Anyone who has struggled with existential issues has probably bumped into the problem of nihilism, a philosophy that seems to influence so much these days. Nihilism comes in many forms, but on a zoomed-out level, it more or less states this: against the infinity of the cosmos and the absurd nature of human life, there is no intrinsic meaning or value to be found.
People have various reactions to that claim, ranging from an instinctive flinch away to a full-on agreement. But both ignoring nihilism and succumbing to it are bad solutions. The better path is to fully contend with nihilism—to intellectually give it its due—with the goal of overcoming it and connecting to a deeper instinct of meaning.
Nihilism and Camus’s Question
There is no question that a huge portion of life contains darkness—everyone faces death, suffering, and malevolence. Philosophers like Camus described the human condition as being absurd, going so far as to say the fundamental philosophical question was suicide:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”
Albert Camus, the myth of sisyphus
That is quite the intense framing, but it cuts right to the core of whether life has meaning, or at least enough to balance the darkness. Many people answer such a question by believing in an eternalist philosophy. Whether through a God, a cosmic plan, or some other abstraction, they make meaning definite by removing it from the unreliable subjectivity of humans.
Others avoid truly questioning the meaning of life through distraction and pretense, tacitly ignoring questions about life, suffering, and meaning. And to be fair, it’s not easy to honestly contend with the dark side of the human condition, especially without some kind of grounding in religion or eternalism. In that case, pulling at the thread of meaning is risky—if the whole thing unravels, you’re left with suffering and meaninglessness.
But can we really avoid Camus’s question? It might feel better in the short term to ignore questions about absurdity and meaning in life or to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. But in my view, we ignore wrestling with nihilism at our own risk, as the nihilistic chickens usually come home to roost.
The Prickly Intellect
Opposite those that ignore the darkness are the “intellectually rigorous” people that take pride in honestly admitting to it. When faced with the question “why is there meaning to human life?”, they stare into the abyss of infinite regression and realize that only a religious answer can create axiomatic meaning. So for them, the only intellectually rigorous conclusion is that there is no inherent meaning to life—many find a sense of comfort in the honesty and consistency of this nihilistic conclusion.
And as we argued in our podcast episode on nihilism and the meaning crisis, an honest person should struggle with nihilism because it gets certain things right. In its cosmic, existential, and moral manifestations, nihilism has valid concerns that you should not carelessly toss aside. One should engage with nihilism and struggle with its arguments, but with a catch: you should do so with the goal of overcoming it, of finding a deeper and more sustaining sense of meaning in the process.
Because at the end of the day—and no matter what nihilism gets right—it seems like suffering only gets worse when nihilistic philosophies propagate. Nihilism might be more intellectually consistent, but perhaps the intellect should not be the only source of truth. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass said, “the intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master”.
So this article will briefly explore the history and philosophy of nihilism along with how it manifests in today’s society. Following that, it will explore ways to define meaning outside of the religious framework, a meaning that can help you overcome nihilism in an honest and durable way.
What Is Nihilism?
Nihilism, coming from the Latin nihil (meaning nothing), is the philosophy asserting that there is no basis for values and meaning in life. The term became widely popular after its use in Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel Father and Sons, and it represented a kind of radical skepticism towards epistemology. If there is no God to give meaning to things, how can we be sure about knowing anything? You can find the same Latin root in the word “annihilate” which helps explain nihilism’s influence on anarchist political groups and revolutionary movements.
For some, annihilation meant terrorism and violent revolution. But the annihilation aspect of nihilism need not be physical—it could also mean extreme skepticism towards knowledge and values. This epistemological nihilism annihilates knowledge structures by pointing out that knowledge and truth have no fundamental grounding—nothing stops you from infinitely asking the question “but why is that true?”. It is reflected in a lot of postmodern philosophies popular today.
But the skepticism inside of nihilism has a long history, one that particularly synced up with the Englightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Enlightenment concepts and scientific thinking led human beings to question everything, including the fundamental axioms of their culture. Besides epistemology, other popular branches of nihilism include political, moral, and cosmic.
But probably the most common and encompassing definition of nihilism—and the one most relevant to our personal psychology—is existential nihilism.
