Having explored moral nihilism ( but you and I have been through that and this is not our fate… ) I just found it leads to consequentialism and utilitarianism: what mores would lead to the society I want to see? Which drops us not far from Kantism.
The problem with Kantism is there are conflicting ideals, and some rivals are at the door with mp40s looking for the Jewish refugees hiding in your basement.
Existential nihilism invites us to try to create that which is meaningful, what is potentially an impossible or absurd task, as Camus notes, but yes, the alternatives are either suicide or philosophical suicide (taking a leap of faith, typically in some major religion).
That said, getting murdered rapidly (instantly is preferred) seems to me a lot better than dying of deterioration over weeks or months, and while I live in relative comfort right now, it is precarious, and can be brought to ruin easily. So while a raid by SWAT on the warpath is immediately and momentarily terrifying, it’s certainly better than a long bout of homelessness and hunger before succumbing to age, misery and the elements. Fire away.
Does existential nihilism not argue that we can’t create meaning because meaning categorically can’t exist? I feel like you’re talking of Existentialism, which is a different thing.
Camus notes three options: the two you mentioned, as well as embracing the absurd and rebelling against it.
I think meaning and existence are a matter of semantics. The quadratic formula is a fundamental tool of mathematics? Does it exist? Not materially, in that it’s one statement in an abstract language. Similarly, while we can demonstrate that gravity is a consistent force that acts upon us, and even have a law (some mathematical rules) that accurately model how objects behave under the influence of gravity (accurate enough to fling space probes to distant planets), the theory of gravity is only a description of the material (very similar to Ceci n’est pas une pipe ).
When a nihilist asserts that knowledge, morality and meaning don’t exist, that is to say they don’t exist much the way the quadratic formula or the law of gravity doesn’t actually exist. While we can understand gravity to a high degree of accuracy, we cannot know the future outcome of a gravitational event (say, the flight trajectory of a space mission) until we see the end results (and even then we’re only assessing what happened based on how we interpret the evidence of the aftermath.)
None of this is to say we cannot invent our own meaning (and for social purposes meaning and mores can be very useful!) but they remain in the abstract. They might inform what your intentions are, and what actions you choose to take, but until after you’ve taken action, all of that is imaginary.
Because we are highly social creatures and organizing is one of our superpowers, we take interpretation of the real, and the meaning we derive from it very seriously. We also take mores very seriously (to which I point to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which highlights how we should treat refugees (id est, the least of us ), but as grandiose as such a charter might be, it only exists as an idea that we communicate to others and decide whether or not we agree to treat each other in kind. But the ephemeral nature of these social constructs becomes very clear in the jungle, when microbes, pathogens and hungry predators all ignore our rights, mores and higher purposes and descend upon us without hesitation.
Much the way King Cnut’s royal authority was not recognized by the sea foam, meaning exists only so far as those who observe and regard it.
I take great peace knowing how my grandma died out of the blue. She was in decent health and in her early 60s, but died randomly in her sleep for no real reason. The night before she died, her and my grandpa were finally starting to look at hotels for their retirement road trip. To some, that may sound sad, but to me it means that she died happy. She went to sleep that night having no idea that she would never wake up
Having explored moral nihilism ( but you and I have been through that and this is not our fate… ) I just found it leads to consequentialism and utilitarianism: what mores would lead to the society I want to see? Which drops us not far from Kantism.
The problem with Kantism is there are conflicting ideals, and some rivals are at the door with mp40s looking for the Jewish refugees hiding in your basement.
Existential nihilism invites us to try to create that which is meaningful, what is potentially an impossible or absurd task, as Camus notes, but yes, the alternatives are either suicide or philosophical suicide (taking a leap of faith, typically in some major religion).
That said, getting murdered rapidly (instantly is preferred) seems to me a lot better than dying of deterioration over weeks or months, and while I live in relative comfort right now, it is precarious, and can be brought to ruin easily. So while a raid by SWAT on the warpath is immediately and momentarily terrifying, it’s certainly better than a long bout of homelessness and hunger before succumbing to age, misery and the elements. Fire away.
Does existential nihilism not argue that we can’t create meaning because meaning categorically can’t exist? I feel like you’re talking of Existentialism, which is a different thing.
Camus notes three options: the two you mentioned, as well as embracing the absurd and rebelling against it.
I think meaning and existence are a matter of semantics. The quadratic formula is a fundamental tool of mathematics? Does it exist? Not materially, in that it’s one statement in an abstract language. Similarly, while we can demonstrate that gravity is a consistent force that acts upon us, and even have a law (some mathematical rules) that accurately model how objects behave under the influence of gravity (accurate enough to fling space probes to distant planets), the theory of gravity is only a description of the material (very similar to Ceci n’est pas une pipe ).
When a nihilist asserts that knowledge, morality and meaning don’t exist, that is to say they don’t exist much the way the quadratic formula or the law of gravity doesn’t actually exist. While we can understand gravity to a high degree of accuracy, we cannot know the future outcome of a gravitational event (say, the flight trajectory of a space mission) until we see the end results (and even then we’re only assessing what happened based on how we interpret the evidence of the aftermath.)
None of this is to say we cannot invent our own meaning (and for social purposes meaning and mores can be very useful!) but they remain in the abstract. They might inform what your intentions are, and what actions you choose to take, but until after you’ve taken action, all of that is imaginary.
Because we are highly social creatures and organizing is one of our superpowers, we take interpretation of the real, and the meaning we derive from it very seriously. We also take mores very seriously (to which I point to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which highlights how we should treat refugees (id est, the least of us ), but as grandiose as such a charter might be, it only exists as an idea that we communicate to others and decide whether or not we agree to treat each other in kind. But the ephemeral nature of these social constructs becomes very clear in the jungle, when microbes, pathogens and hungry predators all ignore our rights, mores and higher purposes and descend upon us without hesitation.
Much the way King Cnut’s royal authority was not recognized by the sea foam, meaning exists only so far as those who observe and regard it.
I take great peace knowing how my grandma died out of the blue. She was in decent health and in her early 60s, but died randomly in her sleep for no real reason. The night before she died, her and my grandpa were finally starting to look at hotels for their retirement road trip. To some, that may sound sad, but to me it means that she died happy. She went to sleep that night having no idea that she would never wake up