Any Nihilists here?

[Belacqua]

Well, at least we can all draw comfort from the fact that none of this is under anyone's control as freewill doesn't exist.

(I know you're partly joking here, but it reminds me of something on the topic of nihilism...) 

It seems to me that the whole constellation of nihilism/existentialism/absurdism comes about because of the loss of older beliefs about natural ends. So for example the old Greek guys posited that because human beings have a particular kind of nature -- the way our bodies and minds are put together -- then we can define what kind of life we should work toward.

The standard example is an acorn. The acorn contains a particular potential. If everything goes right, it can grow up to be a healthy long-lived oak tree. In the old days they used to think that people are the same -- our potential as newborns points to a particular kind of life, as a fulfillment of what our nature points toward. Aristotelian ethics, then, is not so much about obeying moral laws as it is about determining what kind of life best fulfills these potentialities. There is no proof that a given action is moral or immoral, but (within general outlines) we can prove that a given choice does or does not contribute to the end toward which people are pointed. In the same way that not watering your acorn will inhibit the fulfillment of its potential, starving yourself or taking heroin will inhibit your full human development. 

A cat's potentialities are different than a person's, and so its flourishing is different from a person's. But, within certain boundaries, all cats have the same nature and so the full flourishing of a cat's potentials will look pretty much the same for all cats. 

Likewise, they used to think that because people are all generally put together the same, it would be possible to set out a rough but permanent outline of what a fulfilled human life would look like. 

So for Aristotle, the essence of human beings is pre-determined. It's not something we choose through our free will. You're a human, this is your destiny, just accept it. 

The existentialists flipped this and decided that existence precedes essence. In other words, a baby is just raw material and our essence -- what we fundamentally are -- is something we create through all the choices we make in life. And these choices, within certain boundaries, are free choices, for which we must take responsibility. We can't say "I'm just that way by nature," because we are responsible for what we become. 

Marxists, famously, say that there is no such thing as human nature. That what we perceive as our nature is a product of the conditions under which we are raised. And given better conditions, we can be different from what looks inevitable -- and better. So capitalists will say that people are naturally greedy and capitalism is good because the system harnesses this greed for the development of society. But Marxists say that it's the other way round -- living in a capitalist world makes us greedy, and our nature would be different in a different society. 

I was thinking about this because of what we said earlier about the social construction of values. To our modern way of thinking, Aristotle is wrong to say that values are determined by our animal nature. There are no values written into nature. But this means, to existentialists, that we are free to determine what values we will instead live by. 

If that is nihilist, in the sense that values are made up things, then nihilism is compatible with working toward a better life for more people. Inventing a society which values generosity and kindness more than greed would benefit more people, despite these values being non-inevitable, chosen things.