Existential Nihilism
Existential nihilism asserts that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. It overlaps with cosmic nihilism in pointing out the lack of purpose in the entire cosmos, but existentialist thinkers focused on the human condition and the existential anxiety we feel in our search for meaning and purpose.
And the absurd nature of existential nihilism is that even in a meaningless world, humans still search for meaning. Even those that have discovered the absurdity still can’t help but desire meaning and purpose. Some of my favorite television shows like Bojack Horseman, Rick and Morty, and Mad Men explore this tension beautifully.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Nihilism
“What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; ‘why?’ finds no answer.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Nihilism has a strong connection to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In his 1901 work The Will To Power, he warned of the advent of nihilism and the catastrophe that the European culture would encounter because of it. The highest values of the human intellect, in seeking truth and questioning everything, would end up destroying the possibility of value itself.
In Nietzsche’s words, people would discover that there was no “true world” in which to ground any truth claims. This discovery is the endpoint of the extreme skepticism that annihilates knowledge and values. Some cosmic versions of nihilism are passive, but for Nietzsche, this destruction was an active part of nihilism: “nihilism…is not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plow; one destroys.”
When you devalue the foundation from which all other values are rooted, nihilism emerges as the only honest way to view the world. In this view, no value system has a legitimate basis for existing since the foundation of any such system is arbitrary.
Nietzsche’s Solution
Despite his grim diagnosis, Nietzsche did not think of nihilism as an endpoint, and like many existential philosophers, he struggled with how to overcome it. To that end, Nietzsche spoke about becoming unique individuals who create values for themselves:
“We, however, want to become those we are – human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Nietzsche seemed to believe that we could find meaning within ourselves by aiming at our unique potential. He said that people “fear their higher self because, when it speaks, it speaks demandingly”. But if we have the courage to listen to this higher voice, perhaps it is possible to develop maximally into who we could be. And perhaps this aim creates enough meaning to challenge nihilism.1
Amor Fati
Besides ideas of becoming our unique higher selves, Nietzsche also embraced Amor Fati, the concept of accepting suffering and loving fate. It is an idea that was central to Stoicism, and Nietzsche summed it up as follows:
“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
I think amor fati goes a long way towards embracing life and avoiding negative emotions like resentment that can tempt one towards nihilism.
Contending with Nihilism
“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
Albert Camus
I think at one or more points in life, we must all confront the problem of nihilism. And how you approach that confrontation will largely affect the philosophy of life you end up building for yourself.
Embracing nihilism furthers the kind of destruction that Nietzsche warned about. And from what I can tell, ignoring it only pushes those thoughts into the shadows of the mind where they can more deceptively influence behavior.
Embracing Nihilism
You can embrace nihilism actively and passively, and both lead to problems. Passive nihilism is more of the cosmic nihilism gestured at by writers like Kurt Vonnegut—”we are just here to fart around”—and by shows like Rick and Morty.
Passive nihilists do not wish for destruction, but they also struggle to build a proper argument against nihilism. Looking back on my younger self, I could express my passive nihilism as a “what human concerns really matter in this giant universe” kind of attitude. And knowing some astrophysics about the eventual heat death of the universe did not help…
Passive nihilism might be less destructive, and its honesty towards the dark aspects of life can be weirdly comforting. But it created resistance against self-improvement, and as I aged, the comfort was slowly replaced with a sense of existential anxiety.
Active Nihilism
Active nihilism means you actually follow through on the logic of the philosophy to varying degrees. When taken to its extreme, the active nihilist might be resentful towards Being itself—they believe it would be better if nobody existed.2
For most, active nihilism fuels one to question all truth claims with prickly intellectual methods that make everything relative—a “there is no absolute truth” kind of philosophy. Skepticism can be healthy, but the nihilist’s extreme skepticism/relativism can be too easily used to justify immoral behavior.
To use the metaphor of a house, relativists point out that where you put the ground floor—your culture’s axioms—is arbitrary. Adherents to Michel Foucault and other postmodernist thinkers, in claiming that you cannot separate knowledge and power, would say that the ground-floor axioms of knowledge are mostly about those in power maintaining control over others.
