DIALOGUES
CONCERNING MORAL NIHILISM
A Play by Dean Hall and Jon Gill
LIGHTS UP
on a SMOKY PUB. Location: southern U.S., time period: doesn't matter.
The pub is not quite what you might call "run down" but it's
not the cool place on the block anymore. It's a little noisy.
Songwriter DEAN HALL is on a small stage playing Hank Williams's
"YOUR CHEATIN' HEART." Focus shifts to two men waiting at a
high-top table for their third. One is a man (20s) who thinks it's edgy
and cool to call himself NIHIL ZARATHUSTRA. He's wearing a black
button-down work shirt with rolled up sleeves and jeans. He's got a black
wool Kangol cap that he wears backwards—like a cross between a beret and Che
Guevara. He's smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking Johnnie Walker Black,
neat. He’s performing a card trick for HUGH
DAVIDSON that he fumbles. Hugh, being
polite, compliments him. Hugh is a
middle-aged guy who’s gotten his education as much from experience as from
books—a much more rugged, cooler character than Nihil. He’s drinking a margarita and wearing a
nondescript black t-shirt, well-worn Levis, and a semi-ironic salmon pink
turban. They’re waiting for WILLIE J to arrive.
HUGH. Are you
sure he’s coming?
NIHIL. I’m not
sure of anything. (He flashes a cheesy
grin. They are silent for a moment. They both take drinks.)
HUGH.
(Gesturing to the stage) Man, this guy’s pretty good.
NIHIL. I
guess. But if he plays another country
song…
HUGH.
(Interrupting Nihil)…yeah right, like you’d actually do anything.
NIHIL. Well…
(he is silent for a moment.) Isn’t small
talk the worst thing ever? Do we really,
like, is there really a need to discuss the weather or the traffic at any
length? Why can’t we just be in the same
space without talking? I mean really,
why do we feel the need to kill the silence?
What are we so afraid of? Surely
we’d survive just fine by acknowledging and embracing it…
HUGH. Are you
sure you’re still talking about small talk?
NIHIL. (A
Cheshire-cat-like grin pulls across his face) I’m not sure of anything.
The
song finishes, and they both applaud, NIHIL applauding obnoxiously loudly while
half-jokingly calling out FREE BIRD! DEAN
HALL begins playing his own song entitled JESUS WAS A BLUES MAN. WILLIE J enters from a door on stage
right. Willie is a tall, skinny man
closer to Hugh’s age than Nihil’s. At
the risk of invoking stereotype, he wears a tweed suit and a dress shirt with a
novelty tie. He’ll be drinking beer, in
which Hugh will inevitably share, but Nihil is far too pretentious for
beer. WILLIE scans the room for NIHIL
and HUGH.
HUGH. (shouting
to get Willie’s attention) WILLIE!
Wil...Goddamnit WILLIE, OVER HERE!
WILLIE. Hey
guys! What are you talking about?
NIHIL. Nothing, of course…
WILLIE. Been
saving that one up, I see. I could smell
it coming from across the room.
HUGH. Eh, you
know, the usual bar talk. Meta-ethics. Nihil’s over here trying to argue that the
ideas of good and evil are bullshit.
NIHIL. Well,
not exac…
WILLIE.
(Interrupting) That’s terrible! How
could you even believe something so vile?
NIHIL. (Standing
at the table and pacing, reciting an essay of his own writing from memory) Well
it’s not exactly that simple. You see, Good and evil are simple, false
constructs. Now you may find that a repulsive thing to say—and certainly
I, myself, was resistant very strongly to ethical nihilism when I first came
across it.
WILLIE. (To himself)
Oh God, here we go. (HUGH and WILLIE
look at each other and shake their heads).
NIHIL. There is
a natural feeling of repugnance when one is confronted with the idea that there
is no such thing as inherent rightness or wrongness. With that simple
statement, the field of ethics is dead in the water, in case David Hume and
Friedrich Nietzsche hadn't already pronounced its death quite loudly many
centuries ago. Good and evil, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly—these
are properties that do not exist in nature. Good and evil are not
inherent, but rather claims of adherence to arbitrarily-stipulated forms.
