Nihilistic View Of Death

Death is a topic that can be very unsettling to many. It can cause feelings of uncomfortableness, anxiety, or even fear. Some reasons for these reactions can be found in what we know, such as the fear of losing a loved one or coming to the realization that we can die at any moment. Another large factor why death is unsettling is also based upon what we don’t know, such as what happens after we die.

Knowing the answers of what happens after death is something to ‘die’ for. We may never know the true answer but we can speculate and create beliefs and hypotheses of what may happen. These speculations can range anywhere from there being an afterlife or to being reincarnated as another being. Speculations can also take a more pessimistic approach per se, such as the nihilistic view, in which death is the end of being and that life is meaningless. Nihilistic views can be defined as the “rejection of of all religious and moral principles”, or in philosophical terms, an “extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in this world has a real existence” (Oxford Dictionaries).

The nihilistic view upon death is also known as the annihilationist view of death, in which we are inevitably annihilated when we die and erased from existence. This perspective is growing throughout many of the cultures

Immortalists claim that the view of immortality is a universal belief that can be innate, so it must be true. Yet, nihilistics refute this due to various individuals and groups throughout the world that have developed funeral ceremonies in harmony with the belief that death is the end of existence and devoid all supernatural references. Another nihilistic argument towards the annihilationist view of death also claims that many people used to believe the Earth was flat, yet it was proven to be round, which debuts the ‘universal belief’ of the world to be false, coinciding with the belief that the soul is