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The paradox of existential nihilism

#1
Magical Realist Offline
"Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no inherent meaning whatsoever, and that humanity, both in an individual sense and in a collective sense, has no purpose. That is to say: while objects have the capacity for purpose or meaning, there is no universal truth that guides this individual purpose. Thus, without a universal purpose, all meaning that objects could have does not exist, and the idea of any purpose or meaning attributed to something is untrue. If this is taken as a given, then existential nihilism holds that humans are compelled to make up meaning for themselves and others in the absence of a universal, unilateral meaning in order to spare themselves from the negativity surrounding the inevitability of death. Existential nihilism explores both the nature of this invention and the effectiveness of creating meaning for oneself and others, as well as whether the latter is even possible. It has received the most attention out of all forms of nihilism in both literary and popular media.

Like metaphysical nihilism, existential nihilism stumbles when it comes to the nature of its conceptual existence. Common precursors to the paradox ask questions like Hegarty's,[1] implying that, if universal truth does not exist to give meaning to life and therefore nothing is objectively true, existential nihilist theory would be the universal truth that it claims does not exist. Thus, existential nihilism is at best an extremely flawed interpretation of the universe and at worst entirely untrue, as a theory which contends that nothing objective exists must necessarily then be subjective. In this case it is either untrue or has meaning, which would mean that there is a universal meaning (derived from the logical conclusion that the universal truth is nothingness) or even some meaning, which would be contrarian to the original claim."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_nihilism

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."--- C.S.Lewis
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#2
Yazata Offline
(May 16, 2022 07:28 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: "Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no inherent meaning whatsoever, and that humanity, both in an individual sense and in a collective sense, has no purpose.

We probably should distinguish between local contextual purposes and grand cosmic purposes. Thus one can say that the physician is in the emergency room so as to fulfill the purpose of treating patients, while humanity as a whole or even individual people's lives don't have purpose in the sense that (some) religions have attributed divine purpose to humanity.

Put another way, there isn't any goal for humanity's existence or even for particular people's existence, outside the context of purposes and goals that humans (collectively and individually) themselves give to whatever they are doing.

(Actually I can't know that for a fact, but it's my working assumption. I don't know of any grand cosmic purposes nor do I know where they would come from.)

Quote:That is to say: while objects have the capacity for purpose or meaning, there is no universal truth that guides this individual purpose.

Yes.

Quote:Thus, without a universal purpose, all meaning that objects could have does not exist, and the idea of any purpose or meaning attributed to something is untrue.

I don't see how that follows. Just because my life doesn't seem to exist to fulfill any cosmic purpose doesn't imply that I can't have a purpose in mind when I pick up my scissors.

Quote:If this is taken as a given, then existential nihilism holds that humans are compelled to make up meaning for themselves and others in the absence of a universal, unilateral meaning in order to spare themselves from the negativity surrounding the inevitability of death.

Or maybe I pick up my scissors not in some vain attempt to escape the Sartrean "nausea" of existential meaninglessness, but merely because I want to cut something.

Quote:Existential nihilism explores both the nature of this invention and the effectiveness of creating meaning for oneself and others, as well as whether the latter is even possible. It has received the most attention out of all forms of nihilism in both literary and popular media.

It's like I've said repeatedly, many atheists seem to me like fundies with a bloody hole in their chest where their faith in God was torn out. As for me, I've never felt that I had any divine purpose and have never experienced the anguish of its loss. The "Death of God" simply elicits a shrug from me.

Quote:Like metaphysical nihilism, existential nihilism stumbles when it comes to the nature of its conceptual existence. Common precursors to the paradox ask questions like Hegarty's,[1] implying that, if universal truth does not exist to give meaning to life and therefore nothing is objectively true

If my life (or humanity in general) lacks some universal purpose, how do we leap from there to the conclusion that nothing can be objectively true? That looks like a non-sequitur to me.

