A connection is often made between postmodernism and nihilism, but the full meaning of such a connection is rarely explored. The contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo is one of the few philosophers to have devoted much work to explaining this connection. Vattimo extrapolates the relevance of Nietzsche’s theory of nihilism for the postmodern condition, arguing that the concept of the p...

I begin by introducing the standoff between the transculturalist aim of moving beyond cultural inheritances, and the worry that this project is itself a product of cultural inheritances. I argue that this is rooted in concerns about the meaning of life, and in particular, the prospect of nihilism. I then distinguish two diametrically opposed humanistic responses to nihilism, post-Nietzschean re...

Nihilism about practical reasoning is the thesis that there no such thing as rationality—as rationally figuring out what to do. While other philosophers have defended a theoretically oriented version of thesis, usually called “error theory”, case made for fully it: we are so bad at do not really know doing it right would much look like. In particular, our control instrumental (or means-end) rat...

I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer (what I describe as) the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs (the mereological simples) are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place.

If nihilism is delirious existentialism, can existentialism be a valid cure for nihilism? Can we in fact active (pre-anti-) nihilists?

I examine three “anti-object” metaphysical views: nihilism—there are no objects at all—generalism—reality is ultimately qualitative, and anti-quantificationalism—quantification over objects does not perspicuously represent the world. After setting aside nihilism, I argue that generalists should be anti-quantificationalists. Along the way I attempt to articulate what a “metaphysically perspicuou...

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects – objects with proper parts – do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “x s arranged F-wise” (for example, while nihilists deny that there are tables, they concede that there are “x s arranged table-wise”). Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insof...