My overarching take is to defend theory and proper engagement with it, which may actually not be precisely what you’re asking about, but I think I can get to your concerns as well.
Subpoints are:
- The article gives the most superficial gloss of post-structuralist theory, that the gloss is nearly meaningless in itself and only functions to be terrifying. This is destructive to people who are trying to figure out meaning in their lives.
- The title of the article sounds like a death sentence, and then places the blame on (in my opinion) some of the most challenging and truthful thinkers I am aware of.
- Real, philosophical nihilists do not all see their nihilism as a sentence to mental illness, and not everyone who embraces post-structuralist (I’ll broaden it to post modern) theory is a nihilist.
To complicate matters, I agree with both @MarkD and @Klax.
The article mentions the theorists Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. I’ve read Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and plenty of other Post Modern theorists at an introductory level. A book of mind-bending translated-from-French prose per week with additional readings. Foucault’s short article took me 8 hours. It’s not possible to adequately present in one brief, popular-level article in Psych Today the depth, breadth and subtlety of the points they were making and how that applies to an individual and her or his life. Do not believe anyone who leads you to believe that these ideas are easily or completely summarized in a statement like: “There is no truth.”
The article title sounds like a death sentence. To be sure, the ideas of postmodern theorists rock some people’s worlds to the core. I wrote about my husband’s and my friend Bill, over here: Three Tips from a Pastor to Care for Those Deconstructing - #11 by Kendel. When we knew Bill, he was already falling apart (which wasn’t helped at all by a severely broken heart). Then we moved away and lost contact.
Bill and I were reading a lot of the same theory at that time. Admittedly, Bill had worked with it longer and more intensely than I had, and was also a very intense, and sensitive person. But I also came back to more of it later.
I have not found a need to embrace nihilism, but have found both complicating and freeing many of the ideas I worked with in theory. Recognizing that we are creatures living within a context that molds and shapes us gives us an awareness that we can evaluate and work against, when needed, even if we can never entirely leave the context within which we exist.
In my case, as a Christian, I find much of what I learned through postmodern theory an important tool for evaluating what I’m doing, what the Church is doing, how we understand people, how I live my life. It makes thinking and engaging in a culture with so many unquestioned assumptions much, much harder. But I feel no need to assume it’s all meaningless. In fact, right now, trying to write to you seems quite meaningful to me. I hope I have something to give you that you find meaningful.
Pulling around to what I think is more on your mind, it IS, admittedly, a challenge to rethink meaning in our lives and its source and context. We find that meaning is not always clearly handed to us on a plate. Reevaluating what we find meaningful or sources of meaning in our lives is something we must do, and will do again. And you aren’t alone in this process. The process will continue, if you let it, and you will come through it with a better understanding of what is meaningful, even if it’s very different from how you started.
Philosophical nihilism is not a sentence to mental illness.
Here’s a fine quote from Michele Foucault to demonstrate my point: “Nihilism is not a sickness but a historical horizon in which man experiences and comes to know his own subjectivity.” “Nihilism” is not equivalent to “hopelessness.”
Foucault’s personal life is better-known than the other theorists mentioned in the PT article (at least to me), although I know very little. He was rather a philosophical rock star as a younger man, and he was a man who had no problems with uncertainty. If you would like to get a taste of his thinking, this discussion between him and Noam Chomsky (also of great interest) is worth watching. I saw the segment on justice, and found it helpful for understanding better the relationship between things we take as ultimate truths, and their societal source.
Over in the “The End of Apologetics” thread, we have just finished reading a book together that was specifically about apologetics, but was also an excellent introduction to some of the thinking of Søren Kierkegaard. He was a Christian AND a nihilist. So there’s room, I think for a wide range of thinkers and believers/nonbelievers under the umbrella of “nihilism” and it doesn’t mean one must be plagued with mental illness.
If one is stuck, though, at the point where nothing seems meaningful and seems it never will, that is actually a different problem, isn’t it? That is depression. Depression leads to a different kind of nihilism that is not philosophical.
Sorry to write you a book. I hope I’ve brought my thoughts around to adequately address your concerns and that I’ve written something that is helpful to you.