Solipsism & Nihilism

[Mr Endon]

I've only recently started taking a serious interest in philosophy. I've come across the rather bewildering ideas of solipsism and the infamous nihilism. Now,

is there some kind of kinship between them? Does one branch off the other, or are they incompatible? If so, in what do they differ? (Or is it rather like comparing apples and oranges?)

Also, if you could present a strong case against either of these I'd be very grateful.

[backline]

I think of Nihilism as the politics in Russia that Doestoyevsky attempted to counter in The Brothers Karamazov, which I see as an outgrowth of the philosophy that, "It's all nothing." or, "Nothing matters. Existence is meaningless."

Solipsism seems more like personal narcissism to me, which I believe is a phase of growth easily recognized in some adolescent personalities, and may extend well beyond that phase, becoming fixed in the personality.

[JohnLocke]

The two terms are similar but not synonymous. Consider it this way: solipsism is epistemic, in that it posits that your mind (or, more appropriately, my mind) is all that exists. There is nothing else but the mind that experiences reality - everything else is inherently doubtful. It is an issue of knowledge. Nihilism, on the other hand, is a moral concept. It posits that moral values are meaningless - that they do not actually exist. Both concepts entail skepticism and uncertainty, though the former does more so.

[Mr Endon]

That's what I was looking for, thank you. Two more questions:
a) Is it safe to say that solipsism naturally entails nihilism but the reverse is not true?
b) From what I understand, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist, though people try to portray him as such. When he says that morality is relative I know that isn't the same as advocating nihilism, but I can't pinpoint exactly where the difference lies. Is it because being relative is more than just being inexistent?

[coberst]

That's what I was looking for, thank you. Two more questions:
a) Is it safe to say that solipsism naturally entails nihilism but the reverse is not true?
b) From what I understand, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist, though people try to portray him as such. When he says that morality is relative I know that isn't the same as advocating nihilism, but I can't pinpoint exactly where the difference lies. Is it because being relative is more than just being inexistent?


I would claim that solipsism is a radical form of idealism, which holds the mind/body dichotomy and that the only thing of real value is mind and the mind deals with ideas and thus ideas are the only thing that is of value or even perhaps that the mind with its ideas are the only thing that exists.

I would claim that nihilism often happens to the critical thinker because s/he is driven to the conclusion that human existence is of no importance and is meaningless and thus leads to despair and perhaps madness and or suicide.

[Uberzensch]

b) From what I understand, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist, though people try to portray him as such. When he says that morality is relative I know that isn't the same as advocating nihilism, but I can't pinpoint exactly where the difference lies. Is it because being relative is more than just being inexistent?


Nietzsche is not nihilist because he is ultimately a very creative and life-affirming philosopher. Though he recognizes that our present morality is foundation-less, he does not think that it is impossible to have a foundation.

Instead, Nietzsche wants to recognize that we create those foundations. (This is the life-affirming part.) We have the power to establish morality, to perform a reevaluation of all values!

Nietzsche shows us that our present morality is empty, not to say that there is nothing, but hopefully to inspire some to create something better!

[amarna]

Though he recognizes that our present morality is foundation-less, he does not think that it is impossible to have a foundation.

Instead, Nietzsche wants to recognize that we create those foundations. (This is the life-affirming part.) We have the power to establish morality, to perform a reevaluation of all values!

Nietzsche shows us that our present morality is empty, not to say that there is nothing, but hopefully to inspire some to create something better!

You're glorifying him. It was Kant 1785 in "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" who pointed out that morality is relative, an empty man made shell in which one can put anything and everything, and it is Schopenhauer to whom we owe the life-affirming philosophy of will. Nietzsche turned these honorable philosophical ideas into ideology.

[Uberzensch]

You're glorifying him. It was Kant 1785 in "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" who pointed out that morality is relative, an empty man made shell in which one can put anything and everything, and it is Schopenhauer to whom we owe the life-affirming philosophy of will. Nietzsche turned these honorable philosophical ideas into ideology.

Yes, it's true that Nietzsche stands on the shoulders of the very same giants he seeks to destroy.

But, you must recognize his importance in furthering the goal of reevaluation. His "philosophizing with a hammer" was missing from those before him and a prerequisite for all the life-affirming, shell-filling we need to do!

To create, one must first destroy!

