If nothing matters, there is no reason left to do anything at all

The argument

The most common objection to nihilism concerns what it does to motivation. Every deliberate action involves treating some outcome as worth bringing about, and critics argue that this is exactly what the position withdraws. Someone who holds that nothing matters inherently has no answer to the question of why to begin a long project, keep a promise made last year or get up at all, because any answer would have to name something worth doing. The conclusion is not that such a person will behave badly, but that they have been left without the grounds for behaving in any particular way. Critics argue that the effects are observable in the people who take the position seriously rather than as a pose. Sustained conviction that nothing is worth pursuing is described in terms close to those used for depression: effort drains away, plans stop being made, and activities that once absorbed a person become arbitrary ways of filling time. On this account nihilism is not merely an unpleasant conclusion but one that degrades the capacity to live, and recommending it as liberating ignores what it does to people who cannot shrug it off. The sharper version of the objection is that nihilism cannot be lived at all. Critics point out that those who profess it continue to eat, work, protect the people they love and complain when treated unjustly, which are all ways of acting as though things matter. Either the position is held in theory and contradicted in practice, in which case it is doing no work, or it is held consistently, in which case the person becomes incapable of the ordinary business of living. Critics argue that a doctrine with only those two outcomes has little to recommend it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Defenders answer that the argument confuses inherent meaning with motivation. Hunger, curiosity, affection and boredom move people regardless of whether the universe underwrites them, so a nihilist has the same reasons to eat and work as anyone else: they simply decline to add a cosmic warrant on top. The appeal to despair is said to describe a psychological reaction to losing an inherited framework rather than a consequence of the view itself, and many who hold it report calm instead. On the charge of inconsistency, defenders reply that acting as though things matter locally is exactly what the position recommends, since denying built-in meaning was never a claim that nothing can be preferred to anything else.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Hunger, affection, curiosity and boredom move people whether or not anything matters inherently, so action does not require the cosmic warrant the premise assumes. [Rejecting P2] The despair described is a reaction to losing an inherited framework rather than a consequence of the view, and many who hold it report calm instead. [Rejecting P3] Continuing to eat, work and protect others is what the position recommends, since denying built-in meaning was never a claim that nothing can be preferred to anything else. [Rejecting C] At most it follows that nihilism is psychologically hard for people raised to expect purpose, which is a fact about them rather than a disadvantage of the view.