ABSTRACT
Charles Taylor, Hubert Dreyfus, and Sean Kelly address residual fears about nihilism. They represent what we call the moderate view – moderate in the sense that for them, human beings can optimistically hope to overcome the supposedly bad effects of nihilism. Taylor, Dreyfus, and Kellyview nihilism as a man-made problem, the solution to which requires contact with the ‘sacred’. This chapter argues that this strategy is a step back. It traps us within the ‘overcoming’ onto-theological framework that religious believers and atheists alike share, by pandering to misguided fear of nihilism. Inspired by Richard Rorty, who has candidly suggested that we can ‘tell Zarathustra that the news that God is dead is not all that big a deal’, we argue that the idea that nihilism is a problem we need to overcome is an idea we need to outgrow.
