RE: Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?
June 11, 2019 at 6:56 am
(This post was last modified: June 11, 2019 at 7:12 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I'm not arguing for or against nihilism, insisting that nihilism is coherent, or anything like that. I'm giving you examples from your own comments about nihilism that present themselves as normatives. You're building a list of what a nihilist can and can't do, here. Obviously they can say incoherent things, as a matter of practical ability. So this list of can and can'ts isn't a description of our abilities, but what restrictions are placed on the set of propositions that can be affirmed from nihilism, properly understood and held to be true.
-I'm not disagreeing with you-
Only suggesting that this minimal set of normatives is derived in the same way as any other set and potentially ubiquitous to moral comments. Normatives don't have to be coherent to exist, and they don't have to arise from a coherent position to exist. There's no requirement that normatives be cognitivist (in fact, if noncognitivism is true then all normatives are derived from non-cognitive states).
This might help, it's a rehash of that earlier convo. In Will to Power, Nietzsche commented that nihilism was -not only the belief that everything deserves to perish, but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plow; one destroys.
Why did he think as much? Vulcan will have more to say here, but I think that at a minimum we can posit that he believed that even in his position from radical skepticism, he saw a set of minimal normatives. The notion of desert and will to proper action (defined by the position itself) was a necesarry part of understanding nihilism and holding it to be true. This quote gets sensationalized, but consider that the will to destroy can express itself as nothing more than providing legitimate criticism of moral structures in the hopes that they are reformed or abandoned.
There are things a nihlist shouldn't do, and things a nihilist should - or, if we prefer, things a nihilist can't do (properly understood and genuinely held) and things a nihilist had to do (properly understood and genuinely held).
-I'm not disagreeing with you-
Only suggesting that this minimal set of normatives is derived in the same way as any other set and potentially ubiquitous to moral comments. Normatives don't have to be coherent to exist, and they don't have to arise from a coherent position to exist. There's no requirement that normatives be cognitivist (in fact, if noncognitivism is true then all normatives are derived from non-cognitive states).
This might help, it's a rehash of that earlier convo. In Will to Power, Nietzsche commented that nihilism was -not only the belief that everything deserves to perish, but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plow; one destroys.
Why did he think as much? Vulcan will have more to say here, but I think that at a minimum we can posit that he believed that even in his position from radical skepticism, he saw a set of minimal normatives. The notion of desert and will to proper action (defined by the position itself) was a necesarry part of understanding nihilism and holding it to be true. This quote gets sensationalized, but consider that the will to destroy can express itself as nothing more than providing legitimate criticism of moral structures in the hopes that they are reformed or abandoned.
There are things a nihlist shouldn't do, and things a nihilist should - or, if we prefer, things a nihilist can't do (properly understood and genuinely held) and things a nihilist had to do (properly understood and genuinely held).
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