Nihilism comes from the Latin word nihil, meaning, nothing. Nihilism is typically defined as a belief in nothing. Depending on a person’s flavor of nihilism, nihilists don’t believe in objective morality, no good or evil. There is no objective knowledge, no truths and no falsehoods. There is no reason to even exist, because we are all going to be dead in the end. The universe is, and beyond that nothing: no order, no structure, no design, no purpose.
Arguably the best thinker on nihilism was 19th century German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, a miserably cantankorous individual, whose life was burdened by excruciating stomach and migraine pain, and who died in a madhouse unable to feed himself, said there were many different stages to nihilism, but all of them relied on a willing towards nothing.
Heidegger, Martin. “‘The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2013. Buy here!
My interpretation of Nietzsche’s aphorism “How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth.” In this aphorism, Nietzsche traces out the real/appearance distinction throughout the history of philosophy: from Plato to Nietzsche’s own mature philosophy. (view more)
Citations:
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Human All-To-Human. Buy here!
Postmodern philosophy is often misunderstood, partially because it is very nuanced, partially because they appear deliberately obscure, but often because people do not fully understand the presuppositions that postmodernists rely on, nor do they understand the critique of modernity.
In this video, I react to a video by Youtuber Ryan Chapman called “What is Postmodernism?” Chapman attempts to explain postmodernism and show its secret links to so-called Leftist identity politics.
I have also provided a plethora of citations, including the one’s Chapman uses in his video, but doesn’t provide.
Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2008. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Buy here!
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Vintage Books, 2011. Buy here!
Friedrich, Hegel Georg Wilhelm. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press, 1994. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, 2006. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Buy here!
Deere, Don T. “TRUTH.” The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon, edited by Leonard Lawlor and John Nale, Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 517–527. Buy here!
Lyotard Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Translated by Geoff Bennington, Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010. Buy here!
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Nihilism is typically defined as a belief in nothing. Depending on a person’s flavor of nihilism, nihilists don’t believe in objective morality, no good or evil. There is no objective knowledge, no truths and no falsehoods. There is no reason to even exist, because we are all going to be dead in the end. The universe is, and beyond that nothing: no order, no structure, no design, no purpose. Is it truly all for naught? Nothing matters.
Arguably the best thinker on nihilism was 19th century German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche said there were many different stages to nihilism, but all of them relied on a willing towards nothing. Nietzsche believed liberal democracies, modernity, and capitalism inaugurated a new, higher form of nihilism: Theoretical Nihilism.
Friedrich’s proclamation of the Death of God is the realization that all the highest values have been devalued.
Citations: Nietzsche, Friedrich. Untimely Meditations. Edited by Daniel Breazeale. Translated by Reginald J. Hollingdale, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Buy here!
Heidegger, Martin. “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 2004. Buy Here!
Ceika, Jonas. How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle: Nietzsche and Marx for the 21st-Century Left. Watkins Publishing, 2022. Buy Here!
These emotions or moods specifically alter our ways of interpreting the world around us. Moods attune humans to their worlds (which they are inherently a part of). Through being attuned, we are disposed to this or that way of encountering entities within-the-world. Dispositions are the state-in-which-one-is-found. Utilizing the philosophy of German Philosopher Martin Heidegger, I reflect on my own experiences—especially in the past year—of being attuned in very extreme and often destructive ways. This description of moods is existential, not categorical. Humans as both living beings, and reflective or beings-of-contemplation, are qualitatively different types of beings than inorganic entities, specifically a human’s unique temporality and interpretative possibilities. As such, human emotions must properly be viewed existentially, with these characteristics in mind.
Citations:
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, HarperPerennial/Modern Thought, New York, 2008. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Buy here!
Vandergriendt, Carly. “What’s the Difference between a Panic Attack and an Anxiety Attack?” Healthline, Healthline Media, 19 Oct. 2021.
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What if all your beliefs are actually nothing? No justification, no proof, no authority? This willing-towards-nothing is itself a nihilism. Dogmatism, religion, philosophy, all a willing-towards-nothing. Obviously, the tradition of the West doesn’t believe it’s willing towards nothingness. It fervently, without reservation, believes these values (God, the Forms, a Pure world, a world which is realer than this world of mere appearances). This nihilism is practical because it is performed through action, not reflection. Practical nihilism is a willing towards nothingness, but a nothingness that is still rich with meaning because even a willing-towards-nothing creates values. But these values, which supposedly transcend and seem above us, are nihilistic because they are profoundly anti-life.
Heidegger, Martin. “‘The Word of Nietzsche: God Is Dead.’” The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2013. Buy here!
Happy Holidays strange thinkers! Don’t forget! ALL HOLIDAYS MATTER!!! So Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Merry Festivus, Happy Kwanzaa, Get your Saturnalia on, or however your holy days self-identify. Here are books you need in your life!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 1. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Aristotle. Complete Works Part 2. Translated by Jonathan Barnes, Princeton Univ. Press, 1995. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan(New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 20-21. Buy here!
Michel Foucault, Power: (The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol. 3), trans. R. Hurley, ed. J. Faubion (New York: The New Press, 2015). Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: an Introduction. Translated by Robert J. Hurley, Vintage, 1990. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, edited by Colin Gordon, by Michel Foucault, Longman, 1980, pp. 109–133. Buy here!
Foucault, Michel. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the collège De France, 1975-76. Translated by David Macey, Picador, 2003. Buy here!
Pull Yourself Together: A True Story of Alternate Realities, Spiritual Healing, and Dimensional Wholeness. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton, Columbia University Press, 1994. Buy here!
Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Autonomedia, 2014. Buy here!
Farmer, Philip Jose. Riders of the Purple Wage. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Teh Ching 1. Translated by John C. H. Wu, Shambhala, 2003. Buy here!
Wang, Bi. The Classic of the Way and Virtue: a New Translation of the “Tao-Te Ching” of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi, translated by Richard John Lynn, by Lao Zi, Columbia University Press, 1999. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao: A New Way of Thinking: A Translation of the Tao tê Ching with an Introduction and Commentaries, translated by Chung-Yuan Chang, Singing Dragon, London, 2014. Buy here!
Laozi. Tao Te Ching a Bilingual Edition. Edited by Wang Bi. Translated by Dim Cheuk Lau, The Chinese University Press, 2001. Buy here!
Zhuang, Zhou. The Essential Writings: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Translated by Brook Ziporyn, Hackett, 2009. Buy here!
Popper, Karl Raimund. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge, 2002. Buy here!
The Ecology of Attention by Yves Citton. Buy here!
Einstein, Albert. Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition by Albert Einstein. Translated by Robert W. Lawson, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1961. Buy here!
Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature, Barnes & Noble, New York, NY, 2005. Buy here!
Schulman, Sarah. Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017. Buy here!
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson, Columbia University Press, 1986. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, translated by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1974. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. Translated by Walter Kaufman, The Viking Press, 1966. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann, Vintage Books, New York, 1989. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. Translated by Reginald John Hollingdale, Penguin Books, 2003. Buy here!
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. Hackett Pub. Co, 2009. Buy here!
Singal, Jesse. The Quick Fix Why Fad Psychology Can’t Cure Our Social Ills, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2021. Buy here!
