I am an optimist. I love this world, filled as it is with beauty and ugliness; for me, life is of course meaningful, and meaningful in a sacred sense. Yet this belief that “life has meaning” is, for me, a “postulate”: it is unreasonable! And it is much like Euclid’s fifth postulate, or, more precisely, like the “law of excluded middle” in logic—“P or not P” is always true; how can there still be room for debate? Yet intuitionistic logic and certain many-valued logical systems do not accept this, and they can nevertheless construct a logically self-consistent system of their own. It is hard to determine, by argument within logic itself, who is right and who is wrong, even if we may feel that denying the law of excluded middle seems absurd. In the same way, a nihilist who says “life is utterly meaningless” can also be perfectly self-consistent!
Many people think that nihilists can be refuted by simple arguments. For example, Zhao Tingyang points out: “We cannot ask whether life has meaning: if a person is willing to live, then he has already affirmed that life is meaningful.”[1] This is quite interesting and can persuade a number of people; however, if I suppose that I am considering the matter from the standpoint of a thoroughgoing nihilist, the issue is not so simple. For instance, one may think life is utterly meaningless, even say that life is rotten to the core—negative meaning—but at the same time think suicide is just as rotten to the core. Between two equally rotten things, one is willing to choose life, perhaps because suicide is even worse than this meaningless life, or simply out of laziness—well, if alive, then alive; a living corpse, taking each day as it comes. Suppose I were a nihilist who believes that life has absolutely no meaning. According to Zhao Tingyang’s way of thinking, one might probably try to persuade me like this: “Since you think life is utterly meaningless, why are you still willing to continue living in this world? Since you chose to live rather than die, doesn’t that show that you think living is meaningful?” But as a nihilist, I can immediately retort: “I do indeed think life is utterly meaningless, but I think everything is utterly meaningless—life is meaningless, death is meaningless too; to live is meaningless, and to die is meaningless as well. So why should I, by choosing another meaningless thing, prove that I really believe life is meaningless? Such a proof is of course meaningless itself. Whether I choose life or death, neither can prove that what I choose is meaningful, and the act of choosing itself is naturally meaningless, haha. Of course, that very retort of mine just now is also meaningless. Everything, absolutely everything, is merely my having happened to do certain things; I am only yielding to desire and living as a living corpse—where is there any place for ‘meaning’ to stand?” — Clearly, a thoroughgoing nihilist cannot be refuted. Many scholars try to “persuade” nihilists through rational analysis; I think these efforts are futile. On the contrary, nihilists are more likely to use reason to turn around and “refute” “meaning.” For example, if I say that the meaning of life lies in devoting oneself to the cause of all humankind, the nihilist can ask back: “And what is the meaning of the existence of all humankind? After all, humanity will perish, and the universe will perish too. You only think life is meaningful because you have not thought deeply enough; I see farther. I see that in the end everything will be ‘empty,’ and in the end nothing will remain. Human life is brief, so isn’t it wiser to seize the day?” — Such talk is very hard to refute.
In fact, many people really are not as good as nihilists at “seeing through” things. In particular, the prophecy that the universe will eventually perish is often hard to face, and people often consciously or unconsciously evade these questions. For instance, in the late 1980s, Mr. Zhao Kaihua wrote an article, “‘The End of the Heat Death Theory,’” pointing out that “Granted, contemporary cosmology is still unable to predict the ultimate fate of the universe (if there is one), but the nightmare that has tormented the physics community for more than a hundred years—the heat death theory—can, as a page of history, be safely turned over.”[2] Whether the heat death theory can be dissolved by the Big Bang theory is a question I have already raised in earlier writing, and I will not discuss it here for the moment. What I want to ask is: why say that the heat death theory is a “torment,” a “nightmare”? I’m afraid the heat death theory torments not only the “physics community”! It is very hard for people to accept such a miserable end for the universe. Even if it is said that all human beings must die, people still hope for the perpetual continuation of humanity; even if it is said that humanity will ultimately perish, people still hope the universe will be eternal; even if it is said that the universe will one day fall into silence, people still hope for a new creation… For example, Deng Xiaomang says: “However, from the scale of the universe, I do not think heat death is the final destination. On the contrary, the meaning of entropy increase lies precisely in cultivating from it humanity, which is capable of reducing entropy. And after heat death there will inevitably be a new round of creation, perhaps developing into more advanced intelligent beings. As Engels said, no property of matter will ever be lost.”[3] People always hope to find some kind of “eternity.” One can imagine that Engels’s refutation of heat death in The Dialectics of Nature still receives the ardent support of many scholars to this day.
However, Engels’s refutation lacks persuasiveness. I have read the relevant parts of The Dialectics of Nature—Engels was not using scientific argument to refute the second law of thermodynamics, but rather using philosophy to argue, as if to say that the heat death theory does not accord with my philosophy, and therefore is wrong; such an argument is hard to make convincing. As Mr. Zhao Kaihua said, the development of modern cosmology and physics has indeed provided some new insights into the fate of the universe. Yet it seems that, judging from the evidence and theories now available, even if the universe does not end in heat death, it will end in a “Big Crunch,” a “Big Whimper,” and so on—in short, it will certainly come to an end. Of course there is no final conclusion on this. But how could we possibly persuade nihilists to believe in a fantasy unsupported by any scientific evidence rather than in a scientific prediction supported by many arguments already?
Science excludes the “infinite.” If a physical theory arrives at an “infinity” somewhere, that means the theory is in crisis! Yet human beings are always longing for eternity—whether it is the immortality of the soul or “serving the people is infinite,” all are pursuits of eternity. If the meaning of life lies in some eternal thing, then this will surely not be something that can be demonstrated by science; “eternity” is a religious question, and only religious faith can become a repository for “eternity.”
Of course, the meaning of life does not necessarily have to be anchored in eternity; it can also be anchored in aesthetics, or in some kind of “realm” or “state of being,” but these too are not things that can be demonstrated through speculative reason. There is no method that can truly “refute” nihilism. With people who waver between meaning and emptiness, we can adopt an argumentative approach, helping them see whether there are any contradictions; but when facing a truly stubborn nihilist, the only workable method is religious-like (including literary and artistic) “persuasion” — “You can believe that life has meaning; this will make you happier, and such a belief will not bring any contradiction. Why not believe it?”
Once we understand that “whether life has meaning or not” is not a necessary inference at all, but merely a good belief, then we will also be better able to understand different faiths concerning the meaning of life—whether one places ultimate meaning in life itself, in one’s descendants, in “serving the people,” in self-realization, in truth, in the highest good, in immortality, or in God… These are all different faiths; it is hard to say who is right and who is wrong. If they are mutually tolerant, they can certainly coexist harmoniously in a pluralistic society.
February 26, 2006
[1]Zhao Tingyang, *On Possible Life: A Theory of Happiness and Justice*, China Renmin University Press, 2004, p. 14
[2]See Sun Xiaoli, ed., *Philosophical Debates in Modern Science*, 2nd ed., Peking University Press, August 2003, p. 138
[3]Deng Xiaomang, *Lectures on Hegelian Dialectics*, Peking University Press, 2005, pp. 90–91
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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