I originally thought not. But according to this website, it is apparently (or allegedly) possible.
Many people, some of them apparently scientist and other academics, post questions on the Quora website. And there is a growing faction of people there who claim to choose to live their lives nihilistically. I’m not kidding.
I did post a comment on a thread or two, that basically said, choosing to live with nihilism as your morality is like an atheist claiming atheism is his religion. Nihilism is the repudiation of all morality, just like atheism is the repudiation of all religion. But I seem to rarely get a reply to my post. Or if I get one, it just seems vague and to add nothing more to what was already said.
Am I wrong? Can a person live with nihilism as his morality? And thereafter just live a nihilistic life? I think not. But I could be wrong.
(Quick side note: I have chosen specifically to get questions on religion and morality. So that could be why I seem to see a lot of that subject matter on this website. But it does seem to be what people have to say about the subject matter [morality], in any event. Also, I don’t know if you have to be a member to access this website or not. Sorry, if that is the case:).)
Before anybody else says it, I now realize (after viewing my profile) that I did ask a similar question here. The question did seem a little familiar.
Anyways, I think this thread should still go forward, though, because I think this question is a little different. In this thread, I am asking how a person can live with nihilism as their morality.
Mods, if you disagree with me, please let me know:).
Yeah, I am slowing down as I have reached middle age. And mistakes like this have unfortunately become common for me. Sorry:).
Well, it’s a confusion of terms. Nobody adopts nihilism-the-rejection-of-all-morality as a basis of morals, just like nobody adopts athiesm-the-rejection-of-all-religion as a basis of religion. They are either living without morals, like some super-Vulcan, or they mean something else when they say “nihilism”.
Existential nihilism is a form of nihilism, but it is not a form of nihilism-the-rejection-of-all-morals. Existential nihilism, depending on who you ask, might mean that value and morality are human constructs - made up. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or that they are necessarily false or to be rejected. Some existential nihilists are very chill people who see it as a “to each his own” philosophy.
Do people choose their own morality? I don’t think I know anybody–outside of the occasional high school or college kid–who just decides that they’re going to believe this or that from now on.
I think nihilism is the only sane outlook. We’re just here. We won’t be forever. Nothing in this universe really matters, and there is no guiding principle outside of math, physics, and chemistry behind it all.
Even so, if I see someone in trouble, I want to help them. No, it doesn’t really matter that they’re suffering. No, I’m not a better person for helping them out. But it still feels like the right thing to do.
People who reject hard determinism and embrace free will are constantly choosing their own morality. True, it is not often that someone changes their mind, but it is not often that someone changes their religion either. It still happens, especially after life-changing events such as puberty, marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or tragedy.
“I can do whatever I want with no concern for morality whatsoever, ha ha ha” would appear to be a viable moral system (and indeed, one that is used by a number of well-known people). It would also appear to be completely compatible with all forms of nihilism. Morals don’t exist? Yep. Nothing has permanent consequences? Another yep.
So yes, moral nihilism can be your morality. It’s functionally equivalent to having no moral system at all, but it differs in that moral nihilism is, indeed, an ethos.
Nihilism doesn’t say that morals don’t exist. It says they only exist because we created them.
To the OP: I regard myself as a nihilist. I decide what my morality is. I decide how to live my life. The fact that many agree with me that certain acts should not be committed in a civilized society doesn’t have anything to do with how we all arrived at that conclusion.
This would depend entirely on which definition of nihilism one googles up. There are several different ones.
I don’t know what you’d call me, but my morality is self-derived, and I’m of the opinion that all morality is self-derived. If you are taught your morality by somebody else, you don’t have morals; you have instructions. (I’m aware that there are definitions of “morals” that include following orders, but, like with nihilism, definitions may vary.)
I don’t know if this is relevant. But I use the following argument, from time to time, with people who call themselves nihilists, or at least agree with the nihilist theory.
When people say, for example, the Nazi Holocaust was horrible, they are not just emoting or expressing their private feelings. They are saying that the Nazi Holocaust was horrible, because of the pain experienced.
Pain is terrible. Pain is horrible. And I don’t know to what degree it is objective. But you have to admit, it is universally felt the same way.
How you would fit this into a moral theory I don’t know. Cause when I do it, as a thought experiment, all I come up with is a crude form of extreme moral hedonism.
But you have to admit it is horrible and universally felt that way, at the very least.
I don’t have to admit anything! You can’t make me!
At least one variant of nihilism (metaphysical nihilism) proposes that reality as we know it doesn’t actually exist. I’m not one of these sorts and haven’t studied it in any depth (and I mean any depth), so the best way I can imagine to construct a model that approximates this is that we’re all playing a giant video game. And by “we all” I mean me, and some unspecified number of other people, which doesn’t necessarily include any of you and might not include anybody but me. Everyone else is a bot, an NPC, a Sim.
And it doesn’t matter when Sims die. It can even be funny.
Historical deaths, in particular, are suspect; it’s quite trivial to write wars into a game’s backstory without really instantiating any of the fighters for even a moment. They wouldn’t even have bot reality; they’re just history. No biggie.
Obviously there are some, shall we say, social downsides if any significant number of people see pedestrians while they’re driving and yell “ten points!”, but even so I’m not sure I could disprove a video game view of reality - or the moral systems that evolve from it.
It doesn’t have to be extreme moral hedonism, almost any flavor hedonist will denounce the Holocaust (with the notable exception of Nazi sadists). There are other systems of morals. Virtuists (most people in my opinion) might point at the injustice - the untermensch did nothing to deserve their punishment, therefore it was wrong. Utilitarians might say it was a waste of human life, plain and simple.
Nihilists could adopt (almost) any of these arguments, if framed in a morally-relative fashion, and still reject the notion that morality has any intrinsic meaning.
I had thought of nihilism as a rejection of all morals, values, and meaning, while some other term (existentialism?) would apply to someone who constructs their own values and meaning. But I don’t know how well that matches the way professional philosophers use the terms.
