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Nihilism
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- Narrated by: Shaun Grindell
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
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Nihilism
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Summary
When someone is labeled a nihilist, it's not usually meant as a compliment. Most of us associate nihilism with destructiveness and violence. Nihilism means, literally, "an ideology of nothing". Is nihilism, then, believing in nothing? Or is it the belief that life is nothing? Or the belief that the beliefs we have amount to nothing? If we can learn to recognize the many varieties of nihilism, Nolen Gertz writes, then we can learn to distinguish what is meaningful from what is meaningless. In this addition to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Gertz traces the history of nihilism in Western philosophy from Socrates through Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Although the term "nihilism" was first used by Friedrich Jacobi to criticize the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, Gertz shows that the concept can illuminate the thinking of Socrates, Descartes, and others. It is Nietzsche, however, who is most associated with nihilism, and Gertz focuses on Nietzsche's thought. Gertz goes on to consider what is not nihilism - pessimism, cynicism, and apathy - and why; he explores theories of nihilism; he considers nihilism as a way of understanding aspects of everyday life; and he reflects on the future of nihilism. We need to understand nihilism not only from an individual perspective, Gertz tells us, but also from a political one.
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- Random Customer
- 05-09-23
The second half contradicts the first.
Listened to this to see if a more scholarly look into nihilism would eradicate any misconceptions I may have had regarding nihilism being something predominantly experienced by young angry men (such as myself, many years ago), and the perceived influence I see nihilism having culturally at this current time.
The first half of this book was informative in it's own way, and generally provided a neutral narrative tone throughout this section. As it's an audiobook I can't go back and find the precise quotation but I recall the author stating quite clearly that nihilism basically means having politic viewpoints is (unsurprisingly, considering the title of the book) pointless, or some other phrase. This however is completely contradicted in the latter half when the very typical, Marxist / anarcho-communist bias emerges in the second half (anyone who ever went to university knows precisely what I'm talking about).
In summary, despite actively looking to dispel my preconceptions, they were actively reinforced. Nihilism probably does have something to offer people, but only people operating at a significantly higher developmental stage than 95% of the population, and its internal contradictions render it useless as an ideology in practical application, in my not-formally-philosophically-educated opinion.
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