I don't know why objective states of affairs can't exist without the necessity of their fitting into some kind of cosmic story. I'm thoroughly convinced that a biological organism can objectively exist without its life serving to bring about the conclusion of some cosmic plot. Reality needn't be conceptualized as a novel, or even as divine history as set out in the Bible or wherever, where all events are pointing towards some divine eschatological conclusion at the end of time. (Even the ostensibly atheist Marx couldn't let go of that idea.)

Quote:existential nihilist theory would be the universal truth that it claims does not exist. Thus, existential nihilism is at best an extremely flawed interpretation of the universe and at worst entirely untrue, as a theory which contends that nothing objective exists must necessarily then be subjective.

In this case it is either untrue or has meaning, which would mean that there is a universal meaning (derived from the logical conclusion that the universal truth is nothingness) or even some meaning, which would be contrarian to the original claim."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_nihilism

So saying that humanity has no cosmic purpose is supposedly equivalent to attributing a cosmic purpose to humanity? I'm not convinced of that.

Quote:"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."---  C.S.Lewis

Except that we do have purposes on the local/contextual level. My scissors are for cutting things, the emergency room physician is there to treat patients. We know what purposes are from the stories that we tell, from the purposes that we create in our our own lives and in our wider social contexts. The fact that we tell stories into which our own actions fit and that give our own actions meaning needn't suggest that there must be some (divine?) cosmic story that gives purpose and meaning to everything that exists/happens.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
I was an avid believer in religion up till around age 23. The universe and my life were brimming over with meaning and purpose. I was the darling object of God's love, consumed with the drama of Jesus's love for humanity and his imminent return to earth to take his chosen ones home with him. I faithfully devoted myself to the principles of godly living and enjoyed all the emotional rewards, as well as liabilities, of having a cosmic context to everything I did.

When I transitioned into philosophy and agnosticism, almost unnoticeably did I find myself in a new universe where not so much mattered any more. I could pursue my desires to my heart's content and there was noone I was betraying or sinning against.

I see this as a mentally healthy mindset. The universe really does NOT revolve around me, and this liberating contingency allowed me to pursue numerous other worldviews and ideals without hesitation or guilt. There may not be any cosmic context or plot behind my life anymore, but I am no less enraptured by the adventure of living in the awesome mystery of it all. While I pay the price of an involuntary nihilism, I nevertheless reap the reward of a free and open encounter with a reality permeated with possibilities and mind-boggling wonders. Sartre nailed it: we are thrown into the nothingness of our being, bearing sole responsibility for making our lives meaningful.

“We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.”
― William Barrett, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization
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#4
C C Offline
(May 16, 2022 07:28 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: "Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no inherent meaning whatsoever, and that humanity, both in an individual sense and in a collective sense, has no purpose..."

"Objective purpose" would just be another form of determinism, anyway, and conflict with free will. (Latter from the standpoint of the incompatibilism orientations, anyway. Which usually dominate the discussion landscape, like it or not.)

Sartre: "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." --Being And Nothingness (1943)

Sartre argued that a central proposition of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, which is to say that individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a-priori categories, an "essence". The actual life of the individual is what constitutes what could be called their "true essence" instead of an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them. Human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentia...es_essence

"Nihilism" is the belief that nothing matters. Existentialism is the attempt to confront and deal with meaninglessness...to not succumb to nihilism or despair: to not give up or avoid responsibility.
https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258...0dirty.htm


But existentialism conflicts with the determinism of Marxism. Sartre actually always had one foot in the latter, before committing both feet during the 1950s, and the climax of that with 1960's Critique of Dialectical Reason.

So we come to another paradox (inconsistency), of combining existentialism with Marxism:

Sartre: Existentialism and Marxism
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exist...#PolHisEng

. . . the political value to which Sartre remained committed throughout his life: the value of freedom as self-making.

