The history of Western
philosophy is a saga of serious and sometimes profound reasoning about the
fundamental nature of reality and man’s participation in it. Throughout this
chronicle, oppositions have continually recurred, such as those between monism
and dualism in metaphysics, between materialism and idealism in cosmology,
between nominalism and realism in epistemology, and between utilitarianism and
valuism in social morality. Insofar as philosophy has been considered the
search for a reliable guide to the wisdom of life, we have witnessed an
ongoing battle between the logicians and the partisans of emotion.
Greek philosophy
emerged out of religious awe into wonder about the principles and elements of
the natural world. But as the Greek populations increasingly left the land to
concentrate in the cities, interest shifted from nature to social living,
raising questions of law and civic values. Cosmological speculation partly
gave way to moral and political theorizing, and the quests of Socrates and the
Sophists turned into the fundamentalist concepts of Plato and Aristotle.
When the Middle Ages ushered in the Renaissance, the best philosophical minds
turned to the task of exploring the foundations of physical science, and the
symbol of their success turned the philosophers of the Enlightenment to
epistemology and to the examination of the human mind that had produced so
brilliant a scientific creation. The 19th century, a time of great
philosophical diversity, paved the way for 20th-century
opposition between phenomenology and atomism, between logical positivism and
existentialism
Although logical
positivism represents a partisan view, it does express indirectly a basic
truth—that the philosophical enterprise has always hovered uncertainly between
the lure of religious devotion and scientific exactitude. In the teachings of
the earliest philosophers of
Greece,
it is impossible to separate ideas of divinity and the human soul from ideas
about the mystery of being and the genesis of material change, and in the
Middle Ages philosophy was acknowledged to be the “handmaiden of theology.”
But the increased secularization of modern culture has largely reversed this
trend, and the Enlightenment’s emphasis on the separation of nature from its
divine creator has increasingly placed philosophical resources at the disposal
of those interested in creating a philosophy of science.
While philosophy’s
continuing search for philosophical truth is fueled by hope, its answers are
objectively unsolvable. Only individual solutions now seem possible; and the
optimistic hope for objective answers that secure universal agreement must be
given up. In this respect, philosophy seems less like science than art, the
philosophical solutions bearing the stamp of their own personalities, and
their choice of arguments revealing as much about themselves as their chosen
problem. As a consequence, philosophy is no longer regarded as an intuitive
source of wisdom and truth. And since man in our age of technological
abundance is preoccupied with making things work rather than understanding his
role in the cosmos, for all practical purposes philosophy is dead in our
culture.
Generally speaking,
classical philosophy has sided with religion in the ongoing struggle against
nihilism. I expect academic elitists to challenge that statement, since they
are mainly responsible for wresting nihilism from the confessional to the
“enlightened rationality” of a secular world. To put it bluntly, the
individual today who has the temerity to argue for a return to spiritual
values will invariably be looked upon as either a relic of “theism” or a
grandstander of questionable intellectual depth. The polemics of our
postmodern society were well characterized by radio talk-show host and author
Dennis Prager when he said: “Those who believe in nothing are very, very
jealous and angry at those who believe in something.”
Nihilism is the
rationalist’s answer to idealism. It is the view that traditional values and
beliefs are unfounded and that existence is meaningless. The Internet
encyclopedia Encarta defines nihilism as “a designation applied to
various radical philosophies, usually by their opponents, the implication
being that adherents of these philosophies reject all positive values and
believe in nothing.” Inasmuch as nihilism is the logical conclusion of
postmodern humanism, it has become much more typical than “radical” in the
development of philosophy. Law professor Phillip Johnston described the
current plight of philosophy quite accurately, I think, in his 1993 book
First Things:
“Secularized
intellectuals have long been complacent in their apostasy because they were
sure they weren't missing anything important in consigning God to the ashcan
of history. They were happy to replace the Creator with a mindless
evolutionary process that left humans free and responsible only to themselves.
They complacently assumed that when their own reasoning power was removed from
its grounding in the only ultimate reality, it could float, unsupported, on
nothing at all. As modernist rationalism gives way in universities to its own
natural child-postmodernist nihilism-modernists are learning very slowly what
a bargain they have made. It isn't a bargain a society can live with
indefinitely.”
While few
philosophers actually claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated
with Friedrich Nietzsche who defined the term as any philosophy that leads to
an apathy toward life and a poisoning of the human soul. In fairness to the
German philosopher, Nietzsche himself was vehemently opposed to this
movement. He describes it as “the will to nothingness”―the philosophical
equivalent of Marxist revolution in
Russia,
the irrational leap beyond skepticism, the desire to destroy meaning,
knowledge and value. To Nietzsche this was irrational because he knew that
the human soul thrives on value. He saw nihilism as intellectual suicide and
the harbinger of cultural annihilation. But because of his famous
announcement that “God is dead!” and his assertion in The Gay Science
that “we have killed him”, nihilism is wrongly thought to have been born by
the pen of Nietzsche.
