The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

According to Sire, at its heart, nihilism is it “the negation of everything—knowledge, ethics, beauty, reality” (84). Nihilism is more a feeling or attitude than a consistent philosophy, he believes. Although the majority of people have never felt the despair of nihilism, it has been an influential worldview in the 20th and 21st centuries, affecting art and literature and social movements, and as such it is important to come to an understanding of it.

Nihilism is the “natural child” or direct consequence of naturalism pushed to its limits. This seems paradoxical at first glance, because naturalism seems to assure human beings of their worth and self-determination within the universe. Sire argues that there are three factors, or “bridges”—logical implications inherent in naturalism—that led gradually to nihilism. They have to do respectively with metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

The first bridge (the metaphysical) is that of necessity and chance. In positing that (1) matter is all there is and is eternal and (2) the universe is ruled by a closed system of cause and effect, naturalism implies that human beings are only complex machines. This in turn implies that human beings lack freedom of choice; our actions are determined by evolution, biological and genetic processes, and other natural causes. This has serious implications for human moral responsibility, making humans seemingly not accountable for their actions. Moreover, everything that happens in the universe (not just human actions) is similarly predetermined; there is no way out of the endless chain of natural causes.

The end result is that a human being is “a mere piece of machinery, a toy—complicated, very complicated, but a toy of impersonal cosmic forces” (90). While some naturalists try to solve the problem by arguing that “chance” (rather than the laws of nature) is what causes change in the universe, this still leaves human beings helpless before impersonal forces.

The second bridge (the epistemological) is that of “the great cloud of unknowing” (92). In positing that mind or consciousness is a byproduct of matter, naturalism throws the reality of knowledge into doubt. This is because naturalism does not assume the existence of anything beyond matter that can guarantee that our perceptions are reliable. The paradox is that, if naturalism is true, there is no way of establishing that it is true. Thus, although most of us assume the commonsense stance that our perceptions are trustworthy, from the standpoint of naturalism there is no reason this should be the case.

The third bridge (the ethical) from naturalism to nihilism is that of the gap between “is” and “ought.” Although many naturalists are moral people, there is no real basis for morality in naturalism. This is because for the naturalist, the universe is “merely there”; it was not created for any purpose or reason, and thus there is no basis for ethical imperatives or source for moral values.

Naturalists often answer that we get our moral values from our culture, but Sire argues that this merely begs the question of why certain actions are seen as moral or immoral in the first place. In fact, he adds, cultural relativism is ultimately self-contradictory: Without a “nonrelative standard,” we cannot even explain why cultural relativism is a value worth preserving.

For Sire, the overarching problem with naturalism is that it presents us with “a fact without a meaning” (100). All naturalism does is tell us that things are a certain way. But it cannot tell us why this is so or how things ought to be. Unable to overcome this weakness in naturalism, many naturalists have naturally slid into nihilism. Nihilism is the inability to see the universe or human beings as in any way significant; it is “the loss of meaning” (101).

Thus, nihilism is simply the natural consequence of naturalism, making nihilists naturalists who have followed their own philosophy to its logical conclusions. According to Sire, most naturalists, however, have not thought about their philosophy hard enough to realize its ultimate implications, and so they avoid nihilistic despair. However, they are consequently living merely “the unexamined life,” failing to understand their own beliefs.

This leads to Sire’s final point in the chapter: Not only is nihilism untenable intellectually, it is “unlivable.” Indeed, “nobody can live a life consistent with nihilism” (102). There are five principal reasons for this:

1. If the universe has meaning and there is no right and wrong, any course of action is equally open. But the moment we choose to do something, we are implying that there is some value.
2. If “there is no meaning in the universe” (103), then that affirmation itself would also be meaningless. Nihilist epistemology is self-contradictory.
3. Nihilism is essentially parasitical. In order to be a nihilist, you have to have some value to rebel against. And this very fact proves that meaning and value exist.
4. “Nihilism means the death of art” (104); the obverse is that art disproves nihilism. Although art can express nihilism and its consequences, the moment it does so it creates meaning and so disproves nihilism. And if an artwork is itself meaningless, then it is not art. Further, all art has structure and structure implies meaning and thus contradicts nihilism.
5. Nihilism “poses severe psychological problems for a nihilist” because it denies the very things everybody needs to live: “meaning, value, significance, dignity, worth” (105). In actuality, claims Sire, many nihilists have had mental illnesses.

In sum, nihilism is a pervasive spiritual condition in the modern world, one that we must understand if we are to solve the problems of modernity.