nihilism

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

Typically, however, this going forward into a new world also involves a sort of going back. Gideon Barker’s book Nihilism and Philosophy deals with four such instances. In ancient Greece, the Cynics rejected what they saw as the artificial world of the city-state in the interest of a return to nature.

"They rejected any conventional notions of happiness involving money, power, and fame, to lead entirely virtuous, and thus happy, lives. The ancient Cynics rejected conventional social values, and would criticise the types of behaviours, such as greed, which they viewed as causing suffering." wiki

Okay, but to what extent was this encompassed [and then defended] back then given a particular set of philosophical assumptions about the human condition? And [I'd presume] one of them being that there was No God.

And then the part where some chose to be Cynics and others chose to reject them. The part, in other words, rooted existentially in dasein. Unless, of course, the Serious Philosophers among us can pin down the extent to which -- ontologically? teleologically? -- Cynicism is or is not objectively the most rational frame of mind.

Then, with the rise of Christianity, the hierarchical order of the Roman Empire was rejected in favour of a world in which, in St Paul’s words, there would be “neither Greek nor Jew, slave or free, male or female” but all standing equal before God.

The irony here [for those like me] is how some actually argue that Christianity and nihilism are...interchangeable? And how preposterous is that? Instead, it might be more reasonable to suggest that, while Christianity is the exact opposite of nihilism in terms of ends, once someone embraces it they might come to advocate an anything goes approach to means. The slaughter of innocent children on both sides in the latest Middle East conflagration, for example.

In modern times, after the ‘death of God’, Nietzsche declared the end of what he calls Christian ‘slave-morality’, trusting to the Übermensch or ‘Over-Man’ to bring back an heroic age that valued courage and caste.

And the rest is history. In other words, connecting the dots between Nietzsche and, among others, Adolph Hitler. The Master Race, the will to power, the vermin Jews. Then the part where some connect the dots today between Hitler and Trump.

Then Heidegger, seeing the present technocratic age as a result of more than two thousand years of forgetfulness of Being, tried to return us to a long-forgotten way of understanding and living in the world, to recover a more ‘primordial’ thinking.

Sieg Heil?

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

Baker’s account of the Cynics is heavily indebted to Michel Foucault, whose lectures on the subject (translated into English as The Courage of Truth) were the last he was to deliver before his death in 1984.

In my view, this revolves largely around deconstruction. In other words, it's not just the ontological and the teleological gap between words and worlds when confronting conflicting goods, but the fact that language itself is of limited use and value once we leave the readily communicated objective reality of describing interactions in the either/or world and attempt to encompass human moral and political interactions existentially given the profound impact of dasein. To champion deconstruction is to recognize the reality -- the inherent reality? -- of a fractured and fragmented moral philosophy. How can one not be cynical in today's world?

Unless, of course, we can be linked here to the...antidote? Cue the FFOs, the Pinheads and the Serious Philosophers? Cynically enough [here] I always do.

The Cynics had not previously been accorded much space in the history of philosophy: their doctrines were sparse, their writings have not survived, and what we know of them comes down often in jokes and anecdotes.

After all, who wants to believe being cynical is a reasonable frame of mind? Why be "fractured and fragmented" morally when there are hundreds and hundreds of "One True Paths To Enlightenment" that you can choose from...sink down into politically, philosophically, religiously.

They were shocking to the society of their day, in that their way of life involved a rejection of all conventional values. They would do in public what most people thought it proper to do only in private; they acknowledged no family, home, or state, but willingly embraced a life of begging and destitution.

Fortunately, these days, there are considerably more "distractions" available...lifestyles that allow you to be as cynical as you please. Me here for example.

If this was a sort of asceticism, it was a cheerful one: the Cynics showed that you could be happy without material possessions, and that care of the body is less important than care of the soul. There is nothing ‘other-worldly’ in this.

In other words, whatever that means. Or, in being a cynic, whatever it means to you?

