Nolen Gertz - Nihilism

The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series

A complete list of the titles in this series appears at the back of this book.

Nolen Gertz

The MIT Press | Cambridge, Massachusetts | London, England

2019 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gertz, Nolen, author.

Title: Nihilism / Nolen Gertz.

Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2019. | Series: The MIT Press

essential knowledge series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018043231 | ISBN 9780262537179 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Nihilism (Philosophy)

Classification: LCC B828.3 .G47 2019 | DDC 149/.8dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018043231

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On June 30, 1881, Wendell Phillipsa 70-year-old Massachusetts orator, writer, and abolitionistgave a speech at Harvard University for the Centennial Meeting of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Phillips became famous for his oratory after he gave a passionate defense of the abolitionist movement in a speech at Bostons Faneuil Hall in 1837. In fact, Phillips became so well-regarded that soon after his death in 1884 a neighborhood in Minneapolis was named after him, schools in Chicago and Washington, DC, were named after him, awards at Tufts and Harvard were named after him, and a statue was erected of him in the Boston Public Garden. The statue boldly declares that Wendell Phillips was a Prophet of Liberty and a Champion of the Slave.

The likely reason for this is that Phillips used the speech to make the following argument:

Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule. Nihilism is evidence of life the last weapon of victims choked and manacled beyond all other resistance. It is crushed humanitys only means of making the oppressor tremble. I honor Nihilism since it redeems human nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile, made up of heartless oppressors and contented slaves. This is the only view an American, the child of 1620 and 1776, can take of Nihilismany other unsettles and perplexes the ethics of our civilization.

Today we might similarly find this speech strange, wicked, and perverse, even if we do not have Harvard ears. For why would anyone not only defend nihilism but go so far as to argue that the only view an American can take on nihilism is that it is righteous and honorable?

While it might seem like it would help to clarify what Phillips was arguing to know that he was referring to the political movement in Russia that self-identified as Nihilists, this fact really only makes this situation more confusing. The Russian Nihilists sought to overthrow what they saw as an oppressive and tyrannical regime, for which reason we can see why an abolitionist would support them. Yet their plan to achieve this aim was to destroy society as a whole in order to build a new society out of whatever survived their destruction. The Nihilists first attempted to destroy society by advocating for the destruction of social practices and traditional values, such as private property, marriage, and religion. But when mere advocacy didnt work, they turned to assassination, trying several times to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, which they finally succeeded in doing on March 13, 1881, or just over three months before Phillipss speech.

What we mean by nihilism in everyday usage and what the Russian Nihilists meant by nihilism are not the same, but they are not wholly distinct either. When we use the word nihilism today, we likely dont mean that were worried people are trying to kill the Tsar. But we probably do mean that were worried people are destructive, antisocial, and are at the very least willing to use violence to achieve their destructive antisocial goals. We might further expect that if someone were to be defending nihilism, it would be an angry teenager on Reddit, not a 70-year-old well-respected public figure on a stage at Harvard. And yet if someone like Wendell Phillips would give such a passionate justification of Nihilism, then maybe we should rethink our preconceived notions about nihilism, especially considering how many things are still named after this defender of the strange, wicked, and perverse.

Nihilism, not unlike time (according to Augustine) or porn (according to the U.S. Supreme Court), is one of those concepts that we are all pretty sure we know the meaning of unless someone asks us to define it. Nihil means nothing. -ism means ideology. Yet when we try to combine these terms, the combination seems to immediately refute itself, as the idea that nihilism is the ideology of nothing appears to be nonsensical. To say that this means that someone believes in nothing is not really much more helpful, as believing in something suggests there is something to be believed in, but if that something is nothing, then there is not something to be believed in, in which case believing in nothing is again a self-refuting idea.

Philosopher of nothing Jerry Seinfeld identified this problem when he made his first post-Seinfeld stand-up appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Seinfeld began,

Nothingness quickly becomes somethingness as soon as we try to talk about it. And yet, we talk about it all the time. What have you been up to? Nothing. Exchanges like this are so common that it has become something of a reflex, as we frequently respond to such mundane questions with the answer, Nothing.

But to most people such an answer would not be an example of nihilism. Nihilism is supposed to be something dark, something negative, something destructive. Saying you are doing nothing, however, is perfectly normal, as of course everyone knows that you are not literally doing nothing, which, as Seinfeld suggests, would be nearly impossible, but are simply indicating that you are doing nothing worth mentioning. Yet, if we do have these sorts of exchanges as frequently as I have suggested, then that would mean that we are frequently spending our time doing nothing worth mentioning. And if we are spending so much time doing nothing worth mentioning, then perhaps this exchange is closer to what we think nihilism means, perhaps this does indicate that our lives are not worth mentioning, that we are doing nothing with our lives, that we are nothing, that we