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Nihilism is the ability to enjoy a glass of wine while watching the world burn.

I picked this book up because my reading about hedonism (which is pretty close to utilitarianism, in the end, with pleasure as the utility function) got me curious. I somewhat regret getting it as an audiobook because, as usual with nonfiction books, I would have liked to highlight a few phrases without having to quickly jot them down from memory like the line above.

(Adaptive, I have to admit, if the world is burning anyway and one happens to have a glass of wine.)

I learned that nihilism is not a well-formed system of thought that anyone advocates. When Gertz discusses the history of Western philosophers and how they dealt with the idea that perhaps something is meaningless, it was interesting but could have used the word "meaninglessness" all the way through. (I'd forgotten, if I ever realized, how lame Decartes' proof of the existence of God really was. Sheesh.) It wasn't until Nietzsche that psychological nihilism entered the picture, primarily as "apathy due to the belief that nothing matters" or, as it was more often discussed in the book, "situational apathy due to the belief that no relevant action can be taken". And later on, finally, was a discussion of active nihilism, as the desire to (or action of) destroying the current system in order for something else to arise. This could have simply been covered as "destructiveness" or perhaps even "disruption".

So perhaps I learned that "nihilism" is used for too many concepts, and always viewed as a negative even when the more specific concept in question could also be seen as adaptive.

There was interesting discussion of how an individualist but bureaucratic society might lead individual people toward nihilism (in the apathy sense, sitting around with their wine) because they believe, even correctly, that individual action might make no difference -- and overlook the possibility that collective action might still make a difference. I see collective action in a lot of places though, and reject the premise that we truly are in an individualist society. I also appreciated the discussion of the subjugation of experienced reality in favor of relying on experts and science -- though again, I've been seeing a huge countermovement toward "lived experience" in some contexts and "human voices" in others, so I (experientially) fail to agree that this subjugation ever really happened. Though I do agree that there's value in hashing out our shared experience with equals, to develop our worldviews and empathy and yes, okay, to become more human.

One last thing -- I learned that Kafka was a claims investigator at an insurance company. Suddenly a lot of his writings make more sense!