Instead of ethics, we have merely æsthetics, by which I mean that we do
not have proper ethics—the consideration of what is right and what is wrong,
but instead we have æsthetics and axiology—the consideration of those things
that we either do value or ought value.
WILLIE
downs his beer with bemusement and contempt.
He begins to make his counterpoint before being cut off by HUGH.
HUGH. (Imitating
Willie) Yes, Nihil, that’s lovely, but how does that work in practice?
NIHIL. Well…(pausing for a moment as though he
doesn’t know what he’s going to say next) an action is only good dependent upon
the definition used to quantify goodness. Right?
WILLIE.
(hesitantly) Well…I don’t know, what do you mean?
NIHIL. Like,
“the good” is a form, and something is judged as good or bad by how well it
adheres to that form, but that form is merely stipulated, not based on any real
thing, get it? (Silence). Okay, here's a fairly extreme example: it is
fairly universally accepted that murder is morally wrong. But why?
What is it about murder that makes it inherently
wrong?
WILLIE. Well, I
mean think about it. As sentient beings
we’re vehemently opposed to murder! It’s
the ultimate violation of the happiness of others—and more to the point, it’s
absolutely against the very idea of morality!
The idea of morality is to work towards a more inclusive whole! Morality is all about people coexisting in a
society..,
NIHIL. (Interrupting)
AND I AGREE WITH YOU! All I’m saying is
that any answer given to my question must essentially boil down to some form of
either a naturalistic explanation—for example, it's bad to kill because it is
detrimental to the survival of the species; or a retributivistic argument—e.g.,
one must treat others how one wishes to be treated; or a further moral
argument—e.g., that to murder someone is to commit a violation against their
sense of agency and consent. But again the question must be asked: why is
that inherently wrong? (Nihil is quite proud of all the fancy
words he used.)
WILLIE.
(letting out an exasperated sigh, knowing there’s no use trying to stop Nihil)
keep going…
NIHIL. What is inherently wrong
about hindering the survival of the species? And further, why is it just our
species that it's inherently wrong to kill? Is it because of moral
agency? Okay, why do we think a violation of agency is wrong?
Ultimately, the point you reach is the admission that wrongness is merely
contradiction to the values of the moral judge, essentially a fallacious appeal
to emotion. There is no inherent wrongness, merely offense to the
sensibilities. An agreed-upon moral position, therefore, is entirely
reliant upon a concordance of the values of those establishing such a position.
In other words, moral goodness is merely a stipulated definition that is
agreed upon by the moral judges. This, therefore, necessarily means that
any action judged as right or wrong is merely being judged in a formalistic
sense—i.e., the measure of a particular action's goodness is the degree to
which it conforms to the definition of goodness upheld by the moral judge.
To say that something is morally good is to say that it possesses the
quality of moral goodness, naturally; therefore judges must agree on what
qualifies as moral goodness itself, which necessarily means the construction of
a stipulative definition. Sure, if we stipulate a definition, we can
judge something by the extent to which it holds to that definition. But
that does not make a thing inherently good at all. It just means that it
fits the definition chosen, and yes, different moral judges do all
have different, nuanced ways of defining what is right or beautiful or good.
At the risk of invoking cliché, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If it's true that there is no such thing as inherent metaphysical goodness,
then clearly the idea of inherent morality could only be viewed as pure, simple
construct.
WILLIE. So you
spent all that time to say you’re a moral skeptic?
NIHIL. YES, hell,
I’m a nihilist! And so are you!!
WILLIE. Okay,
come on, now that’s where I draw the line.
I’m not about to just say that everything is permitted and that you
should do whatever you want! Hell no, I
won’t allow it!
NIHIL. But
Willie, that’s not what nihilism means!
You’re attaching all this baggage to a word that just means that nothing
is intrinsically morally good! Hell, you even agree with that, I know you
do!
