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The Origins and Trajectory of Nihilism
Nov. 28th, 2020 05:06 pmFor now, we can define nihilism quite simply: nihilism is a philosophy or way of life which asserts that a central element of human life does not exist. These could include knowledge, morality, meaning, justice, among other things. For now, although quite broad, this definition will do; more useful than a definition here is a concrete example of nihilism.
I'm in the process of reading the book After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, and one of the central events chronicled in the book represented the development of a particular form of nihilism. That moment is when Kierkegaard presented the arguments in Enten-Eller (Either/Or) that there can be no justification for being virtuous for someone who has not already chosen to be so. This moment marks the evolution of an extreme form of moral nihilism: for asserting that there can be no justification for morality outside of the moral system itself is to admit to two crucial things: the first is that it's possible to step outside of the moral system in question; the second is that from this vantage point, morality has no justification. The moment that both of these points are accepted, no arguments can save the particular moral system: it has just been demonstrated that for those who don't find it persuasive, there is nothing which can be said to persuade them of its truth, or utility. Since if any particular moral system lacks any justification, it logically follows that there is no reason to view it as binding upon human beings, this assertion transforms the moral system into mere fashion.
By removing any binding element to morality, even for the adherents to a moral code, Kierkegaard demonstrated that morality cannot exist. This is a profoundly nihilistic viewpoint to adopt, but crucially there was no way for Kierkegaard to escape the conclusion that this in fact was the case. By the time Enten-Eller was published in 1843, it had been demonstrated quite conclusively that there could be no justification of the European moral system which existed at the time from outside of itself. Furthermore, at this point in time, there was a growing amount of intellectual territory which sat outside of the moral system: the scientific method and various intellectual developments of the last few centuries had created a distinction between facts and values, and obliterated the basis upon which the moral system of Christian Europe were created, sustained, and Kierkegaard simply realized what had happened.
Looking back on it in hindsight, it may seem incredible that no one had noticed this, but human societies are always contradictory and incoherent. Societies are never going to be any more coherent than the people who make them up, and human beings are never fully coherent. We are always a mess of contradictions and incoherence, although just as some times and places are more or less coherent, some people are more or less coherent. However, even the most coherent of us are at least somewhat contradictory, and so societies are always a mess of contradictions and incoherence. Kierkegaard's logic merely addressed one of those elements of society which had grown incoherent.
There are three reasons why I chose this example: the first is that its timing suggests the evolution of the society centred in Western Europe and her colonies in eastern North America is independent of the temporary planets, and was disrupted as much as any other culture's trajectory through time, a point which is well worth noting. The second reason is that the developments which emerged out this powerfully shaped morality in the Modern Era, and we will be exploring that in the future. The third reason is that this claim is ideal as a case study for the claim emerged in the typical social context which breads nihilism; and it exemplifies within itself the reason that nihilism is always a self-limiting phenomena. Let's look at the second element first, and discuss the way that nihilism always eliminates itself. The reason can be stated quite simply: in practice nihilism involves refusing to make a choice. The claim that morality can't be justified is a nihilistic claim, but a nihilist must either stick with the old moral code, or choose to reject it. There is no way to avoid making a choice, and human nature being what it is, the choice that morality doesn't exist will never be a popular one.
Most human beings dislike nihilism, and so there are at least two responses to this: the first is to attempt to find a way to save the existing system. This usually succeeds, but in eras which breed nihilism, this task is doomed to failure, since the nihilists are correct to assert that the things which give the culture its meaning are flawed. The fact this task is doomed to failure does not mean it won't be attempted, nor that it won't powerfully shape society and discourses of the era. Rather, it means that the old system is going to fail. You can witness this fact by noting that although it has some similarities, the morality of even the early 20th century is radically different in many important ways from its equivalent a century earlier. A huge amount of thinking which had justified morality, such as the Great Chain of Being, was dropped. Society in many ways became more egalitarian; even in the 1860s, the idea that the British House of Lords could, or should, have its power restrained was dismissed as a radical and absurd idea. Yet it happened in 1911, to loud cheers.
This brings us to the second response to discovering that something you believe in is flawed: there is a frantic effort to find something new to replace it with. This produced radical incoherence. The incoherence occurred as a result of an inability for people who disagreed to come together, find common ground, and reason together on moral issues. Rather, since there was nothing grounding morality, or rather nothing which most people could agree on, people found it hard to discuss matters of morality constructively. If this doesn't sound familiar to you, you need to get out more. A lot more. One example is the debate over slavery in the US in the run up to the civil war: neither the abolitionists nor the supporters of slavery could make an argument which convinced the other side; there was no way to ground the debates in shared common ground. The abolitionists pointed to human rights, the slavers pointed to property rights, both had arguments which they found convincing and could not understand the arguments of the other side; nor could either side frame their case in language which was persuasive to their opponent. The result was the bloodiest war in American history.
This leaves the question of how nihilism emerges in the first place, since as the above suggests, a nihilistic society is highly unstable. The origins of nihilism are simple enough in theory: they emerge when an intellectual development becomes central to a society's view of the world, and then is found to have a flaw which makes it unworkable. In the case of morality in the 1800s, what this fundamental flaw was can be stated simply enough: the goal of establishing a “rational” justification for morality. For anyone interested, I will recommend After Virtue by MacIntyre, as it is discussed in far greater detail there, but the main reason it failed is that the inherited Christian morality required a purpose for human beings. As the established thinking of the era rejected that, there was no basis upon which the accepted morality of the era could be supported. Given the central role which people gave “reason”, the result was that there was nothing to build morality on at all.