[nemos]

I don't understand why limit yourself with some clichés? I reserve the right, depending on the situation and mood, to freely choose my attitude and be both cynical and optimistic. In general, I am for balance, so if there are no special reasons, I will take the side of the opposition, just to maintain balance and also because I believe that the truth is always in the middle. There no tend to be absolutely true or absolutely false opinions. And any excess leads to a dead end.

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

In Plato’s dialogue The Sophist, Socrates says the real philosopher is one who ‘lives the philosophical life in truth’.

In other words, one of the very first "general description intellectual contraptions" in dire need of an actual context.

For Baker, Cynicism is the first philosophy to have actively tried to put this vision into action. The Cynics radicalized the Socratic simplicity of life. After all, Socrates went home each night to bed; the Cynics by contrast often didn’t have homes. Socrates didn’t take part in politics: the Cynics didn’t even acknowledge the city-state (polis) to begin with.

So, let's settle this once and for all: what is the most rational manner in which to live one's life...more or less cynically?

It was necessary for them to keep a distance from the exercise of political power if they were to say what they thought needed saying. They aimed to speak truth fearlessly whether to fellow citizens or to a mighty tyrant, to expose lies or wrongdoing. Most Greek philosophy was for an elite, but Cynic philosophy was available to all.

Sure, Cynics can be objectivists. They merely assume that if one is in touch with their own "true self" in sync further with "the right thing to do do" then they do embody the truth: Cynicism.

On the other hand, to what extent did they have the capacity -- the political power -- to enforce that frame of mind? It's for everyone precisely because "in reality" down out of the philosophical clouds, almost no one believes it.

The parallels with Christianity are striking. In both there is a rejection or inversion of conventional values. In both the call is a radical one. The Jesus of St Paul’s writings is a destroyer of the Jewish law; he and his disciples lead a wandering life, taking ‘no heed for the morrow’, leaving family and possessions behind in order to embrace a life of poverty and to live in what is seen as the truth. The lowest are raised up, the highest brought down. Both the Cynic and the Christian are concerned with the care of souls; although, for the Christian this is in preparation for another world, whereas for the Cynic it is in this world alone that we must struggle to achieve the true life.

In other words, in regard to the actual stakes involved on both sides of the grave, they could not possibly be more different.

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

For Nietzsche, Christianity is Platonism for the masses, promising us an eternal world where all is truth and light in place of this world, which Plato called “the twilight world of change and decay”, where mankind could only live to die.

Philosophy and death let's call it.

Who really knows -- consciously, subconsciously, unconsciously -- how, in a free will world, each of us comes to create a philosophy of life that factors in death. Once we grasp the fact that we all die, what can be done to create a comforting antidote to oblivion itself? And it's not for nothing that those such as Plato and Descartes and Kant "solved" this problem by defining and deducing God into existence. God is there to provide us with a soul. The soul is there as a vessel to carry us for all of eternity into the promised land.

For Nietzsche, however, it is not our everyday world of appearances that is the illusion, but the Platonic-Christian heaven.

And then the part where those on one side challenge those on the other side to resolve it once and for all by demonstrating either that a God, the God, their God does exist or that no Gods exist at all. And fortunately for both neither side can actually do this given "the gap" and "Rummy's Rule".

Meaning all it is necessary to accomplish for both sides here is that "in their head" they believe what they do about God/No God. And that need be as far as it goes to make it true. Plato, Descartes, Kant and their "serious philosophy" ilk created realities inside the cave and outside the cave. Now, the stuff inside the cave -- the social, political and economic "shadows on the wall" -- are, one way or another, something that we are each familiar with. After all, we embody them in sustaining human relationships down through the centuries. But the more "formal", "a priori", "transcendental", "deontological" assessments?

Worlds of words let's call them.

His declaration of the death of God is directed not only at Christianity, but at any claim to the existence of another world. This world in which we live – the only world there is – is not only subject to change but is also without goal or purpose.

