Neither desperate, nor depressed, nor terrorists: nihilism is not what you have been told

A broken shell.CS0523183 (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A fairly neutral definition, but one that for that very reason allows us to fit into it almost all the forms of nihilism that have ever been considered, I would say that this current is something like the following: "Nihilism is the loss of confidence in anything from which absolute values ​​could emanate, above all moral or existential values, that is, values ​​that give meaning to our existence”.

A way to further summarize this definition would say that nihilism consists in believing that existence is meaningless.

Of course, nihilism does not consist in "believing in nothing", nor even in "believing that everything is nothing" (although some people, I don't quite understand why, can actually believe such an absurd thesis, and there is no problem in calling them nihilists as well), but rather consists in not believing in anything, well understood that the "beliefs" to which these definitions refer are not of the type "I think I have entered the mobile password wrong", Rather, it is above all moral beliefs, beliefs about what gives meaning to our lives and to human history.

In other words, nihilism consists in the belief that nothing has absolute value (that is,

there is nothing that has absolute value).

What nihilism does not consist of is the belief that "the only thing that has absolute value is nothingness", or something like that, since as perceptive nihilists we know perfectly well that there is nothing that is "nothingness".

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The history of Western thought has been preparing the way, over two millennia, so that it ends up being quite reasonable to conclude that nihilism is not something completely crazy.

Specific beliefs that were traditionally hoped to provide a more solid foundation for the values ​​that were intended to give meaning to life can be annihilated with relative ease.

So no one can be surprised that nihilism is a way of thinking, and even a vital attitude, very present in our society, heir to the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and the scientific revolution, and which has already seen too many wars. world events and social conflicts of all kinds.

Now, the fact that nihilism, as we have just defined it, has ended up being something like the "default way of thinking" of our time does not imply, far from it, that many people are consciously nihilistic.

On the contrary, most are still pretty convinced that some stocks are robust, consistent, and vigorous.

And, of course, it is precisely for this reason that it still makes some sense to write an invitation to nihilism.

(...) Most of the times that you see that "the nihilism of our time" is criticized, the things that you see that are criticized (leading an inauthentic life, not having an enriching job or leisure, not learning to think critically at school, being hooked on screens, not having the illusion of living,

Another radically naive conception of nihilism, this one perhaps not so present in the philosophical writings on the subject (although in part as well), but more influential in what we could call "the cultural vision of nihilism", that is, the image that is usually made an ordinary person of something or someone they call a "nihilist."

The following phrase from the philosopher Nolen Gertz sums up this naive description well: "Nihilism is the ability to enjoy a glass of wine while watching the world burn."

This idea that nihilists somehow enjoy violence and destruction stems not only from the misconception that nihilists "worship nothing," but also from the association of old 19th-century Russian nihilism with the typical violent practices of some anarchist groups.

Nobody seems more nihilistic to us than a suicide bomber, for example, and that's not to mention the villains of superhero movies.

After all, doesn't nihilism precisely seek the annihilation of everything?

(We insist: no).

Related to this is the old fear that "if God does not exist, everything is permitted", to use Dostoyevsky's famous phrase in the novel

.

This is a fallacy because supposedly non-nihilistic societies have always found plenty of excuses for harmful behaviors and the most appalling cruelty to abound without limit: throughout history, the belief in “supreme values” has tended to be, much more often than the lack of such faith, a perfect justification for wickedness.

On the other hand, and more important for our matter, rejecting the supposed “supreme values” does not at all imply adopting the contrary values.

Thinking that loving your peers is not an intrinsic moral mandate ordained by God himself does not logically imply that one has to hate his peers.

The second simply does not follow from the first.

After all, perhaps one has other types of reasons to be respectful of others, reasons that are not based on a metaphysical conception of the meaning of existence.

And reasons that, moreover, may be much more effective in leading us to conduct consistent with those values ​​than religious commandments have used to be.

Nihilism, therefore, does not seek something like "the destruction of everything in general, and of everything valuable in particular",

Nor is it true that the nihilist must inevitably be a desperate and depressed person, constantly anguished by the idea that nothing makes sense.

Actually, nihilists do not think that everything is meaningless.

There are lots of things that make a lot of sense.

For example, it makes all the sense in the world that dictionaries are arranged alphabetically, it makes all the sense in the world that we bathe at the beach much more frequently in summer than in winter, or that we put our socks inside our shoes and not outside.

What we nihilists think does not make sense is existence (that of each person and that of the world in general).

But that shouldn't bring us one inch closer to despair, because we also thought it was unreasonable to expect existence to have meaning.

Jesús Zamora Bonilla

(Madrid, 1963) is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UNED, and Dean of its Faculty of Philosophy.

This excerpt is a preview of his book

, which the Deusto editorial publishes on February 1st. 

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