In order to understand the origins of this, we need to look at the “Enlightenment” and Rationalism in general, which will be the subject of a future post.
I'm in the process of reading the book After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre, and one of the central events chronicled in the book represented the development of a particular form of nihilism. That moment is when Kierkegaard presented the arguments in Enten-Eller (Either/Or) that there can be no justification for being virtuous for someone who has not already chosen to be so. This moment marks the evolution of an extreme form of moral nihilism: for asserting that there can be no justification for morality outside of the moral system itself is to admit to two crucial things: the first is that it's possible to step outside of the moral system in question; the second is that from this vantage point, morality has no justification. The moment that both of these points are accepted, no arguments can save the particular moral system: it has just been demonstrated that for those who don't find it persuasive, there is nothing which can be said to persuade them of its truth, or utility. Since if any particular moral system lacks any justification, it logically follows that there is no reason to view it as binding upon human beings, this assertion transforms the moral system into mere fashion.
By removing any binding element to morality, even for the adherents to a moral code, Kierkegaard demonstrated that morality cannot exist. This is a profoundly nihilistic viewpoint to adopt, but crucially there was no way for Kierkegaard to escape the conclusion that this in fact was the case. By the time Enten-Eller was published in 1843, it had been demonstrated quite conclusively that there could be no justification of the European moral system which existed at the time from outside of itself. Furthermore, at this point in time, there was a growing amount of intellectual territory which sat outside of the moral system: the scientific method and various intellectual developments of the last few centuries had created a distinction between facts and values, and obliterated the basis upon which the moral system of Christian Europe were created, sustained, and Kierkegaard simply realized what had happened.
Looking back on it in hindsight, it may seem incredible that no one had noticed this, but human societies are always contradictory and incoherent. Societies are never going to be any more coherent than the people who make them up, and human beings are never fully coherent. We are always a mess of contradictions and incoherence, although just as some times and places are more or less coherent, some people are more or less coherent. However, even the most coherent of us are at least somewhat contradictory, and so societies are always a mess of contradictions and incoherence. Kierkegaard's logic merely addressed one of those elements of society which had grown incoherent.
There are three reasons why I chose this example: the first is that its timing suggests the evolution of the society centred in Western Europe and her colonies in eastern North America is independent of the temporary planets, and was disrupted as much as any other culture's trajectory through time, a point which is well worth noting. The second reason is that the developments which emerged out this powerfully shaped morality in the Modern Era, and we will be exploring that in the future. The third reason is that this claim is ideal as a case study for the claim emerged in the typical social context which breads nihilism; and it exemplifies within itself the reason that nihilism is always a self-limiting phenomena. Let's look at the second element first, and discuss the way that nihilism always eliminates itself. The reason can be stated quite simply: in practice nihilism involves refusing to make a choice. The claim that morality can't be justified is a nihilistic claim, but a nihilist must either stick with the old moral code, or choose to reject it. There is no way to avoid making a choice, and human nature being what it is, the choice that morality doesn't exist will never be a popular one.
Most human beings dislike nihilism, and so there are at least two responses to this: the first is to attempt to find a way to save the existing system. This usually succeeds, but in eras which breed nihilism, this task is doomed to failure, since the nihilists are correct to assert that the things which give the culture its meaning are flawed. The fact this task is doomed to failure does not mean it won't be attempted, nor that it won't powerfully shape society and discourses of the era. Rather, it means that the old system is going to fail. You can witness this fact by noting that although it has some similarities, the morality of even the early 20th century is radically different in many important ways from its equivalent a century earlier. A huge amount of thinking which had justified morality, such as the Great Chain of Being, was dropped. Society in many ways became more egalitarian; even in the 1860s, the idea that the British House of Lords could, or should, have its power restrained was dismissed as a radical and absurd idea. Yet it happened in 1911, to loud cheers.
This brings us to the second response to discovering that something you believe in is flawed: there is a frantic effort to find something new to replace it with. This produced radical incoherence. The incoherence occurred as a result of an inability for people who disagreed to come together, find common ground, and reason together on moral issues. Rather, since there was nothing grounding morality, or rather nothing which most people could agree on, people found it hard to discuss matters of morality constructively. If this doesn't sound familiar to you, you need to get out more. A lot more. One example is the debate over slavery in the US in the run up to the civil war: neither the abolitionists nor the supporters of slavery could make an argument which convinced the other side; there was no way to ground the debates in shared common ground. The abolitionists pointed to human rights, the slavers pointed to property rights, both had arguments which they found convincing and could not understand the arguments of the other side; nor could either side frame their case in language which was persuasive to their opponent. The result was the bloodiest war in American history.
This leaves the question of how nihilism emerges in the first place, since as the above suggests, a nihilistic society is highly unstable. The origins of nihilism are simple enough in theory: they emerge when an intellectual development becomes central to a society's view of the world, and then is found to have a flaw which makes it unworkable. In the case of morality in the 1800s, what this fundamental flaw was can be stated simply enough: the goal of establishing a “rational” justification for morality. For anyone interested, I will recommend After Virtue by MacIntyre, as it is discussed in far greater detail there, but the main reason it failed is that the inherited Christian morality required a purpose for human beings. As the established thinking of the era rejected that, there was no basis upon which the accepted morality of the era could be supported. Given the central role which people gave “reason”, the result was that there was nothing to build morality on at all.
In order to understand the origins of this, we need to look at the “Enlightenment” and Rationalism in general, which will be the subject of a future post.