[billl]

Yeah, Nietzsche would generally give credit where it was due, but also said where the giants before him went wrong, in his opinion. He praised Schopenhauer and gave him his due, but actually went on to eventually criticize Schopenhauer's nihilism. He thought Kant's categorical imperative devalued/demeaned the individual.

I guess the best part about Nietzsche (his exploration of how to re-value values, and how to live, and the vision of a new kind of person) can seem like ideology, but I guess it seemed like the next step for him. His stuff is aggressive, tends toward anti-social (sort of by necessity, but also maybe by temperment), and it's no surprise he eventually went insane. But great, powerful, searching stuff, I think. Great criticisms, new approaches (which can, of course, be criticized in turn) and superb writing, even in translation. Rare to get a writer like that when reading philosophy, energetic, not gloomy or wooden.

Haven't read but a couple pages of him in the last ten or fifteen years, though.

[Chicopac]

You're glorifying him. It was Kant 1785 in "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals" who pointed out that morality is relative, an empty man made shell in which one can put anything and everything, and it is Schopenhauer to whom we owe the life-affirming philosophy of will. Nietzsche turned these honorable philosophical ideas into ideology.

You're glorifying Kant and Schopenhauer. Protagoras said around 450BC "Man is the measure of all things", and he was not the only Sophist to understand relativism. Let's not forgot the melancholy Danish Prince, fretting around 150 years before Kant! "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Kant only said that morality is relative from the human perspective, because we cannot know the true morality; of which, of course, there is one, Kant would say. He asked all contemporary philosophers to halt their philosophizing so that he could work it out.

Schopenhauer's will to live is an entirely different thing from the complex will to power Nietzsche developed and eventually fell head over heels in promotion of. It was, purely and simply, the human desires to live a successful human life and reproduce and all that, and because this was the purpose behind all things, and Schopenhauer was certain of this, life sucked for him; and he let other people know. To call this idea honorable and Nietzsche's pure "ideology" is to misunderstand both philosophers.


That's what I was looking for, thank you. Two more questions:
a) Is it safe to say that solipsism naturally entails nihilism but the reverse is not true?
b) From what I understand, Nietzsche wasn't a nihilist, though people try to portray him as such. When he says that morality is relative I know that isn't the same as advocating nihilism, but I can't pinpoint exactly where the difference lies. Is it because being relative is more than just being inexistent?

a) Solipsism does not logically necessitate nihilism, because it is a knowledge judgment, whereas nihilism is a moral judgment, sort of. But if the question is whether solipsism is a natural segue into nihilism, then yes, definitely. The line between them is blurry. They sort of both revolve around the phrase "Nothing is true; everything is permitted." Solipsism is basically the first part of the phrase, nihilism basically takes the leap into the second.

b) Nietzsche wasn't a full-fledged relativist: he didn't lay it out as: morality is relative. He said that morality was created by us, but not even really by us, by humans countless epochs before us, and their morality remains law. The difference is that to say "morality is relative" is a statement against any best morality, but he strove for a best morality; he wanted to be the creator of the new valuation, or at the least its inspiration. This is also why he's not a nihilist: nihilists see that their old valuation is now meaningless and think this means the world is meaningless. This was plain foolish, to Nietzsche. Life for him was overflowing with meaning and purpose.

[Mr Endon]

Many thanks for the great discussion, I've been profiting from it greatly, even (nay, specially) from the digressions on the great Germans, whom I'm eager to study in the coming months. And Chicopac, thank you for addressing my questions so thoroughly, now those matters are much clearer for me.


Feel free to continue the ongoing discussion of the Germans, but let me ask you one more question:

I was having a discussion with a hardline Christian about morality. He believes there is an absolute Truth and an absolute Good (God). I believe that there aren't absolutes. He started to think I was a nihilist. He asked, "what values do you go by, then?" I said that it is "life-affirmingness", and not Truth, whatever that might be, that I always take into account when making decisions.

The problem is, can I advocate for everyone to think the way I do? I mean, the problem with leaving people to interpret what is life-affirming or not is that someone may have a gross misconception of what that is and, for example, expell minorities genuinely thinking that that's alright. On the other hand, if we define what "life-affirmingness" is, aren't we creating an absolute?