This commitment finally led Sartre to hold that existentialism itself was only an “ideological” moment within Marxism, which he termed “the one philosophy of our time which we cannot go beyond” (Sartre 1960 [1968, xxxiv]). As this statement suggests, Sartre’s embrace of Marxism was a function of his sense of history as the factic situation in which the project of self-making takes place.

Because existing is self-making (action), philosophy—including existential philosophy—cannot be understood as a disinterested theorizing about timeless essences but is always a form of engagement, a diagnosis of the past and a projection of norms appropriate to a different future in light of which the present takes on significance. It therefore always arises from the historical-political situation and is a way of intervening in it. Marxism, like existentialism, makes this necessarily practical orientation of philosophy explicit.


- - - - - -

Marxism Versus Existentialism (a "they are not compatible" view, from that era)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/novack/...y/ch12.htm

The development of Sartre has been especially paradoxical. He worked out his original existentialist ideas under the sway of nonmaterialist thinkers such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as a deliberate challenge to Marxism. In Being and Nothingness (1943) and Materialism and Revolution (1947) Sartre presented his philosophy as an alternative to dialectical materialism. Then in the late 1950s he made a turnabout and embraced Marxism, at least in words—which for him, as he explains in the first volume of his recent autobiography, have had a reality greater than the objective world.

In his latest philosophical treatise, The Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), the first section of which has been published in English as Search for a Method, he declares that existentialism has become a subordinate branch of Marxism which aspires to renew and enrich it. Thus the phenomenologist of existence who condemned dialectical materialism as false and a foe to human freedom in the 1940s now proposes to marry Marxism and existentialism.

To what extent, if any, can these philosophies be conjoined? Can a synthesis of the two be viable? This article intends to show that the contending world outlooks cannot be harmonised or integrated into one containing “the best features” of both.

A legendary alchemist thought that by putting together fire and water he would concoct that most desirable of delights, “fire-water”. Actually, the one nullifies or extinguishes the other when they come into contact. It is the same with Marxism and existentialism. Their fundamental positions over a broad spectrum of problems extending from philosophy and sociology to morality and politics are so divergent that they cannot really be reconciled.

This piece can do no more than indicate the main lines of their disagreement on the most important issues...

[...] For existentialism the universe is irrational; for Marxism it is lawful. The propositions of existentialist metaphysics are set in a context of cataclysmic personal experience. They all flow from the agonising discovery that the world into which we are thrown has no sufficient or necessary reason for existence, no rational order. It is simply there and must be taken as we find it. Being is utterly contingent, totally without meaning, and superfluous.

For dialectical materialism, reality has developed in a lawful manner and is rationally explicable. The rationality of nature and human history is bound up with matter in motion. The concatenation of cosmic events gives rise to cause-and-effect relations that determine the qualities and evolution of things. The physical preceded and produced the biological, the biological the social, and the social the psychological in a historical series of mutually conditioned stages. The aim of science is to disclose their essential linkages and formulate these into laws that can help pilot human activity.

The rationality, determinism, and causality of the universal process of material development do not exclude but embrace the objective existence and significance of absurdity, indeterminism, and accident.

However, these random features of reality are no more fundamental than regularity. They are not immutable and irremovable aspects of nature and history but relative phenomena which in the course of development can change to the extent of becoming their own opposites. Chance, for example, is the antithesis of necessity. Yet chance has its own laws, which are lodged in the occurrence of statistical regularities. Quantum mechanics and the life insurance business exemplify how individual accidents are convertible into aggregate necessities...

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#5
Magical Realist Offline
“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski
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#6
Magical Realist Offline
“Built to be lonely
to love the absent.
Find me
Free me
from this
corrosive doubt
futile despair
horror in repose.
I can fill my space
fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart.”
― Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis
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#7
Leigha Offline
Interesting. One could say though (as a counter to this argument) that life isn't ''nothing,'' and so there must be something to it. And if there's something to life, then it can't be entirely meaningless, but that may not have anything to do with purpose for those who consider themselves nihilists.
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