If it’s a giving up, it’s a giving up on a conceptual confusion about a real thing that one has set a nonsensical standard for.
Daniel Dennett quotes from “Net of Magic”, by Lee Siegel
Quote from book:
“I’m writing a book on magic, ” I explain, and I’m asked, “Real magic?” By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. “No, ” I answer: “Conjuring tricks, not real magic.”
Dennett:
Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
For many, real morality, real free will, real knowledge is some conceptual gibberish. The morality, free will, and knowledge that actually exists is rejected as not real morality, free will, and knowledge.
The kind of nihilist you describe is the one who has rejected the existence of “real” magic in his mind, but has not given it up in his heart, his valuations. His mind knows he can’t have real magic, it has “given up” on real magic, but his heart still yearns for it, still judges the magic that actually exists as lesser, as not real magic. Real magic is felt to be shinier and fluffier and altogether better than the magic that actually exists, that’s the one he wants, but knows that he can’t have.
Hence that sense of futility and impotence you sense in them.
(I’ve never met anyone who calls himself a philosophical nihilist who fulfills this trope of the “fatalist nihilist”. This imagined villain seems to live mainly in the mind of the believers in real magic, next door to the “misanthropic egoist”.)
If it’s a giving up, it’s a giving up on a conceptual confusion about a real thing that one has set a nonsensical standard for.
Daniel Dennett quotes from “Net of Magic”, by Lee Siegel
Quote from book:
Dennett:
For many, real morality, real free will, real knowledge is some conceptual gibberish. The morality, free will, and knowledge that actually exists is rejected as not real morality, free will, and knowledge.
The kind of nihilist you describe is the one who has rejected the existence of “real” magic in his mind, but has not given it up in his heart, his valuations. His mind knows he can’t have real magic, it has “given up” on real magic, but his heart still yearns for it, still judges the magic that actually exists as lesser, as not real magic. Real magic is felt to be shinier and fluffier and altogether better than the magic that actually exists, that’s the one he wants, but knows that he can’t have.
Hence that sense of futility and impotence you sense in them.
(I’ve never met anyone who calls himself a philosophical nihilist who fulfills this trope of the “fatalist nihilist”. This imagined villain seems to live mainly in the mind of the believers in real magic, next door to the “misanthropic egoist”.)