel like robbing a bank, or doing heroin? How will that work out for me?) But it is not without values, it values whims and pleasure without context. Anyway I'm sure this is going to open up a big can of worms in the form of replies. I look forward to reading some of them but will probably opt to just do this single "drive by" comment since philosophical discussions are almost necessarily verbose and time consuming.

hathawsh 2y ago
That's an interesting distinction that clarifies the terms for me. Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? One is a removal of values, the other is adding values. It seems to me that, in most cultures, some degree of nihilism is a prerequisite for hedonism.
- gspencley 2y ago
  > Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? I'm going to answer your question and, in doing so, answer another comment that argued with me about the definition of nihilism. The short answer to your question is "no." According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism): > Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning. > There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities does not exist or is meaningless or pointless. If existence doesn't exist, then there no values because nothing exists. If morality does not exist (or is baseless), this is a rejection of values since morality is a code of values. If knowledge doesn't exist or is impossible, this is a rejection of values since values are that which we seek to acquire and keep, and so if you can't know anything then values become meaningless because you don't know what you value or what you ought to value. If nihilism is a rejection of meaning qua meaning, then you are rejecting values since nothing can mean anything, and therefore values have no bearing on your life or existence since life and existence itself is meaningless (no matter how you define "meaning"). Therefore, nihilism is the rejection of ALL values regardless of whether they are personally chosen values or "imposed" values. There may be degrees of nihilism. Some nihilists may reject certain values while choosing to retain others. But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. Now, slight digression: my personal opinion is that on a fundamental level, all values must be chosen by the individual since only individuals are capable of forming value judgements. Groups can agree upon values, or say "if you want to belong to this group then you must accept certain values ('our' values)", but at the end of the day the individual must ultimately decide what values to adopt. Hedonism broadly refers to a philosophy of "whim worship" or "pleasure seeking." It values pleasure for pleasure's sake and considers anything that brings pleasure to be "good" and anything that does not to be either "bad" or "neutral." While hedonism may very well assert the "right" to "arbitrary pleasure", I disagree that that is its defining characteristic, since you can assert that right while also acknowledging that pleasure seeking for pleasure sake can be self-destructive and therefore morally wrong (ex: bank robbing and heroin abuse). [Edit: upon re-reading the above paragraph, I think a better example here is to focus on drug abuse. I personally think that you have a "right" to put whatever you want into your body. And abusing hard drugs might feel good and bring you lots of immediate pleasure. That doesn't mean that it is "good for you" and therefore, under my code of ethics, self-destruction via drug abuse or other is immoral. But I'm also trying to steer clear of discussing the definition of morality, and why human beings need morality, because that would quickly get off topic]. I would say that pleasure is a positive value (vs the negation of values), whether you are a hedonist or not, and therefore hedonism and nihilism are mutually exclusive by definition. Though I would also argue that both are destructive since one dispenses with values all together while the other uses pleasure as a SOLE determiner of what to value and therefore values that which can be destructive.
  - hathawsh 2y ago
    Thanks for the explanation.
  - sph 2y ago
    > But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. No and no. I've replied to you elsewhere, but you seem to confuse "having no meaning" with "war against meaning". It's a common, and tiring, fallacy. The former is neutral, the latter is negative. The point of nihilism is that there is NO meaning, so the subtext is "make your own", not the ignorant cliche of "nothing matters, we might just off ourselves."
fellowniusmonk 2y ago
Nihilism is life without personal values? I mean you can happily define any term however you want. It will cause certain kinds of issues though... but just because the community organized documentation of our massively open source project called philosophy says (very roughly): let Nihilism: &str = "Life is without an (intrinsic|external), fixed basis for meaning." you can absolutely redefine it in your personal REPO to mean. let Nihilism: &str = "Life is without a personal basis for value." But... I mean, your definition is very strange and is not aligned with the community docs, in many ways it is quite antithetical and will cause any dependent arguments or clauses to have runtime errors. But I mean, if you want to pick a nihilism variant/alt (My favorite nihilism is Mereological Nihilism) and elevate it to be your primary definition of Nihilism that's ok!
vernon99 2y ago
> > Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. > This is not nihilism, it is hedonism. Only if you are driven by selfish desires, but that’s not the only way of operating even when there’s no external/“absolute” definition of meaning. See “selfless action”, “karma yoga” and “dharma” on page 45 of the spiritual life manual.
sph 2y ago
> This is not nihilism, it is hedonism No, hedonism is seeking pleasure. That is not what I said. What you feel like doing is the stuff that makes you tick. The stuff that makes you get out of bed in the morning. For some, it's pleasure, for others, it's work, painting, surfing, seal-clubbing, whatever. > what if I feel like robbing a bank, or doing heroin? Then do that. People that feel like robbing banks, already are doing it, so what is the problem? Reminds me of the misconception from religious people that atheism means having no morals whatsoever, that it means murdering babies all day long. It won't be "philosophy" nor "religion" that stops you from doing harm, if that's what drives you. I much prefer to believe that the vast majority of people have good intentions, and have loftier goals for themselves than pursuing hedonism.