I've tried to evade this conundrum by saying that there are no absolutes but humans demand absolutes and indeed they are essential, so we create one, though it's not really something that starts with a capital letter. Does this make any sense? Could you help me sort this mess out?

[billl]

The answer you are looking for is something about how life is not classifiable into absolutes, there's always exceptions, but we could always form hypothetical categories to justify what is obviously right and true in a particular instance, leaving aside the distant ramifications which might require a reappraisal of everything in-between, and so it's best to make sure we retain the freedom to go with the absolutes that are most obvious to any immediate particulars, BUT also be careful not to get too lazy about it and just always take the painless path because the unfair results languish out of sight, spawning innocents unaware of the source of the injustice that befalls them as a result of our innocent codification of what happens to be right in the moment. Of course, if everyone did this, it might all just come out in the wash, not perfect, but better than an amusement-park simulacrum. And that's what we get, on the whole. Simple, really. It's like, "Yeah, man, take control!" But in the end, just decide to go along with the dogma that fits the situation.

[billl]

Sorry, that wasn't serious. I was just agreeing with you.

[amarna]

I've tried to evade this conundrum by saying that there are no absolutes but humans demand absolutes and indeed they are essential, so we create one, though it's not really something that starts with a capital letter. Does this make any sense? Could you help me sort this mess out?

I'm fond of theory of cognitive dissonance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance :)

[Mr Endon]

That is a fascinating theory, amarna, and I've read the wiki from top to bottom. Are you implying that I'm rationalising my worldview? I guess I may be. However, is it still rationalisation if you're aware of it? In other words, I think that rationalisation, when made consciously, turns into soulsearching and self-discovery, and is aimed at actual change of attitude rather than mere appeasement of uneasiness. But then again, maybe this is just rationalisation :)

[amarna]

Protagoras said around 450BC "Man is the measure of all things", and he was not the only Sophist to understand relativism. Let's not forgot the melancholy Danish Prince, fretting around 150 years before Kant! "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Kant only said that morality is relative from the human perspective, because we cannot know the true morality; of which, of course, there is one, Kant would say. He asked all contemporary philosophers to halt their philosophizing so that he could work it out.
Schopenhauer's will to live is an entirely different thing from the complex will to power Nietzsche developed and eventually fell head over heels in promotion of. It was, purely and simply, the human desires to live a successful human life and reproduce and all that, and because this was the purpose behind all things, and Schopenhauer was certain of this, life sucked for him; and he let other people know. To call this idea honorable and Nietzsche's pure "ideology" is to misunderstand both philosophers.

To say something is not the same as to prove it. Prior to Kant a lot of people said or thought that there could be something relative about ethics and religion. But it was Kant who proved that morality is nothing but a normative postulate. He devastated epistemology as well as ethics - not by hysterically hammering around but with logically successive derivations which were irrefutable. Theory of cognition was jumbled by him like classical physics was by Einstein in 1916. Anyway, I can't detect anything Nietzsche contributed to epistemology. He's derivative. And as to ethics, my good-or-evilness, all that populistic Uebermensch stuff he wrote meets the WHO definition of Narcisstic Personality Disorder and it plainly IS protofascistic.
I do not deny Nietzsche's importance to cultural history at all. I wouldn't deny the importance of airplanes, gonorrhea or Beatrix Potter either. Though his importance results from populism and simplicity. He just was crowing out (to crow out? Is there really such an English verb? Any Shakesperean reference? "Speakest, Prince Hamlet, what crowest thou out?" Hm, guess not :D) all the anti-clerical, anti-democratic and anti-whatsoever opinions his coevals liked to hear. And one hasn't to be a mastermind to understand the advantage of being more brutal than others.
As to Schopenhauer: His philosophy of will is, unlike Schopenhauer himself, not misanthropic at all. He assumed something like an inborn empathy as fundament of morality, 150 years prior to the detection of mirror neurons. Of course that's honorable. Honorable, clever and cute, the handiwork of wisdom. :D

[amarna]

Are you implying that I'm rationalising my worldview? I guess I may be. However, is it still rationalisation if you're aware of it? In other words, I think that rationalisation, when made consciously, turns into soulsearching and self-discovery, and is aimed at actual change of attitude rather than mere appeasement of uneasiness. But then again, maybe this is just rationalisation :)

Rationalising is at least one way to reduce cognitive dissonances. Heavy drinking would be another. :D