My point of course. A fractured and fragmented labyrinth. A seething salon of moral and political dogmas ever and always in conflict...either theoretically up in the philosophical clouds here or "for all practical purposes" "down on Earth" where one might champion one of literally hundreds of objectivist Isms...enabling one to smugly divide up the world between "one of us" and "one of them".

It is also subject to eternal recurrence. The challenge for us is to embrace what seems the ultimate pointlessness: the prospect of repeating our lives in every detail forever.

How's that working out for you? In other words, when it comes to an essentially meaningless and purposeless existence tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion, even those like Nietzsche blinked.

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

For Heidegger, that philosophy is not the overcoming of nihilism Nietzsche had intended. On the contrary, it is “the ultimate entanglement in nihilism”, and fails to escape from the metaphysical prison.

Sieg Heil?

Only for Nazis [those without a "condition"] fascism is the embodiment of moral objectivism...the antithesis of moral nihilism. Instead, with them, nihilism is said to revolve far more around means than ends.

On the other hand...

In effect, Nietzsche remains caught up in Platonism. If the true world is one of eternal Becoming for Nietzsche, as compared to one of eternal Being for Plato, it is still, for all that, a true world: all that’s happened is that Being and Becoming have changed places.

At least until we do come down out of the intellectual clouds and grapple with the complex realites of actual human interactions. But that is basically what the moral authoritarians among us refuse to do. Instead, they subsume these complexities in one or another objectivist dogma. They hammer the world into their own rendition of the "psychology of objectivism".

On the other hand...

But in Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power, Heidegger sees the end of metaphysics, the completion of a history of forgetfulness of Being lasting more than two thousand years: with the essence of knowledge as will to power comes “the unrestrained exploitation of the earth” even “the thrust into outer space”, confirming mankind’s sense of homelessness.

The "will to power". There is Nietzsche's take on that, and there is Adolph Hitler's take on it. And then Heidegger's more or less astute take on both of them?

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Nihilism & Philosophy by Gideon Barker
Roger Caldwell scrutinises philosophical revolutions.

The ‘essence of metaphysics’, Heidegger tells us, is nihilism.

How utterly preposterous!

If I do say so myself.

"Metaphysics is a type of philosophy or study that uses broad concepts to help define reality and our understanding of it. Metaphysical studies generally seek to explain inherent or universal elements of reality which are not easily discovered or experienced in our everyday life." PBS

It's like Satyr and his ilk equating nihilism with "Abrahamism". When, in fact, all religious renditions of the One True Path start with the assumption that in regard to the behaviors we choose on this side of the grave, there is in fact an essential moral philosophy. Theirs. Indeed, Satyr's clique/claque have their own secular dogma rooted not in God but in genes.

If so, how do we escape it?

Again, the irony. Most "escape it" as FFOs, burrowing into one or another "my way or the highway" deontological agenda. God or No God.

If Nietzsche remains the last metaphysician despite his repudiation of all philosophy since Plato, what of Heidegger himself? Arguably he is in no better position. Nietzsche awaits the Übermensch for the transvaluation of all values. Heidegger, seeking to recover a sort of poetics of Being in a time when instrumental (practical-goal-directed) reason has strangled thought, vainly evokes what is, in effect, a return of the gods.

Sieg Heil, as others put it.

By the end of the book I’m little clearer about what nihilism is than I was at the beginning. The journey has been an exciting one; but has it in the end led round in circles?

Circular in the sense that the author has come to grasp one "philosophical" assessment of nihilism. Which will more or less conflict with the assessments of others. Then around and around they go insisting that their own definitions and deductions pertaining to nihilism are the most rational point of departure.

Fine, I note. Now all we need do is to take our academic assumptions down out of the theoretical clouds and focus in on a particular set of circumstances.

Instead...

Philosophy has again and again claimed to start from the beginning, in effect discarding its own tradition. Is this in itself a nihilistic gesture? Is a new beginning even possible? The Cynics, St Paul, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, were all adept at tearing down old beliefs, and all also have a positive end in view: that of getting us to live true, authentic lives. But the true nihilist is surely one who believes in nothing.

