What do nihilists believe

What do nihilists deny? See Oxford for a brief description of nihilism. Pecorino All Rights reserved. Section 6. Return to: Table of Contents for the Online Textbook. The cynic would prefer to remain dubious than risk being duped, and thus the cynic sees those who do take such risks as dupes.

For this reason the cynic is able to reveal the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of cynicism, much like how the pessimist reveals the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of pessimism. Once appeased, Thrasymachus defines justice as a trick invented by the strong in order to take advantage of the weak, as a way for the strong to seize power by manipulating society into believing that obedience is justice.

Thrasymachus further argues that whenever possible people do what is unjust, except when they are too afraid of being caught and punished, and thus Thrasymachus concludes that injustice is better than justice. Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of being naive and argues that Socrates is like a sheep who thinks the shepherd who protects and feeds the sheep does so because the shepherd is good rather than realizing that the shepherd is fattening them for the slaughter.

Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. Here we can see that nihilism is actually much more closely related to idealism than to cynicism.

The cynic presents himself or herself as a realist, as someone who cares about actions, not intentions, who focuses on what people do rather than on what people hope to achieve, who remembers the failed promises of the past in order to avoid being swept up in the not-yet-failed promises about the future.

The idealist, however, rejects cynicism as hopelessly negative. By focusing on intentions, on hopes, and on the future, the idealist is able to provide a positive vision to oppose the negativity of the cynic.

But in rejecting cynicism, does the idealist also reject reality? These ideas may form a coherent logical story about reality, but that in no way guarantees that the ideas are anything more than just a story. As the idealist focuses more and more on how reality ought to be , the idealist becomes less and less concerned with how reality is.

The utopian views of the idealist may be more compelling than the dystopian views of the cynic, but dystopian views are at least focused on this world , whereas utopian views are, by definition, focused on a world that does not exist. It is for this reason that to use other-worldly idealism to refute this-worldly cynicism is to engage in nihilism. Along with pessimism and cynicism, nihilism is also frequently associated with apathy. To be apathetic is to be without pathos, to be without feeling, to be without desire.

To be apathetic is thus to be seen as not caring about anything. The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing. In other words, apathy is seen as nihilism. But apathy is not nihilism.

However, in either case the apathetic individual is expressing a personal feeling or, to be more precise, feelinglessness and is not making a claim about how everyone should feel or, again, not feel. The apathetic individual understands perfectly well that other people feel differently insofar as they feel anything at all.

And because the apathetic individual feels nothing, the apathetic individual does not feel any desire to convince others that they should similarly feel nothing. Others may care, but the apathetic individual does not, and because they do not care, the apathetic individual does not care that others care.

Yet apathy is still often seen as an affront, as an insult, as a rebuke by those who do care. JANE: It really makes you think.

Thanks a lot. JANE: No! Now this guy died and it makes me think and that hurts my little head and makes me stop smiling. So, tell me how you cope with thinking all the time, Daria, until I can get back to my normal vegetable state. So why have you been avoiding me? The apathetic individual can thus, like the pessimist and the cynic, reveal the nihilism of others, though, unlike the pessimist and the cynic, the apathetic individual does this without actually trying to.

Whereas the pessimist and the cynic challenge others to explain their lack of either pessimism or cynicism, the apathetic individual is instead the one who is challenged, challenged by others to explain his or her lack of pathos. In trying to get the apathetic individual to care, the person who does care is forced to explain why he or she cares, an explanation which can reveal just how meaningful or meaningless is the reason the person has for caring.

However, not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings. And indeed it is because the nihilist is able to have such strong feelings, strong feelings for something that is nothing, that the nihilist is not and cannot be apathetic. White Privilege and Racial Injustice. Freedom and Free Markets. Religion and the Art of Living. Nations and Borders. The Divine Shape Shifter. Sartre's Existentialism. Life and Death in Prison.

The Examined Year: - Uncut. Good, Evil, and the Divine Plan. Two Concepts of Safe Space. Self and Self-Presentation. Gun violence, advocacy, and the NRA. Perception, Memory, and Justice. The Demands of Morality. Will Innovation Kill Us? A Nietzschean Defense of Ben Carson. Collective Immortality: Living on Through Others. What is Cultural Appropriation? The Logic of Regret. Social media, knowledge of others, and self-knoweldge. Bioethics — Myths and Realities.

