Nihilism and Existentialism

[The Jay]

Can anyone who claims to be an existentialist not be a nihilist at the same time? Nihilism basically says that all moral frameworks are subjective and therefore void of much meaning. Existentialism imposes a subjective framework and elevates it to an intersubjective status. [short ramble/] Though, I suppose that if one were to be a nihilist one would realize that every framework were intersubjective in regards especially to those that claim to have an objective one. [end short ramble]. This would seem to indicate to me that to be an existentialist, being a nihilist is a pre-requisite.

I still have more reading to do on the subject, but I just wanted to see the community's thoughts on this.

[seventeethdecember2016]

I feel as though Nihilism is just a Faction of Existentialism. Just my opinion.

[JustMovement]

Yes, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky are sometimes both listed as existentialists, and they were very religious. Kierkegaard especially was concerned with "existential" questions such as the anxiety that accompanies living, the realization that we all live in despair as liberating and closer to the truth rather than the superficial acceptance of the values that society dictates (what sartre calls "bad faith").

Both Sartre and Karl Jaspers were humanists and so not nihilists and they are the big dogs of modern existentialism. heidegger can perhaps be called a nihilist, but he refused the label of existentialist.

[Decolonize The Left]

Can anyone who claims to be an existentialist not be a nihilist at the same time? Nihilism basically says that all moral frameworks are subjective and therefore void of much meaning. Existentialism imposes a subjective framework and elevates it to an intersubjective status. [short ramble/] Though, I suppose that if one were to be a nihilist one would realize that every framework were intersubjective in regards especially to those that claim to have an objective one. [end short ramble]. This would seem to indicate to me that to be an existentialist, being a nihilist is a pre-requisite.

I still have more reading to do on the subject, but I just wanted to see the community's thoughts on this.

Nihilism is a logical dead-end. It is a statement of fact without anything else: there is no inherent/absolute meaning in anything. So no one can actually be a nihilist because humans are meaning-creating creatures. Anyone who says they are a nihilist is full of shit. If you're truly a nihilist you couldn't speak for language is a set of symbols (read: basic meaning) and by using language you are entering into a relationship with others based on common meaning.

Existentialism, broadly speaking, is the most well-known secular attempt at confronting the abyss of nihilism. Rather than opt the religious route and arbitrarily posit a source of meaning (god), existentialism claims that it is up to the human animal to confront the absurd and create meaning for themselves in spite of it all.

Note here how well religion deals with nihilism, it simply side-steps the entire discussion and argues original cause. This is very effective in combating the reality of the absurd because the religious mind can always 'put it out of sight' by simply bringing the idea of god back to the fore-front. Existentialism, and the secular confrontation of the absurd, is much more difficult as (to use a common metaphor) there is no crutch of religion. Nietzsche attempted to develop an entire value-system to take the place of religion's backwards solution, but any value-system which cannot fall back on arbitrary dogma will not function as well as religion.

- August

[La Comédie Noire]

I think while they both admit the subjectivity of all ideas and therefore the meaningless of existence, Existentialism is much more optimistic in our abilities to construct our own meaning. Nihilists suffer from a severe spiritual reaction (Spiritual Diabetes) to the loss of meaning and deride all attempts to build meaning as futile and arbitrary, accusing existentialists of imposing an absolute meaning on universe which they most certainly don't.

It would be a little like not wanting to build a shelter because it would be man made and therefore not a given in the universe. It is this existential anxiety we must over come. Admittedly though, it's a little harder with more abstract concepts such as morality.

[The Jay]

Nihilism is a logical dead-end. It is a statement of fact without anything else: there is no inherent/absolute meaning in anything. So no one can actually be a nihilist because humans are meaning-creating creatures. Anyone who says they are a nihilist is full of shit. If you're truly a nihilist you couldn't speak for language is a set of symbols (read: basic meaning) and by using language you are entering into a relationship with others based on common meaning.

Existentialism, broadly speaking, is the most well-known secular attempt at confronting the abyss of nihilism. Rather than opt the religious route and arbitrarily posit a source of meaning (god), existentialism claims that it is up to the human animal to confront the absurd and create meaning for themselves in spite of it all.