Again, in my view: "How utterly preposterous!"

Even if a nihilist believes in nothing, she believes in that. And ever and always the need to make that crucial distinction between what we believe regarding the either/or world and the world of conflicting value judgments.

How ludicrous is it for nihilists to insist they don't believe in the laws of nature? in mathematics? in the rules of logic? in the material/empirical world around us?

Here we are on our way to solipsism or sim worlds or dream worlds or the Matrix.

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

“We don’t need an atom bomb at all; the uprooting of human beings is already taking place…It is no longer an Earth on which human beings live today.”

Martin Heidegger, Der Spiegel interview, 1966

The rest is history?

Lars von Trier’s latest movie Melancholia could be interpreted as a logical consequence of the history of European nihilism, whose most significant proponents were the philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche and E.M. Cioran, and poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Maurice Rollinat and Lautréamont.

That's not how I interpreted it. From my frame of mind it was as though every single human being on Earth was on death row. Absolutely no one would be spared as the planet Melancholia collided into Earth and obliterated us all. Then the part where each of us as individuals reacts to that. Some despairingly, others...philosophically? But it is the fact that all of us will die that changes everything. The closest we come to that now is in imagining the Big One ushering in the next extinction event. Only here no life is likely to survive at all. No recovery. Earth is eradicated and that's that. And, if Earth really is the only inhabited planet...?

In the film, the Danish director seems to be constructing an argument which not only “questions the value of life” (Nietzsche) but also invites us to change our status from “mortals to moribund beings” (Cioran).

In other words, if we do live in an essentially meaningless and purposeless No God universe, the values we come to embody "here and now" really are rooted existentially in dasein.

Then what?

The planet Melancholia is on a collision course with the Earth. This film’s terrifying apocalypse is completely original, focusing not on the biological or physical destruction of our planet and species as do more trivial productions such as Independence Day or 2012. Instead it emphasizes the psychological distress of two particular Earth-dwellers, the severely melancholic Justine and her sister Claire.

Right. If we have to explore moribund beings in the ultimate extinction event...one where absolutely no one is spared, of course we must focus in on the plight of the very, very rich. Thus, for those of us who are not "one of them", we might react quite differently. Cue shots of the masses rampaging, looting, taking whatever advantages they can in those final desperate days.


Just out of curiosity, how about you? How might you react when out of the blue it is announced to the world that an enormous asteroid will smash into Earth next month and "wipe us out"?

Now, sure, if you believe in God, that's just part of His plan. Next stop...Heaven?

And if you don't?

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

Night Moves

Melancholia’s intro is a depiction of the planetary dance of death between Melancholia, a planet the size of Saturn, and Earth, combined with an ironic introduction to the history of art. The soundtrack of the intro is provided by Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde, a post-Romantic manifesto which proposes the clash and the final union between two opposing principles, love and death. Here the music symbolizes the astronomical (and perhaps astrological) clash of the two planets. The intro is shot in slow motion, almost as an MTV Wagner music video, and it could be seen as an abstract of Melancholia, summarizing the whole movie.

Okay, but what does not change [from my own frame of mind] is this...that Lars von Trier chooses to focus in on one particular "clump" of wealthy, influential people that you and I may or may not be able to identify with. And yet if a planet the size of Saturn ever were to collide with Earth, we would all be confronted with...oblivion? So, is there a way to pin down the optimal reaction to an "extinction event" that will wipe us all out? Philosophically or otherwise?

That's what is crucial for me here. None of us are going to escape this particular extinction event. But who is to say how any particular one of us will react to it? After all, there are still going to be millions convinced that this is just one more act of God -- their God -- and that they are on the cusp of eternal salvation.

Thus...

If the alliance between love and death, and the subsequent destruction of the principle of love, are the atmospheric message of von Trier’s intro, the nihilistic motto of the whole film would be: “The Earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it” (Justine).

Justine? She had begun to experience a debilitating depression when the collision started to unfold. So, an extinction event might be just what she needed. But who but someone with one of another mental illness is going to blame it all on an evil Earth?