There are some legitimate aspects to that way of thinking, but claiming that knowledge is either arbitrary or fundamentally about power misses the most crucial aspect of our reality: either Being continues or it doesn’t—either the house collapses or it doesn’t. So while it is true that you theoretically can put the ground floor of a house anywhere you want, houses built on firm bedrock with a high bearing capacity are more stable than those built on flimsy soil. And the same logic holds true for axiomatic claims and their load-bearing ability to sustain civilization.
But the active nihilism I observe today does not seem to care about how durable the house is, so to speak. It questions and destroys cultural norms and values without concern, perhaps even with a malicious delight. This overly active skepticism—”putting one’s shoulder to the plow” in Nietzsche’s words—destroys value after value without knowing (or maybe even caring) whether human societies can survive the absence of certain load-bearing values.
Certain cultural norms and truths should be questioned and destroyed, but I do not think that relativism and nihilism can ever be proper justifications. And the irony that living by an absolute truth of “there is no absolute truth” seems lost on the relativistic nihilists.
Being
“The knowledge that nothing matters, while accurate, gets you nowhere.”
Dan Harmon
For me, overcoming nihilism comes down to one fundamental assumption that we can find deep within ourselves: Being is good. The light of human consciousness is a mystery and a miracle, and to let that miracle succumb to the darkness would be a tragedy. But since life is filled with suffering and tragedy, we need meaningful reasons to sustain ourselves and our species.
So if we need to believe in meaning to sustain Being, then we should make it our life’s mission to continually seek it—that is justifiable bedrock for me. This kind of meaning, grounded in the belief of Being, does not come from outside ideologies or intellectually clever arguments, but from deep within.
Is Nihilism on the Rise?
Trying to empirically figure out if nihilism is on the rise goes beyond the scope of this article, but I do want to briefly comment on my motivation for writing on this topic. In my experience over the last few years, I began suspecting an implicit/passive nihilism influencing many people’s behavior. It is reflected academically in the postmodern traditions and culturally in the popular political ideologies that casually destroy long-held Western values—Chesterton’s Fence is relevant here.
Changing outdated, non-inclusive, and unfair cultural norms is important for progress. But it is also important to do so thoughtfully, humbly, and with a guiding motivation that Being is good—that we should continue the miracle of human consciousness. I think ideology is dangerous wherever it comes from on the political spectrum, but it is many of the leftist/social justice ideologies that seem to flirt with nihilism these days. While these ideologies claim to be guided by virtue and compassion, under the surface it seems like there is implicit anger, resentment, and even sometimes a nihilistic urge to destroy.
One hypothesis would be that failing to consciously contend with nihilism pushes it into our subconscious, where it can influence our behavior in more deceptive ways. Another hypothesis is that the anxiety of nihilism causes many minds to implicitly seek out its opposite: dogmatic ideology and totalitarian certainty. That second hypothesis explains why many political movements have taken on religious fervor.
I frankly do not know what is going on, and my opinions on this topic are still fairly open and curious. But my instinct tells me that the dogmatic and righteous-sounding ideologies popular today have something to do with nihilism. For some, the ideology might be a cover story for their urge to destroy. But the majority might not realize how self-destructive certain philosophies are—they believe the label on the ideology box without knowing what is inside. Whatever is happening is above my understanding, but my instinct detects growing nihilistic darkness in our societies.
The image of the ouroboros at the top of this article—the mythical serpent that destroys itself—reflects the infinite regression of nihilistic skepticism combined with the desire to destroy, even if subconscious.
Finding the Meaning of Meaning
“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
On the one hand, choosing meaning over nihilism has an easy explanation: nihilism does not help you deal with the suffering in life. It either has no effect on suffering and tragedy or more likely, makes them worse. So for me, the intellectual reason for choosing meaning rests on the assumption that Being is good and that reducing suffering is also good.
But to understand what meaning is, I think we must move beyond the intellect. The intellect craves precision and consistency, but for me, meaning is an instinct that comes from non-intellectual parts of myself, including the body.
What Is Meaning?
The prickly skepticism inside of nihilism wants to prove that meaning is empty if you cannot precisely define it. The intellect seeks to understand the world by boxing things into neat categories, especially when language is involved. A precise definition is great at telling you what something is, but to box something in is also to box it out. When you give something too precise a definition, you box it out of all the other possible manifestations.
