Morals and Meanings: An Argument on Nihilism

This week I would like to discuss the subject of moral nihilism. I believe that nihilism is a dangerous trend in our times, and, though I am unable to prove categorically why nihilism should be rejected, I believe I can make a decent case.To begin, what is nihilism? To answer this, we may turn to the philosopher and theologian Helmut Thielicke, whose body of work is an inspiration to me. Thielicke identifies nihilism as coming in two primary manifestations.The first is “confessory” or open nihilism, in which an individual or group consciously despairs when confronted with the “abyss.” Confessory nihilists are anguished; they express misery at what they perceive as the harsh meaninglessness of life, the lack of higher purpose. They see little or no difference between life and death—they have lost faith in everything.The second, and less blatant, kind of nihilism is “ciphered.” Ciphered nihilists would probably not describe themselves as such: to fend off the abyss, they assume a supreme apathy toward life. They choose not to ask questions; they permit themselves to be told what to do. Twentieth century dictatorial states, at least in the West, featured many elements of ciphered nihilism: during and after the First World War, it spread throughout the traumatized masses as the “Belle Époque” shattered before Europeans’ eyes. The rise of relativist thought and the unspeakable atrocities of the so-called “Fresh and Jolly War” caused many to simply abandon their search for purpose—their persistence in questioning, in both practical and spiritual affairs—and allow themselves to be subdued by the likes of Hitler.In its rawest form, nihilism is manifestly terrifying. What can one do, helpless before the void of emptiness? To whom does one go in times of sadness, or need? Why are we so cruelly alone? Indeed, everybody cycles through these questions at some point in their life, and citizens in the contemporary era are especially prone to brush with nihilistic sentiments. Perhaps more so than at any other time in modern history, aspects of nihilism pervade our society. In the wake of 20th century bloodshed, “right and wrong” and “good and bad” have become subject to relativist “debunking:” “right and wrong” are frequently viewed today as individualized cultural constructions, as opposed to objective truths. While ideas of morality remain firmly entrenched among our people, they have lost their explanatory basis. These values are a powerful and prevalent vestige of centuries of strict moral structure, but they have lost a major source of reinforcement.Perhaps here it would be prudent to discuss the origins of those morals, so that we may see why the rise of nihilism poses so serious a threat. Let us briefly examine why societies created and adhered to spiritual authority. As a general matter, human spirituality attempts to answer two basic questions: where does the universe come from, and why does the universe exist—the latter specifying to what is the purpose of man. Creation stories abound throughout history, from the ancient Heliopolitan myth that the eternal dark sea in an instant became home to the god Atem, from which all else sprang; to the Chinese concept of the comingling of Heaven and Earth, prior to a great separation; to the famous hand of the Jewish God, who “in the beginning” created the Heavens and the Earth. These stories, cultivated in widely disparate environments, share in the singular goal of attempting to explain the origins of existence where science and reason cannot.With this practical explanation of how established, we may now move to the more emotional question, why. Nietzsche argues, controversially, that humans created God in an act of weakness. Being unable to cope without an objective authority, and wanting to establish order and moral codes among the people, civilizations devised God to impose laws where mortals could not. Accompanying this functional rationale for God was the human search for ideals. Perfection, as anybody knows, is frequently on our minds. Seeing that the earth was imperfect, peoples turned to a transcendental realm where ideals could be realized. If one is to be honest with oneself, says Nietzsche, one must turn away from God and strive to be the “Superman,” a human manifestation of divinity, a self-reliant being that answers to nobody but himself.So we come to the subject of abandoning, or perhaps “moving on from,” God. Leaving aside Nietzsche’s argument of “super” human triumph—which itself has no objective confirmation—some serious issues arise from this intellectual shift. The removal of the objective transcendent authority from a society leads one to wonder: what moral or value structure is left? Without God, who is to differentiate between murder and kindness? Who is to guide peoples toward generosity and not theft? Most importantly, who is to dispense authoritative judgment? A human cannot prove that murder is not bad, nor can he prove that depriving others’ rights is unjust, and he certainly cannot prove that his understanding of “good” is better than anyone else’s. Without that God, incentives for behaving “virtuously” (the definition of which becomes itself unclear) are significantly diminished, if not totally eliminated.Apart from its unpleasant consequences, nihilism is also conceptually objectionable.  As a notion, it is self-contradicting. One hears countless nihilists state, “there is no objective truth, there are no absolutes, there is no greater purpose and there is no value.” They discount the unconditional and reject, with seeming cogence, cases for purpose. Yet a problem arises: the argument, “there is no objective truth,” is an absolute, and yet by its own parameters it cannot be objectively true. The sole self-perpetuating argument that a nihilist really has is one of constant denial: one cannot prove that there is purpose. And yet this argument does not at all rule out that there is—it only brings to light the possibility that there isn’t. Nihilists make the error of assuming that by stating that value cannot be concretely proven, they have effectively disproven that value.Despite the evident drawbacks to nihilist thinking, it is still easy to slip into that kind of thought. Life is, after all, filled with unexplained hardships, and one may be inclined to classify those hardships as part of the “sea of meaninglessness.” Nevertheless, I believe that there are good reasons to avoid that path. One of these is what Thielicke and some others would call the “fractured” nature of nihilism—or, better put, the “striving” nature of humans. The reason why nihilism instills despair in us is that we, as humans, want the world to be reasonable, ordered and purposeful. We desire explanations and spend inordinate amounts of time mulling over abstractions, despite being aware that no definite answers will come. The fact that the human is dissatisfied and perturbed by infuriating ambiguity is a testament to our rejection of nihilist “values,” meaninglessness. The fact even that a nihilist would take the time and effort to argue his case is testament to the fact that he still wishes to frame the universe in some manner, no matter how bleak his conclusions may be. The search for an explanation, even if that explanation amounts to “everything is meaningless,” is a deviation from genuine nihilism. There is no true nihilism—or if there is, it is not in humans.For the true nihilist would be absolutely immobile—he would be a nucleus of total conflict, unable to decide whether to breathe, exist or think. The true nihilist would not even have the logical will to take his own life in despair, because that act would not be objectively any more purposeful than remaining alive. Such an act would furthermore ascribe value to the ideals of order and purpose: the man who kills himself in the face of the abyss is a man still guided by that yearning for purpose—having found none, he goes mad. In short, humans are incapable of being true nihilists. We ask too many questions and get too riled when no answers are given or found.Finally, I cannot explain why precisely I believe in the values that the nihilist strives to delegitimize as hollow and futile. Why I support strong social institutions, why I and so many others love our civil and human rights and why I still believe in purpose are in some ways unanswerable questions. Perhaps it all comes down to feeling good; perhaps it a stubborn rejection of a sad, single truth, that there really is no value. It is possible that—if by some metaphysical miracle we were to obtain the answers to our existential inquiries—I am completely misguided. There is a distinct chance that there is no meaning. But, as the nihilist would say, “there are no absolutes,” and I know for sure that this, too, is not one of them. ♥