But, truly, an extinction event of this magnitude will certainly prompt any number of us to ask "why?" And while the God world folks will have an answer -- God's Will -- what of those who deem the human condition as just another manifestation of an essentially meaningless existence?

Yes, no doubt there are nihilists of this nature:

This attitude is reminiscent of gnosticism, seen as a forerunner of modern nihilism by scholars such as Hans Jonas and Ion Petru Culianu. Its first principle was that the world of matter (or the Earth) is evil, and that humankind is the damaged creation of an evil divine power. The nihilism proposed in the 20th century by various writers, such as Cioran, Marinetti and Gottfried Benn, draws the similarly disturbing conclusion that because of our inherent defects, human beings must be destroyed – adapting one of the four noble truths of Buddhism, that suffering must be annihilated by nirvana (which means ‘snuffed out’).

It's all reduced down to one or another "spiritual" narrative. And if that works for you then, fine, that's really all that counts. What's crucial is that there is an explanation...a Divine explanation.

But "here and now" that is just another psychological defense mechanism for those like me.

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

...the second part of the movie focuses mainly on Claire. One of the most important features of this section is its portrait of John, Claire’s husband. “The real scientists, all of them agree: Melancholia is gonna pass just in front of us and it’s gonna be the most beautiful [sight] ever” is John’s initial statement. He is the archetype of the rational scientist; but he ends as a Stoic philosopher. His creed might be: pereat mundus et fiat scientia! (‘Though the world perish, let there be knowledge!’)

Science and nihilism? Well, science can provide us with considerable knowledge -- objective knowledge -- about extinction events here on Earth. Only this one involves a planet ten times the size of Earth smashing into it. The utter extermination of all life. Even the cockroaches.

But what does all of this vast store of knowledge really mean [or matter] when the scientists too are facing oblivion? Besides, the scientists were wrong about Melancholia. It didn't just "pass in front of us."

As for John's stoicism, I missed that. How is committing suicide in sync with that frame of mind?

On the other hand, the melancholy that Claire suffers from? What can science tell us about that? The irony [for me] is that despite her truly glum assessment of existence, she's the one who panics in the "cave".

Think, perhaps, "I'm tired of living but scared of dying"?

Thus...

The end of the movie brings back the Wagnerian motif, as the two sisters and Claire’s young son Leo face the apocalypse in a ‘magic cave’ (a shelter made of wooden sticks) constructed at Justine’s suggestion to comfort Leo. Claire breaks down completely while her melancholic sister keeps calm, suggesting the theory that mentally ill people face external catastrophes more easily because they’re more accustomed to traumas and intense psychological imbalances.

Whatever works, I always say.

So, if the Big One ever does occur in our lifetime -- and scientists note over and again it's only a question of when -- what might work for you? And, no, not just theoretically.

This could make intelligible the idea hinted at by the film that noche oscura (the nihilistic night when I inwardly die, descend into hell and cannot imagine a return from the inferno – when my entire world dies inside me) is even scarier than the night of St. Bartholomew (the sense of cosmic death). This thesis would be absurd if considered from a rationalistic perspective: how could the spiritual death of one individual count for more than the demise of mankind?

You tell me.

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

Death, Universal & Personal

Lars von Trier’s vision of apocaplypse in Melancholia puts it in the same category of Romantic nihilism as Byron’s Darkness, Lautréamont’s Maldoror and Cioran’s A Short History of Decay.

Still, what fascinated me most about this apocalyptic vision was the part where it encompassed a context in which every single human being on Earth was doomed to die. No exceptions. If it were to become a reality "here and now" and it was announced that scientists had discovered a huge asteroid that would collide with Earth in, say, September precipitating the next extinction event. It would [eventually] become that which everyone was talking about 24/7.

Here too, of course. So, what would be noted among us regarding it? And how would our reactions not be rooted existentially in dasein? As though there actually might be a way for scientists and philosophers to pin down the most rational -- logical? -- reaction. As for the theologians? Think Jerry Falwell's reaction to the AIDS pandemic: God's will?

