Hacker News Reader

Comment by scott_s | Hacker News Reader

I think it's worth noting that dvt's post agrees with the submitted essay. Quoting more:

> At times he described himself as “a nihilist,” by which he meant not that everything is meaningless, but that he actively rejected the available eternalisms. He also condemned “nihilism,” understood as apathetic unwillingness to take problems of meaningness seriously. He particularly included Christianity and “Apollonian” rationalism in that. Nietzsche’s intention was to develop a new, positive alternative.

View on HN

Then the author's use of the word nihilism in this article is a redefinition of what is the accepted definition of the term.

Rejecting accepted definitions is fine if you have a purpose for doing it. The problem with Chapman is more that he's very sloppy with his langauge. If you read his blog, you might be left with the impression that Nietzsche is just some simple pseudo-mystical bullshitter, because Chapman doesn't explain Nietzsche's double movement from knowing to unknowing and vice versa. To use Chapman's own taxonomy, what Chapman thinks he's doing is dwelling in the space between meaningfulness and meaninglessness, but he's just being meaningless while expecting Nietzsche to somehow do the heavy lifting. Nietzsche probably would've hated this guy.

Rejecting accepted definitions in discourse and propaganda has proven intellectually and politically dangerous in the past, even when the redefinition is made honestly and explicitly. Devastating when made dishonestly and opaquely.

It raises a red flag…why didn’t an author just define a new term for the concept instead of distorting an old term? Why the required effort for a reader to make the translation from accepted definition to the author’s “special language”? This is prose, not poetry. Redefining accepted terminology is the intellectual equivalent of cultural appropriation and, at best, leads to confusion and empty bickering over terminology. Just sounds sloppy to me…imagine doing that in a STEM discipline, you’d be laughed out of the room.

Could be a useful strategy in cult psychology, though, I grant you that.

> Rejecting accepted definitions in discourse and propaganda has proven intellectually and politically dangerous in the past, even when the redefinition is made honestly and explicitly. Devastating when made dishonestly and opaquely.

And if the accepted definition is already the dishonest and dangerous type?

I think the point this author is making is that Nietzsche’s use of word “nihilism” does not match our accepted definition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com