nihilism & happiness

“Nihilism stands at the door,” wrote Nietzsche.  “Whence comes this uncanniest of all guests?” 


So begin Sean Kelly's "Stone" reflections in the Times the other day. He doesn't explain exactly what Nietzsche meant by "God is dead," and this statement suggests that he hasn't spent much time in the heartland:

Today’s religious believers feel strong social pressure to admit that someone who doesn’t share their religious belief might nevertheless be living a life worthy of their admiration. 

I meet many who don't seem to feel the pressure at all.


But Kelly makes a fascinating connection in this essay to Herman Melville, whose message he translates as encouragement to

 find happiness and meaning... not in some universal religious account of the order of the universe that holds for everyone at all times, but rather in the local and small-scale commitments that animate a life well-lived.  The meaning that one finds in a life dedicated to “the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country,” these are genuine meanings.  They are, in other words, completely sufficient to hold off the threat of nihilism, the threat that life will dissolve into a sequence of meaningless events.  

Wish I'd had that interpretation of the whale-hunter's intent back when my undergrad profs had me reading Pierre and Moby Dick. (Douglas Adams' whale might have helped, too.)


"All writing is re-writing," and maybe the best reading is re-reading. Bear that in mind, students, as you prepare for next week's exams.