As for my own reaction...no less fractured and fragmented.

All of them start from the psychological disintegration of the individual and move out to a project of universal destruction. First one of us dies on the inside, and then all must follow: this is the incontrovertable rule of nihilistic violence:

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air…
The world was void,
The populous and the powerful – was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless –
A lump of death – a chaos of hard clay.
Byron – Darkness

Sure, that's one possible reaction. But the "nihilistic violence" that might attend such a catastrophe is brought about by nature itself. Or by God? After all, think of post-apocalypse films like the Mad Max franchise. Or on a smaller more personal scale, The Road.

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

Byron’s poem [above] proposes a sort of spectacle of imploding anxiety, which might be summarized through Samuel Beckett’s construct, ‘lessness’ (“rayless”, “pathless”, seasonless”, etc). In the imaginary universe of Melancholia, lives are similarly transformed into an ode to death.

An ode to death?

From my frame of mind, it is a film that revolves around the actual death of every one of us. In other words, we can discuss death "philosophically" such that each of us as individuals are more or less in the vicinity of our own demise. But here we are dealing with the possibility of an extinction event such that no one is excluded. Death becoming starkly existential for every single man, woman and child on Earth.

And what makes it particularly enthralling is we know that some day the Big One will in fact smash into Earth. It's only a matter of when and how massive the extinction event is.

Consider for instance the scene in which Justine gives herself to the Planet of Death, worshipping it naked as Melancholia menacingly approaches.

Here, however, both Justine and Claire are afflicted with a mental illness. Justine is depressed and Claire sufferers from chronic anxiety. But what of those among us who are not? Those who are confronted with an extinction event -- with oblivion -- "in one's right mind"? Here it would seem to come down to the extent to which one is able to fall back on God and religion in order to comfort and console them.

Consider also this quote:

“If the face of the earth were covered with lice as the sea-shore is covered with grains of sand, the human race would be destroyed, a prey to dreadful pain. What a sight! With me, motionless on my angel wings, in the air to contemplate it!”

Comte de Lautréamont – Maldoror and Poems, translation by Paul Knight

Sure, if you are hovering above it all with "angel wings", that's one thing. But what if you are down here with the lice?

We can observe a detached, non-human point of view in Cioran too: “The spectacle of man – what an emetic! Love – a duel of salivas… All the feelings milk their absolute from the misery of glands. Nobility is only in the negation of existence, in a smile that surveys annihilated landscapes.” This is the inner contradiction of a nihilism which goes beyond the self: a nihilism that firstly wants to destroy and secondly wants to watch destruction from above.

On the other hand, given that a catastrophic extinction event does unfold in our lifetimes, how "detached" are you likely to be? Yes, I can contemplate the "human condition" as he does..."in my head". But what on Earth does that really have to do with my own frame of mind in encountering this mass extinction?

More or less fractured and fragmented?

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Melancholia
Stefan Bolea takes us on a tour of European nihilism.

If Cioran’s “smile that surveys annihilated landscapes” is evocative of the horrors of WW2, what would the cosmic destruction in Melancholia suggest?

Obviously...that there are catastrophes that can involve millions of us and catastrophes that can involve all of us. For example, the catastrophes that have been unfolding in Ukraine and Gaza. Tens of thousands of men, women and children have been killed. But we're still around. And most of us will still be around to witness the next catastrophe. But suppose the Ukrainian conflict results in a nuclear war. That may or may not result in our own demise. But an event on the scale of Melancholia spares no one.

Or, sure...

Perhaps the Danish director is expressing our deepest unconscious desire to be absolved of existence: he’s expressing the mysterious will to die, the instinct of death, which has its roots in the core of our civilization.

I'm sorry but that doesn't make much sense to me. Personally. An unconscious desire to be absolved of existence? Though, of course, because it's unconscious who would really know? And if you are looking for the core of civilization, it still revolves largely around subsistence. Around the stuff Marx and Engels grappled with. And millions of us are rather keen -- consciously -- on sustaining our lives as long as possible.

