NIHILISM
Nietzsche defines nihilism as the situation which obtains when
"everything is permitted." If everything is permitted, then it makes
no difference what we do, and so nothing is worth anything. We can, of course,
attribute value by an act of arbitrary resolution, but such an act proceeds ex
nihilo or defines its significance by a spontaneous assertion which can be
negated with equal justification. More specifically, there is in such a case no
justification for choosing either the value originally posited or its negation,
and the speech of "justification" is indistinguishable from silence.
------ Stanley Rosen
Nietzsche defines nihilism as the
situation that arises when everything is permitted. It is a sense of
direction-less-ness where there is no reason to choose one path over another
and so every path is equally open. This gives us a sense of freedom but if
every path is equally open it also means that one has nowhere to go. It leads
to a lack of a sense of objectivity because there is nothing about one
direction that commends it over another. What value any direction is supposed
to have is determined by our will and our will is undetermined by any external
consideration about the value these directions may have for us because in
itself these directions are equally devoid of any intrinsic value. They are
just so many fragments and there is no reason to place one fragment over and
above another. The constraints that we do deploy in making choices are
themselves devoid of intrinsic value and so are completely ad hoc. As a matter
of fact, objectivity is itself taken to be something that simply is and what
values we attach to things comes from the subjective side of the world and so
in order to arrive at true objectivity we need to subtract the subjectivity and
thereby to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Madhyamaka school of Buddhism
understood objectivity as emptiness; what is objective is empty or devoid of a
self and the self itself is devoid of the self being a conglomeration of
elements externally related to each other come to be considered as one and so
as a self but neither of these elements has any distinctive mark of
subjectivity.
Once objectivity is understood as
emptiness the social world becomes arbitrary because social norms come to lack
any authority. There is no reason to prefer one norm over another because who
decides which norm is better and who decides who should decide. Thereby power
becomes its own justification because only the mighty have the right to rule
because they can rule. In an empty world there is no order but chaos does not
last forever and order comes as an imposition of the authority of the powerful.
What was supposed to lead to freedom gives way to tyranny because anarchy and
tyranny are two sides of the same coin. Science – no – scienticism in its quest
to be the measure of everything that is, relegates all non-facts to the
subjective end of things but it too cannot survive the demise of the social
world. Science depends on objective thinking but all thought is subjective and
determined by contingent social-political-economic and historical circumstances
without a trace of objectivity. Without the possibility of objectively valid
thought there is no science.
With lack of any external limits
or constraints on choices it seems as if subjectivity has complete reign over
the matter-of-fact world. But because the self does not find itself or is not
at home with an external world it retreats inward and there it is again
confronted with its own nothing-ness. It is as empty as the outer world and so
the inner-outer distinction becomes meaningless. Within itself it finds only a
flux of various elements that it has been considering as a unitary self. The
self turns out to be not just something that engenders an illusion but it
itself is an illusion. The matter-of-fact world is all that there is.
What kind of ontology does
nihilism have? First it can be an atomic ontology, what exists is only
externally related to another object because everything that exists has a
separate existence from everything else. Or an ontology of absolute relativity,
there is nothing that exists in-itself but only in relation to another and that
one exists in relation to still another and so on and so forth, so whatever
exists, exists in relation to something else and there is nothing that has any
independent existence. The key idea here is the groundlessness of being which
Nietzsche calls the death of God. The perception of this groundlessness within
oneself constitutes our sense of self.
There are different ways to
confront this situation. One response is in accordance with Protagoras’s dictum
that man is the measure of all things - to make the finite being God. Since the
self is nothing in particular it can be everything and its will reigns supreme
so it can shape itself whichever way it likes. So, we see for instance Nietzsche’s
way was to rejoice in nothingness because it opens the way for endless
self-determination and self-determination is freedom. Nothing-ness becomes the
source of values and the source of personal transformation to an authentic
self. This is the key idea of Existentialism. The problem here is that even
though freedom is self-determination, every determination binds us to the world
and restrains us. If for instance my vocation is that of a painter that
determines my mode of being-in-the-world, I have to think and act in a certain
way to discharge my role in the world as a painter, a role that relates me not
only to a certain set of tasks incumbent on me but also puts me in relation to
others in the world. But the self is nothingness that desires to reside within
itself and no determination is adequate to nothingness because something cannot
be nothing. Something in order to be something allows determination or limits but
nothingness is absence of limits. The only way for the self to rest within
itself is by excluding every determination and every determination is a bondage
to be got rid off in order to be at home with oneself. Every determination is
not-self because the self is nothing-ness. Our predicament then is that the
self wants to express itself in the world and in this self-expression, it wants
to regain itself in the external world by finding itself outside itself as the
unity of inner-outer but self-expression demands determination or the
acceptance of limitations which to the self are bondage inhibiting
self-expression. But is this a problem? Could I not take a multiplicity of
roles discarding one after the other like different clothes that I could wear?