Even though he viewed
Christian morality as nihilistic, Nietzsche also recognized that without God
humanity is left with no epistemological or moral base from which we can
derive absolute beliefs. Thus, although nihilism in the past has threatened
apocalyptic religions and utopian ideals, Nietzsche tells us it is also a
threat to humanity’s future, as is any philosophy which devalues human life
and the world around us. Some have taken this warning as a polemic against 19th
and 20th century scientism as well.
Nihilism has been
defined as a belief in the nonexistence of truth, which is difficult to
justify because it is a variation on the liar paradox:
i.e., if it is true that truth does not exist, then the statement “truth does
not exist” is itself untrue, thereby proving itself false. Nonetheless, the
philosophy of nihilism permeates modern literature, and nouveaux art such as
surrealism, cubism and dadaism embrace it openly. In music it has taken the
form of ‘punk rock’ and ‘rap’ whose chaotic song patterns and and obscene
lyrics depict life’s meaninglessness and amorality. And, because it is
compatible with scientific objectivism as well as an alternative to the mythos
of religion and supernaturalism, many have bought into the idea that
philosophical nihilism represents an intellectual breakthrough.
I see the thrust of
philosophy today as a futile effort to make nihilism credible. Because a
supernatural basis for reality is disallowed, the nihilist is obliged to
identify and support a ‘ground of being” within the natural world. He may
choose matter, energy, or symbols as his foundation, but not spirit, deus,
or soul. There is no extension of selfness beyond death, except in the
collective or socio-biological
sense, and the nihilist may not posit a primary source save for causation in
accordance with the laws of physics.
To come up with a
meaningful ontology by these ground rules would be a spectacular feat, and one
that only sleight-of-hand
rhetoric can conspire. It is an effort whose objective, I believe, is doomed
to failure. I say this because 1) the public at large―indeed every
person―intuitively demands a transcendent reality;
2) the rejection of such alternatives is depressing and foreboding;
and 3)
nihilism is
no more rational than the theism, vitalism or spiritualism it is purported to
replace. While sociologically nihilism is culture without value,
fundamentally it is life without soul.
The anonymous
Christian author of the LifeNotes website suggests that, since true
nihilists “believe in nothing”, the modern philosopher’s argument that one may
find or create value in a world without essential meaning is fallacious.
“I
would suggest that if we embrace a modern secular philosophy, or no
philosophy/religion at all, we must embrace nihilism. …if you believe that
your existence may end at physical death, you are accepting the idea that
"nothing" may follow death, and you are by definition accepting the
possibility that "nihilism" is correct. Once we realize that the acceptance of
nihilism is a necessary consequence of our humanistic beliefs, or non-beliefs,
we will be able to decide for ourselves if what we currently believe to be
true, is what we really want to believe is true. Until we understand the
nature of "nothing", we may well have difficulty appreciating ‘anything’. …If
there is anything in life we can count on occurring without fail, it is
physical death. While all acknowledge the certainty of their eventual demise,
few think about death until they are faced with it. The very nature of human
existence cries out against a conclusion that life itself may be
‘meaningless’.”
The inference here is
that only existents can have a past and future associated with them. Once the
individual ceases to exist, he or she reverts to nothing and has no past
except as a posthumous object of history. This is the rationale for
existential philosophy popularized by Sartre in the last century. I submit
that the relevance of nihilism to the cessation of individual selfness is
unavoidable and poses a profound challenge to the postmodern philosopher. The
issue raises serious questions about the value of any philosophy that portends
to be a source of moral or intellectual enlightenment.
By and large, what
passes for philosophy these days is more accurately labeled socio-political
pragmatism―a potpourri of evolutionary anthropology, utilitarian ethics, and
semiotic dialectics. One contemporary philosopher with a cult following has
coined the term “philosophology” for the modern-day
academic approach to the subject (typically a comparative analysis of ‘-isms’
that adds little of significance to advance its cause). Like art and music,
philosophy’s appeal tends to be subjective, and there are many ways to evaluate
it. But if one needs an empirical reference to “test the credibility” of a
philosophical proposition, it is not a true philosophical concept. A
philosophy that attempts to impose the authority of its author on the public
is immediately suspect. If the
author has not bothered to develop an ontology or epistemology to account for
conscious experience, the thesis is incapable of critical analysis and is
therefore useless. And, as a rule of thumb, unless
there is insight to be gained from the thesis, it’s probably not worth the
effort.
Regrettably, our
society has evolved to the point at which classical idealism is denounced as
“outmoded”, “unscientific” and “impractical”, and our preoccupation with
technology makes it extremely unlikely that we shall see a re-emergence
of spiritual values in our lifetime. Philosophy has been left hanging on the
coat-tails
of scientific objectivism and is compelled to explain consciousness as an
accidental byproduct of biological evolution. As a consequence, Sartre’s “hole
in the heart of being” has been transplanted in the heart of our culture as we
enter the twenty-first
century. So long as we are persuaded that there is nothing new under
the sun―no reality apart from physical finitude, no primary source or ultimate
purpose for life―we are doomed to fulfill Nietzsche’s prophetic vision of
humanity without belief. Which is why I say that philosophy is dead in our
culture.
--HP
RETURN TO VALUES PAGE