Why bother studying philosophy, ethics and morals when nihilism

There's more to philosophy than ethics.

>>8450176
To get a job.

Seriously, though, because it's fun and studying other stuff is boring.
Philosophy isn't about reaching conclusions, think of it more as mental gymnastics.

>>8450176
NIHILISM???

ARE YOU FROM FUCKING PLEBBIT OR WHAT?

THIS IS 4CHAN, WE ARE LARGELY RELIGIOUS BECAUSE WE'RE LARGELY ANTI-FEDORA

TAKE THE REDPILL AGAINST NORMIES

WE ARE AGAINST NORMALCY

WE ARE AGAINST ACTIVE SEXUAL AND SOCIAL LIVES

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>>8450176

>>8450176
Start with the Greeks.

>>8450200
>zero dubs
Faggot confirmed.

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>>8450176
>not using spooks as your armor and building a traditional pseudo christian nuclear family and valuing outdoor time, family dinners, community, cleanliness, and fiscal austerity as the ideal way of life.

I fucking pity the philosophy majors I knew in school, they are all wearing the same clothes, look unkempt, and are universally unhappy. Ignorance is truely bliss, we should all strive for the epicurean ideal.

>>8450271
kys

>>8450271
hedonism is the superior way of life

>>8450229
Are nihilists incoherent? Nothing means anything and abstractions don't exist. Seems fairly coherent to me.

>>8450252
, and end with nihilism

>>8450176
To impress women that are into intellectuals, and to have semi-interesting discussions with your friends while high. Those are literally the only uses.

>>8450271
This guy is correct. Studying philosophy led me to conclude that philosophy is pointless, retroactively making much of my life pointless, meaning that I'm now terribly depressed. Should've just pledged myself to Joseph Smith.

>>8451522
how come i can shit in your face if abstractions don't exist?

>>8451542
you legit can't shit on my face, it's literally not possible

>>8450176
Logical systems aren't necessarily complete

>>8451542
You can shit in my face all you want, nothing abstract about that.

>>8451514

Except when you get into your forties and you're old and sad and childless and nobody with a tight cute body wants to be hedonistic with you anymore, except as a fling that will last a year tops.

For the cultural example par excellence of this, see: physically attractive, sexually active young gay men, their desires, their preferences, how they choose to live their lives.

I'm not entirely knocking hedonism by the way, just reminding everyone of what they know is coming if they care to stick around long enough to find out. In the long view it really is all for nothing (to the OP's point), so you are free to live as you please.

>>8451566
>old hedonists

Why? If you're really going to dedicate yourself to the lifestyle, you ought to be dead by 35 at the latest.

>>8450185

There's more than just ethical or moral nihilism.

>>8451569

comfort, too, or the requisite amount of moderation to avoid getting a painful disease, are also hedonic imperatives, alongside drinking, drugging, fucking. They are in tension with one another but they tend toward the same goal: maximization of pleasure, which for our present purposes is identical with and coterminous to the minimization of pain.

>>8450185
this

and even if I'm a nihilist inside, I can still use ethics for something. nihilism doesn't mean that I can't have opinions or any will to do anything: who the fuck needed objective truths for those in the first place?

nihilism literally just means a belief that there's no objective truth about something. morality doesn't exist: okay, I can still ponder or use ethical systems for whatever reason. there's no objective meaning or value in life: I can try to make one up and sort of "act it out", and so on and so on

it feels weird to be such a 21st century man, most of these big crises about nihilism seem absolutely ridiculous... I never "really" believed in some objective morality or meaning in the first place, I've been a fucking moral relativist since the age of 12, it isn't that big a leap to say that okay, no right or wrong really exists.

>>8451602
Yes, but at some point you become too old to effectively drink, drug, and fug, along with the inevitable depression from societal pressure to be less worthless to your fellow man (disregard this if you are a psychopath or very self righteous); at that point your best recourse as a hedonist, it would seem to me, would be to go out in a blaze of drug-fueled glory. Being very sure to take a lethal amount to avoid living as a vegetable, of course.

>>8451608
And this is the philosophy most smart people are gravitating towards in the last years, i don't know if it has a name.
"the world is meaningless and any form of morality or human concept is just a construct, but i'll make up my own philosophy of live and live it out like it's all a big game"
Nietzsche was right.

>>8451713
>smart people

Not really. It's the philosophy that western society as a whole is gravitating towards, especially Europe. It's a cultural shift like any other, caused by a gradual disenfranchisement with religion and freedom of information. I imagine it'll pass after the current generation.

>>8451742
To be replaced by what? Religion is on its way out on the western hemisphere and science is not going to produce the next idol.
It does explain the rise of neo-fascism though.

>>8451762
>to be replaced by what?

Hedonism. Joking aside, I think we're undergoing a degradation of moral values that will lead to a much more liberal mindset overall, especially in regards to personal freedom. This is a bad thing for me, but I recognize that on a grand scale it isn't objectively any worse.

The other option, of course, is a cultural rebellion against this perceived liberalism like what you see on a small scale here on the 'chan, which would probably lead to a fair bit of civil unrest and possibly a reversal of some of the personal freedom trends we've been seeing over the last 50 years or so. Which is equally terrible, for different reasons.

>>8451771
I think the best place to look for reference is rome, we have masses which are becoming more and more limited in their opportunity for growth (slaves in rome, technological efficiency in our case) And dependant on handouts, socialist give outs in this case. Coupled with a more and more elitized class of megarich which value liberalism.

Sadly, i can only see what happened to rome, republics becoming too dissosciated from reality because of a more and more entrenched aristocracy that gives rise to an angry backlash that takes authoritarians into power, who after a while will proceed at fucking it up.
Murrikans are about to be hit by their fascist, trump or whoever comes the next election if trump loses.

