• DOI:10.1111/NOUS.12146
• Corpus ID: 146890471

If Nothing Matters

@article{Kahane2017IfNM,
  title={If Nothing Matters},
  author={Guy Kahane},
  journal={No{\^u}s},
  year={2017},
  volume={51},
  pages={327-353}
}

• G. Kahane
• Published 1 June 2017
• Art
• Noûs

Some of us, at some points in our lives, are struck by a vision of the universe as devoid of value. In such a state of mind, all human striving appears absurd, and the grandest achievements seem worthless. One feels that nothing matters. It is possible that such feelings have always been around, but they appear in their most acute form in the disenchanted modern era, with the rise of natural science and the decline of religious belief and traditional forms of life. Nietzsche famously announced that “nihilism stands at the door,”1 and many European thinkers thought that philosophy’s most urgent task is to face up to this crisis—the impression that science has shown value to be an illusion.2 It is a remarkable fact about recent metaethics that one can find in it none of this anxiety, even though it has long been dominated by naturalism. Until fairly recently, this was because most metaethicists assumed that fear of nihilism is due to mere confusion. Hare, for example, offered the following therapy to a young Swiss guest of his who, after reading Camus, was gripped by despair at the thought that nothing mattered.3 Hare suggested that his guest should ask ‘What was the meaning or function of the word ‘matters’ in our language; what is it to be important?’ Hare soon convinced the young Swiss that