Khvaragh wrote:ils wrote:Ummm, neither Buddhism or Jainism have anything to do with nihilism unless you're employing an idiosyncratic definition of the term, and atheism is not a religion -- it's a feature of various belief systems.
I would have to agree. Buddhism (Theravada anyway) and Jainism are
non-theistic religions, not nihilistic ones. The difference is quite sharp.
I suppose you might call Doomsday Cults nihilistic, but even them, they usually think they're ascending to some higher level by offing themselves...
I thought I'd addressed this, but maybe it was elsewhere.
Anyway, belief systems like Buddhism (and Stoicism, and to an extent Christianity) are sometimes called 'nihilist' because they:
a) address suffering from the demand-side, not from the supply-side;
b) advocate reducing demand
c) do this through metaphysical systems that reduce the significance of the individual as a discrete entity
These demand-reduction systems can be contrasted with supply-side systems (eg utilitarianism) and demand-reconfiguration systems (eg Cynicism, where demand was redirected to 'natural' things and away from artificial or manmade things).
Here, it's meant to be the individual who is reduced to nihil, and likewise their desires/demands/etc, rather than, in the normal usage, the value in the world itself.