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Nihilism

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Nihilism
Nihilism Nihilism is an offspring of naturalism; naturalists who felt that there was too much inconsistency got unhappy and eventually had enough, creating a worldview that applied more logic and was more heavily based in reason. Sire says that “nihilism is the negation of everything” meaning that nihilists don’t believe in philosophy and the possibility of knowledge or even reality (Sire 94). Nihilism believes in a closed universe; its focus is on atomic matter. Nihilism is a belief that free will is just something that is imagined, that everything in the world is just a cause and effect of chance. Nihilism holds humans as the most important thing in the universe, but says that in the big picture humans are meaningless. There are many problems and contradictions with Sire’s chapter on nihilism. Sire says that “there are values, but no value” (112). Well that makes no sense; how can one have values but not believe in values. That’s like someone saying, ‘I don’t believe that cats are real’ but that person owns a cat. Sire also says the nihilist deny that God is real; saying that God is not real is believing that there is a God in the first place. If someone thinks there is no God then one has an understanding of who God is and nihilism states one can’t do that. Sire also says that nihilists don’t believe in ethics and have no moral values, that they are not necessary or possible. If that was the case then there would be more crimes that are committed by nihilist; there’s not so that leads one to believe that they know crimes are wrong. Proving they do in fact have moral values and then disproves their worldview. After analyzing this chapter in The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire, one can come to believe that someone can’t really know what nihilism is unless a nihilist writes it. Same goes with all the worldviews except for theism which is really well explained because Sire is a theist. My advice is bringing someone in that is an actual nihilist


Cited: Sire, James. “The Universe Next Door” 5th Edition. Downers Grove, IL. 2009
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