No one can solve nihilism because it is an internally consistent system. If you want to believe it, you will. And no one will be able to convince you otherwise. All people can do is attack your starting premises and your values. And that’s what Camus is trying to do. Reinterpret the meaningless as something absurd, maybe even funny instead of something dreadful.

Basically going from “Life is meaningless nothing matters....” to “Life is meaningless! Nothing matters!” It is an attempt to change your attitude to the same set of facts. Which is not logical by nature.

Most people starve, live in war torn areas, or live where illnesses are pretty common. — Darkneos

Not most people. I would be willing to bet that most people consider themselves “of the fortunate”. And that most people would say life is worth it. Despite the circumstances.

You seem to be looking for some objective argument that destroys nihilism. Some internal inconsistency or some grave logical error inherent in the belief. There is no such thing. Upside is: There is nothing compelling you to choose the set of premises that lead to nihilism. If you’re a nihilist it’s because you choose to be one.

most people would say life is worth it. Despite the circumstances. — khaled

And that's the real point underneath it all. If someone finds life worth living then it is, precisely because they find it so, because there is nothing more to the value of it than whether or not someone finds it valuable.

If someone doesn't, they're not obliged to do so, but since it's as much a matter of one's reaction to circumstances as to the circumstances themselves, an alternative to changing difficult-to-change circumstances is to change one's reactions instead. That's not always easy either, but if someone feels like trying that instead of dying, if that's worth the effort to them, then it's worth it period, because that's all worth is.

That's like saying 'eating doesn't overcome starvation, it just dodges it.' C'mon :lol:

Why should one kill oneself at all? Why do one need "values" or "life goals" to live? Enjoy the joyride. Sure there are people that live shit lives, mental disorders or whatever. People that run into hopeless situations. Those people also probably dont think much about values and stuff, they know bloody well their pain and thats probably it. But for anyone not in a current hell, why suicide?

Nihilism, schmihilism. Perhaps you solve it by understanding you accepted it, and are just as capable of rejecting it.

No one can solve nihilism — khaled

In a sense, sure. And there are flat-earthers. Heidegger's Sorge - care - seems a pretty good refutation.

So-called "existential nihilism" always seemed self refuting to me. Nihilism assumes that nothing matters and everything from morality to meaning is completely pointless and there are no objective claims. Ok? So that means that "nothing matters", being an objective claim, also doesn't matter. It's circular

Why do many people say Camus "solved" nihilism? — Darkneos

Who?

Everyone has an Ego so when we say "nothing matters" that is a claim to objectivity and can only be emotionally held on to as a meaning in life. The fundamentals of karma work. Do evil and evil comes to you. Do good and you won't go to hell (maybe you'll just be annihilated). But justice and fairness are not the same thing. The universe allows itself to be just to us but our lives might not be fair in themselves, or in comparisons between us

I'm not aware of anyone saying Camus 'solved' nihilism. Only that his version of existentialism is one potential approach if you are of the view that life is absurd and pointless.

I think nihilism can make a lot of sense, but I have usually found it an empowering and uplifting notion rather than a depressing one. 'Nothing matters' doesn't have to come with a 'how awful' stamp unless you have already made the assumption that transcendent purpose is critical.

Sure, it can be argued that nihilism is circular - as in - if nothing matters than nor does nihilism. But many presuppositions we use in life are circular - eg, logic. You can't use logic to defend the use of logic. Will we now abandon logic?

Why should one kill oneself at all? Why do one need "values" or "life goals" to live? Enjoy the joyride. Sure there are people that live shit lives, mental disorders or whatever. People that run into hopeless situations. Those people also probably dont think much about values and stuff, they know bloody well their pain and thats probably it. But for anyone not in a current hell, why suicide — Ansiktsburk

Values and life goals are pretty much the reasons why anyone is alive at all.

Life is not a joyride, it's hell unless you're in the developed world.

Everyone has an Ego so when we say "nothing matters" that is a claim to objectivity and can only be emotionally held on to as a meaning in life. The fundamentals of karma work. Do evil and evil comes to you. Do good and you won't go to hell (maybe you'll just be annihilated). But justice and fairness are not the same thing. The universe allows itself to be just to us but our lives might not be fair in themselves, or in comparisons between us — Gregory

no such thing as Karma, or good and evil for that matter. Doing evil doesn't make evil comes to you and doing good doesn't mean much either.

Justice and fairness are pretty much the same thing.

The universe doesn't allow anything, it just is.

I fail to see how nothing mattering can be empowering.

[reply="Darkneos;502771" I've always found the idea that 'the only meaning there is is the one we chose to make' to be liberating and an aphrodisiac for living. The practical consequence of nothing matters does not need to be abyss. You can fill the space with a simple question. So what now? Nothing matters is also at the heart of Buddhism (not that I am an adherent).

So that means that "nothing matters", being an objective claim, also doesn't matter. — Albero

This as well. If nothing matters, then it doesn't matter that nothing matters.

