246. Nihilism Is Nothing

We like nihilism for the same reason we like ideology and religion. All of these things give us a way to escape uncertainty. Just as ideology provides us with certain truths about our political situation, and religion provides us with certain truths about our spiritual situation, nihilism provides us with certain truths about our existential situation.

Nihilism tells us nothing has value and by doing so it frees us from our worries about the value of things, the value of others, and the value of our own lives. By making everything worthless, we allow ourselves the strange comfort of knowing that nothing we do can possibly matter. Freedom from meaning is also freedom from responsibility, and in this there can be a kind of morbid excitement.

But just like any dogma — whether ideological or religious — there can be no genuine certainty about any of nihilism’s claims, for they rely on foundations just as uncertain as anything else. Skepticism is such a powerful antidote that it can defeat not only any possible dogma, but also the most severe nihilism.

It follows that to use skepticism as a justification for nihilism or any kind of cynicism is absurd. For all that skepticism can do is to show us that everything is ultimately uncertain and there are no foundations to our knowledge. The conclusion that follows is not that there is no value but that we cannot be certain of value.

That we can and do value things and people in our ordinary lives does seem to lend value some reality through us, but we cannot be sure that our value judgments have any foundation beyond the fact that we make them. Still, we live in a world of human-created conventions and our values are real and influential in this world.

From the standpoint of the ultimate, we are stuck with interminable uncertainty. We cannot escape our uncertain subjectivity and arrive at the certain objectivity we so deeply desire. The only ultimate reality we have is emptiness, where everything is nothing but also something, uncertain but also possible. And it is precisely this possibility that can be a source of hope. For it means ultimate goodness is possible, and through our willingness to see it and respond to it, we also have the opportunity to create it in the world.