Dance as a Way of Knowing. Technological Immortality. What is a Culture of Victimhood? The Changing Face of Feminism. Ashley Madison, accommodation, and silencing. The Ethics of Drone Warfare. Has Science Replaced Philosophy? Education and the Culture Wars. Are Some People Better than Others? The Last "Universal Genius".

The Fine-Tuning Argument for God. Does Science Advance? The Power and Perils of Satire. Does Neuroscience Threaten Free Will? The Ethics of Whistleblowing. Science and Politics: Friends or Foes? The Paradoxes of Ideology. Why Propaganda Matters. Unconditional Love. When Democracies Torture. The Bone that Changed China.

A new multi-level hierarchy of ethics and morality. The Nature of Wilderness. The McDonalds-ification of Education. Democracy in Crisis. Forbidden Words. Ethical Relativism. Disorders of the Mind - The Philosophy of Psychiatry. The More Good the Better? Camus and Absurdity. The Evolution of Storytelling. Political Activism in the Digital Age. The Psychology of Climate Change Denial. Regulating Bodies. Food Justice. Could Race be in Your Genes? Categorizing Humans. December The Sex Trade.

Violating the Humanity of Others. Gut Feelings. Immortality: Hume and Boswell. The Moral Costs of Climate Change. Transformative Experiences. Identities Lost and Found in a Global Age. Intuitions Are a Guide to…Look Here! The Fairness Fixation. Philosophy as Therapy. Freedom, Blame, and Resentment. Corporations and the Future of Democracy. Second-Guessing Ourselves. Babies and the Birth of Morality. Neuroscience and the Law. Is Intuition a Guide to Truth?

Remixing Reality: Art and Literature for the 21st Century. The Race Delusion. Privacy and The New Surveillance Society. Tainted by the Sins of Our Fathers? Anatomy of a Terrorist. The Problem of Other Minds. Being Human is Like Being Here.

The Reality of Time. The Metaphysics of Color. Risk and Rationality. Conspiracy Theories. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Acting Together. Science and Gender. Inspiration for Evil. The Legacy of Freud.

Memory and the Self. Moral Luck. An Anti-Determinist Argument. Confessions of a Conflicted Carnivore. The Ethics of Soda. Tennis as a Way of Knowing. A New Wrinkle on an Old Problem. The Dark Side of Science. Latin-American Philosophy. Diogenes the Cynic. Richard Fletcher, Historian. My Discovery of the X-Files. Science, Philosophy, and Theology. The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Teaching Philosophy. What is philosophy? The Psychology of Partisan Politics. The Self. The Linguistics of Name Calling.

December Turbo-charging the Mind. How Fiction Shapes Us. Economics: Cult or Science? Mind Reading. Poetry As a Way of Knowing. Epicurus and the Good Life. On Being Normal. The Dionysus Awards. Black Solidarity. The Right to Privacy. Philosophy in Fiction. Is Democracy a Universal Value? The Examined Year: December Nihilism and Meaning. What would Jesus do? A Blog for Christmas. Is it wrong to wreck the earth?

To Forgive and Forget. The Military: What is it Good for? Is Nothing Sacred Anymore? Thinking Inside the Box. Cooperation and Conflict. From the Minds of Babies. Morality and the Self. War, Sacrifice, and the Media. Deconstructing the College Admissions Rat Race.

Schizophrenia and the mind. Health Care — is it a right or a privilege. Time, Space, and Quantum Mechanics. The State of Public Philosophy. Philosophy and Everyday Life. What Are Words Worth? Atheism and the Well-Lived Life. Lincoln as a Philosopher. The Language of Responsibility. Gay Pride and Prejudice. Summer Reading The Prison System.

Beliefs Gone Wild. Cities, Gentrification, and Inequality. Should Marriage Be Abolished? The Extended Mind. What is an adult? Social Networking. Is it All Just Relative? Free Will. John Locke. A dialogue on Biracial Identity.

Different Cultures, Different Selves. Derrida and Deconstruction. The Moral Costs of Markets. December The Philosophy of History. Nominations open for the Third Annual Dionysus Awards!