HUGH. (rising) You
idiots, do you even realize you’re basically on the same goddamned page and you’re
over here arguing minutia? You both know
you wouldn’t allow it! None of us
would! But Willie, that’s not the point
here—look, you admit that there’s no common essence to morality, which is what
Nihil’s saying—you’re over here trying to go one step further though and ground
it in some divine nonsense! Where’s the
rub? (3 beats of silence). Anybody?
WILLIE. Look,
I’m just trying to get some moral facts here, and…
NIHIL.
(exploding) Facts, Willie? Really?! You want facts? Here’s some things that
are just outright facts. I am a tiny, loosely-put-together bundle of
carbon, hurdling through the vastness of space on a comparatively-average-sized
pale blue rock held in place by the force of a giant nuclear reactor 93 million
miles away. I will live for nothing—NOTHING—but a mere blink of cosmic
time, and my impact on the universe will be virtually non-existent. I
probably don’t have what might be classically called “free will” and there
definitely is no inherent meaning or reason to my life or the lives of anyone
else.
And yet, every
moment I think upon these things, I feel like a god, standing tall upon
Olympus, for despite my insignificances, I have been granted the most
incredible fortune possible, and it feels like the whole of reality, the vast
expanses of space and time, have conspired, allowing me the beautiful
opportunity to experience this cosmic blink filled with love, laughter, music, joy,
wisdom, LIFE! Yes, I am a nihilist. I don’t believe in any inherent
value in the world. But that doesn’t stop me from being happy, or from
behaving in what you might call a “moral” way.
Look, just because life might be “easier” in a universe where inherently
grounded morality exists, doesn’t mean that we should accept that as being the
case. We’re philosophers, goddamnit. We
care about the truth. The way things actually are. Not the PR implications of the words we use.
HUGH. That’s the
real rub, Willie. You guys are just
arguing semantics over the definition of fact, but it’s completely
irrelevant. You say that “faith in a
fact can fix a fact,” but that’s just not what we mean by fact. You see, a fact is a fact is a fact. It’s not dependent on human minds. But Nihil, you’ve got to also understand
that, while physics does fix the facts, and is the best way we have of
knowing the world, truth is emergent,
subjective. A product of human
minds. Willie, what you really want
moral truths, and if Nihil was honest he would happily grant those to you. He might not want to admit it, but he’s every
bit as worried about morality as you are.
Hell, I bet it keeps him up at night that there aren’t any moral facts
in the world. But Willie, that’s not an
excuse to try to ground the subjective with the objective. We can’t derive an ought from an is, any
more than we can derive an is from an
ought. Writing about David Hume’s philosophy, Simon
Blackburn said that “the foundation stones of moral knowledge lie in front of
everyone.” These stones can be analyzed,
cherished, collected, or thrown, but they are stones nonetheless—and really, ultimately
it’s up to us. We’ve got to figure it
out. We have to find our own grounding.
WILLIE. And
what’s that grounding?
HUGH and NIHIL.
Love.
DEAN HALL begins to play I’LL BE YOUR
ANGEL
NIHIL. Love is
the answer. We all have love within us. All morality comes from
love—caring about those around us. Love is so powerful that it can usurp
reason. Hume said that Reason is the slave of the passions. It's
not something that has to be argued for—IT'S ALREADY THERE! The grounding is within us! And love is greater than all of us. It’s greater than all our ideals. It’s greater than happiness. Happiness is all about the self. But love
is the most inclusive thing there is.
Happiness reflects upon the self, but love reflects upon humanity. Love connects all sentient beings. We don’t need or want to appeal to
happiness. All that matters is
love! Now argue out of that one,
goddamnit!
Nihil
slams his hand too hard on the table, accidentally sending his whiskey glass
tumbling to the ground and shattering.
All three laugh hysterically, then slowly go silent. They sit for a moment.
NIHIL. So, how
about this weather we’re having?
WILLIE. Crazy,
indeed! And the traffic getting here…
They trail off in small talk. We see all three joking and laughing.
FADE
TO BLACK.
-Dean Hall and Jon Gill
(This is the fruition of an independent readings course on David Hume that commenced last July. The nectar is in the journey! -jpo)
(This is the fruition of an independent readings course on David Hume that commenced last July. The nectar is in the journey! -jpo)
