Nature’s Creativity Proves the Downfall of Nihilism
How a philosophical overview of science recovers life’s meaning
In an Aeon article, “Philosophy was once alive,” Pranay Sanklecha argues that analytic philosophy specifically has avoided the problems that matter most, such as whether life is meaningful.
Addressing that problem would mean dispensing with the possibility of nihilism, yet as Sanklecha points out,
In the analytic literature on meaning in life, there is remarkably little sustained engagement with nihilist or sceptical worries about value. The basic version of this worry is very simple: it’s the worry that nothing is valuable. You’d think that this was quite an important worry to consider when thinking about the meaning of life — nihilism is very much a thing. It’s not that you had to endorse nihilism, but you at least had to engage seriously with the reasons people have for being nihilists. Analytic philosophers dealt with this worry by assuming it away.
What more precisely is nihilism? Britannica says, “In the 20th century, nihilism encompassed a variety of philosophical and aesthetic stances that, in one sense or another, denied the existence of genuine moral truths or values, rejected the possibility of knowledge or communication, and asserted the ultimate meaninglessness or…
