Category: Nihilism

the most convenient definitions

[last lines]Brian Johnson: [closing narration] Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…

Andrew Clark: …and an athlete…

Allison Reynolds: …and a basket case…

Claire Standish: …a princess…

John Bender: …and a criminal.

Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

How often do I simply see people in “the most convenient definitions”? Putting someone in a box is easier than encountering the “you”.

Anyway …

biology

I heard someone say today, “biology proves that men and women are different”.

Well, I say, “biology proves that I am different.” I am different from other males and other human beings. My life is one of a kind.

And tomorrow? I have no proof (biological or otherwise) of tomorrow. Biology (or any science) can only make statements about the past. The rest is a guess! Tomorrow I may cease to be either male or female. I may simply cease to be!

Anyway …

nihilism

nihilism is the view that certain things people often assume are “real” or “given”—like objective meaning, objective values, or a purpose built into the universe—may not exist. …

The key practical point is this: a claim about what exists in the universe is not the same as a recommendation about how to live. “There is no objective meaning” is descriptive. “Therefore I should act cruelly” is prescriptive.

J. Colle, Ardenne. Nihilism Explained: A Short Philosophy Book for Beginners on Existential and Moral Nihilism and the Meaning of Life, 13 & 21

experience necessity

According to Hume, Descartes’s cosmological proof of the existence of God relied on a conceptual foundation that he had left unquestioned, the conceptual foundation of causality. Hume argues that if you really tried to build knowledge back up from the most basic elements of human nature (e.g., perception), then you could not claim that causality is something we can know to be true rather than something we can only believe to be true. Though we may see one event follow another, and see this sequence of events happen over and over again, it is impossible to see that this sequence of events must happen. In other words, we cannot experience necessity.

Gertz, Nolen. Nihilism (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series), 19.

In the end, we are always free to act.

purgation

Traditionally the first “step” of union with God is purgation. One of the definitions suggested by Google is “evacuation of the bowels brought about by taking laxatives.” For the follower of Jesus, it is simply being like Jesus who …

… ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών, ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος· καὶ σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος

… made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men

Philippians 2:7 (KJV)

Other English translations use “empty himself” for κενόω. Maybe philosophically it is a little like “nihilism” – to become nothing? For the follower of Jesus is a choice to be “nothing” so God can create.

… absolute to itself

Who can precisely say that my neighbour suffers more than I do, or that Jesus suffered more than all of us? … Each person remains with his own suffering, which he thinks absolute and limitless… Each subjective existence is absolute to itself. For this reason each man lives as if he were the centre of the universe or of history.

On the Heights of Despair