On the contrary, to be free means the possibility of help is real. I'm an atheist. I don't know if there is a heaven and if good would necessitate it. I do know there is a hell

This as well. If nothing matters, then it doesn't matter that nothing matters. — Pfhorrest

I've made that joke a thousand times. Actually if nothing matters then everything matters.

As I already said:

Sure, it can be argued that nihilism is circular - as in - if nothing matters than nor does nihilism. But many presuppositions we use in life are circular - eg, logic. You can't use logic to defend the use of logic. Will we now abandon logic? — Tom Storm

Life is not a joyride, it's hell unless you're in the developed world. — Darkneos

That's not very accurate, is it? If you are saying that you are more likely to have a happy life if you live somewhere where there are resources, then perhaps. But the variables are so much more complex. There are very happy poor people living in impoverished places. There are vey many wealthy people in developing or poor nations. There are rich people in wealthy countries who live miserable hellish lives.

Do you see a better way of approaching the issue of the now official position of those who've peeked inside the box of meaning/purpose and found none for themselves than Camus'? I haven't read Camus but I know he was deeply involved in the whole meaning of life question but what if, just what if, his conclusion was, as @Wayfarer once said, "the least worst option" or as I like to see it, the lesser of two evils? This is a question worth asking and if someone has a good answer, it'll be worth a listen/read.

I haven't read Camus but I know he was deeply involved in the whole meaning of life question but what if, just what if, his conclusion was, as Wayfarer once said, "the least worst option" or as I like to see it, the lesser of two evils? This is a question worth asking and if someone has a good answer, it'll be worth a listen/read. — TheMadFool

I'm not sure I follow your thoughts. I had no idea Camus was back in fashion. I doubt that many people actually square off to nihilism, but some people are depressed...

The main reason Camus comes up so often is that he remembered for an attention grabbing somewhat hokey statement about the main philosophical question in life being, why not commit suicide? Given that Camus died young in a car crash with a bus ticket in his pocket, you can't help feeling that he was right about one question. Life is absurd.

ー

Life is absurd — Tom Storm

You can say that again. Camus, despite what his detractors, if any, say, was, in my opinion, a success story, no? Plus, built into his philosophy is the expected harsh criticism leveled, if that's the case here, against Absurdism. What could be more absurd then faulting a philosophy that, at its heart, is optimistic even as it hurls itself directly into the crosshairs of an unfeeling enemy that gives no quarter to man, woman, or child and picks us off one by one with deadly accuracy. :joke:

Some people's existential problems really are ... such that a touch of room fragrance can put their noisy mind to ease:


It must be great to be like that.

Sometimes nihilism needs to choose to be less objective and straightforward, maybe even to choose a lie, in order to be set free. We have the right to obey laws external and internal and the duty to be free. To see things the backwards way can lead to nihilism

Are you saying that the way out of nihilism is to select a 'lie' to put your hope in. Fake it until you make it?

We have the right to obey laws external and internal and the duty to be free. — Gregory

If you are a true nihilist then the idea of 'laws' and 'obeying' and 'duty' and 'freedom' are all empty pointless terms so none of this would apply, surely?

The "law of explosion" is the problem with nihilism (recent posts on my thread on truth\beauty are talking about this). You can't really understand anything from a "God perspective" . Many people get so depressed that they can't feel anything and then think they are God. This leads too or comes from drug abuse in many cases. "Beware of wisdom that is not earned" said Jung because drugs are illness, an attempt to control reality. Is nihilism any different from this? Isn't nihilism simply a putting of reality into one basket and saying "fuh you" to it? Go ahead and point of the if nihilism is true than nihilism doesn't matter. The problem isn't with infinite regress though. It's with the law of explosion. Nihilism is objective realism in disguise. I've never been a nihilist so maybe my approach is flawed, yet I don't see traditional logical approaches to it as helpful

I can't really reply to you as there are so many ideas going on and many of them I don't follow or don't see reasons for. I will ask you what do you mean by:

Nihilism is objective realism in disguise. — Gregory

Can you step this out in simple terms?

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Nihilism is a dogmatic response to dogmatism. That's what I am getting at

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Nihilists take the assertion "life is good" as a 100% true position and respond with the 100% objective response "life is meaningless". I like your "fake it till you make it" comment

Nihilism is a dogmatic response to dogmatism. That's what I am getting at — Gregory

Nihilism has hard and soft variants. In philosophy I always understood nihilism to refer to the idea that there is no transcendent meaning or purpose to human life. This is not the same thing as saying there is no individual meaning. As most neophyte existentialists like to say, the meaning that matters is the one you make for yourself.

Anther type of nihilist is psychological. The person who thinks life is pointless and feels a sense of despair and depression. This form of nihilism is often more about a person’s mental health than a coherent belief system. It is usually a subjectivist claim about a personal state.

For my money I don’t really think there are practicing nihilists, just people who use the term badly. I don’t think we can easily find examples of people who actually live without any meaning. Even not having meaning ends up being a big producer of meaning.