Nihilism is a philosophical viewpoint that rejects belief in any objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value in life.
Nihilism argues that any meaning in life is imposed subjectively by humans rather than objectively existing in the world. A nihilist would say that there is no provable right way to live and that everyone must determine their own path, values, and meanings.
The core ideas of nihilism are:
There is no objective or universal truth. No moral, religious, or philosophical beliefs can be proven to be definitively true.
Life has no inherent meaning or purpose. There is no cosmic destiny or greater goal that human life is oriented towards.
Traditional values and conventional morality have no objective justification. Moral claims cannot be grounded in rationality or divine command.
All values and beliefs are baseless and arbitrary. Nothing is inherently right or wrong, good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
Life itself and the human experiences and activities within it lack any objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.
There are no objective moral truths. All values and judgments about right and wrong are subjective.
We should embrace moral relativism and recognize that different cultures and individuals can validly have contradictory moral beliefs. No one is objectively right or wrong.
Trying to universally justify or prove values and morals is pointless. We should simply choose and live by the values we prefer without needing external justification.
Obligation, guilt, and objective morality often limit freedom and individual responsibility. We should feel free to live as we want without moral commandments.
Reason alone cannot determine values or prove moral truths. Values come from subjective emotions, desires, and creativity.
Atrocities are often committed in the name of moral absolutes. Skepticism of moral objectivity may create more compassion.
Rather than seeking objective truths, meaning, or ethics, we should reflect on what kind of person and world we want to create, and then work towards that.
Our values and morals come primarily from non-rational factors like our feelings, desires, upbringing, and emotions. We may use reason to work out the implications of the values we already hold, but reason itself does not and cannot determine what we ought to value. People's actual moral beliefs and values are shaped much more by life experiences, emotions, social influences, and cultural contexts than by abstract reasoning.
The view that reason alone can reveal objective moral truths assumes that values and ethics can be determined through rational analysis and logical deduction, much like math or science. However, many philosophers argue this is impossible because:
There are no observable moral facts in the world that reason could analyze to find ethical truths. No amount of reasoning can take you from descriptive facts to prescriptive values.
There are no self-evident axioms or intrinsically rational moral principles to deduce ethical systems from. Any assumed axioms are subjective choices.
Different logically valid moral systems can be deduced from different starting assumptions. Reason alone cannot show which assumptions are the correct ones.
Identical moral arguments and logical reasoning can be used to justify completely contradictory conclusions. So reason does not consistently lead people towards the same values.