Many of the most common responses to the basic premises of nihilism come down to despair: despair over the loss of God, despair over the loss of objective and absolute values, and/or despair over the postmodern condition of alienation and dehumanization. That does not, however, exhaust all of the possible responses — just as with early Russian Nihilism, there are those who embrace this perspective and rely upon it as a means for further development.
The first step in moving from despair to hope seems to be accepting the validity of nihilism as simply being the logical conclusion of brutal honesty about our lives and the world around us. The absence of objective and absolute values may not be an entirely pleasant conclusion, but that doesn't make it the wrong conclusion. The next step seems to be the argument that the absence of objective values does not therefore negate the possibility of any values whatsoever.
For postmodernists, what follows is the belief that all values and all "metanarratives" are equally valid. Christians who accepted the principles of nihilism and created what became known as "Death of God" theology argued that in a "post-Christian" society, the nature and need for God had to be rethought. Not all atheists accept the principles of nihilism; among those who do, not all accept the postmodernist conclusion that all values are therefore equally valid.
Postmodern Nihilism
When it comes to how they respond to nihilism, modern and postmodern thinkers follow closely in the steps of German Friedrich Nietzsche who used the the assumption of nihilism as the basis for the revaluation of all values. Indeed, many who would count themselves as participants in postmodernism owe quite a lot to the work and insights of Nietzsche, particularly when it comes to his critiques of modernity and modern assumptions.
It is a central thesis of postmodernism that there is neither truth nor error and that all beliefs and perspectives are equally valid. Rather than seeing this as a reason for despair, postmodernists rely upon this thesis as the source of inspiration, allowing them to ignore many traditional assumptions in order to develop new and radical ideas. Jacques Derrida, for example, has argued that the absence of any possibility for absolute truth should not lead us to nihilistic despair because it effectively eliminates the possibility of totalitarianism, a political and social system which relies so heavily upon the assumption of possessing an absolute system of truth that needs to be imposed upon everyone.
Philosophers who adopt this position are also sometimes known as "antifoundationalists," so-called because they argue against the existence of absolute and objective "foundations" or "metanarratives" that structure our thinking, our reason, and our values. Although we may think that we have very good reasons for adopting our positions, we cannot argue that we have objective reasons for those positions — our "truths" are merely constructions, transitory in nature and ready to be abandoned as soon as something better comes along. At no point are our "truths" valid in any transcendental or transcultural way — they can only apply to us, in our particular circumstances and time.
American philosopher Richard Rorty makes this point when he wrote in "From Logic to Language to Play" that "Nothing grounds our practices, nothing legitimizes them, nothing shows them to be in touch with the way things are." The response to such objective meaninglessness is to adopt a cheerful, or at least a very determined, nihilism which accepts that meaningless on its own terms and works to construct personal, subjective meanings which allow us to live.
Contrary to Derrida's assertion, it does not seem very obvious that the absence of truth and values is a death-blow to the possibility of totalitarianism. Just the opposite seems to be the case, in fact, because without any external standards we can use for evaluating ideas and settling disagreements, then the only solution when faced with more than one option is raw power. After all, none of the options are really "better" and none rely more upon "truth" than any other.
So there is nothing genuinely wrong with one of those views from taking power by force and being imposed by force, even if it isn't "true." This, it can be argued, is quite compatible with Nietzsche's argument that all interpretations of our world are driven not so much by a desire to simply and accurately describe matters of fact, but rather a will-to-power over ourselves, our world, and even others around us.