>>8451793
I would continue this discussion, but I agree with you almost completely, down to the comparison with Rome. I've come to peace with the fact that society will change around me, but that doesn't mean I'm not planning to go live in a cabin when things start to get really bad.

>>8451802
There is a ray of hope though, a sufficiently cultured nation can become selfaware enough to both keep an eye on the aristocracy so as to avoid them taking too much control and to manage a socialistish state that keeps the truly poor from not being able to break out from that, the best examples are the nordic countries.

Too bad then comes the issue of mass suicide due to the biological limitations of the human mind.

>>8451823
I'm also in medschool so that, worse case scenario, my skills are always valuable and i can always manage to be in a good (or at least stable) position no matter the reality around me

>>8451555
>>8451559
there are two kinds of people

Why not?

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>its a people think degeneracy caused the decline of Rome episode

Why

>>8450176

>nihilism is the logical conclusion

prove it

Nihilism is really fucking boring desu. It's pretty much the easiest thing anyone can come up with.

>>8451823
The biggest problem for the nordic countries is that they're not necessarily always going to be able to keep it up. A welfare state is not cheap, in a capitalist/market economy world, it needs a pretty prosperous country (in an international planned economy, of course, anything could be worked out, in theory).

I live in one, our economy is not doing that well. This has given rise to both right-wing neo-nationalist populism and idiotic right-wing neoliberalism (I call it idiotic because it is an ideology that pretends to not be an ideology, making it an incredibly strong one, one that manages to ignore all facts while pretending to be all about reason over feeling).

This is not going to end up well unless we give the rule to some nice social democrats again who'll make sure that the rich also suffer from the shitty economy (or unless our economy magically gets really good). Cutting from the poor and only giving back nationalism doesn't work, neither do neoliberal policies which just come down to "well uh disassemble the big fat state so business will prosper, also lower the wages and taxes". It just causes more and more anger, more and more people who don't have a positive view of the future...

>>8453483
It's also the hardest one to live with.

>>8453227
Because /pol/ has been raiding more than usual.

>>8454165
Nah. My life has improved pretty drastically since I embraced nihilism.

>>8453227
No, it's a "people think degeneracy is a symptom of decline" episode. Mind the nuance, it makes all the difference in the world.

>>8454212
in a freedom from spooks kind of way?

>>8451526
>Studying philosophy led me to conclude that philosophy is pointless, retroactively making much of my life pointless, meaning that I'm now terribly depressed.

Same until I realized that even the best philosophical arguments for the pointlessness of life were fundamentally unsatisfying. The cure is to choose whatever answer you want since you can't know the truth from Philo anyways. So I chose faith, specifically a sort of Catholicism with a degree of agnosticism (I believe in the Trinity, Jesus' teachings and an afterlife; but I don't care much for post-Apostolic miracles, much of the OT, Paul's contributions, etc.) that honestly satisfies my religious needs and allows me to be happy.

Only retards allow academic philosophy to enter into their real life beliefs and lives. It's a bunch of depressing answers -- and while they seem better than blind religion, they're just a few hundred logical justifications removed from the same level of dogma. Recognize that and be free

>>8450176
Well, anon, I guess I'm indifferent.

i think you mean ontological nihilism bro

>>8451526
you're depressed because you're not a platonist. join the cult lad

>>8454628
My man

Wow this board is now full of pseuds, if you don't pass you nihilism phase after 20-22 you are pathetic

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>>8455454
>/lit/ posters
>not freshmen
come on

Nihilism is self defeating, so why believe in it?

>>8455458
Because it makes sense, it's something you come to organically.
The whole idea is trying to build a practical way of living while still believing it's all pointless in the end.

>>8455454
If you "passed through nihilism as a phase", then you never understood it, or you mentally degenerated into a retard.

>>8455618
He's talking either about reaching nihilism and never expanding upon it like >>8455596 says, or he really is a retard.

>>8451522
he did mean that if you´re not brave enough to have some beliefes and logical thiniking to offer it´s always just easier to say you believe in nothing

>>8450176
>gets done reading Grendel and learns nihilism
>posts to 4chan that he's a "nihilist"

Why don't you finish highschool you shit for brains. true nihilism is a fantasy. its nonexistent. impossible. story over with.

go back to cutting yourself and find a different word to "describe who you are" like the worthless feministic sack of skin you are.

>>8450176
find a deity that you like, and focus on that.

if you can't find it in you to realize that the molecules that make you didn't just spontaneously CREATE THEMSELVES, then you are a waste of flesh. and you blur the line in which separates humans from animals.
in which case that would make you as close as possible to your fictional "nihilism" or living only by instinct/ not by "philosophy, ethics, or morality" <---aka beliefs.

we possess instinct but we are not bound to it.

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>>8450176
For fun. This is basically the only answer to nihilism. Fun.

>>8455973
so molecules can't create themselves but deities can...

>>8450176
This >>8456011
Studying philosophy is about learning other people's ideas, you don't necessarily have to agree with them.

>>8450176
Humanity will always wish to seek something greater then itself; wonder why morals and ethics matter and find great pleasure in searching for answers to big philosophic problems (like ethics and morals).
Some people aren't fans of having a blunt one-size-fits-all viewpoint on them eg. nihilism.

>>8456059
obviously you buffoon.
that is the epitome of the word Deity/Deities.

but that is not the point here desu.

>>8456168
making up a word for something doesn't make it real

>>8450271
Epicurus was not all into what you're talking about desu.

In fact he was worried with the ignorance of the people around them and their misguided strive to achieve happiness by having more stuff for example.

>>8450176
To realise what utter bs that statement is.

>>8451771
what's so bad about hedonism? Doesn't everyone strive for pleasure and the lack of suffering? It seems like the only goal uniting everyone.