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Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre
So basically you ARE a nihilist that doesn't refer to himself as a nihilist based on a stereotypical misunderstanding of nihilism.
You admit life has no objective higher meaning, but life still has meaning to you that you still recognize as subjective. That doesn't make you less of a nihilist. That's how many nihilists are.
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I don't think I'm going to be transported to a magical haven in the sky when I die, but that doesn't mean I condemn existence. I can hold meaning in my life in itself without recognizing there's some higher power waiting for me. The two aren't mutually exclusive. That being said I've never said that I'm not nihilistic, in fact I've espoused nihilist values in the past, most of which are due to my pessimistic personality. I guess if you want to label me as something cause everyone seems to love labels, you could call me an "optimistic nihilist" because I believe life has no objective higher meaning but I don't reject existence within itself and instead view the experience with optimism. I personally wouldn't call myself that cause it sounds dumb.
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It's not rooted in pessimism because you're assuming that life having meaning is a positive when many many people relish in the idea of life having no inherent meaning.
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Ehh, I don't know. That's find that reasoning shaky. If we're talking general societal belief and ideology, the idea that life has no meaning is pretty pessimistic. But like I've said what makes nihilists different from defeatists is what they do with their pessimistic belief. Holding pessimistic values and/or factoring those views into your nihilism doesn't make you a grinch, nor would I say it fundamentally does so. I think there's a kind of spectrum that comes to nihilism because nihilists vary on how pessimistically nihilist they are. This goes back to the IEP article, which states that a "true" nihilist would "would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy." Neither you nor I are full on nihilists but that doesn't make nihilism at it's core not pessimistic.
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I personally dislike the term 'existential nihilism' because nihilism in it's self is existential. Tacking the 'existential' at the beginning is a self indulgent appeal to superficial ideas of intelligence.
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I believe the term exists to distinguish from 'moral nihilism' which I'm fairly certain is a branch separate from existentialism. I agree though that existential nihilism as a term is generally redundant.