Dian asked:

What's wrong with basing our life on a lie, knowing it's a lie? When it's too late for faith and too early
for science then what?

Was Nietzsche an Antichrist, an atheist, a nihilist or an existentialist?

Why is philosophy so attractive though it offers no undoubted truths? Are we masochists to do
philosophy? Are those who haven't noticed their ignorance and don't think happier?

If my illusions collapse, I'll have no purpose in life...nihilism awaits. They why endanger these
illusions, why live so dangerously?

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Your question happens to coincide with the subject of the Philosophy Now magazine undergraduate
essay competition. based on the recent science fiction film The Matrix.

I discover that my familiar world, the whole of my life, has been a dream produced by an evil scientist.
My body which has been asleep since birth awakes to a world reduced to a post-apocalyptic
wasteland. A mysterious stranger offers me two pills. The blue pill will let me return to my comfortable
world of illusion, eliminating all knowledge of the choice I have made. The red pill will allow me to
remain awake to face the awful truth.

I would take the red pill, without hesitation. As a philosopher, I have to say that. But what's so wrong
with taking the blue pill? Taking the blue pill means choosing a life 'based on a lie'. But at least I will
have the complete confidence that the deception will never be uncovered. I will never live to regret my
decision. That's why the essay question is so good. It focuses the problem much more sharply.

One of my philosophy teachers when I was an undergraduate once said she in God 'because the
alternative would be too terrible to contemplate'. I would say that's not a legitimate ground for holding
the belief, but only for wantingthe belief to be true. If God doesn't exist that's too bad. But my teacher
was not a fool. She thought that this was one of those few special cases where it was OK to close
one's eyes to legitimate doubt.

More than any other philosopher, Nietzsche challenges us to examine the value that we place on
truth. He was not a nihilist, but he did perceive and understood the threat posed by nihilism. The
choice is either to embrace comforting illusions, or find the courage to create our own values. (As an
undergraduate, long before I read Nietzsche, I was impressed by David Wiggins' powerful defence of
this view of values in his British Academy Lecture, 'Truth, Invention and the Meaning of Life', which
has since been published in book form.)

A Nietzschean conception of values is the best chance for the religious attitude- I won't say religious
belief - in a world where God has been killed by science and technology.

Nihilism is not a belief about the way things are, it is a psychological condition that anyone can
succumb to. The nihilist does not see the world in its true colours. The world does not have any true
colour - not even grey. Theworld is every colour we freely choose to paint it. Making sense of our life
is an aesthetic, as well as a moral challenge.

Geoffrey Klempner