hathawsh 2y ago

That's an interesting distinction that clarifies the terms for me. Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? One is a removal of values, the other is adding values. It seems to me that, in most cultures, some degree of nihilism is a prerequisite for hedonism.

gspencley 2y ago
> Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? I'm going to answer your question and, in doing so, answer another comment that argued with me about the definition of nihilism. The short answer to your question is "no." According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism): > Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning. > There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities does not exist or is meaningless or pointless. If existence doesn't exist, then there no values because nothing exists. If morality does not exist (or is baseless), this is a rejection of values since morality is a code of values. If knowledge doesn't exist or is impossible, this is a rejection of values since values are that which we seek to acquire and keep, and so if you can't know anything then values become meaningless because you don't know what you value or what you ought to value. If nihilism is a rejection of meaning qua meaning, then you are rejecting values since nothing can mean anything, and therefore values have no bearing on your life or existence since life and existence itself is meaningless (no matter how you define "meaning"). Therefore, nihilism is the rejection of ALL values regardless of whether they are personally chosen values or "imposed" values. There may be degrees of nihilism. Some nihilists may reject certain values while choosing to retain others. But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. Now, slight digression: my personal opinion is that on a fundamental level, all values must be chosen by the individual since only individuals are capable of forming value judgements. Groups can agree upon values, or say "if you want to belong to this group then you must accept certain values ('our' values)", but at the end of the day the individual must ultimately decide what values to adopt. Hedonism broadly refers to a philosophy of "whim worship" or "pleasure seeking." It values pleasure for pleasure's sake and considers anything that brings pleasure to be "good" and anything that does not to be either "bad" or "neutral." While hedonism may very well assert the "right" to "arbitrary pleasure", I disagree that that is its defining characteristic, since you can assert that right while also acknowledging that pleasure seeking for pleasure sake can be self-destructive and therefore morally wrong (ex: bank robbing and heroin abuse). [Edit: upon re-reading the above paragraph, I think a better example here is to focus on drug abuse. I personally think that you have a "right" to put whatever you want into your body. And abusing hard drugs might feel good and bring you lots of immediate pleasure. That doesn't mean that it is "good for you" and therefore, under my code of ethics, self-destruction via drug abuse or other is immoral. But I'm also trying to steer clear of discussing the definition of morality, and why human beings need morality, because that would quickly get off topic]. I would say that pleasure is a positive value (vs the negation of values), whether you are a hedonist or not, and therefore hedonism and nihilism are mutually exclusive by definition. Though I would also argue that both are destructive since one dispenses with values all together while the other uses pleasure as a SOLE determiner of what to value and therefore values that which can be destructive.
- hathawsh 2y ago
  Thanks for the explanation.
- sph 2y ago
  > But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. No and no. I've replied to you elsewhere, but you seem to confuse "having no meaning" with "war against meaning". It's a common, and tiring, fallacy. The former is neutral, the latter is negative. The point of nihilism is that there is NO meaning, so the subtext is "make your own", not the ignorant cliche of "nothing matters, we might just off ourselves."

fellowniusmonk 2y ago

Nihilism is life without personal values? I mean you can happily define any term however you want. It will cause certain kinds of issues though... but just because the community organized documentation of our massively open source project called philosophy says (very roughly): let Nihilism: &str = "Life is without an (intrinsic|external), fixed basis for meaning." you can absolutely redefine it in your personal REPO to mean. let Nihilism: &str = "Life is without a personal basis for value." But... I mean, your definition is very strange and is not aligned with the community docs, in many ways it is quite antithetical and will cause any dependent arguments or clauses to have runtime errors. But I mean, if you want to pick a nihilism variant/alt (My favorite nihilism is Mereological Nihilism) and elevate it to be your primary definition of Nihilism that's ok!

vernon99 2y ago

> > Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. > This is not nihilism, it is hedonism. Only if you are driven by selfish desires, but that’s not the only way of operating even when there’s no external/“absolute” definition of meaning. See “selfless action”, “karma yoga” and “dharma” on page 45 of the spiritual life manual.

sph 2y ago

> This is not nihilism, it is hedonism No, hedonism is seeking pleasure. That is not what I said. What you feel like doing is the stuff that makes you tick. The stuff that makes you get out of bed in the morning. For some, it's pleasure, for others, it's work, painting, surfing, seal-clubbing, whatever. > what if I feel like robbing a bank, or doing heroin? Then do that. People that feel like robbing banks, already are doing it, so what is the problem? Reminds me of the misconception from religious people that atheism means having no morals whatsoever, that it means murdering babies all day long. It won't be "philosophy" nor "religion" that stops you from doing harm, if that's what drives you. I much prefer to believe that the vast majority of people have good intentions, and have loftier goals for themselves than pursuing hedonism.