Patrick Baca

English 220-007
Jennifer Gammage
February 17, 2014
Paper 1: Expository Conceptual Analysis
The Black Hole that is Nihilism
Why are you reading this? Is there any particular reason why you are reading these words
and not out in the world reaching for things greater than yourself? Throughout history, man
(even those who have reached things greater than themselves) has been perplexed by the
question: why are we here? To this day we have yet to formulate a concrete answer. This
ambiguity has led to thinking and theorizing, and produced the concept of Nihilism. In its
broadest terms nihilism is the belief that nothing matters. The world you are living in today, at
this very moment, is false. Nihilism in its essence is nothing, there is no concrete object that is
nihilism, it is just an ideal. It can be a very devastating view of the world. Like an unimaginably
massive black hole that totally annihilates any and everything in its path, nihilism is just as
unfathomable and destructive. Nihilism is the state of mind that there is no True Ground that
supports the world, values, and morals that make up our existence; it relegates everything that we
previously knew and believed to be true down to nothing and meaninglessness.
This definition of nihilism is based off of traditional accounts of nihilism as outlined by
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He is widely regarded as the father of nihilism, but was
not a nihilist himself. The idea of there being no True Ground that supports our world means that
there is no definite truth to anything we have thought to be True. True with a capital T because it
refers to a transcendent, absolute meaning and purpose to our lives. Nietzsche believed that the
early Christian morals, which strongly dictated how people lived their life (with Heaven in mind)
led to the rise of nihilistic thinking. In his Will to Power he writes, For why has the advent of
nihilism become necessary? Because the values we have had hitherto thus draw their final
consequence; because nihilism represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and
ideals--because we must experience nihilism before we can find out what value these "values"
really had (pg. 2). He believed that the values and morals that man had lived by for so long
finally became overshadowed by the lack of concrete evidence for people to still believe them
true. Nietzsche stated, the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; why?
finds no answer (pg. 5). The aim at that time was molded by the Catholic Church, and it was to
get to heaven by living life by church doctrine, the Ten Commandments, and the Bible.
However, the church could not find an answer to why unfortunate things happen to good
people and not to mention, church doctrine had strayed wayward from what it really should be.
During the Scientific Revolution people began to take it into their hands to find an answer. This
led to different ways of thinking about the world and life in general. Mankind made great strides
in just about every facet of life but still could not answer the question: why are we here?
Mankind emphasized its own capability instead of relying on God and other such ambiguous
beliefs. This sentiment is best summed up by Nietzsches The Madman excerpt, found in The
Gay Science. The madman cries, God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become
gods, merely to seem worth of it?(The Gay Science). The idea of us killing God seems insane,
but when explained it becomes clear. Since people no longer relied on the idea of a higher power
to make sense of the world, they killed God. Religion was in some ways a pacifier for the evils
and wrong in the world, but after Gods death man sought his own Truths. Man had become God
and could now formulate their own views and ideas of how to make sense of the world. This is a
tall task for the simple human being, who is but a speck on the timeline of the universe and this
is when the magnitude of this deed becomes too great for us to handle. Now nihilism comes
into play. Man can only hope to make sense of our world and the vastness of the universe. It
becomes too much for the mind to handle, and the mind delves into a nihilistic state. With no
God to rely on for absolute truth human beings are confronted with a myriad of possibilities of
what purpose we have and what life is truly about. This notion of infinite possibilities goes hand
in hand with nihilism and it is on display in todays society.
In our modern society the only certainty we have is uncertainty. As nihilism has
propagated itself throughout its inception, it has made this uncertainty even more obvious in day
to day life. Life, and where you are at this moment, is completely random and made up of
endless choices we make on a daily basis. In the opening pages of Hubert Dreyfus and Sean D.
Kellys All Things Shining, the authors tell the story of Wesley Autrey. Autrey rescued a man
who had just fallen onto subway after having a seizure, moments before the subway passes the
station. As soon as he saw the man fall Autrey left his two daughters behind, and jumped onto
the tracks and on top of the man to cover him from the subway. The two men were safe and the
day carried on as usual. This is the uncertainty of life in full effect; from the mans spontaneous
seizure to Autrey just being there at that moment. As Dr. Charles Goodstein said in All Things
Shining, It was spontaneous, it was without much consideration for the practicalities, the
realities of the moment (pg. 3). This is what life is made of, spontaneous realities of the
moment. That spontaneity alludes to the nihilistic idea of there being no True Ground to support
our world. People have to make choices every day whether they be big or small, Dreyfus and
Kelly write that: It is not just that we know the course of right action and fail to pursue it; we
often seem not to have any sense for what the standards of living a good life are in the first place.
Or said another way, we seem to have no ground for choosing one course of action over any
other (pg. 15). Not knowing what to do with ones life can be overwhelming because it seems if
the right choices arent made then ones life will turn out opposite of what we seek or think to be
a meaningful life. This feeling of the unknown can cause the idea of nihilism to sprout in
peoples minds. In a blog post on reddit.com, a user by the name of MonstroDon wrote an article
titled, How to not give a f*ck without being a nihilist. In this article the author states that a
nihilistic state of mind stems from insecurity. It is a basic human feeling but when one thinks of
it on a cosmic level it is apparent where the idea of nothingness comes into the mind. Again the
human race is a speck on the grand scale of the universe and the unknown is so vast that we
cannot even fathom what else is out there.
To the individual nihilism can be very devastating and even somewhat depressing when
we think of our lives being led for nothing in the end. Some people have delved so deep into the
idea of nihilism that they have decide to take their own life because: why not? However, I
dont think nihilism should be thought of in this pessimistic point of view. I am religious and
believe that there is a God and afterlife of some sort. God gave free will to man to make their
own decisions which is how most people live their lives, not just in belief in God, but in making
their own decisions with conviction. Nietzsche wrote that, To this extent, nihilism, as the denial
of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking (pg. 15, Will to Power). The
denial of truth, what we have been told to supposedly be true, is a way to embrace ones life and
existence, because now after denying truth we can find our own meaningful real Truth.
Works Cited
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science, 1882. Print.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power, 1888. Print.
Dreyfus, Hubert & Kelly, Sean D. All Things Shining, New York, Free Press, 2011. Print
MonstroDon, How to not give a F*ck without being a nihilist, reddit.com, March 10
th
2013.
February 17, 2014













Reflection
What were the biggest challenges in this section?
The biggest challenge in this section was just getting my mind around the idea of nihilism.
Coming into the class I was thinking exactly what nihilism is about: Whats our purpose? Now I
feel like I understand why I was thinking about that, but now I feel like its a divine way of
thinking.

What kinds of reading skills did you use in this section?
I read only looking for quotes that would support my points and idea of nihilism.

What kinds of writing skills did you use in this section?
I really used, I guess, expository writing skills. Usually I write in an argumentative fashion,
but in this paper I feel I did a good job of creating a strong thesis of nihilism and explaining what
I meant by that thesis statement.

What did you learn and how?
I learned that nihilism is a mind blowing idea that is full of different meanings and
interpretations. It can be seen as a pessimist or optimist. I see it as an optimist because it is a way
to find out about yourself and what you think about the world. It has been kind of depressing and
ominous, but now I think of it as a way to create my own views of people, the world, its ideas,
and myself in relation to all of it.