Children as Philosophers. The Power of Thought. Reading, Narrative, and the Self. Civil Disobedience. Levels of Reality. The Idea of a University. Comments Will be Moderated, beginning immediately. The Occult Philosophy. Bargaining with the devil. Digital Selves. The terror of death, and how to overcome it.

Gandhi as Philosopher. Philosophy for the Young: Corrupting or Empowering? Self Deception. Bodies for Sale.

William James. William James and the Squirrel Example. Social Reality. The Irrationality of Human Decision Making. Rawls on Justice. Democracy and the Press.

What are Human Rights? Corporations as Persons. Psychological vs. Biological Altruism. Hannah Arendt. Culture and Mental Illness. Faces, Feelings and Lies. The Ethics of Torture. On Being a Wife.

What is a Wife? Food and Philosophy: Live at the Marsh. Science and Pseudo-science. What is Normal. Infinity: A Dialogue. The Second Annual Dionysus Awards.

New Blog Policy. The Philosophical Legacy of Charles Darwin. Does Postmodernism Mean Moral Relativism? Am I a Postmodernist. Work and the Self. Comment on Pornography by Rae Langton. Pornography: Open Thread. Philosophical Wife Swapping. Two Skeptical Arguments. The Place of Scepticism and Sceptical Arguments. Thoughts on the Reader. The Dionysus Awards: Join in the Fun. Philosophy Talk and the Paradoxical Facebook Contest. The First Annual Dionysus Awards.

Philosophy and history. December Rawls. Welcome Valley Public Radio Listeners. Why not buy and sell kidneys? Legal Ethics. Emergence: Live Blogging. Separation of Powers and the Charismatic Presidency. Dualism Strikes Back? More on the Luck of the Draw. The Luck of the Draw: Live Blogging! Philosophy and Film: Live Blogging. Open Thread on Apologies. Saint Augustine. Why Music Matters: Open Thread! December Rename that Radio Show??

Political Correctness and the Speech Fashion War. What We've Been Up To, lately! Poetry, Philosophy, Truth. Why we Charge for Downloads. Suscribe to the Phiosophy Talk Download Service!! Playful Intentions and the Problem of the Hypno-Flirt. Flirting as a two-step dance. Where Does Morality Come From? Check us out Wednesday and Thursday in Portland. What's on your Summer Reading list?

Science, Censorship and Subsidy. Sixty-Seconds -- Really? Journalistic Ethics? A Philosophical Shout Out. Wanting More Life. Why I am not a Wittgensteinian. Democracy and the Judiciary. Truth and Bullshit.

American Pragmatism. November Children as a Philosophical Problem. Clayton's Afterthoughts. Music, Meaning, and Emotion. The Future of Philosophy. Why I am not a Stoic! Philosophy Talk Moves to Sunday. Odds and Ends. What the Imagination is For. My summer reading. Does Truth Matter? We need your help! Educated Insolence. Not so deep thoughts about humor.

Thoughts on the Doubling of Consciousness. Legislating Values: A Reprise. Science: The Big Kahuna. The Best of Philosophy Talk Podcast. God, Design and Science. December God had a Technical Difficulty. Why Believe or Disbelieve in God? The Dark Allure of Idealism. Storytelling Creatures. What's to be Done? Fiction and Imaginative Resistance. Fiction and Belief. Backstage Live with Philosophy Talk. The Costs of War. The Language of Politics.

Saints, Heroes, and Schmucks Like Me. Was Lance Armstrong Self-Deceived? Emotions, Judgments, and Mattering. Self-Deception and Moral Dilemmas. Greetings from Down Under! Improving the World vs Improving my Country. Negotiating Identities: The Crash Solution.

Intergenerational Obligations and the Rope of Lives. Evolutionary Psychology: A Defense -- Sort of! Sex, Prostitution, and Well-lived Lives. Confucianism: Intelligent kindness. Kjellberg to Guest Blog. Forgiveness Deserved, not Demanded. Forgiveness - the discussion continued Griswold to Guest Blog on Forgiveness. How to be a Relativist. Propaganda and the Human Mind. Do Genes Make the Person? Philosophers' Carnival, Number Twelve. Naturalism and Value.

Skin, Deep. Steroids and Baseball. Meaning from Meaninglessness. Earlier Birth and Later Death. Schopenhauer and Prozac. Mohan's Question. Did I Cheat? Freedom, Responsibility and Martian Anthropology.