However, remembering the significance of the Wagnerian soundtrack from Tristan und Isolde, if death and love collide, we must hang on to our capacity for love until it transforms the power of death.

I'm attempting to wrap my head around that in regard to my own existence but -- consciously -- it is not registering at all.

How about you?

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Does Philosophy Cause Nihilism?
by Rick Lewis

Philosophy is an activity. I used to say this with an air of self-satisfied originality whenever I was asked what philosophy was about. However, a friend recently pointed out, pointedly, that it says the same thing in my favourite reference book, the Bluffer’s Guide to Philosophy. Still, that doesn’t make it any less true.

Okay, you are actively pursuing philosophy from day to day in your life. But then the part where Marx suggested that "the philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways....the point, however, is to change it.”

Change it?

Into what: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

It is impossible to read philosophy without thinking about what you are reading.

Or more to the point [mine] thinking about how what you are reading is applicable in turn to the life that you are living. And what of those who read exactly the same thing but then choose behaviors that come into conflict with yours?

In this respect philosophy is unlike history or astronomy. It is possible to read a well-written article about the rise of Napoleon, or the formation of stars, in a totally passive way, accepting without query the assertions of the author, and still quite genuinely learn something in the process. It is not possible to read a philosophy article in this way, though – you find yourself arguing mentally with the article’s author, because that is the only way to gain a full understanding of what he or she is saying.

The historian and the astronomer are more or less in sync with the facts involved given a particular context or they are not. Whether in regard to Napoleon or to a supernova explosion. Though only with Napolean are the facts likely to precipitate the sort of discussions that in turn precipitate conflicts that revolve around value judgments. And for any number of objectivists among us you have learned absolutely nothing about Napolean [morally] unless you think about him exactly the same way.

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Does Philosophy Cause Nihilism?
by Rick Lewis

The activity of questioning assumptions and criticising arguments to gain a deeper understanding is fundamental to philosophy, and has been since its earliest days.

Okay, let's ponder the actual existential implications of that. For centuries now philosophers have been "questioning the assumptions and understanding the arguments" of other philosophers in an attempt to grasp the "wisest" manner in which to differentiate moral from immoral behavior.

And, given any particular moral conflagration of note, how have they managed to fare so far?

Philosophy involves the critical analysis of existing assumptions – things that people take for granted. This often includes assumptions about society: its institutions, values, customs and beliefs. Not surprisingly, this can make philosophers unpopular.

And who are more unpopular than those like me? In other words, the moral nihilists. In my opinion, most philosophers in forums like this one will defend one or another side of any particular ethical divide. They all accept that something in the vicinity of objective morality does exist. Whereas I argue that in a No God world, not only does deontology seem beyond the reach of philosophers, but, in turn, that even their own moral philosophies are rooted existentially -- historically, culturally -- in dasein.

Philosophy has been accused of causing nihilism, by undermining existing values and beliefs and failing to put anything useable in their place.

Or, perhaps, moral nihilists have convinced some philosophers there really is nothing that is essentially useable to put in their place.

Among the less reflective, this has been one of the most objectionable aspects of philosophy as a whole.

And among the more reflective? How do they defend what they construe to be an essential font -- the One True Path to Enlightenment -- for establishing objective morality? Instead, we have dozens and dozens of at times hopelessly conflicting "schools of thought" to choose among.

Thus...

Through their eyes, philosophers are very good at the destructive business of showing up the flaws and contradictions of everyday thinking, but when it comes to putting something new in their place, philosophers fall out among themselves and the result is that philosophy causes nihilism; the rejection of all values and beliefs as meaningless and unfounded.

No, again, the distinction to be made here, in my view, is between essential values and beliefs and existential values and beliefs ever and always evolving and changing over the course of actual human interactions historically and culturally. And in regard to the existential parameters of the lives we actually live.