Note here how well religion deals with nihilism, it simply side-steps the entire discussion and argues original cause. This is very effective in combating the reality of the absurd because the religious mind can always 'put it out of sight' by simply bringing the idea of god back to the fore-front. Existentialism, and the secular confrontation of the absurd, is much more difficult as (to use a common metaphor) there is no crutch of religion. Nietzsche attempted to develop an entire value-system to take the place of religion's backwards solution, but any value-system which cannot fall back on arbitrary dogma will not function as well as religion.

- August

I was under the impression that nihilism was simply the rejection of all objective meaning and that existentialism was working within an admittedly subjective framework. If that were the case then every existentialist would be, at the same time, a nihilist. In my understanding, your analogy of a nihilist rejecting language due to it's subjective nature is ill founded, as a nihilist would simply admit that language itself is objective.

Thanks for your response,
Liquid

[Anarpest]

I'm not sure that existentialism can be wholly associated with secularity.

Also, if theologists got over their existential concerns comfortably by mentioning the word 'god,' then they probably wouldn't have spent so much time trying to work them out, and in all likelihood existentialism wouldn't exist, or at least not have been born in the same way and form.

[The Jay]

I think while they both admit the subjectivity of all ideas and therefore the meaningless of existence, Existentialism is much more optimistic in our abilities to construct our own meaning. Nihilists suffer from a severe spiritual reaction (Spiritual Diabetes) to the loss of meaning and deride all attempts to build meaning as futile and arbitrary, accusing existentialists of imposing an absolute meaning on universe which they most certainly don't.

It would be a little like not wanting to build a shelter because it would be man made and therefore not a given in the universe. It is this existential anxiety we must over come. Admittedly though, it's a little harder with more abstract concepts such as morality.

That pretty much matches what I was trying to say, thanks.

[The Jay]

Yes, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky are sometimes both listed as existentialists, and they were very religious. Kierkegaard especially was concerned with "existential" questions such as the anxiety that accompanies living, the realization that we all live in despair as liberating and closer to the truth rather than the superficial acceptance of the values that society dictates (what sartre calls "bad faith").

Both Sartre and Karl Jaspers were humanists and so not nihilists and they are the big dogs of modern existentialism. heidegger can perhaps be called a nihilist, but he refused the label of existentialist.

Why can one not be a humanist and a nihilist? I think that this is directly related to my response to August in that I don't see nihilists as rejecting the fact that subjective morality existing.

[JustMovement]

Because with humanism you are already presupposing that there is at least one special thing in the universe, the human. Even if the universe is devoid of meaning (and by meaning I do not mean semantic meaning, which I think is causing some confusion in this discussion, the denial of semantic meaning is more a feature of post-modernism as I understand it), for the existentialist the individual is able to create his own purpose, and this is contrary to a consistent nihilism in which there is NO purpose (hence the nihil).

[black magick hustla]

Nihilism is a logical dead-end. It is a statement of fact without anything else: there is no inherent/absolute meaning in anything. So no one can actually be a nihilist because humans are meaning-creating creatures. Anyone who says they are a nihilist is full of shit. If you're truly a nihilist you couldn't speak for language is a set of symbols (read: basic meaning) and by using language you are entering into a relationship with others based on common meaning.



this is not what people mean when they call themselves nihilists today, or when they use the term nihilism. i think the more relevant definition today is that nihilism more or less means cynicism, and hedonism, or a general rejection of social expectations/mores.

[The Jay]

this is not what people mean when they call themselves nihilists today, or when they use the term nihilism. i think the more relevant definition today is that nihilism more or less means cynicism, and hedonism, or a general rejection of social expectations/mores.

That is the popular meaning of the word you're right there. That meaning, however, is not what I understand the technical philosophical meaning to be and that is the one that I am using and addressing.

[Positivist]

Nihilism and existentialism both acknowledge the absence of objective meaning in life but nihilism rejects the subjective creation of meaning while existentialism embraces it.

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Berdyaev (Orthodox Existentialist) has an interesting rejoinder to this. In general, the Russian Existentialists are among the more interesting ones. Dostoevsky's own reply to Political Nihilism (Nihilism has many flavors, mind you) in the wake of Nechaev Circle is on display in "The Possessed"/"Demons", which I would recommend reading.

Gabriel Marcel also places the primacy of experience and sensation over thought in his brand of Existentialism. He's not a Nihilist (at least in the sense I believe you're describing, you're not very specific). Avoid his plays, they're dreadful.