And some words are too deep to be precisely one thing. We can still use the word, but we should know that the word is merely a label for an experience. It gestures at a concept that originates from places deeper than the intellect, including the body. The body is our primary connection to the world, and its signals are more honest than the deceptive nature of words and intellectual prickliness.
Our ancestors connected to meaning and Being through their bodies long before language existed, as did we during development. As Iain McGilchrist says in his book about our divided brain structure:
“The very words which form the building blocks of explicit thought are themselves all originally metaphors, grounded in the human body and its experience”
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
So if epistemological nihilism would assert that there is no ultimate meaning because all explicit knowledge must be defined in relation to other knowledge—like defining words with other words—then a good retort is that we can ground meaning in the human body and its experience.
To find meaning, then, we should not be tempted by the intellect to think of ourselves as abstract biological machines that happen to have an intellect. We are instead an embodied consciousness, and it is okay to be guided by the deeper embodied instinct towards meaning.
Meaning Is Surrender
“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”
Carl Jung
Another way to express meaning is to say that meaning is surrender, specifically surrender of the intellect. Meaning created by the intellect is misguided, and it tends to flirt with dogma and ideology. But the sense of meaning that comes primarily from our bodies is deeper and implicit. It manifests itself to us from outside of our conscious awareness, such as when something triggers goosebumps or tears. Meaningful signals from the body also convince me in crucial moments that love is a deeper value than anything else, even truth.
To believe in meaning, therefore, is to surrender to the signals of meaning that come from our entire nervous system. The instinct for meaning might be an evolutionarily adaptive guiding system that kept our ancestors properly oriented. In this evolutionary view, the instinct to do meaningful things, something we feel rather than think, might be what keeps us on a balanced path that sustains Being.
Meaning Is Pointing
For those whose intellect is still holding on, there is one other concept that might help you choose meaning over nihilism. I first encountered it in Kevin Simler’s article titled A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning, which tries to more explicitly define meaning.
After similarly describing the implicit sense of meaning outlined above—meaning as a bodily feeling/perception—Simler tries to more precisely define meaning to be pointing:
“A thing X will be perceived as meaningful in context C to the extent that it’s connected to other meaningful things in C.”
In this formulation, meaning is all about connectedness. Something is meaningful if other meaningful things depend on it. Your life has meaning because other meaningful people and things depend on you. And in such an environment filled with meaning, having more connections pointing outward makes your life more meaningful.
This meaning-as-pointing concept is a narrative tool used in many movies, perhaps most famously in It’s a Wonderful Life. In it, we understand the interconnectedness of meaning by observing the effects of removing points from the meaning web.
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”
This conceptualization does not solve the infinite regression problem—you still have to assume some inherent meaning somewhere to get the meaning web up and running. But for me, appreciating this interconnectedness makes life more meaningful, and it’s far better than focusing on the dark abyss.
Nihilism: Brilliant Outrage
“Famously, there’s not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It’s not progressing toward anything, it’s a statement of outrage, however brilliant”
Alan Moore
The intellectual arguments for nihilism are strong, and emotions of fatigue and resentment towards life can make it all the more tempting. Especially if we think belief in some eternal/religious entity is the only alternative, nihilism appears to at least come with some intellectual honesty and consistency.
But I think the nihilist/eternalist dichotomy is false, and it is okay to find yourself somewhere in between those two poles. You can contend with nihilism and understand where it’s right without becoming a nihilist, and you can also connect to a more nebulous and mysterious source of meaning without being religious. Staying on a middle path like this creates a true-to-yourself meaning, one that will make you less tempted by the comfort of dogmatism or ideology.
To be clear, I am not pretending to have solved the meaning crisis by intellectually beating nihilism’s arguments. I am purposefully bypassing the intellect to ground meaning in personal experience. The nihilist might call this an intellectual foul that in no way proves an objective or ultimate case for meaning. But when you compare such intellectual skepticism with the undeniable meaning of things like crying at a wedding, crying at a funeral, getting goosebumps at the climax of a symphony, holding a baby, having an uncontrollable belly laugh with someone you love, wistfully reminiscing about a cherished memory—the list could go on and on—the prickly/brilliantly sharp arguments for nihilism seem pathetically small.
So don’t be afraid of nihilism—contend with it and intellectually understand it. But to overcome it, surrender your intellect, go home to your body, and connect to the obvious truth of meaning.