The metaphor about changing clothes bears the fact that every single role is
taken as external and so as disposable and so the self cannot find itself in
anything it does. The source of discomfort for the self is its inward sense of
emptiness that it simultaneously seeks to fill and retain. The inward sense of
nothingness forces it to cling to that nothingness which means that the self
has to be endlessly affirmed because it cannot be allowed to dissolve into this
nothingness but at the same time neither of these affirmations stick to the
self. It cannot be at home outside itself, it cannot be at home within itself.
Its confrontation with its own groundless-ness drives it outside but the
outside world is equally empty and so from there is returns to itself
empty-handed as before. Like in the myth of Sisyphus, the individual is forced
to take the rock to the summit of the mountain again and again without finding
a resting place. Either there is constant unrest goading the person to move
from one task to another not finding satisfaction in anything or there is the
desire to remain undisturbed within oneself where all externality is seen as a
burden or both tendencies come in conflict. The definition of freedom as
self-determination loses its meaning. This leads to a sense of purposelessness;
there is nothing one cannot do but then there is nothing to do.
These observations lead us to
another alternative which allows us to see freedom as unity of inner-outer;
being at home with oneself and outside oneself or in the unity of endowment and
achievement. Freedom consists in order not in disorder. If I have a classroom
full of students shouting at the top of their voice, the loudest noise would
win but that is not the result we are after. If we want everyone to be able to
express their opinion and the best reasoned opinion to win then everyone has to
be allowed a chance to speak in turn. Again, if freedom is self-determination, then
I am not free if influenced by an advertisement I buy things I do not need.
Freedom is not possible without order and order is impossible without goodness.
My principle of action should be within me not in external contingent factors.
My ability to recognize my own good and to act in accordance with it is my
freedom. On this alternative what is good for me cannot be bad for another and
so what is good is not perspectival but truly objective. To recognize one’s own
good and act on it is the harmony of thought and action.
How can one overcome nihilism in
the face of loss of meaning? Nihilism is an endemic condition of human being
because it is inextricably tied with the consciousness of our own finitude and
so demonstrates to us the futility of human pursuits, its goals and purposes.
Finitude, death and suffering go together and this is not because death is an
external force in the absence of which the finite being would continue forever
but to be finite is to be something that can be consumed by death; it is not
possible to be finite and deathless. It is said that we invented God in order
to deal with our mortality but while that may be true about the ideas of heaven
and hell which are based on finite continuity but it is not true of God because
the idea of God is the idea of infinity. The very consciousness of finitude is
bound up with the consciousness of infinity. We cannot arrive at the idea of
infinity in a finite number of steps that can be added indefinitely. The
indefinite is different from the infinite. The consciousness of finitude is
bound up with the consciousness of the negation of finitude and so the feeling
arises within us of there being something greater outside us. When this greater
outside us is seen as nothingness then God becomes an empty beyond that dwells
neither in man nor in the world and so God becomes finite because there is
nothing outside the infinite but God is outside man so he must be finite.
Nothingness does not dwell in anything; it is itself only by negating itself
and so we find Nagarjuna’s observation that emptiness itself is empty; it
cannot but negate itself because it is negation. Man does not find himself in
nothingness because nothingness excludes but does not include anything. But
what is infinite is capable of being everything and yet nothing in particular
because it is un-negatable. To be aware of the infinite within the finite is to
be aware that the finite being’s existence is derived from something other than
itself. Since the infinite is the source of the finite it is in the infinite
being that the finite being can find itself and be at home with itself and
since the infinite being permeates the external world one can also be in
harmony with the outside world. Our finite purposes get their meaning from
their relation to the infinite and so work becomes a mode of worship and
contemplation of God. Our purpose is to be God-like since God is our ideal or
higher self – to be God-like is both our endowment and the object of our
achievement. But this is not achieved either through running away from the
external world nor through the life of ambition but through transforming the
meaning of our ordinary activities by seeing them as ways of contemplating God
which is to become God-like by imitating him in his goodness which is achieved
through overcoming self-will. Nihilism in this way gives way to itself by first
demonstrating our own nullity and then allowing self-affirmation as the person
being a part of God.
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